2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Utterly ridiculous. Full stop.

It was absolutely because

Gotta say that aged well, everyone who didnt believe the numbers was surprised 6 months later when 2024 was announced....

2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

BUT, to grossly over simplify, MSFS is simply the more attractive simulator for first time / casual users. Doesn't make it actually better, but you should get my drift.

The problem MS are having is MSFS2020 is not the more attractive simulator, If it was then the same would have happened to XP12 as P3D.

MS have bought a large market share by pouring vast amounts of resources into claiming it was, but it was all built on lies, like those mobile phone game adverts that look nothing like the game. But credit where credit is due, they recognised it, and went for the reboot, best they could have done in the circumstances.

Laminar and their 3PDs benefitted hugely from this, because LR have never really put money into marketing, it all goes into building the best flight sim. If anything DCS benefitted the most, the rise there has been meteoric.

I really like the new career mode coming in msfs2024, all things considered it will make an even better onboarding system for people before they quickly move on to XP12.

For hardware, the best source of data is and always was:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

Edited September 25, 20241 yr by mSparks

2 hours ago, mSparks said:

It was absolutely because

Gotta say that aged well, everyone who didnt believe the numbers was surprised 6 months later when 2024 was announced....

The problem MS are having is MSFS2020 is not the more attractive simulator, If it was then the same would have happened to XP12 as P3D.

MS have bought a large market share by pouring vast amounts of resources into claiming it was, but it was all built on lies, like those mobile phone game adverts that look nothing like the game. But credit where credit is due, they recognised it, and went for the reboot, best they could have done in the circumstances.

Laminar and their 3PDs benefitted hugely from this, because LR have never really put money into marketing, it all goes into building the best flight sim. If anything DCS benefitted the most, the rise there has been meteoric.

I really like the new career mode coming in msfs2024, all things considered it will make an even better onboarding system for people before they quickly move on to XP12.

For hardware, the best source of data is and always was:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

I just don't understand how you can feel comfortable making the leap from one factoid to another like that...

In re XP specifically, it was never going to go the way of P3D because P3Ds consumer demise resulted from quite a different set of challenges that XP has not had to face.

Those who were on P3D found MSFS attractive simply because MSFS improved on P3D across the board, and those folks are loyal "MS" fans. I.e., they were naturally primed to jump to the next, better version of ESP.

Whereas X-plane had/has a loyal fan base, most of whom prefer XPs strengths to those of TOS, and particularly given the nearly incredible improvements that V12 has delivered over v11.

I.e., X-Plane is really competing against itself, not MSFS. And the one thing you did get right is that XP is definitely gaining new users due to the halo effect of the massive number of people being enticed into flight sim by TOS.

Many/most of them won't come over to XP because they find that option meets their entertainment needs.

But there are obviously a percentage who find they gain interest in what XP has to offer, and they're adding XP to their collection.

I'd be very interested to see how many new users of XP abandon TOS entirely.

As this drifts not only OT, but shifts the discussion to other sims, I won't say more than none of the public numbers we have support your dubious conclusions.

2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I just don't understand how you can feel comfortable making the leap from one factoid to another like that...

occams razor

2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

because P3Ds consumer demise resulted from quite a different set of challenges that XP has not had to face.

Namely, unlike for XP, all the top P3D devs like PMDG and Milviz did switch (well, technically Milviz didn't, but its not their priority any more).

2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Many/most of them won't come over to XP because they find that option meets their entertainment needs.

Except it wont,  the barriers to entry around the aspects that make a good flight sim are just to high, and always were, they require far to much investment to get working, are not considered priorities by bean counters (who do not and will never understand the implications of a super puma costing several thousand euros just to start the engines), and everyone with the relevant modern knowledge to further that development is working with Laminar, every day that passes puts MS further behind, they THINK the problems are just the graphics engine (which, tbh, mildly surprised even me, I expected LR to par MSFS2020 with XP12, not nuke it from orbit) and getting bored of flying over your house (duh) - they are just the lowest hanging fruit.

