19 hours ago, shivers9 said:

Oh you have not seen anything yet. Wait until Monday when V6 is released. LOL... all the xbox guys from brand x will shut down their machines and head over here to tell us just how stupid we really are. Those days alone are enough to keep you entertained for a week or so. 

Followed by the day a new sim from brand x is announced which prompts the crews from other sims to knock and tell them how they're all just xbox gamers. 

No ill intent here, but more of an observation. It's amusing how every sim branch thinks the others are always being 'that guy', when the reality is that every sim has their die-hards that feel the inexplicable need to poo all over the other sims while the majority can cope with the fact other sims exist. It's just a lot of noise by a few.

On 7/1/2023 at 8:43 PM, FBW737 said:

Indeed, compatibility issues that will never be addressed because some of the developers of said addons have abandoned the platform so don't expect many addons that work in V5 to ever work in V6. So much for backwards compatibility. The same was true for the V4 to V5 transition. Plenty of addons  V4 compatible never saw the light of day in V5. It will be far worse this time around.

I would expect addons without binary code (say: stupid BGL files for scenery) work but addons with binary code (gauges, effects a.s.o) to be reworked (depending on the internal depth) and recompiled using the newer SDK. Addons that use hidden = non-SDK functions have to be reworked surely. That's how it ever was.

Literal hogwash.

You can't "partner with Unreal." It's like Garmin "Partnering with Cessna 172" It's a product, not a brand.

Let's all put on our thinking caps for just half of a second and ask ourselves why Lockheed Martin would begin developing a game from the ground up in a new engine to maybe compete with an already established product while they rake in literal billions of dollars from the defense industry on old technology. Lockheed Martin's presence at events like FSExpo is a formality. They only go because the cost to them is so utterly minuscule I'd be amazed if a single person in the company reviewed the Concur expense report for airfare before approving it. The entertainment consumer has never been their primary target demographic, it never will be their primary target demographic, and they are perfectly happy to be perceived as "stagnant" if it means they keep raking in lucrative contracts on the commercial end.

A P3D version running on unreal engine 5 would 100% not work with any previous addons. And from there the obvious question is, if P3D v7 means everyone is starting from scratch, then what is the point? Either LM can keep iterating on ESP and making sure it continues to work on modern hardware, or they can wipe the slate clean.

Would anyone seriously invest time and money into P3D v7 if they had to start from scratch? Especially when there are two other sims with already dedicated user bases? This whole argument is silly. What would P3D V7 have to offer to convince a sizeable market to jump ship?

P3D only survived because it was relatively easy for devs with already existing FSX addons to move them over, and iterate on each minor upgrade that solved the glaring flaws of FSX as hardware moved on. It would have never been successful if there wasn't relative compatibility with FSX, and that hasn't changed.

X-Plane survives on a die-hard fanbase of loyalists, and a sizeable userbase of Mac and Linux users who have no other serious choice. MSFS convinced devs to start from scratch because it was easy for users to enter and opened up the market to a more casual userbase that FSX had once owned, and by opening up the hobby to those who can't afford a gaming PC.

P3D V7 would have to somehow *both* offer a compelling reason for users now invested in either MSFS or X-Plane to switch, AND offer the same compelling reasons for devs to switch, while also competing with the marketing budget of Microsoft and Xbox Games. Ergo, it will never happen, and at this point it's bordering on the sadness of Detroit Lions fans proclaiming next year to finally be their year.

/rant

On 6/30/2023 at 5:38 PM, Boeingnut said:

It's a sad time for our hobby. My first sim was FS98. During that period, there was also flight unlimited II, the Aerowinx 747-400, Fly  and a few other sims. Never did I see such infantile tribalism as we see now. There was plenty of freeware available at Avsim and Flightsim.com. There were freeware developers, like Eric W. Ernst (who is sadly no longer with us) who took the time to design, and program panels that, at the time, were advanced. He always helped on an install if things went sideways. I honestly don't recognize the hobby today.

Captures what many of the less vocal folks here feel. Sadly it's a sign of the greater zeitgeist creeping into hobby spaces.
Keep doing your thing. 👍

2 hours ago, Stavros said:

A P3D version running on unreal engine 5 would 100% not work with any previous addons. And from there the obvious question is, if P3D v7 means everyone is starting from scratch, then what is the point? Either LM can keep iterating on ESP and making sure it continues to work on modern hardware, or they can wipe the slate clean.

Would anyone seriously invest time and money into P3D v7 if they had to start from scratch? Especially when there are two other sims with already dedicated user bases? This whole argument is silly. What would P3D V7 have to offer to convince a sizeable market to jump ship?

P3D only survived because it was relatively easy for devs with already existing FSX addons to move them over, and iterate on each minor upgrade that solved the glaring flaws of FSX as hardware moved on. It would have never been successful if there wasn't relative compatibility with FSX, and that hasn't changed.

X-Plane survives on a die-hard fanbase of loyalists, and a sizeable userbase of Mac and Linux users who have no other serious choice. MSFS convinced devs to start from scratch because it was easy for users to enter and opened up the market to a more casual userbase that FSX had once owned, and by opening up the hobby to those who can't afford a gaming PC.

