MSFS: A Victim of Its Own Huge Success

[F737MAX 5,553]

2 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

I think it is more a victim of poor planning, management, and infrastructure provision rather than a shortage of cash.

💯 Although Jorg mentioned frequently in the recent developer Q&A stream that there are project managers on various aspects of the sim, MSFS appears to be struggling in various aspects due to:

1. It being more popular than MS' initial expectations
2. It being more difficult technically than initial expectations
3. The development teams struggling to meet the demands of discerning flight simmers (whether casual or semi-pro/pro flight simmer types).

All of which has caused MS/Asobo to continually play catch-up, ever since the earlier-than-anticipated release to market.
This has meant the QA on various updates has left many of us wanting as regression bugs have appeared in spite of trying to clear the large lists of long-standing issues and feature requests.
 

3 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

Or high demand somehow means many sales, as in the rest of the economy, and therefore they have enough "funds".

💯 While some flight simmers may pay a subscription for streamed content, the vast, vast majority (particularly the casual users) won't. Turning off streamed content like world textures, photogrammetry, live weather and live traffic for 'non-subscribers' would kill the interest level in the sim and in turn kill the sim.
Instead, the money to pay for MSFS' online content is being driven by Marketplace sales and (possibly) cross-selling any content developed for MSFS for use elsewhere in MS' product/service portfolio and will remain that way.

[A330B747 15]

16 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

MSFS offers so much that even for me - a procedural high realism IFR simmer - it's the best I could wish for. If/When they finally complete the weather and fix AI traffic, I wouldn't know what would still be missing for flight sim perfection.

 

Are you serious? What's the best part of a Flight "SIMULATION"? it's the TOUCHDOWN&LANDING. and what miss? SUSPENSION PHYSICS and GROUND PHYSICS. Then will be perfect.

[lwt1971 7,347]

6 hours ago, David Mills said:

1. Finally, as I'm sure you've noticed, forum traffic, both here and elsewhere, has exploded in recent months. This time last year, I could easily read all daily posts in the MSFS forums in one sitting. Today, I can't begin to keep up. New posts often scroll off the bottom of the first page before most visitors ever see them. I've also experienced occasional difficulty in recent weeks accessing various MSFS forums due to bandwidth issues (though these delays have been short and immediately remedied).

Interesting observations David and I wholeheartedly agree with all your points, and this one above is something I've really noticed around here, especially since around the 40th anniversary edition or so I think.. though traffic started to uptick here ever since May 2022 when the serious aircraft for MSFS started getting released. The relentless pace that MS/Asobo keeps enhancing the sim via core sim updates, world & city updates, aircraft & avionics updates, and contracting out to 3rd party devs to provide add-ons free for us all is a big part of it, as is the way MS/Asobo constantly engages with the community and just overall behaves entirely unlike the legacy "old guard" ways of flight sim devs.. equally important of course is all the 3rd party payware that also seems relentless in their buy-in and support of the MSFS platform. Add to all this the great freeware offerings from the likes of FBW, and one is left unsurprised at the snowballing success that is MSFS.
 

Edited March 28, 2023 by lwt1971

[Bdub22 1,609]

5 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

To keep up with demand, MS will have to look at another funding model to keep the service performing well across the globe.

I actually see them releasing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2025 before they do that. Millions of copies at $65 a pop. Do the math. 

[Stoopy 1,571]

To me, MSFS is more like Robin Trower than Taylor Swift.  Totally righteous and twice removed from yesterday, man.

[H_Slughorn 1]

3 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

... Add to all this the great freeware offerings from the likes of FBW, ...
 

FBW = Farmers Bank of Willards??  As a new user, I am having trouble keeping up will all the abbreviations. 🙂

No problems with the servers for me...

[Ricardo41 5,936]

9 hours ago, David Mills said:

At first blush, it may seem silly to compare Microsoft Flight Simulator to singing sensation Taylor Swift. But there is a close parallel between the two

You should have just labeled your post: I love Taylor Swift!😉

We won't judge.......

[cchiozza 106]

At this point it is unusable for the stutters are nothing short of a PowerPoint. Well PowerPoint is smoother.

[turbomax 3,269]

9 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

and it’s arguably one of the best flight simulator for GA IFR flight because of the default GA avionics.

but ... but .. it's not FAA approved 😊

[HarryVoyager 21]

Admittedly, I don't usually have the problem of airport vehicles driving on runways mostly because I have a knack for finding things that are not actually runways to land at. 

I particularly recall the strip I found out in Tasmania that had a tree at the end of the runway. Was going to file a bug report on it when I looked up the actual air strip . That... wasn't. It might have been one at some point in the past but not any more. 

The tree right off the concrete? Yeah, it was real. 

[jarmstro 2,402]

There are those who go off on holiday and spend the entire two weeks looking for things to find fault with, making outrage videos and joining long queues in order to complain, complain, complain. There are others that just enjoy the holiday.

[Amon1973 1,421]

1 hour ago, cchiozza said:

At this point it is unusable for the stutters are nothing short of a PowerPoint. Well PowerPoint is smoother.

I had very bad stutters after installing SU12, I updated FSUIPC to the latest version. My stutters are now completely gone and my sim is now super smooth @ 4k.

[Nemo 1,305]

10 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

To keep up with demand, MS will have to look at another funding model to keep the service performing well across the globe.  I predict a subscription model is just around the corner.

If that would mean quality, stable service, ala Netflix, I would pay a monthly fee.

Interesting thoughts. I would pay for a subscription model too, but would rather prefer something like a pro version.

Edit: Right now, MSFS hangs at syncing data, which is usually caused by server/cloud issues.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Nemo

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

No issues.

other than not enough time to fly.

As far as realism goes - if people start downloading current NOTAM before creating a flight plan I might start taking them more seriously.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Glenn Fitzpatrick

[MarcG 2,929]

53 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

There are those who go off on holiday and spend the entire two weeks looking for things to find fault with, making outrage videos and joining long queues in order to complain, complain, complain. There are others that just enjoy the holiday.

Some of us went on holiday all happy but during the holiday got downgraded to a room with a worse view, so we complain 😉