20 hours ago, Franz007 said:

This has been discussed to death in dedicated forums. It is simply not possible because of the licence-costs. So i am surprised you are surprised.

We don’t all live on flightsim forums. Do you know if xplane have actually explored this avenue and didn’t go down it due to licensing costs? 

1 hour ago, g-liner said:

Do you know if xplane have actually explored this avenue and didn’t go down it due to licensing costs? 

Yes absolutely. And this has been the reason given. You can search for how much this would cost for a user to download tiles in a good enough resolution. We speak about thousands and thousands of $ per user and year, depending on the area used.

8 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Its by leaps and bounds the most expensive addon (including even the sims themselves) I have ever bought. Full stop.

I wouldn‘t call it an addon but a subscription allowing you to keep your Airac-datas up to date. And it shows how cheap flightsimming is compared to real flying or even a few hours spent in a full level-D sim.

6 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

Yes absolutely. And this has been the reason given. You can search for how much this would cost for a user to download tiles in a good enough resolution. We speak about thousands and thousands of $ per user and year, depending on the area used.

And Meyer would never pay out for it because he wants all the money for himself. Just saying.

2 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

I wouldn‘t call it an addon but a subscription allowing you to keep your Airac-datas up to date. And it shows how cheap flightsimming is compared to real flying or even a few hours spent in a full level-D sim.

I don't want to fly for real or pay out for a level D sim. It's of no interest to me. Navigraph is an addon and it's very expensive imo.

17 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

And Meyer would never pay out for it because he wants all the money for himself. Just saying.

What a great comment…knowing it would cost hundreds of millions a year and not even cover the income the company is generating, for a guy who founds the navigraph-subscription to be too expensive 🤦‍♂️

Edited December 30, 20232 yr by Franz007

On 12/22/2023 at 9:54 AM, Christopher Low said:

Who is the guy with 1TB of RAM?

Rami M. Emory, everyone knows he has 1TB of RAM.

Edited December 30, 20232 yr by Tierborn

4 hours ago, Franz007 said:

What a great comment…knowing it would cost hundreds of millions a year and not even cover the income the company is generating, for a guy who founds the navigraph-subscription to be too expensive 🤦‍♂️

Just to confirm do you know for sure that xplane tried to team up with Apple Maps or google maps for mapping data and “hundreds of millions a year” was asked for. . . so they’re now not doing it? 

On 12/22/2023 at 7:09 AM, lwt1971 said:

For the "Main purpose of your flight simulation" question these were the answer choices and results:

1) Casual gaming / Entertainment: 33%
2) Curiosity / Interest in Aviation: 42.2%
3) Familiarization of cockpit/airport/airspace: 11%
4) Maintaining skills/currency and proficiency of training: 7.7%
5) Training towards a pilot license or certification: 5.5%

Given these answer choices, most of us who sim and don't do IRL flying have 1) and 2) to choose from (perhaps also 3)), and that's where the bulk of the answers went naturally. Given the answers re: factors important in a sim where the top answer was flight realism (from last ear), and factors important in an aircraft (this year) where systems/FM/etc are in the top answers, and IFR vs VFR (this year) it's pretty evident the users who participated in this are mostly the "hardcore simmer" kind who use their sim, including those who use Navigraph.
 

And there is your reason for no historic weather and better servers.

A third of the users that did the survey just like to mess around.  Historical weather and decent servers makes bugger all difference to them

1 hour ago, fluffyflops said:

And there is your reason for no historic weather and better servers.

A third of the users that did the survey just like to mess around.  Historical weather and decent servers makes bugger all difference to them

That could be, but I am not sure all the questions were well formulated to come this conclusion.

I, for example, chose "A" above because I did not see myself in the other categories -- I am not a pilot or aspiring real world pilot. While I chose "A", I fly 6 to 7 times a week, using Navigraph to fully plan the route, looking for current TFAs etc, I follow procedures, whether VFR or IFR, and I pay attention to the quality of my take-offs, climbs, descents, and landings. I plan for weather and will even not perform a virtual flight if the weather conditions are not acceptable. So I do not think because I chose "A" that I am just messing around and don't care about all aspects of simulation.

8 hours ago, g-liner said:

We don’t all live on flightsim forums. Do you know if xplane have actually explored this avenue and didn’t go down it due to licensing costs? 

