25 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

For a company the size of Aerosoft though, I think they can hire the same amount and quality of developers that iniBuilds hired.  If iniBuilds can develop some of their aircraft within 2 years, there isn't a reason Aerosoft can't, IMO.

Remember, iniBuilds is about to beat Aerosoft at releasing a decent A330 in MSFS 2024. Why can iniBuild do it but Aerosoft can't?  Aerosoft surely started MSFS 2020 as a larger company than iniBuilds, right?

Hmm...no not necessarily. 

From 2017-2020 I never got the impression that Aerosoft had a large number of developers.  My only basis for that is that I closely followed them circa 2017-2020 thru a couple of projects.  Some projects were published by Aerosoft and thus carried the Aerosoft name, but they were not produced in-house by Aerosoft, the actual dev(s) were elsewhere.  Independent contractors, in a sense.  Limesim and Michael Cependa come to mind.

Just because Aerosoft has an app, a store, and associated infrastructure does not mean they are bristling with FMC programmers and graphic artists.  I'd wager ini had more of those types even in 2020-21.  Now historically (2009-2017, a period in sim history of which I was absent), that may have been different.  Things change...

6 minutes ago, martinboehme said:

Surely if they could they would? Surely they don't want to be this late with an A330 that ends up being this underwhelming?

Being a large company doesn't equate to being able to attract and retain key people. The deciding factor isn't money. The much more important questions are: Am I going to be working with other high-calibre people, and am I going to be fired up about the things I'll be doing? A company needs to understand this and be able to offer the right environment to get great devs.

As an example, witness Working Title. These are a bunch of extremely talented folks who got together just for the love of working on something great with other awesome people -- without any financial incentive. I'm not saying great devs will always work for free -- they have mouths to feed too, and they can choose who to work for. But it's not just, or even primarily, about the money. (Edit: And, of course, Working Title are being paid now, and being paid well, I assume.)

You can get the opposite effect as well. Once a few key developers leave a company, others will follow because the thing that motivated them -- working with great people -- is no longer there. I feel as if this may have happened to some of the former greats who seem to have lost their edge.

So Aerosoft isn't managing their developers and recruiting their developers as well as iniBuilds is. 

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

4 hours ago, jon b said:

Where as if the PMDG was the only 747-400 available customers would have stretched to buying it even if they didn’t use all its inbuilt features.

That's pretty much exactly why I bought their 744.

I was on X-Plane and there just wasn't any mid- / high-fidelity option available.

So not only did I stretch for that 744, I also added an entire additional flight simulator to get it!

Now though, I'm looking at a LOT of add-ons and thinking that many of the Defaults are Good Enough. Or even what today is considered mid-tier would've been High Fidelity in the older sims.

So now I'm at the point where, yes, I will still spend for a "Study Level" add-on, BUT it's got to be something that's going to be one of my primary rides.

2 hours ago, martinboehme said:

Agree that there's a number of developers who have been slow to get their products finished and have been blindsided by similar products that got there first.

I'm getting an implication from your post that these developers, to some extent, chose to take it easy -- that they could have been faster if they had just hired more people, and maybe taken out a loan to do so if necessary. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think the developers you name would have loved to get finished faster (and probably planned to do so).

The trouble is, it takes a very specific skill set to develop complex airliners, particularly the FMC, which so often seems to be the pièce de résistance. You can't just hire these people with these skills off the street -- you need to work hard to find them. If you invited an otherwise skilled and experienced "generalist" software engineer to an interview and asked them to explain, say, spherical trigonometry and WGS 84, you'd get nothing but blank stares.

I think the reason you're seeing some developers getting their products finished faster is because they've managed to hire and retain a group of people with these key skills. I see other developers who seem to have lost their previous ability to bring products to market on time, and I speculate that they have lost key people and aren't able to find equivalent people to replace them. I don't have any evidence for this, but it seems the most plausible explanation to me.

I agree with you, but there are some questionable priorities at work.

The 737 MAX just isn't that different a bird that PMDG would've struggled to release it by now. After all, it's IRL designed to handle / operate as close to the NGs as possible. Just to be more cost effective, which doesn't affect the flight sim aspect at all.

And then there's Leonardo. Who released an extremely high fidelity bird, but managed to do a less than satisfactory job on the graphics (for which talent IS widely available), especially considering they are, IIRC, the highest priced addon in the sim.

I'm not at all trying to shoot holes in your argument, but as with most things, reality is never as simple as we'd like. 👍

 

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

For a company the size of Aerosoft though, I think they can hire the same amount and quality of developers that iniBuilds hired.  If iniBuilds can develop some of their aircraft within 2 years, there isn't a reason Aerosoft can't, IMO.

Remember, iniBuilds is about to beat Aerosoft at releasing a decent A330 in MSFS 2024. It's also possible that iniBuilds started the A330 after Aerosoft, because they were focusing on the A310 and then the A320 initially. Why can iniBuild do it but Aerosoft can't?  And Aerosoft surely started MSFS 2020 as a larger company than iniBuilds, right?  (When I was watching the first discovery video on Aerosoft back in 2020/2021, they seemed like one of the larger companies in flight simulation)

Yes, and let's not forget the gigantic grant Aerosoft got from the .de govt explicitly to develop the addon. 

