2 hours ago, Bjoern said:

Well, it's all a spiral. Devs increase prices to cover expenses, users expect more accuracy and complexity because of the increased pricing. Better tools facilitating workflows and proper documentation would help a lot to minimize frustration from trial & error. As an example, the workflow for wiper trails is straight from a KGB torture manual, it's easier to find Atlantis than some official guidance on creating PBR textures, previewing textures for repaints requires more improvisation than on Apollo 13 and there's a scientific dispute about the oldest writings on Earth - Egyptian hieroglyphs or X-Plane's SDK plugin code examples. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In terms of scenery, the tools have got much easier and better over the year.s Creating PBR materials is mostly child's play these days using tools such as Substance Painter with the built-in library and user contributed materials. In the old days... creating textures often involved photoshop skills, lots of photographs etc, now the job is far easier. However, customers expect more, such as detailed interiors, animated passengers etc. Not only that, MFS (and XP12 to some extent) can make any subpar texturing look decent with AO and decent lighting. 

I believe the key for devs who want to make good money in either sim is to find an area where nobody is looking at (aka. a niche) and go from there, something available tools can't make easy. e.g. We are really lacking a decent traffic or ATC tool

 

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

there is no special xbox exclusive forum for msfs, they use the same as PC:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/navigraph-flightsim-community-2023-survey-is-out/617200

The truth is, xbox series X/S that can actually use it have not sold well (a few million units), only 3 million in 2023 by some estimates 

https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-has-outsold-xbox-series-x-and-s-3-to-1-in-2023-new-data-reveals

VR is the future. Wouldnt be surprised if aces of thunder on psvr2 tops the 2024 survey.

msfs for the other "100s of millions" of xboxes gets something like a 1/10 rating for play anywhere. And even for the new series X|S is somewhat mixed opinions 

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/does-msfs-run-well-for-xbox-users-top-model-now-here-in-late-2023/614924

very similar to xplane mobile. - lots and lots of users tried it, many even bought some content, but it is not something they take seriously enough to visit any related websites, let alone complete a survey.

You can see this just from the fraction of users that write stuff, entirely consitent with the results of the survey.

This is absolutely why imho MS are going for round 2 with 2020 + 4 + missions. They realised very very late in the day they need something to make xbox users come back rather than uninstalling it after the first session (drunkedly flying over their house) .

Do you have any evidence that contradicts it? because I don't. 

The msfs2020 "shock cancelled" and msfs2024 announced in between dec 2022 and dec 2023 is also entirely consistent with the total xbox flop seen in the 2022 results, and the disastrous xbox console sales in the last 12 months.

Well, someone is buying a ton of MS2020 addons that are coming to market, if not the developers wouldn't stay nor would the marketplace keep growing! How's the org's store doing these days with new products?, I haven't seen anything that is a must have. Tells one everything they need to know about the (at least short term) future from 3rd party providers and it's not good for XP. 

1 minute ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Well, someone is buying a ton of MS2020 addons that are coming to market, if not the developers wouldn't stay nor would the marketplace keep growing! How's the org's store doing these days with new products?, I haven't seen anything that is a must have. Tells one everything they need to know about the (at least short term) future from 3rd party providers and it's not good for XP.

Sadly, the last 2 products (I won't name them) that I bought through the X-Plane.org store have been bad quality, and I simply bought them to support the dev community rather than actually wanting the products initially (plus they were on sale). I have a feeling that many have simply lost interest in making anything groundbreaking, and we are currently in a no-win situation

7 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Sadly, the last 2 products (I won't name them) that I bought through the X-Plane.org store have been bad quality, and I simply bought them to support the dev community rather than actually wanting the products initially (plus they were on sale). I have a feeling that many have simply lost interest in making anything groundbreaking, and we are currently in a no-win situation

I think all the freeware / gateway scenery from the community has raised the level of default airports in X-Plane to the point they look good enough to leave them alone. It's to the point a payware airport needs to look great and/or is missing something a user wants included for me/them to purchase.

Then you have autoautho, X-World or ortho4xp for coverage outside the airports. Makes it tough for 3rd party providers, except those that make aircraft/airliners. Even there, XP has made it easier with planemaker.

One main reason I like to keep addons to a minimum is to keep XP12 as clean as possible, all addons can do is possibly slow things down and/or introduce stutters.

I just dont buy scenery, cant see any point, @tonywob as for airport interiors, ye could never see the point of that. all the effort put in, would get looked at once and never again. Only thing im interested in is naval aircraft and turboprops, which isnt a big thing so my spending is pretty much dried up. Have enough of every thing else, some I havnt even flown.

