7 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

You like to commit yourself don't you? Obviously AGAIN that was taken as said with my quote. I will COMMIT to saying something more exact in that I do NOT believe enough people WILL keep paying for MS to trust Asobe to produce another episode in this series.

Once again, your word salad makes me wonder if you're drunk...

4 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Robert, my comment was not at all directed at you or your post, but rather at some of the follow on "conclusions" by other respondents. 🤙

Ok. Thanks very much for clearing that up! Apologies.

23 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Once again, your word salad makes me wonder if you're drunk...

OK enough already. I do not believe in blocking people as that seems childish so I will ask you directly to stop insulting people you disagree with please. you do it a LOT in many threads and personally it has become very tiresome.

30 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

OK enough already. I do not believe in blocking people as that seems childish so I will ask you directly to stop insulting people you disagree with please. you do it a LOT in many threads and personally it has become very tiresome.

It's not insulting to remark that your comments are frequently incoherent and similar to those of someone under the influence.

There's plenty of folks here with whom I disagree, and vice versa. And we're able to have reasoned discussions.

Have a great day.

2 hours ago, MattNischan said:

It is not necessary to exit the sim. Simply create a project in devmode with your edited files in them, and then when you hit build, the files will be remounted and refreshed in the VFS. For a project with just one copy step (for your CFG files, for example) this process will only be a second or two longer than the quick reload anyhow.

It was sorta a hacky backdoor function to the above proper VFS remounting process and could cause problems in some scenarios (needing to infer information due to not having a build or project definition, etc), is my understanding. But this question in general is much better suited to the MSFS DevSupport forums and not here on Avsim.

The VFS thing seems to crash though semi often - been trying to use it for livery stuff.  Hopefully it'll get more stable as we go.

2 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

True, but it's so much easier to make all kinds of alarming claims about "evil" Asobo/Microsoft than it is to research the facts. 

Well one fact is that MS did in fact abandon a certain FSX some years ago after a 30-odd year run.

They do have form.

16 minutes ago, DavidP said:

Well one fact is that MS did in fact abandon a certain FSX some years ago after a 30-odd year run.

You mean this FSX?

"At this point I was so disappointed I stopped playing Flight Simulator X and popped in FS9. Like and old pair of shoes it just felt good to play without any of these technical issues."

Sounds awfully familiar to recent events. 😁

Full link https://www.ign.com/articles/2006/12/02/microsoft-flight-simulator-x

(Actually an amusing trip down memory lane. I think every one of us can relate to just how badly FSX ran on our machines back in 2007)

39 minutes ago, DavidP said:

Well one fact is that MS did in fact abandon a certain FSX some years ago after a 30-odd year run.

They do have form.

 Many companies abandon software or gaming software and re-introduce them at a later date. Not sure why I would guess marketing and the built up hype after the absense causes demand to increase.

Grand Theft Auto is sort of in this situation. They haven't really done much on a new version for sometime. The hype is building for a new upcoming version that is sure to be a big seller when it releases.

15 hours ago, Biggles2010 said:

 

It's as reasonable a supposition as the optimistic claims about the future regularly made by the usual group of MS supporters on Avsim, also without hard evidence.

Microsoft is not a benevolent institution or charity. The only important consideration is return on capital. The main returns come early in the product cycle, but expenditure continues with support and development costs. As Asobo has expanded, those costs have risen. 2024 has not gone smoothly and this may impact sales if current users go back to 2020 and would be buyers hear of problems. The X Box generation not only has has a very short attention span, but is very communicative about any games issues. Ongoing costs will become the major issue for MS. Server capacity appears to be based on 'average demand' and it's all too clear it cannot cope with any peaks in useage. It's unlikely to improve much because that means further costs for the future at a time when returns start to diminish..

Almost every company is focused on what returns they can get from a product, project, or service.  Your business analysis misses a key point though, the 80%/20% rule or Pareto Principle in business - that is, 80% of the revenue can come from 20% of the customers.  In the case of MSFS, the 20% of the customers that are driving 80% of the revenue are the hard core flight simmers.  FYI, it's probably not exactly 80%/20%, it could be 90%/10% or some other breakdown for MSFS, but you get the idea - I will use 80%/20% to illustrate my example, even if the the exact breakdown is some other figure. 