But a semi decent "career" tool, that lots of people buy into because of the marketing, will create possibly the best onboarding tool imaginable for those who complete at least some of it and want to move onto a real flight simulator - aka everyone who sticks around. The derth of that to date has been by far XPs biggest barrier to attracting new users, it assumes a level of proficiency in aviation that is generally rare.

Edited September 25, 20241 yr by mSparks

11 hours ago, mSparks said:

But a semi decent "career" tool, that lots of people buy into because of the marketing, will create possibly the best onboarding tool imaginable for those who complete at least some of it and want to move onto a real flight simulator - aka everyone who sticks around. The derth of that to date has been by far XPs biggest barrier to attracting new users, it assumes a level of proficiency in aviation that is generally rare.

I think the most « casual » oriented users will certainly stick with MS. The ones interested in core aviation will to some extend switch to XP. A good test is to discuss with the gamers about the true altitude based on density, a basic knowledge to pass a PPL. Completely missing in MSFS but they don’t care because they don’t even understand what it is. And they will weight group-flights where they can land with the B747 at Lukla and crash into other flying kiddies way above a thing that they don’t understand. That’s those who then seriously will claim stuff like « MSFS is by far the best sim around » when everyone with some aviation-knowledge knows it is not.

2 hours ago, Franz007 said:

I think the most « casual » oriented users will certainly stick with MS. The ones interested in core aviation will to some extend switch to XP. A good test is to discuss with the gamers about the true altitude based on density, a basic knowledge to pass a PPL. Completely missing in MSFS but they don’t care because they don’t even understand what it is. And they will weight group-flights where they can land with the B747 at Lukla and crash into other flying kiddies way above a thing that they don’t understand. That’s those who then seriously will claim stuff like « MSFS is by far the best sim around » when everyone with some aviation-knowledge knows it is not.

They gave numbers at FSEXPO, 2020 retention rate was about 7% (1 million of the 15million - see also that post about stagnation I linked earlier) - the ones who didn't switch to the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 have been and will continue to come to X-Plane (and DCS). - result, XP12 breaking all its past records. Learning how to use X-Plane will only increase the ones that switch to X-Plane, I expect that will be by a significant amount.

Very happy to see this develop, that was always the biggest issue with that dashboard, X-Plane had some 50 million users across all platforms (I did laugh a lot when she said 15 mill was unprecidented...) - but "global" retention has been abysmal (fractions of 1%) and that dashboard only ever covered a very tiny portion of the ones who got serious about flight sim and stuck around and enabled data sharing, plus interpreting it requires a lot more subtle knowledge of who is doing what that is very difficult to source.

Edited September 26, 20241 yr by mSparks

5 hours ago, Franz007 said:

I think the most « casual » oriented users will certainly stick with MS. The ones interested in core aviation will to some extend switch to XP. A good test is to discuss with the gamers about the true altitude based on density, a basic knowledge to pass a PPL. Completely missing in MSFS but they don’t care because they don’t even understand what it is. And they will weight group-flights where they can land with the B747 at Lukla and crash into other flying kiddies way above a thing that they don’t understand. That’s those who then seriously will claim stuff like « MSFS is by far the best sim around » when everyone with some aviation-knowledge knows it is not.

@Franz007, while I agree with most of what you say I should point out that MSFS does not only model density altitude and its effecfs, it also models the variations of geopotential height with Low / High temperature.

You can easily test it with any ILS approach on a rather cold (rather hot) day, and using your altimeter with the proper QNH set, observe you're higher (lower) than the preconized glideslope height at a given point.

Edited September 26, 20241 yr by jcomm

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

@Franz007, while I agree with most of what you say I should point out that MSFS does not only model density altitude and its effecfs, it also models the variations of geopotential height with Low / High temperature.

You can easily test it with any ILS approach on a rather cold (rather hot) day, and using your altimeter with the proper QNH set, observe you're higher (lower) than the preconized glideslope height at a given point.

