22 hours ago, threexgreen said:

building the most profound helicopter physics in any available sim

Agree except for this. 

8 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

If I am not mistaken, two companies only have had difficulties in grafting their products on FS20 : RXP for the avionics  and HiFi. All the others are back in the game.

Does anyone know why RXP is not in MSFS.  If PMS50 and TDS are doing it, RXP should have been able to do it too.

1 hour ago, Damian Clark said:

I take full responsibility for the situation we are in.  I could have closed shop a long time ago, "pivoted", and/or made decisions to be very successful and financially rewarded despite all this.  I own it all.  And I apologize to everyone (mostly my children) for all of this. 

Damian, Maybe you don't need to give up on the aspiration to broaden and improve the weather simulation in MSFS. There is a roadblock now but ASOBO has not closed the door on the possibility of what you are asking for so there is some hope. You are clearly a talented developer and you know this space very well. If you could develop something, honestly even a set of weather presets that helps show what is possible, a lot of us that are familiar with Hi-Fi will purchase it, and probably many others who are new would as well; and maybe some further engagement will help; open doors. I hope you can find a way to keep the lights on and to stay engaged.

14 minutes ago, Matt Sdeel said:

Does anyone know why RXP is not in MSFS.  If PMS50 and TDS are doing it, RXP should have been able to do it too.

Better let the developer comment on a sensitive issue if he is so enclined.   

25 minutes ago, Cognita said:

I hope you can find a way to keep the lights on and to stay engaged.

Thank you.  That's the current plan.

To me, an ideal situation would be for @Damian Clark to be hired as a full-time employee by Asobo to work on the core sim, rather than continuing as a third-party developer. He obviously has the expertise to do a superb job on the weather for Asobo. Everyone wins: Asobo, Damian Clark, the entire flight sim community.

12 minutes ago, David Mills said:

To me, an ideal situation would be for @Damian Clark to be hired as a full-time employee by Asobo to work on the core sim, rather than continuing as a third-party developer. He obviously has the expertise to do a superb job on the weather for Asobo. Everyone wins: Asobo, Damian Clark, the entire flight sim community.

The ideal situation would be an open platform where specialists like Damian will be able to do their thing and MS will cooperate and accommodate.

21 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

We can't really make sweeping claims about MS/Asobo's intentions without confirmation on their side.

Not how the real world works, do you go to a Coyote and ask the animal if he/she will confirm they ate my sheep?  If you believe businesses are transparent then please show me all the sales $$$ (not units but revenue) from MS and from DLC providers?  No takers? 😉 

I don't know what you mean by "Protectionist" as I've never heard that term used in the business arena.  Microsoft, Apple, Meta, etc. all practice "leverage" and "control" as much as they possibly can without getting the attention of US anti-trust laws.  Microsoft elected to go exclusive with Meteoblue as weather provider and contracted source data and part of that negotiated agreement was exclusivity ... this is pretty common for the world of business.  

Microsoft is not "Transparent", they share the information they want to share not ALL the information.  As HiFi eluded to earlier, this is just business, happens all the time.  Microsoft do what is best for Microsoft, content providers can tag along if they see any opportunities ... I think you're forgetting that MS get 25-30% cut from products in the Marketplace which will come with DRM vs. not in the Marketplace.

20 hours ago, Krakin said:

Makes no sense blanketing the team as evil just because some devs weren't able to benefit via the same avenues they were used to.

Evil?  Just business as discussed earlier.  Several key flight simulation features were not open or provided via SDK for:

1.  Seasons

2.  Weather

3.  Combat

39 minutes ago, CO2Neutral said:

Not how the real world works, do you go to a Coyote and ask the animal if he/she will confirm they ate my sheep?  If you believe businesses are transparent then please show me all the sales $$$ (not units but revenue) from MS and from DLC providers?  No takers? 😉 

I don't know what you mean by "Protectionist" as I've never heard that term used in the business arena.  Microsoft, Apple, Meta, etc. all practice "leverage" and "control" as much as they possibly can without getting the attention of US anti-trust laws.  Microsoft elected to go exclusive with Meteoblue as weather provider and contracted source data and part of that negotiated agreement was exclusivity ... this is pretty common for the world of business.  

Microsoft is not "Transparent", they share the information they want to share not ALL the information.  As HiFi eluded to earlier, this is just business, happens all the time.  Microsoft do what is best for Microsoft, content providers can tag along if they see any opportunities ... I think you're forgetting that MS get 25-30% cut from products in the Marketplace which will come with DRM vs. not in the Marketplace.