Anyways, it's known that there are many casual simmer, especially some that simply try MSFS on Gamepass and then never return to MSFS after a few tries, and these casual simmers make up some of the 80% that don't drive much revenue for MSFS since they were never long term flight simmers in the first place.  Then there are the hard core flight simmers that buy all sorts of peripherals just for flight simming, that subscribe to Navigraph, etc.  Those hard core flight simmers make up some of the 20% for MSFS, and they spend heavily in the MSFS marketplace.  I wouldn't be surprised if the hard core flight simmer in MSFS spent 10x more than the casual simmer in MSFS, which means those 20% of users are outspending the other 80% of users by a huge factor.

Now the problem with MSFS 2024 is the poor launch.  Without a doubt, a significant portion of those hard core simmers in MSFS 2020 who should be in the 20%, did not migrate to MSFS 2024 yet.  So the challenge for the MSFS team is to make MSFS 2024 better so that those hard core simmers do migrate from MSFS 2020 to MSFS 2024.  Then there are the 3rd party add-on makers who will take time to port their add-ons from MSFS 2020 to MSFS 2024, but when they do port it over, they will bring over more of those MSFS 2020 users (ie. some PMDG users are waiting for the 777 and 737 to be ported to MSFS 2024).

I also think that's why Jorg wanted to do Career Mode, because he wanted to expand the market of hard core simmers - that is, Jorg was hoping to convert some of the casual users, and get them to stay longer in MSFS with Career Mode, thus transforming some of the casual users to hard core simmers.  Unfortunately, with the poor launch and bugs in Career Mode, that opportunity was partly lost.  Having said that, if they continue to fix MSFS 2024 and the remainder of the hard core MSFS 2020 simmers migrate to MSFS 2024, the marketplace revenue for MSFS will pick up significantly and I think the MSFS 2024 team will be fine. 

Finally, even if MSFS 2024 broke even or was slightly unprofitable for Microsoft, I can see them continuing to MSFS 2028, MSFS 2032, etc.  Because they want to make a digital twin earth so this is a long term investment for them. The digital twin earth isn't just for MSFS, it's also for other potential games or applications that could use a digital twin earth.  To be honest, if the MSFS team did no further upgrades for MSFS 2028/2032 except for upgrading the terrain and photogrammetry around the world, they will still sell a lot of copies of MSFS 2028/2032 based on improved terrain/photogrammetry around the world.  Microsoft could purely focus on improving the terrain and photogrammetry only for future versions of MSFS, with no changes in anything else, and they would still sell a decent amount of copies of MSFS (although not as many copies if they also focused on upgrading other features).

I disagree with your analysis because you didn't even mention the 80%/20% rule in the first place, which seems you lack the understanding of where MSFS's revenue is coming from.  You mention return on capital, but your analysis doesn't even consider that Microsoft is investing in the digital twin earth, so breaking even or a slight loss in MSFS isn't a big deal to them, because they realize with a very good digital twin earth, the revenue opportunities that will provide for them in the future.  Finally, I won't get into the server costs, but rest assured, the server costs for MSFS are likely not that expensive for Microsoft because they own Azure (you can read here from an someone who has past experience working with Microsoft and why the server costs are cheap for MSFS) - you are wrong about the server costs too.

The MSFS team, including Asobo, have a good track record of fixing MSFS.  And IMO, the state of MSFS 2024 some 3 weeks after release is much better than the state of MSFS 2020 after 3 weeks of release (in MSFS 2020 after 3 weeks of release, we were still CTDing often at that point in time, but the CTDs in MSFS 2024 right now are way fewer than MSFS 2020 after 3 weeks).  MSFS will likely be here for a long time coming, and we will see future versions of MSFS.

Edited December 14, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

10 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

The MSFS team, including Asobo, have a good track record of fixing MSFS

The difference being 2020 really was ground breaking and the benefits over previous generation simulators where immense. 2024 is not groundbreaking at all. Yes, visually it has improved, in some places Bing maps have been updated and the flight and ground models have also been made better -- but these things could have been provided in a sim update, even a paid sim-update if they wanted to monetize. What is new is the career mode and I agree with you that likely their aim was to try to "hook" more people who casually use the game, to keep them interested and maybe some of them will stay with the title (attention = money) and perhaps make some marketplace purchases.  Personally I have no interest in career mode, and I wonder how many of those hardcore simmers -- the 10 or 20 or 30 percent -- bought 2024 to play careers. I am not sure it is that many.