That would be new. Do you know when they updated that? Or can you point me to any of the offical infos? Because it was clearly missing like 1 year ago...I researched that topic and haven't found any info pointing to that feature having been implemented since then (even Pilot BB711 tested it and confirmed it was not simulated). I cannot test it since I have deinstalled MSFS long time ago...Are you sure you are not mixing it up with XP12?

5 hours ago, mSparks said:

X-Plane had some 50 million users across all platforms

Hmmm...pardon? I'm having big big big difficulties to believe that? Knowing that the org-forum (that we can assume has been visited by almost all of the XP-users at least once) has just 1,1 mio users and those are all users counted since +/- 20 years.

7 hours ago, mSparks said:

They gave numbers at FSEXPO, 2020 retention rate was about 7% (1 million of the 15million - see also that post about stagnation I linked earlier) - the ones who didn't switch to the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 have been and will continue to come to X-Plane (and DCS). - result, XP12 breaking all its past records. Learning how to use X-Plane will only increase the ones that switch to X-Plane, I expect that will be by a significant amount.

In my experience as someone who creates scenery for both sims it has stagnated. XP11 caught the disappointed FSX/P3D crowd but MFS won them back and we're mostly back to XP10 days with only a very niche type of user (including Linux and Mac OS) as the main base. It's wishful thinking that there is a large group of users out there willing to spend money outside of hardcore simmers. I'd argue most users are long term ones such as myself who continue to buy upgrades or those who love to tweak everything. LR simply can't compete with MS and they shouldn't, but rather they should be targeting the power-users/tweakers.

1 hour ago, Franz007 said:

Hmmm...pardon? I'm having big big big difficulties to believe that? Knowing that the org-forum (that we can assume has been visited by almost all of the XP-users at least once) has just 1,1 mio users and those are all users counted since +/- 20 years.

We only need to look at the xplane.org store to see this. Quality addon development has vanished along with anything new or exciting being announced. The situation however is not much better in MFS from a developer point-of-view with a very over-saturated marketplace and 2024 will further complicate this since it seems pretty well polished out of the box with little need to purchase addons for most casual users

 

6 hours ago, mSparks said:

X-Plane had some 50 million users across all platforms

50 million users would likely give laminar research a market value anywhere from several hundred million to a billion or two. 50 million users mean that they would have gained on average about 1.7 million users every year since the company's inception in the 90's. That would be truly amazing no doubt and an astounding amount of revenue. They would have a team of 100+ developers rewriting the xplane engine from scratch while Austin is on the phone negotiating a streaming deal with either bing or google. Okay, back to reality, let's be logical here. I'll just assume you made a typo.

55 minutes ago, tonywob said:

We only need to look at the xplane.org store to see this. Quality addon development has vanished along with anything new or exciting being announced. The situation however is not much better in MFS from a developer point-of-view with a very over-saturated marketplace and 2024 will further complicate this since it seems pretty well polished out of the box with little need to purchase addons for most casual users

 

Hi Tony, I am not entirely sure to understand your answer related to my comment. I was only talking about the number of users of XP not being as big as 50 mio. I was not talking about any 3rd-party devs 😉

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Quality addon development has vanished

Really...

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

In my experience as someone who creates scenery for both sims it has stagnated

One of the best "rule of thumbs" I've learnt over the years for the potential of any product/service, is to simply ask myself "would I want to buy this, and if I did how much would be to much". Sounds stupid, but I found when I actually do that, products that "sound" great are suddenly not, products that sound mediocre can suddenly pop up as blockbusters.

Its been a while for either sim that either has hit the " I want to buy this, and its less than I am willing to pay" - XP12 OrbX GB stuff is the only thing on my list, I've not pushed the button yet simply because standard Ortho was broken, and I've not been doing much GB flying - will change soon.

2020 hit pretty much all the risk takers (those who buy stuff without a personal recommendation) - and they didn't recommend it to their friends.

2024 announcement has for sure made buyers accross the board hold off, because that devalued anything not 2024 on the optimism that something better will replace it soon.

