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those who were naive enough to think that the MSFS platform's capabilities were fully represented by the default aircraft in the sim then.

Exactly right. I cannot tell you the number of debates I had on this very subject. To the point I was accused many times of being a shill for FS 2020 - which is especially ironic as it's not my favorite sim! I just prefer to compare apples to apples, and the original Defaults in FS 2020 were on par for fidelity level vs other sims.

 

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with CFD, advanced atmospherics and airflow, helicopter and glider physics, and avionics at an unprecedented depth and fidelity as *default* that no other sim can can even come close to,

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Even some of the default aircraft in MSFS are now high fidelity in terms of systems and aerodynamics, again far surpassing anything else in any other sim.

You're starting to sound uncharacteristically like a certain "enthusiast" over in the X-Plane forums...

As you say, FS 2020 has made quantum leaps in fidelity & quality since release and thus is a far more enjoyable experience across the board than it was at the beginning.

Quite frankly, though, I find only the C172 G1000 and Cabri helo measure up in terms of their aerodynamics. I attribute this to the great lengths the Asobo devs went to collect real-world data to shape the flight & performance models of the addons themselves rather than to any inherent advantage of CFD-Lite.

A great example of that is how closely the Cabri performs to IRL and High Fidelity versions in other sims, and yet the Bell 407 is inarguably sub-par when it comes to many aspects of helo flight characteristics (and don't even get me started on the utterly abysmal state of its systems...).

In re fixed wing flight models, there are quite a few 3PD addons that are CFD-enabled, which makes them fly more fluidly, but which like the B407, don't behave correctly to one degree or another.

This is especially apparent in high performance military aircraft, from fast jets to warbirds. They just ain't right, regardless of dev.

We also have cases where 3PD developers like SWS and Just Flight are publicly avoiding CFD because they can NOT get it to perform their aircraft according to real life metrics. In their view, the traditional flight model is preferable because it enables them to get their addons to hit the IRL performance chart metrics very closely.

CFD-Lite is the future, and the future is bright, but it's a ways off in the distance yet...

In terms of systems, I'm not quite sure if you're restricting your comments to the Default aircraft, or in general. If the former, then you may very well be right.

However, for e.g., the default P-51D in DCS World completely eclipses any single engine piston steam gauge Default in any sim. And most of the payware ones, too.

The new Defaults in XP v12 are substantially upgraded as well. I cannot make a blanket judgement, other than to say they are definitely Payware-Grade addons that perform better than many of their counterparts in FS 2020 to this day.

Now, it is quite obvious that MS & Asobo brought their "A" Game to the table when it comes to the G1000, the 40th Anniversary addons. And the still-pending upgrades to the CJ4 & Longitude look to raise them to a High Fidelity status in all regards. I am particularly interested in the Longitude as it will finally represent it's incredible IRL performance, plus the thoroughly modern & accurate Garmin, along with other systems.

So while Asobo absolutely deserve a standing ovation for this year in particular, it's still quite early (and still inaccurate) to declare that the addons and other features "far surpass anything else in any other sim."

Edited December 23, 20223 yr by UrgentSiesta
removed extraneous OP quotes

12 hours ago, OverTheEDJ said:

I know someone who "was" a die hard XP user since version 9. In the first week of MSFSs release, I convinced him to buy it. Initially, he did not like MSFS (almost hated it and its lack of in depth avionics), he then shelved MSFS, and went back to XP11 for the past 2+ years.

When, XP12 came out on pre-release. He bought it day one, but was not overly impressed with the upgrade.

Recently, I mentioned all of the advances / updates / features, and upcoming AAUs for MSFS, and asked him to look at the latest Dev update vid; he then updated his MSFS and was impressed by how it has grown since its release. Given all of the updates etc. (especially what WT has on the horizon), he stated that he now just going to fly MSFS because of how it is advancing...

I think that 2023 is going to pull many hardcore XP fans. The fact is....MSFS is advancing fast in many areas including performance. The avionics upgrades (WT) and focus on study level planes are really going to hit home with those who demand deeper systems / sim experience.

Prior to MSFS, I was soley XP11. Now, I am not sure if I will upgrade to XP12 (once it matures more) because MSFS is putting out so much so fast (updates / payware / freeware etc.). So much so, that I am now leaning towards letting go of all my XP addons because MSFS is replacing it (now with Helis and the Vsion Jet).

Absolutely agree with you at the pace that MSFS is advancing.  When I look at the feature list and how much XP 12 advanced from XP 11.50 back in 2020 to XP 12's beta release in September of 2022, I think the volume of changes and the amount of changes might be comparable to say, 2 Sim Updates in MSFS.  But we are getting about 4 Sim Updates now, per year in MSFS, so 2 Sim Updates takes about 6 months to do.  So at this current pace, the MSFS team is running laps around the LR team.  Looks like the money spent on the larger development team for MSFS is paying off.

