Milviz stopped selling P3D products?

[newtie 540]

I just went to their website, went to 'click here for other products (P3D) etc. and there's nothing to be found.

One XPlane aircraft only.

[newtie 540]

Just checked their forum. It's done.

And the hits just keep on coming...

[pommy80 83]

Announced nearly a year ago. Here is a thread here at Avsim:

MILVIZ leaves P3D enthusiast market - The Prepar3d Forum - The AVSIM Community

 

[dave2013 1,142]

I wonder if they'll give away their FSX/P3D stuff for free?

Would be a nice gesture considering that they don't plan on making money on those products any more.

Dave

[level7 175]

On 1/3/2023 at 4:44 AM, newtie said:

Just checked their forum. It's done.

And the hits just keep on coming...

Quote

Happy New Year!
Post by doodlebug » Sat Dec 31, 2022 5:11 pm

The Team at Blackbird Sims would like to wish you & yours a very Happy New Year!
Hopefully 2023 will bring a ton of new & cool avgeek joy to the MSFS eco-system!
Sadly, it also brings an end to our work in P3D, and Blackbird will not be carrying Prepar3D products into 2023.

Happy New Year!

That's a bit of a bummer, kinda wish I picked up the T-38A now...

[newtie 540]

More than a bummer, an omen.

[Airboeing 87]

Understandable from a developer's point of view. You need to focus your ressources to some platform, and as MSFS already sees more activity than P3D and X-Plane combined (50-75% of flights, depending on which statistics you look at), it's quite logical to develop for that sim if you want to maximize your chances of making a profit.
 

Of course it's bad for all of us who don't use MSFS as their main sim (I haven't even tried it), but as a dev - at least one that needs to make a living out of addons - you need to prioritize.

[Rogen 1,095]

1 hour ago, Airboeing said:

Understandable from a developer's point of view. You need to focus your ressources to some platform, and as MSFS already sees more activity than P3D and X-Plane combined (50-75% of flights, depending on which statistics you look at), it's quite logical to develop for that sim if you want to maximize your chances of making a profit.
 

Of course it's bad for all of us who don't use MSFS as their main sim (I haven't even tried it), but as a dev - at least one that needs to make a living out of addons - you need to prioritize.

It's not as though we're talking new developement here, their P3D range was already developed and hasn't changed for some time, plus they even advised they'll sell but not be offering support.

Looks like they've removed their P3D product line from every sales platform, I see some still listed in Orbx Central, but when linking to Orbx Direct it's a 404.

I always thought they were a questionable bunch with their wierd video rants and the way they did business overall.

At least I had the chance to buy at their flash sale they had a while back, their products themselves are resaonable, although there were a number of obvious bugs I ended up resolving myself.

Cheers

Edited January 4, 2023 by Rogen

[newtie 540]

Hey Rogen,

Do you have their Beaver? If you do, did you ever figure out the Kap140/RXP GTN750 “gotta dial in the next waypoint on the DG in order for the GTN to follow the next track thing?” Took me a good long while. Crazy.

[level7 175]

Previously I think they said no support but 50% off. Now with the P3D products removed they don't even sell anything. Hard to understand how this is better for them - unless they felt they were still dealing with support even when it was no longer promised.

[newtie 540]

I think this will be the norm very soon.
I’m very interested in what LM is going let loose, if anything, given the ‘we’re closed’ sign on more and more devs doors.

[Rogen 1,095]

On 1/5/2023 at 8:43 AM, newtie said:

Hey Rogen,

Do you have their Beaver? If you do, did you ever figure out the Kap140/RXP GTN750 “gotta dial in the next waypoint on the DG in order for the GTN to follow the next track thing?” Took me a good long while. Crazy.

I do have the Beaver radial and turbine, do you mean the turbine ?

I run the F1 GTN in them and have been flying the radial of late, but in that I use the GTN more as a map and hand fly for the most part.

Cheers

[Rogen 1,095]

On 1/5/2023 at 12:16 PM, level7 said:

Previously I think they said no support but 50% off. Now with the P3D products removed they don't even sell anything. Hard to understand how this is better for them - unless they felt they were still dealing with support even when it was no longer promised.

They were not the greatest for support anyway.

Once a product was released they tended to mark it as finalised even if additional bugs were then identified.

Case in point their big rant about having to do v5 installers for their existing products, really such actions are classified as maintanence, I mean people cannot buy a product if they cannot install it.

Anyway I think they're getting their just deserts with the constant changes in MSFS forcing them to revist their code with each MSFS update, lest their product become unusable.

And I see they are having gauge issues as well - quote snip from their website.

"However, with the highly dynamic and ever-improving environment that Microsoft Flight Simulator has become, we've found that it is out of our wheelhouse for us to ship our products with full support for 3rd party avionics products. Most, if not all, of these, are highly susceptible to compatibility issues that have little to nothing to do with our products. And yet, we're EXPECTED to provide support and fixes for these products.

These issues cost us valuable development time, as the sim continues to evolve from month to month and update to update. This, in turn, prevents us from working on new and exciting products that we would like to share with our customers. It's hard enough dealing with our own fixes, let alone having to deal with problems with other devs products..."

Good luck to them... heh

Cheers

[UrgentSiesta 936]

Ugh...sad news.

Though I have to admit I hadn't taken advantage of any of their 50% off deals simply due to the "In As-Is Condition", No Updates, No Support policy. AND because I was previously bitten by their strange aversion to update their products for v5 compatibility...

The really strange thing with this move, though, is that they still actually do a LOT of P3D development for .Mil/.Gov, so it's not like it would be much more work to tweak the models here and there.

I guess it shows just how sharply the sales have fallen off that the addons can't even support their own maintenance man-hours. 😞

A shame because had their King Air come out just a bit earlier, I would've happily paid the original price for it.

In any case, I have their wonderful T-38C to keep me busy until they launch it into MSFS (already previewed in sim some months ago).

And the good news is that their products for MSFS have, so far, been easily up to par (at release).

 

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 553]

They had a platform with loyal customers who want and need (like me) an ATR and we were left without it... and now this happens.