I say that later, because if I planned to buy into 2024, I would hold off buying anything not 2024 now.....

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Quality addon development has vanished

Erm, flight factor has been getting a lot of love? there are plenty of others keeping busy to (e.g. I found out today KMGM was updated for XP12, completely missed it).

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

We only need to look at the xplane.org store to see this.

IMHO, the problem with the org store is not that addons vanished, but that the developments that are going on are simply invisible. (huge shift to discord has contributed a lot to that)

1 hour ago, brinx said:

50 million users would likely give laminar research a market value anywhere from several hundred million to a billion or two. 50 million users mean that they would have gained on average about 1.7 million users every year since the company's inception in the 90's. That would be truly amazing no doubt and an astounding amount of revenue.

~20 million Android

~30 million iPhone

>1 million Win/Lin/Mac (1,097,921 registered on x-plane.org)

1 hour ago, brinx said:

They would have a team of 100+ developers

Its several hundred actually, with at least 10 or 20% of them on full time salary. You probably didn't realise all those "3 guys in a shed" comments were all made in jest.

Edited September 26, 20241 yr by mSparks

22 hours ago, mSparks said:

occams razor

Ockham's Razor = Logic or Common Sense.

i.e., sounds great but not always correct.

Quote

Namely, unlike for XP, all the top P3D devs like PMDG and Milviz did switch (well, technically Milviz didn't, but its not their priority any more).

Yes, thanks for supplying the additional detail.

Quote

Namely, unlike for XP, all the top P3D devs like PMDG and Milviz did switch (well, technically Milviz didn't, but its not their priority any more).

And to be clear, those devs switched because, almost overnight, their ESP/FSX/P3D sales dried up once MSFS v2020 released.

MilViz said it got so bad they were measuring sales in single digits per week...

Quote

Except it wont,  the barriers to entry around the aspects that make a good flight sim are just to high, and always were, they require far to much investment to get working, are not considered priorities by bean counters (who do not and will never understand the implications of a super puma costing several thousand euros just to start the engines), and everyone with the relevant modern knowledge to further that development is working with Laminar, every day that passes puts MS further behind, they THINK the problems are just the graphics engine (which, tbh, mildly surprised even me, I expected LR to par MSFS2020 with XP12, not nuke it from orbit) and getting bored of flying over your house (duh) - they are just the lowest hanging fruit.

While we know XP is ahead in several areas, this is particularly uninformed. If you're going to speak from authority, you need to be aware of what else is going on in the industry.

From your words above, it's easy to see you're simply not keeping up with reality.

Quote

But a semi decent "career" tool, that lots of people buy into because of the marketing, will create possibly the best onboarding tool imaginable for those who complete at least some of it and want to move onto a real flight simulator - aka everyone who sticks around. The derth of that to date has been by far XPs biggest barrier to attracting new users, it assumes a level of proficiency in aviation that is generally rare.

Define a "real flight simulator", please. And then compare/contrast between the two sims.

More will match than not.

My (at the time) 7 year old son was operating X-Plane after about 20 minutes of me showing him around. Then went on to teach himself what to do all the way up through re-creating our real world airliner trips.

You're preaching from a very short Ivory Tower. Not a good look.

 

4 hours ago, Franz007 said:

That would be new. Do you know when they updated that? Or can you point me to any of the offical infos? Because it was clearly missing like 1 year ago...I researched that topic and haven't found any info pointing to that feature having been implemented since then (even Pilot BB711 tested it and confirmed it was not simulated). I cannot test it since I have deinstalled MSFS long time ago...Are you sure you are not mixing it up with XP12?

Makes two of us - I've quit using MSFS 2020 long ago, and I seriously doubt I'll go 2024, but one or 2 years ago I did test the effects of T in the altimeter readings, with online weather, and they did present coherent results.

Anyway I guess this video was recorded using MSFS: A320 Effects of cold temperature on Baro Vertical Navigation VNAV Vertical Guidance (youtube.com)