One thing that lacked in FSX was freeware. Any freeware that existed was extremely low effort. It's the main reason so many converted over to X-Plane. FSX not by design, but the community was extremely wall gardened and protected for the return on investment commercial developers got from it and freeware was almost rebelled against minus a few exceptions (SunSkyJet for example).  X-Plane on the other hand, while it had many commercial addons, it was largely based on the pool of freeware.   

What was it about MSFS (2020) that opened the flood gates to, almost at warp speed bring the community of freeware developers to fast forward so fast to the X-Plane community? I'm happy it happened but my brain is a very introspective one and thoughts like this cross my mind and need input.

FWIW: Not a my sim is better than yours thread. It's as simple as I presented  the question 

Edited July 20, 20241 yr by styckx

The ability to fly in the real world with satellite-based streamed scenery -- a revolutionary advance. There are other factors as well, but this was the game-changer.

Edited July 20, 20241 yr by cobalt

The technology advanced considerably in the intervening years as did the number of people familiar with 3D modeling and MSFS made it much easier to develop scenery than in the old FSX/P3D days.

10 minutes ago, styckx said:

What was it about MSFS (2020) that opened the flood gates to, almost at warp speed bring the community of freeware developers to fast forward so fast to the X-Plane community?

Do you mean from?

Besides that, more users, more downloads. Maybe MSFS is easier to develop for? No clue what I'm talking about now, so next post please.

My understanding is the workflow for scenery creation is much more streamlined, as well the tool sets available are also improved.

And where the tools are better and the workflow allows easier and faster production, you'll have more releases.

Cheers

I have developed a little bit of freeware scenery for P3D and quite a bit more for MSFS. The main difference is the default ground scenery. You can create nice 3D models for P3D, but the airport will still look blunt because the surrounding area is rather basic. To improve it, you had to acquire the rights for satellite images etc, which was prohibitive. In MSFS, you can put the same 3D house at the same location and it looks gorgeous.

Another factor is the quality of default buildings. Quite often, we cannot easily get images for all buildings on an airport, so you nees to apply some artistic imagination. The default buildings in FSX/P3D are glorified cubes, absolutely horrible. In MSFS, you have a choice between about 150 different default hangars, for instance.

Hence, the basis in MSFS was really good, and then developers added freeware extra stuff, like people, windsocks, camping stuff, ...And everyone can use it. For a developer, that's a dream come true 🙂

Peter

Thank you for the early input. I'm just amazed still to this day the complete difference in community. FSX/P3D had this weird "stay in line with narrative" feeling too it where you had to walk on eggshells with every comment you made. 

Edited July 20, 20241 yr by styckx

7 minutes ago, styckx said:

Thank you for the early input. I'm just amazed still to this day the complete difference in community. FSX/P3D had this weird "stay in line with narrative" feeling too it where you had to walk on eggshells with every comment you made. 

I think that's more a symptom of "low hanging fruit", where trolls and the moderators are more willing to jump on a thread because there is higher visibility, i.e. it's easier to jump onto and you just know the mods are more than willing to hide, delete and lock a thread if it even looks just a little independent.

Cheers

 

Edited July 20, 20241 yr by Rogen

Talk about freeware.  I watched a YouTube by PatroitSix and learned to make my own scenery.  I built an airport across the street from my house complete with hangers, buildings, tower, parked planes and also a heliport in my back yard, and I'm no computer geek.  The plus is they show up in MSFS2020 and I fly out of them daily.  Not intended for Flightsim.to but for my own personal enjoyment.

Roy

Not comparing or starting a vs. war, but important to provide facts: P3D has plenty of freeware tools (ADE over at FSDeveloper) to make scenery development very easy with MANY more buildings/trees etc. objects to select from (many more than XPlane or MSFS). 

For P3D you might want to also checkout Scenery Design website.

I don't see any difference across any platform in terms of users jumping on someone that makes false statements or inaccurate statements regarding a platform ... happens in MSFS, P3D, XPlane.

MSFS 2020 SDK and tools don't impress me, find them extremely buggy with error messages that don't provide any context to help resolve.  Making my own tree-arrays was definitely difficult to figure out.  Hoping MSFS 2024 will have a better SDK and more robust and less bugs.  I do like fewer rounds trips required in MSFS scenery development.  Lighting engine in MSFS is certainly better and makes production of PBR based objects more consistent.

 

6 hours ago, styckx said:

One thing that lacked in FSX was freeware. Any freeware that existed was extremely low effort.

One thing that this topic lacks is historical accuracy.
The premise is utter nonsense and frankly insulting to the freeware developers
who spent thousands of hours producing superb FSX addons.
Not to mention all those who produced masterpieces for earlier versions too.



 

 

1 hour ago, CO2Neutral said:

Not comparing or starting a vs. war, but important to provide facts: P3D has plenty of freeware tools (ADE over at FSDeveloper) to make scenery development very easy with MANY more buildings/trees etc. objects to select from (many more than XPlane or MSFS). 

For P3D you might want to also checkout Scenery Design website.

I don't see any difference across any platform in terms of users jumping on someone that makes false statements or inaccurate statements regarding a platform ... happens in MSFS, P3D, XPlane.

MSFS 2020 SDK and tools don't impress me, find them extremely buggy with error messages that don't provide any context to help resolve.  Making my own tree-arrays was definitely difficult to figure out.  Hoping MSFS 2024 will have a better SDK and more robust and less bugs.  I do like fewer rounds trips required in MSFS scenery development.  Lighting engine in MSFS is certainly better and makes production of PBR based objects more consistent.

 

Sorry, I have a full-time job and kids and don't have the time to fiddle with outdated tools to generate content for an outdated sim.

MSFS clearly stands out with the most engaged and productive freeware content creators of any simulation platform to date. Truly plug & play in the majority of cases.

did the op truly play fsx?...i saw a ton of freeware for it.

 

1 hour ago, wim123 said:

did the op truly play fsx?...i saw a ton of freeware for it.

Perhaps factual accuracy is not the purpose of the topic.

One should not forget that freeware includes not only community-produced content but also dozens (or even hundreds) of high-quality scenery and aircraft made available by Asobo/MS over the years for free. This level of support and content release is unprecedented in previous sims.