Well, thanks for stating the obvious about how the real world works 🙂 ... I'm not saying that businesses are fully transparent, and of course obviously they do what's best for their business. My point is that then doesn't mean we can make conclusions on what they really must be doing or thinking, and if they are being "protectionist" (it's a term that Ray Proudfoot used so I responded, and I took that to mean they are intentionally not wanting to open up live weather because they don't want extensions to make it better or something... which does not make sense to me given how open they are with various other aspects of MSFS and letting add-on devs extend, one example being the core avionics framework). Now if MS/Asobo came out and explicitly gave reason(s) for why they haven't opened up MSFS weather for writing/extending then it's up to us as consumers to take them at their word or not, but certainly in the absence of them saying anything it's even more foolish for us to come to sweeping conclusions re: their intentions. 
 

@eslader,

Look in the shops, listen to modern music, look at modern art......Do you see blandness? We have greater choice but the options are all bland. That's lack of innovation.

....also what's the difference between Innovation and development? Granted, both are derivative to a certain degree but it is a question of "to what degree?"

 The things you mentioned were development IMO. True innovation requires creativity and the current environment (political and social) does not lend itself to creativity. For creativity humans need security, safety, respect, hope and wealth etc and for the vast majority (in the west) there is way less of that around now than there was in the 60's and 70's. The post war period was a mini renaissance that started to fizzle out in the 80's. Human endeavours and prospects are cyclical and we are approaching the end of this one.

There is still some innovation I agree but it is a matter of degree.

Same goes for PC games.

Edited April 6, 20242 yr by Ray Proudfoot
Long quoted post removed

1 hour ago, GaryK said:

True innovation requires creativity and the current environment (political and social) does not lend itself to creativity. For creativity humans need security, safety, respect, hope and wealth etc 

Hmmm…I know we’re going way off topic but surely human creativity and innovation has been spurred by adversity?

Just look at aviation; In the space of five decades (and two world wars) we go from the Wright brothers flying bicycle to the Convair B58.

The classical Renaissance took place between the end of the Black Death in Europe and the beginning of the Reformation, a period of huge turmoil and a revolution in art and scientific discovery.

What do we do now? We’re secure enough and wealthy enough to sit on our backsides and stare at screens…..

What does "Xbox like" even mean?

20 minutes ago, Krakin said:

What does "Xbox like" even mean?

Hi, can you timestamp that video to the exact second when that bloke states the weather system has been "completely rewritten" please? I've watched again but can't hear him say it, thanks 

3 hours ago, GaryK said:

Look in the shops, listen to modern music, look at modern art..

Funny you should bring up modern music. I'm a fan of the old stuff too - my playlist runs the gamut from Bach to the Beach Boys to Iron Maiden, with bluegrass and nerdcore thrown in for fun (if you haven't discovered Klingenem or MC Hawking yet, go check it out). My wife hates it when my playlist is on.  Something interesting happens especially with music popular when Boomers were teenagers: An assumption that music peaked with (Beach Boys / CSN / Beatles / The Association) and modern music is just a bunch of garbage.

What they don't seem to realize is that most music back then was garbage too. The reason we still listen to CSN today is because they were one of the comparatively few bands putting out creative, good music. We do not, on the other hand, listen to the Ballad of Liberty Valance, the Jolly Green Giant, or Mr. Custer. Even the good bands had stinkers we don't listen to anymore -- Simon and Garfunkel's At the Zoo is a great example.

The point is that we look at old creativity and innovation with rose-tinted glasses because we tend to only remember the really good stuff whereas in the moment we're surrounded by a morass of junk that will get weeded out. In 20 years people will be looking back at what survived from today (Pentatonix, Post Modern Jukebox, Disturbed, Lorde, Lady Gaga),  wondering why they can't innovate like we did in 2024.

And by the way, all that 60s music everyone loves? We were in the middle of a cold war where school kids were doing regular nuclear attack drills, we were sending kids just out of high school over to fight a Southeast Asian war against their will, Russia was parking nukes 400 miles off the coast of Cuba, the national guard was shooting war protestors (and I bring that up because that specific incident sparked two high-charting songs we still listen to today, Ohio and Find the Cost of Freedom), a president, presidential candidates and civil rights leaders were being assassinated, churches were being bombed, oh and by the way Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, the Zodiac Killer and the Boston Strangler were roaming around murdering people for fun... It was an unbelievably turbulent time where safety and respect were hard to find, so those conditions are absolutely not needed for creativity.