16 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

I just dont buy scenery, cant see any point, @tonywob as for airport interiors, ye could never see the point of that. all the effort put in, would get looked at once and never again. Only thing im interested in is naval aircraft and turboprops, which isnt a big thing so my spending is pretty much dried up. Have enough of every thing else, some I havnt even flown.

I'm in the same boat since I fly the Zibo Mod 100% of the time in X-Plane. I also don't get the want for the buildings interior getting a makeover. Maybe next we'll drive up at the airport in uniform, kiss the wife goodbye, walk through the terminal to get to our ride. Maybe stop off and get some coffee along the way. 😀

1 hour ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Well, someone is buying a ton of MS2020 addons that are coming to market, if not the developers wouldn't stay nor would the marketplace keep growing! How's the org's store doing these days with new products?, I haven't seen anything that is a must have. Tells one everything they need to know about the (at least short term) future from 3rd party providers and it's not good for XP. 

There is no short term

It takes a few years from starting even a fairly simple flight sim project to delivering it. just look how long it took pmdg to drop their first aircraft, and they were working on them a full year or more before MS first released. 

And thats for projects with a full time commitment not ones being done "on the side". 

What is coming to market now is stuff started mid 2022 at the latest, many people even now still believe xbox is a bigger market than PC, blindly accept it is true because microsoft rather than grasping that its a fraction of the size of PC with sales of xbox consoles falling at 52% year on year.

It got so bad last year MS had to put most 3PDs on salary and NDAs to keep them around.

The sim bringing users to 3PDs is unsustainable, 3PDs need to bring users to the sim. MS and Asobo know this well, its why they put them on salary.

Conversely, vskylabs, hotstart have clearly been knocking it out the ballpark. I expect similar is true for the likes of tolis, flight factor xcrafts and most of the other fully independant XP devs 

It's very easy to neglect how long a lead time these things have, The Sparky744 went byccnc4 in May 2019 - "just" starting to get traction, and that was for an aircraft that already had heavy dev for XP10 and XP11

3 hours ago, mSparks said:

There is no short term

Short term in regards to projects that were already started and shelved when developers made the shift to 2020, they could see the light of day sooner rather than later and/or never in X-Plane! Unless one believes there aren't any shelved XP12 items out there by developers. Then there is also the short term advantage when dealing with porting products over rather than starting from day one, question is... is it worth the developers time in porting them over or continue to develop for 2020/2024?

Years for 3rd party products depends on what's being developed, sophisticated aircraft with systems/sub-systems is going to take longer than developing an airport or create some satellite scenery, it also depends on how many are working on the project and project size.

5 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Unless one believes there aren't any shelved XP12 items out there by developers.

Like I said, xplane is in kinda  a weird place atm. No ones buying (or starting) XP11 projects. XP12 isnt quite there in terms of number of people who own it and the developer tools to kick off big new projects.

5 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Years for 3rd party products depends on what's being developed, sophisticated aircraft with systems/sub-systems is going to take longer than developing an airport or create some satellite scenery

Well, Tony would be better placed to confirm or deny the scenery thing, but good quality scenery doesnt look like any less work than a good aircraft to me, architect's can spend years designing one building and its surroundings, and a typical airport has many structures and vehicles that need recreating. Plus sales of scenery are going to be much lower than an aircraft even in optimum circumstances, which doesn't exist anywhere (other than maybe DCS).

5 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

is it worth the developers time in porting them over or continue to develop for 2020/2024?

I can't imagine there is any more active development specific for 2020 than there is for XP11 right now. Both are EOL with only a short remaining lifespan, that doesnt mean ongoing projects suddenly get shelved, look how long FSX kept limping along. It does mean in 2 or 3 years there wont be new products being released for them (because they weren't started today), afaik no one outside of the microsoft partners are making 2024 stuff.

Edited December 29, 20232 yr by mSparks

I think that X-Plane 12 sold very well actually but that this is based on past merits of X-Plane 11.

It could become Laminars mistake if they don't want to consider this imo and if they dont do anything about the glaring issues (dark cockpits, anti-aliasing and blurriness, Vulcan loss errors and glitches, freezs, broken compatibility and among other things, most of all dwindling devs) there could be a very painfiul reckoning in the future.

From what I've witnessed in the last 2 years - which began so hopeful with the release - and the mess I have now I won't buy any more X-Plane 12 addons (most I own have issues that either aren't acknowledged at all or not fixed in reasonable timeframes) and I dont look forward to X-Plane 13. I'll concentrate on MSFS for eye candy and choice of good immersive, affordable planes and DCS for fidelity and professional flight model. X-Plane 11 was a nice in between because it had crisp graphics, Zibo, ortho4xp, X-World and other things but for me X-Plane 12 has been 1 step forward at least 1 back and it isn't acknowledged how many people have grievances.

