14 minutes ago, GoranM said:

There you go.  Me too.

🎅

Beautiful! ☺️

Who needs to sit and watch TV and fill your face full of food for Christmas day when you can just come to Avsim 

9 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

If MP is a silly gimmick, why is LR investing so much in developing it and evangelizing it?

You're conflating network data streams with MMO multiplayer. The latter is a small portion of their development efforts. I haven't heard Austin or anyone else mention it, even in rebuttal form, during the course of 12 so far.

I have zero DCS experience but am certain it's up there with goal and intent akin to vatsim et.al. and I'm putting that latter category in with 'networked data stream' where there is a specific rule set or intention of the feature.

A free fly option like what XP mobile currently offers can indeed be a fun thing to do from time to time, but on average I'd rather not have a bunch of kids swooping all over my approach path, threatening both my itchy TOGA trigger finger and the photometric immersion that's got me drooling onto my keyboard! Buzz off ya little twerps! : )

I'm certain that a majority of people turn it off most of the time which makes it a gimmick. Fun to have, but neither a critical component nor ultimate selling point (aside from game platforms: mobile, xbox).

9 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

but that's substantially more than "none" as you claim.

Actually, it is still none. None of them has abandoned the platform entirely, which was my original statement. I understand if there's a scale-back. I would not be surprised if the beluga was a bit of a bust, so no love lost there!

Milviz's decision wasn't predicated on xp12 vs f2020, was it? I think that decision was made some time ago. Non sequitur, as you say? Same w/ the PMDG DC6 which was also a terrible first offering. The product was certainly high quality, but who cares about a DC6? Almost nobody. That's up there w/ Beluga. PMDG who? Zibo for the win.

You're listing airframe availability discrepancies (some a bit obscure) that have always existed. Nothing has really changed for XP and there's nothing Austin could / would do to be able to sway them. It didn't happen during XP11's successful run. He's got a path in mind and clearly has enough money and sales to continue enroute.

As for scenery, I'm still scratching my head wondering who Tony was talking about? Drzewiecki maybe? I don't think they've confirmed either way but have certainly embraced fs2020.

39 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Who needs to sit and watch TV and fill your face full of food for Christmas day when you can just come to Avsim 

Is TV still a thing? Darn that's been a while.

Wow, soak in nostalgia to. 🥰

1 minute ago, mSparks said:

Wow, soak in nostalgia to.

Some day that red rider bb gun will be mine. Ovaltine or not!

19 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

As for scenery, I'm still scratching my head wondering who Tony was talking about? Drzewiecki maybe? I don't think they've confirmed either way but have certainly embraced fs2020.

A few of the top of my head.... Orbx, PilotPlus, iniBuilds, Gaya, perhaps Drzewiecki (although their XP products were just ports of P3D products). They have shifted heavily over to MFS development from P3D and X-Plane (but haven't necessarily said they've stopped XP development, just heavily shifted focus). I was surprised to even see places like ThresholdX also shift their attention more to MFS. It's very noticeable IMO, and easy to understand why (it's where the customers are). 

I remember when MFS was first released/announced and there was a lot of hate thrown towards 'greedy" scenery developers and that addons will no longer be needed. Clearly, that didn't turn out too well

As I said earlier though.. MFS is very over-saturated, so for small developers it's harder to stand out and get noticed and be competitive with the lower prices offered by others. Plus I'd argue you need to work much harder to make a high quality scenery for X-Plane since it's far less forgiving in terms of poorly modelled or textured objects (Lighting and AO make a huge difference)

8 minutes ago, tonywob said:

haven't necessarily said they've stopped XP development, just heavily shifted focus

Good to know. Never heard of PilotPlus or Gaya. The latter does seem like it might be a notable loss. Also, I didn't know DD was a P3D port. I could swear their NYC is based on photogrammetry data...

 

12 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Plus I'd argue you need to work much harder to make a high quality scenery for X-Plane since it's far less forgiving in terms of poorly modelled or textured objects (Lighting and AO make a huge difference)

Yup. There's a clarity and sharpness to XP overall visuals that I much prefer. I can imagine that demands more from the modelling/texture designers.

5 hours ago, GoranM said:

Why do you care so much about what we think of MSFS?  Is it that important you get our approval?

Hey Goran--the image was posted to demonstrate to counter the idea posted here that melted buildings are a necessary part of the sim's current state, which it isn't this is related only to photogrammetry which isn't ready for prime time obviously.  I couldn't care less about "your" (that us against them again) approval, but lies and nonsense is worth countering, here, or elsewhere.

Edited December 25, 20223 yr by Noel

2 minutes ago, Noel said:

Hey Goran--the image was posted to demonstrate melted buildings etc aren't necessary as is frequently stated by Sparks is the case, and that's false and is why I posted this image.

Fair enough.  As long as you get what you want out of it, all is good.  

I know it can get very annoying when people tell you something you know isn't true...right?

🙂

Nobody mentioned it but Carenado is one of the developers that seem to have switched totally over to the other side.

i know the hairy chested XP pilots looked down on the average quality of their products but they were still fairly popular with their affordable prices and frequent sales 

7 hours ago, peroni said:

Nobody mentioned it but Carenado is one of the developers that seem to have switched totally over to the other side.

i know the hairy chested XP pilots looked down on the average quality of their products but they were still fairly popular with their affordable prices and frequent sales 

Several years ago, Carenado contracted an X-Plane dev team by the name of Thranda to make X-Plane versions of some of their add ons under the Carenado name.  It was in 2019 when Carenado and Thranda decided to amicably part ways so Thranda can create add ons under their own name for X-Plane while Carenado return to an MSFS only workflow.   They never switched to X-Plane.  They included X-Plane in their add on catalogue.  

Edited December 25, 20223 yr by GoranM

Lol about the amicably part 😀

After the split, Carenado published one or two more aircrafts for XP and then stopped completely since MSFS came out. 
 

Forgot to add, one of the Carenado devs is now in the Laminar team

Edited December 25, 20223 yr by peroni

4 minutes ago, peroni said:

Lol about the amicably part 😀

After the split, Carenado published one or two more aircrafts for XP and then stopped completely since MSFS came out. 

I prefer to take things at face value.  They split in 2019.

https://www.thresholdx.net/news/catdsw

""Attempts were made to negotiate further collaborations, but in the end, we decided to split completely on amicable terms."

Edited December 25, 20223 yr by GoranM

1 hour ago, Noel said:

Hey Goran--the image was posted to demonstrate to counter the idea posted here that melted buildings are a necessary part of the sim's current state, which it isn't this is related only to photogrammetry which isn't ready for prime time obviously.  I couldn't care less about "your" (that us against them again) approval, but lies and nonsense is worth countering, here, or elsewhere.

Melted buildings in MSFS can't be countered.  Some areas are good, some are bad. For every image of a good area, you could easily post one of a bad if you wanted to be balanced.

9 hours ago, SierraDelta said:

If that's your explanation are you really sure that you should be using a modern computer? It takes at least 3 dedicated mouse clicks to buy something from the World Map. SMH.

Oh, I don't use a computer. All of my simming is done on a reconditioned Lexmark IBM Electric typewriter. I leave computers to the qualified people.