I would imagine it goes beyond just sheer cost.  It would require a level of direct access to Google's satellite data that I don't believe Google really give anyone - and yes, it would be expensive too.  And because XP's overall userbase is a small fraction of the size of MSFS, you can't dilute the cost through economy of scale.

MSFS having streamed mapping data was a very specific synergy that is pretty much unique to Microsoft alone - a company that owns Bing Maps, plus Azure cloud to distribute the information to a large userbase, plus makes their own flight simulator.  And because they're all "in house", they can choose to eat these costs, or price them at cost.  Plus work done to expand or improve Bing Maps feeds into better data for MSFS, and work done to process that information for MSFS can flow the other way back to Bing Maps.

LR would be Google's customer, and Google would demand a pretty penny for that kind of access PLUS the server infrastructure to disseminate it to end-users.

5 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

And there is your reason for no historic weather and better servers.

A third of the users that did the survey just like to mess around.  Historical weather and decent servers makes bugger all difference to them

 

As said multiple times already, the choice of answers are such that you cannot at all draw these conclusions. For those of us non-casual simmers who are not IRL pilots, what answer are we supposed to choose?? 3) to 5) are for IRL pilots or those intending to become one. I personally was trying to decide between 1) and 2), and both seemed to suggest "casual simmer"

1) Casual gaming / Entertainment: 33%
2) Curiosity / Interest in Aviation: 42.2%
3) Familiarization of cockpit/airport/airspace: 11%
4) Maintaining skills/currency and proficiency of training: 7.7%
5) Training towards a pilot license or certification: 5.5%

 

Edited December 31, 20232 yr by lwt1971

11 hours ago, jarmstro said:

I don't want to fly for real or pay out for a level D sim. It's of no interest to me. Navigraph is an addon and it's very expensive imo.

Not when you consider that the very same Jeppesen worldwide charts Navigraph provides cost $10,000 per year per airplane when used for r/w aviation. I manage chart and database subscriptions for a 6-aircraft corporate fleet Three of them use Jeppesen electronic charts. We just renewed our subscription for 2024 and the bill was just over $30,000.

The Jeppesen electronic charts Navigraph provides for flight simulation are 100 percent identical to the electronic charts Jepp provides for r/w operators. The only difference is the big red warning label “For Flight Simulation Use Only” printed at the bottom of each Navigraph chart. Other than that, there is no difference.

 

8 hours ago, g-liner said:

Just to confirm do you know for sure that xplane tried to team up with Apple Maps or google maps for mapping data and “hundreds of millions a year” was asked for. . . so they’re now not doing it? 

I know that they discussed different possibilities to do that, based on one of the Laminar-guys on discord. They gave an example of the costs to model a single airport based on orthos, like Manchester. The tile for just that ridiculously small area costs beetween 600 and 1500£.

The hundreds of millions is my own estimation if someone would expect the company to cover these costs for all of their users.

Here what „Delta_Claus“ summarized on discord:

„So if you're looking at a global ortho solution... downloading something perpetual is not going to cut it.
- The cost is too high
- Not only do you need to download one zoomset... but multiple (imagery comes at different zoomlevels... which is increasingly cheaper the less detailed that imagery is. Most airport ortho is purchased at something called ZL16/17/18. Basic gloval coverage will be done at something like ZL10 (maybe?)
- The storage would be in the Petabytes (more on server costs)
- There is an incosistency from country to country... which you have to pay people for to process. The geospatial industry is full of engineers who look at processing data like this

So... you're left with one option... licensed subscription. Surprise, surprise money 😄

https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/

 

2 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

Not when you consider that the very same Jeppesen worldwide charts Navigraph provides cost $10,000 per year per airplane when used for r/w aviation. I manage chart and database subscriptions for a 6-aircraft corporate fleet Three of them use Jeppesen electronic charts. We just renewed our subscription for 2024 and the bill was just over $30,000.

The Jeppesen electronic charts Navigraph provides for flight simulation are 100 percent identical to the electronic charts Jepp provides for r/w operators. The only difference is the big red warning label “For Flight Simulation Use Only” printed at the bottom of each Navigraph chart. Other than that, there is no difference.

 

That's very interesting. Thanks.

However, even at £10000 per aircraft its still a minor part of the overall running costs. Whereas in a flight sim Navigraph is by far the greatest cost way above the cost of the plane itself.