The launch was indeed dreadful and has been followed by a substantial number of reports of connectivity and stability issues, many documented in their forums. It is further challenged by the sheer number of small bugs -- from flashing textures, ocean ships in the Seine, incoherent ground effect at heliports, blinding night lights, aircraft with no electrical systems, integer-division errors and coherent draw bugs preventing third-party developers from joining 2024, (no Black Square, no TDI, no PMDG) and so many more.  Then there is the absence of the marketplace, they will lose all the holiday sales. And for me the inability to access my 2020 content to try it myself -- even though I was repeatedly assured that those things I purchased on the Marketplace would be compatible in 2024 -- means I have no intention of ever buying anything from the Marketplace again, even Marketplace-only items.

I like 2024, I have deleted 2020 because 2024 really is a step forward. But it has not gone well and that may very well impact the longevity of the title.

Edited December 14, 20241 yr by Cognita

On 12/13/2024 at 10:39 AM, robert young said:

Thanks for that Matt, but I never had a single problem with re-sync in thousands of edits. The (new) process you describe sounds rather convoluted compared with a simple "re-sync" and as far as I can see there were no instructions (in the FS2024 sdk) about reloading an edit before your kind post here, but if it can be learned quickly then no worries and I will of course edit my thread title assumption. I don't quite understand "project with your edited files in them" - but I will have go and see if I can make it work.

Try this. If after making some edits use the  Aircraft Selector option (Under Dev Mode >Tools) to reload the aircraft you are working on but with a different livery (or if necessary load a different aircraft and then reload your aircraft) to force the files to be updated. I don't know what kind of edits you are making, but this works for me with simple code edits (I'm not a developer), and is reasonably fast compared to restarting the sim. And you don't have to be working with an "official" developer Project Package, i.e., you can just be working on a plane from the Community folder.

Al

 

Edited December 14, 20241 yr by ark

We keep getting Asobo’d. But nah let’s keep believing their PR and “transparency” lol. 

6 hours ago, ark said:

Try this. If after making some edits use the  Aircraft Selector option (Under Dev Mode >Tools) to reload the aircraft you are working on but with a different livery (or if necessary load a different aircraft and then reload your aircraft) to force the files to be updated. I don't know what kind of edits you are making, but this works for me with simple code edits (I'm not a developer), and is reasonably fast compared to restarting the sim. And you don't have to be working with an "official" developer Project Package, i.e., you can just be working on a plane from the Community folder.

Al

 

Hi Ark,

That might well be a better solution than "mounting" files using the VFS which to me sounds unnecessarily complex and at the moment unreliable. The beauty of the re-sync command is that it was an ELEGANT method which instantly unloaded from RAM then reloaded all your configuration files - and was guaranteed to work. It is an example of an intelligent bit of design because it is simple, easy and very quick (less than 4 seconds for a GA aircraft). I hadn't thought of loading from the load option in dev mode, and I wonder if it really does clear the "old" aircraft from RAM? Thanks for the tip - I'll try it.

3 hours ago, robert young said:

I wonder if it really does clear the "old" aircraft from RAM?

In response to your comment above, I did some more experimenting and found after making a change I had to use the Aircraft Selector to load a different plane before reloading the plane with the changes, or I could load a different version of the same plane, e.g., one with a different avionics panel, and then reload the version of the plane I was working on, in order for the changes to take effect. As you suspected, simply switching to a different livery (paint scheme) before reloading the plane with the changes does not work. In my initial testing when I had switched to a different livery before reloading the "original" plane, I had also switched to a different avionics panel, which does work. Sorry for the confusion. 
Still, using the Aircraft Selector twice, to load a different plane and than again to load the original plane, takes only a minute or so and is a good alternative to having to restart the sim, etc.

Edited December 15, 20241 yr by ark

On 12/13/2024 at 10:55 AM, UrgentSiesta said:

makes me wonder if you're drunk...

There's nothing bad