Just look at the Working Title team alone.  This is a whole team dedicated to avionics.  The advancement of the GA avionics in MSFS is mind boggling, with how fast the G1000 NXi matured, and now AAU1 with even more avionics being improved.

Having said that, I believe Austin said he is hiring more people and expanding the size of the team working on XP 12, so that may help LR to pick up the pace of development and changes.  In any case, if nothing else changes (ie. both MSFS and XP have the same number of resources working on it going forward), I think MSFS will pull further away from XP 12 (but this should be the outcome, if Microsoft is pumping more money into the MSFS team versus LR spending money on their development team, everything else being equal).

Edited December 23, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

9 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

I don’t think they do to be honest. Since the beginning they were dismissing MSFS as serious platform and then they realized “ops we missed the train, we need to hurry up”.

I think the biggest problem was the SDK and lack of info that would allow a serious aircraft to be developed. Plus updates caused issues that required hot fixes on more than one occasion. Remember the DC3 from PMDG? The Airbus is infinitely more complex so you can understand their initial reluctance.

9 hours ago, Abriael said:

I had literally just mentioned people trying to dismiss MSFS as simply eyecandy. 

Understood, thanks.

9 hours ago, Abriael said:

that's definitely not true for P3D. MSFS makes it enturely obsolete under every point of view.

But MSFS doesn’t have weather radar, an open weather engine to allow HiFi to develop a program with historical weather or ChasePlane. Those are important to plenty of users.

@rickjake, understood. Concorde will eventually come to MSFS so I hope you might choose to fly it again. I agree 32-bit is a nuisance. A new version is long overdue.

11 hours ago, Abriael said:

The result is completely unsurprising, and of course the true percentages are bound to be even more radically in favor of MSFS, as the userbase of Navigraph and even more so the percentage of that userbase who is willing to take a long survey is very much unbalanced toward the most hardcore of simmers. 

Another thing that is even less surprising is that I already see people swallowing Austin's blue pill and dismissing MSFS's advantage as eye-candy, which is simplistic, reductive, and frankly silly. MSFS can count on resources on a different order of magnitude compared to Xplane, and those resources are spent on much more than eye-candy. The avionics update currently in beta and the Airbus A310 were just the latest unequivocal evidence of this. 

Quite simply, X-plane's developers don't have the resources to complete with MSFS in any field and they've been resting on their (already scarce) laurels thinking that they can deceive a significant number of core simmers into believing their "superior simulation oh so pro!" urban legend with silly videos that are little more than Austin's ego trips and hubris. Any residual advantage they may have because their platform has been around longer is destined to be eaten up and eclipsed.

MSFS is already the overall better simulator and the better product, and not by a small margin. X-plane 12 was a rushed, underfeatured stopgap to try and put something on the market to stop the hemorrhage, but we all know it's simply no competition. Competition is good for the market only when the competitor has the means to actually compete. Otherwise, it's simply a meaningless dilution of third-party developers' time and resources.

The fact that DCS is picking up steam is also significant. Their product is very different from MSFS, so it has the potential to retain and expand its niche, which is great. The best way to compete with MSFS (albeit Eagle Dynamics does this naturally and not necessarily intentionally) is to have a product that offers a completely different experience instead of doing the same thing and just saying "ours is better, please believe us!" 😂

Very well written!

Edited December 23, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

5 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I think the biggest problem was the SDK and lack of info that would allow a serious aircraft to be developed. Plus updates caused issues that required hot fixes on more than one occasion. Remember the DC3 from PMDG?

The DC6 from PMDG works very well and the regular updates to MSFS, which break fixes and then fix broken bits are becoming more successful as each one is released.
It must be approaching the point at which even the most ardent insistent upon "study level" quality might be willing to actually purchase a copy and try it out.

 

11 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But MSFS doesn’t have weather radar, an open weather engine to allow HiFi to develop a program with historical weather or ChasePlane. Those are important to plenty of users.

The results of the survey say that that "plenty" is pretty much an overstatement. And you can pretty much bet that P3D is going to bleed even more users before the next survey. This trend isn't going to stop. 

PS: "doesn't have weather radar" is incorrect. 

Edited December 23, 20223 yr by Abriael

13 hours ago, jrw4 said:

So whatever conclusions one might want to draw from this survey, it would be very hard to extend them to the flight sim community as a whole

!!!

if the survey was conducted by a yoke or GPU manufacturer it would be more representative than by a niche developer like Navigraph for "hard cooooaaar" users. I for one (private pilot) don't own Navigraph, have never participated in any of their surveys, but use MSFS on a daily basis. and I am not the only one, with x-box users probably even less likely to even have ever heard of, let alone use Navigraph, therefore I assume the x-plane versus x-box percentage is totally misleading, which they are, not surprisingly celebrating over in the other forum. therefore I think the Steam statistics that Noel posted show a much more reliable picture of the simulators market share (yes I know x-plane 12 was released only recently):

x-plane 12 - 585

MSFS - 41.000

Edited December 23, 20223 yr by turbomax

9 hours ago, Doering said:

Very true Glenn! I follow Aerobask very closely. From all indications, they are not interested in developing for MSFS. There must be valid reasons? They have cut back on their product line dramatically! 