47 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

So Aerosoft isn't managing their developers and recruiting their developers as well as iniBuilds is. 

Certainly seems like that could be the case.

27 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

The 737 MAX just isn't that different a bird that PMDG would've struggled to release it by now

That puzzles me too -- seems like all the parts that are typically hard are similar between the NG and the MAX. The screens are different, but mostly in terms of layout rather than logic, I think?

28 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

And then there's Leonardo. Who released an extremely high fidelity bird, but managed to do a less than satisfactory job on the graphics (for which talent IS widely available)

Agree that this is the part that it's easiest to find talent for. I can only conclude that the graphics weren't a priority for them? 🤷‍♂️ I do wish they had invested more in this.

27 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Yes, and let's not forget the gigantic grant Aerosoft got from the .de govt explicitly to develop the addon.

Which underscores my point that developing airliners for MSFS isn't a problem that you can simply throw money at.

I'm most curious re: the level of fidelity Asobo/WT are shooting for with their 737 Max. Assuming it's something to the level of the ini A310, but then again they also seemed to suggest it might be more. Also curious about the iniBuilds A330. Sufficed to say, the level of fidelity in the default fleet is likely going to keep creeping up throughout MSFS 2024's years and beyond, so that just makes things even more interesting for the 3rd party market. What's unprecedented here is how the base sim developer is partnering with quality 3rd party devs like iniBuilds etc.

I wonder if in order to keep the market more open and healthy, that MS/Asobo are intentionally going to hold back the default birds from getting too high in fidelity and then competing with payware (what I mean is, even if in theory MS could pay a lump sum of cash to a developer like iniBuilds to put out something like their A300 or upcoming A350 into the default fleet, would iniBuilds go for that? How would ini even know if amount X is enough to cover their potential earnings from the aircraft being payware instead. Overall it seems like for the overall goodness of the sim ecosystem the default birds shouldn't get too high in fidelity hehe. I'm all for the default birds going all out as much as possible for flight dynamics fidelity but not necessarily systems/etc (although avionics is payware level quality or better now in MSFS).

Generally speaking, IMO, just in order to give opportunity for 3rd party devs to fill the void the default sim shouldn't hold back on amping up the fidelity of any aspects/features of the sim... but on the other hand it's also important to have a healthy ecosystem of 3rd party devs that have the opportunity to thrive.
 

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by lwt1971

11 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

 After PMDG released the 737 for MSFS, they were truly in the drivers seat to release the 737 Max in MSFS. 

 

So, I work in PR in the real world. I'm pretty sure PMDG is licensing things from Boeing for its releases, and we're talking about roughly the time period in which the 737Max had just killed 600 people in the real world and Boeing was being burned at the stake in the media. At that time, if Boeing were my client, I'd be metaphorically jumping over tables screaming "Nooo!" if they said they were gonna work with PMDG to release the Max. The negative press, especially the social media trolling, that would inevitably result would be the exact opposite of what you'd want. It would spread far beyond the flight sim world (as we've seen other releases do in more positive ways, like the city newspapers that ran stories about how X city is now rendered in MSFS, etc). The last thing Boeing needed at that point was to be seen "making a game" while very clearly not doing what they were supposed to be doing while making real airplanes.

In short, I'd be amazed if Boeing didn't call PMDG up to say "do not even think of releasing that now or in the near future."

9 hours ago, jon b said:

anyone just wanting a mid range 747-400 without all the customisation will surely be happy with the free 2024 747 with freeware mods.

 

That'd be a pretty hard sell for me. The default 747 is pretty nice, especially if you remember default 747s from older MSFS sims. But it still can't hold a candle to the PMDG version. That will be a day one buy for me no matter how many free/included 747s are already out there.

 

6 hours ago, eslader said:

So, I work in PR in the real world. I'm pretty sure PMDG is licensing things from Boeing for its releases, and we're talking about roughly the time period in which the 737Max had just killed 600 people in the real world and Boeing was being burned at the stake in the media. At that time, if Boeing were my client, I'd be metaphorically jumping over tables screaming "Nooo!" if they said they were gonna work with PMDG to release the Max. The negative press, especially the social media trolling, that would inevitably result would be the exact opposite of what you'd want. It would spread far beyond the flight sim world (as we've seen other releases do in more positive ways, like the city newspapers that ran stories about how X city is now rendered in MSFS, etc). The last thing Boeing needed at that point was to be seen "making a game" while very clearly not doing what they were supposed to be doing while making real airplanes.

In short, I'd be amazed if Boeing didn't call PMDG up to say "do not even think of releasing that now or in the near future."

That'd be a pretty hard sell for me. The default 747 is pretty nice, especially if you remember default 747s from older MSFS sims. But it still can't hold a candle to the PMDG version. That will be a day one buy for me no matter how many free/included 747s are already out there.