Of course I dont claim to be a clairvoyant this is just my opinion and what I came to believe since X-Plane 12 released.

1 hour ago, The Seawolf said:

It could become Laminars mistake if they don't want to consider this imo and if they dont do anything about the glaring issues (dark cockpits, anti-aliasing and blurriness, Vulcan loss errors and glitches, freezs, broken compatibility and among other things, most of all dwindling devs) there could be a very painfiul reckoning in the future.

https://www.x-plane.com/2023/10/coming-in-x-plane-12-0-8-and-beyond-roadmap-update/

dwindling devs isnt even close to true, there are more devs working directly with LR now than was claimed working for Asobo at the height of MS's development. 

XP isnt P3D that was clearly 100% dependant on a single 3PD (PMDG).

Which highlights another misnomer I often hear.

(successful) 3PDs dont "follow the money".

They follow the best development tools that allow them to create the highest quality products.

Then the money follows the highest quality products.

22 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Impossible to get the bigger picture using Navigraph survey! Many MS2020 Xbox users never heard of Navigraph let along have taken their survey. This survey is more or less that of hard core  / Intermediate simmers, yet XP12 still doesn't do well. That's why the 3rd party programmers are leaving or cutting down the amount of hours spent on XP products.

The big thing going for XP12 is what's under the hood aircraft dynamics, physics and what-not. But how does that translate for the base platform and 3rd party developers going forward? Granted I've only had three type rated airline pilots in my flight deck and all three prefer MS2020. Two pilots (Boeing) had the opportunity to fly XP12 and MS2020 in my flight deck, both prefer 2020. The third pilot (Airbus) only flew my setup with XP12 but has flown MS2020 elsewhere. He said to me when we were done, you have to get MS2020. He's in for a treat next time he's in town, 2020 is up and running along side XP12.  Everyone else (non pilots) in my flight deck ALL prefer MS2020.

+1

5 hours ago, The Seawolf said:

I think that X-Plane 12 sold very well actually but that this is based on past merits of X-Plane 11.

It could become Laminars mistake if they don't want to consider this imo and if they dont do anything about the glaring issues (dark cockpits, anti-aliasing and blurriness, Vulcan loss errors and glitches, freezs, broken compatibility and among other things, most of all dwindling devs) there could be a very painfiul reckoning in the future.

From what I've witnessed in the last 2 years - which began so hopeful with the release - and the mess I have now I won't buy any more X-Plane 12 addons (most I own have issues that either aren't acknowledged at all or not fixed in reasonable timeframes) and I dont look forward to X-Plane 13. I'll concentrate on MSFS for eye candy and choice of good immersive, affordable planes and DCS for fidelity and professional flight model. X-Plane 11 was a nice in between because it had crisp graphics, Zibo, ortho4xp, X-World and other things but for me X-Plane 12 has been 1 step forward at least 1 back and it isn't acknowledged how many people have grievances.

Of course I dont claim to be a clairvoyant this is just my opinion and what I came to believe since X-Plane 12 released.

+1        Must be making sparks coming out of  mSparks ears.

9 hours ago, mSparks said:

Well, Tony would be better placed to confirm or deny the scenery thing, but good quality scenery doesnt look like any less work than a good aircraft to me, architect's can spend years designing one building and its surroundings, and a typical airport has many structures and vehicles that need recreating.

3rd party programmers are now Architect's? Have you look at the buildings in XP12??? Are you kidding me, that's very funny!

7 hours ago, The Seawolf said:

t could become Laminars mistake if they don't want to consider this imo and if they dont do anything about the glaring issues (dark cockpits, anti-

Glaring to who, there are even pilots who fight over wheter its ok or not, works fine for me. Its n opinion, you declared yours.

7 hours ago, The Seawolf said:

anti-aliasing and blurriness, Vulcan loss errors and glitches, freezs, broken compatibility and among other things,

Laminar are well aware of the issues, dont know why you are raising the issue, They are pretty much building a new engine, and are smart enough to know if they fix AA at present it may cause bottom end machines FPS to tank which is a far worse problem.. They have also listened to someone who may have a solution. so we wait next beta. As for Vulkan losses they are far fewer than ever, remembering Vulkan still a WIP

You all carry on like Laminar isnt listening, if they followed the complaints wed still be at b1 and would be a far worse experience.