This is untrue. Aerobask recently released a brand new V2 of their Viper Jet and it is quite well done, the Falcon 8X is still in development and they have multiple other unannounced addons also in development.

While they did decide not to bring forward a couple of their older aircraft, undoubtedly because some were unpopular, they have either rebuilt them, or are replacing them with other High Fidelity addons. I think the net/net is that they'll be about where they are, and the highly anticipated Falcon 8X will be a flagship product for the sim.

2 minutes ago, Reader said:

The DC6 from PMDG works very well and the regular updates to MSFS, which break fixes and then fix broken bits are becoming more successful as each one is released.
It must be approaching the point at which even the most ardent insistent upon "study level" quality might be willing to actually purchase a copy and try it out.

Thanks for the correction.

1 minute ago, Abriael said:

The results of the survey say that that "plenty" is pretty much an overstatement. And you can pretty much bet that P3D is going to bleed even more users before the next survey. 

PS: "doesn't have weather radar" is incorrect. 

I can only speak for myself. I may buy it for low-level sightseeing. P3D will remain my primary sim.

Does the PMDG Boeing radar function as it does in P3D?

9 hours ago, OverTheEDJ said:

Interesting, I have been waiting to see if Aerobask and VSKYLABS would develop for MSFS as I prefer the smaller GA aircraft and Helis. However, I think we will see more MSFS developers fill in that gap (especially Helis, as it has already started) in 2023.

And if not, it sounds like Asobo will improve upon their default small GA fleet like the VL3, Virus etc. I would love to see a G3X version of Flight Design's CTLS or even better, their new F2.

 

vSkyLabs are absolutely adamant that they will not move to MSFS as they view X-Plane's engineering advantages to critical to abandon. Whether we agree or not, Huss is a former F-4 Phantom instructor pilot, and remains deeply involved in aerospace.

The good news is that Cowan Sims are making the jump and bringing at least several of their high quality helos to MSFS. They lost out to Fly Inside for first-to-market with the Bell 407, but their MD 500 is also nearly ready.

And even Hype Performance Group are polishing up their beta 145 with CFD in prep for general release.

MilViz, too has at least one UH-1 "Huey" in the pipeline and it's already flying in the sim.

I'm pretty excited to see what the rest of the AAU's will do, but I suspect much of the work may go towards the 787 & 747, at least at first.

In any case, it's going to be another banner year.

9 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Thanks for the correction.

I can only speak for myself. I may buy it for low-level sightseeing. P3D will remain my primary sim.

Does the PMDG Boeing radar function as it does in P3D?

Since when PMDG is the indicator of whether the weather radar is included in a simulator or not? 🤔

You're free to stick to whatever you like if it makes you happy, but we're talking about market trends here. And market trends pretty much indicate that P3D is a dying platform, abandoned by most users and by most developers. People still fly on FS2004. Doesn't make it less dead. 

Edited December 23, 20223 yr by Abriael

5 minutes ago, Abriael said:

Since when PMDG is the indicator of whether the weather radar is included in a simulator or not? 🤔

You're free to stick to whatever you like if it makes you happy, but we're talking about market trends here. And market trends pretty much indicate that P3D is a dying platform, abandoned by most users and by most developers. People still fly on FS2004. Doesn't make it less dead. 

Because if it’s available for that aircraft it should be available for others.

Give it a rest will you that P3D is “dead”. How can it be when LM still exist as a company and v6 is in beta. You’re entitled to your opinion but to describe a sim still in use and with plenty of third party products as dead is ridiculous. FS2004 cannot be purchased - unlike P3D.

That’s all from me on this topic.

2 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

that P3D is “dead”. How can it be when LM still exist as a company

dead as in aerofly II. exists but still is also "dead" 😊

5 minutes ago, turbomax said:

dead as in aerofly II. exists but still is also "dead" 😊

P3D use different as the consumer sude was always a bit of an aberration and it's primary focus is industry, education customers etc

That means P3D itself isn't going anywhere but it's relevance for individual simmers is  diminishing and with that goes Dev support

Edited December 23, 20223 yr by Matchstick

MSFS standard Steam edition is the best AUD$99, by a very big margin, I’ve invested in flightsim…

& in fact, this barebones basic sim surpasses, imo, many $thousands of purchases for the previous available flightsim products…