P3D V7 would have to somehow *both* offer a compelling reason for users now invested in either MSFS or X-Plane to switch, AND offer the same compelling reasons for devs to switch, while also competing with the marketing budget of Microsoft and Xbox Games. Ergo, it will never happen, and at this point it's bordering on the sadness of Detroit Lions fans proclaiming next year to finally be their year.

/rant

Yes - and it all depends on what the Mil/Comm/Gov market wants.

While they still truly NEED backwards compatibility, that is surely not an indefinite requirement. At some point, the Commercial clients will begin adopting a new, better platform.

E.g., there are some "upstart" sim companies with products like Nor that have the opportunity to grab a significant slice of the Commercial pie. Unreal is LM's response to that.

Otherwise LM never would've made the announcement & commitment around Unreal.

The only question, at this point, is will that next LM sim be available to consumers?

Was reading a DCS thread on another forum, which led to a product/company called Metra and their combat sim, which led to a Lockheed Martin post about Unreal Engine, which lead to this thread on Avsim....

Interesting.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/lockheed-martin-engages-unreal-engine-for-aerospace-simulation-r-d

4 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Was reading a DCS thread on another forum, which led to a product/company called Metra and their combat sim, which led to a Lockheed Martin post about Unreal Engine, which lead to this thread on Avsim....

Interesting.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/lockheed-martin-engages-unreal-engine-for-aerospace-simulation-r-d

This is "promising".  I really do suspect that LM will release Unreal Engine in their next upgrade.  I've said so much about this on this forum, and it's my choice to NOT use V6 and keep using 5.4, because I don't believe V6 was a serious upgrade.  I look forward though, literally starting from scratch, with a TRUE upgrade like Unreal Engine.  LM MUST compete with MSFS from a realism standpoint, and Unreal Engine will do that.

13 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Was reading a DCS thread on another forum, which led to a product/company called Metra and their combat sim, which led to a Lockheed Martin post about Unreal Engine, which lead to this thread on Avsim....

This is very promising news.  I'd be surprised if we see anything like v7 using Unreal in 2024, but perhaps in 2025 or 2026.

P3Dv6 is very disappointing and really should have been v5.5, which is why I'm sticking with v5.4.

Dave

On 11/22/2023 at 6:10 AM, spilok said:

This is "promising".  I really do suspect that LM will release Unreal Engine in their next upgrade.  I've said so much about this on this forum, and it's my choice to NOT use V6 and keep using 5.4, because I don't believe V6 was a serious upgrade.  I look forward though, literally starting from scratch, with a TRUE upgrade like Unreal Engine.  LM MUST compete with MSFS from a realism standpoint, and Unreal Engine will do that.

P3D isn't likely to transmogrify into Unreal. 

LM make their money from operating vast training environments using networked P3D, not from P3D itself. 

The true likelihood is that the Unreal product will develop into a separate sim. Or at best take the MSFS road and rebuild select portions of P3D code into an Unreal enviro (which is what MS/Adobo did). Which still ends up as a separate sim. 

P3D as we know it will continue on ad infinitum until LMs customer base (mil/com/gov) are ready to replace it. Which could easily span another decade or two. 

At the moment, these other new sims haven't given any indication they'll be consumer products, and the very same thing may happen with the Unreal version.

 

 

On 11/22/2023 at 3:05 PM, dave2013 said:

This is very promising news.  I'd be surprised if we see anything like v7 using Unreal in 2024, but perhaps in 2025 or 2026.

P3Dv6 is very disappointing and really should have been v5.5, which is why I'm sticking with v5.4.

Dave

You gotta understand that P3D isn't built for us consumers, it's built for the gov/com

When you look at the features being added/upgraded, it all makes sense. Eg the upgraded airports, etc. 

P3D for consumers is a dead man walking (due to lack of addon dev support rather than any problem with the sim itself). 

 

10 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

P3D for consumers is a dead man walking (due to lack of addon dev support rather than any problem with the sim itself). 

Dead man walking, but still walking.  🙂

14 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

You gotta understand that P3D isn't built for us consumers, it's built for the gov/com

When you look at the features being added/upgraded, it all makes sense. Eg the upgraded airports, etc. 

P3D for consumers is a dead man walking (due to lack of addon dev support rather than any problem with the sim itself). 

 

This.

LM dominate the military simulation market and need to continue to do so. Buy their hardware and buy their training too. This 360 degree approach is not only extremely profitable but also what their customers demand.

Modern military hardware is all about sensor integration. What the guys in the sky are ‘seeing’ is also being fed to ground units in real time and vice verser.

For LM’s uses the Unreal engine offers two huge advantages; a single, integrated world where ground, sea and air activity takes place within a common software environment and that same software environment that tens of thousands of developers and potential developers are familiar with.

It means the talent pool available to LM and their customers is huge. 
Talk of LM going up against MSFS for the consumer/entertainment software market is amusing but unlikely in the extreme.

Agreed. LM and MSFS are unrelated in that regard.

21 hours ago, newtie said:

Dead man walking, but still walking.  🙂

Limping, may be more accurate, unfortunately.