 

I don't really agree with this. The last 737 Max incident that resulted in a crash was March of 2019. By November of 2020, the FAA had given clearance for the Max to fly again.  The PMDG 737 NG was released in spring of 2022, which is 1.5 years after the Max was cleared by the FAA to fly again, and when the PMDG 737 NG was released for MSFS, that would have been the ideal time for PMDG to ramp up development of the Max.  But PMDG took longer to release the remaining variants for the 737 NG, they took forever on their EFB, and then I assume Randazzo wanted to focus on the 777.  Moreover, the MSFS team also has a relationship with Boeing, as they had to get approval from Boeing to use the 747 and 787 in MSFS 2020, and of course they got approval for the 737 Max in MSFS 2024. Why did the MSFS team get approval for the 737 Max in MSFS 2024 but PMDG didn't?  Mind you, the MSFS team probably got approval for the 737 Max at least a year ago from Boeing, because Asobo has been working on it for some time.  There is no reason that PMDG couldn't get approval from Boeing at the same time that the MSFS team got approval for it.  So yeah, I don't really agree with you but we can agree to disagree.

 

Edited October 9, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

to add to the OP's list, I think Blacksquare ate the market for King Airs from Milviz and Carenado.. I'm still hoping for a King Air with even more bells and whistles like the one from Airfoil labs in X-plane which has lot of A2A kinda features.. 

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

Why did the MSFS team get approval for the 737 Max in MSFS 2024 but PMDG didn't?

Does the default MSFS plane fully implement the updated MCAS code and dual AOA sensors? I suspect not but prove me wrong someone. 

I would not be surprised if Boeing were nervous about allowing a study level (world accurate) version of their patched up Max to be used in an application where YouTubers are notorious for producing crash videos and stirring up drama. 

A 'lite' systems implementation that looks and plays safe would be a good look for their image. 

You can bet there is a team of lawyers watching all licenced Boeing product very closely. 

2 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

Does the default MSFS plane fully implement the updated MCAS code and dual AOA sensors? I suspect not but prove me wrong someone. 

I would not be surprised if Boeing were nervous about allowing a study level (world accurate) version of their patched up Max to be used in an application where YouTubers are notorious for producing crash videos and stirring up drama. 

A 'lite' systems implementation that looks and plays safe would be a good look for their image. 

You can bet there is a team of lawyers watching all licenced Boeing product very closely. 

I'm not sure if it does or doesn't, but if Boeing were so concerned about that, they would have sent a cease and desist order to iFly and FlightOne for the P3D release of the iFly 737 Max.  And yet FlightOne and iFly released the 737 Max for P3D back in 2022, and I didn't hear any news of a cease and desist order to iFly or FlightOne (not to mention the iFly 737 Max for P3D is also available for sale at websites such as Aerosoft's website, and Aerosoft would have to delist it if they got a cease and desist order from Boeing).

Also, while Boeing may have told Randazzo not to release the 737 Max back in 2019/2020, based on my listening of the various radio interview Randazzo did in the last two years, my own interpretation of those radio interviews was that Randazzo was free to release the 737 Max within the last 2 years, if he wanted to. I did not even catch any hint in the radio interviews that Randazzo did, where he talked about the 737 Max, that Boeing was still blocking him from releasing it. But that is my interpretation of his radio interviews, maybe you may come to a different conclusion.

Edited October 9, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

29 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I'm not sure if it does or doesn't, but if Boeing were so concerned about that, they would have sent a cease and desist order to iFly and FlightOne for the P3D release of the iFly 737 Max

I don't think they are worried about 'lite' releases without in depth system info. It's the modern software rewrites I'm talking about. PMDG used to ship their Boeings with full original manuals (labelled not for flight in red on every page).

They no longer are allowed to supply these. You can't even test or use the failures without these manuals so you either take their word they are implemented correctly or find your own manuals (not difficult). I have them all from previous sims except the max.

I have read the latest Max FCOM and the MCAS alterations are in there (still give me goosebumps reading the IMPROVED logic). Good luck finding an ORIGINAL one, pre-fixes.

A Max without MCAS (the current version) would not BE a realistic Max imo. Same with the dual sensors and redundancy logic. I don't think I'm being picky here, for a flight model different from the NG you would need the larger engines, CG difference and the software to tidy up 'loose ends'.

The plane is NOT just an updated NG with bigger screens. 

 

3 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

I don't think they are worried about 'lite' releases without in depth system info.

 

Was the iFly 737 Max for P3D a "lite" release though that didn't have in depth system info?

Edited October 9, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

18 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Was the iFly 737 Max for P3D a "lite" release though that didn't have in depth system info?

I don't know. DOES it have the 'enhanced' (as described in fcom) MCAS /stab trim system implemented as per FAA requirements? Does it behave as specified in the manual? I may be wrong but are some systems auto in sim like setting cruise altitude on pressure panel? I think that's why I didn't get the NG version. 

I presume it has the stab trim primary and backup cutout switches modelled to disable the MCAS /trim system also the 5 second pilot MCAS trim switch override? 

Edited October 10, 20241 yr by sloppysmusic
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