P3D V7 in 2025 or 2026?

[sloppysmusic]

11 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

the similarity between 2020 and P3D SDKs

I did not know that. Interesting...

3 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

The only question is, "will the next gen "P3D" be made available to consumers?"

That doesn't seem to have stopped people before 

I can't see how they can stop people paying for it if they accept the licence. They would certainly not admit it but publicly but having a large 'ghost' market of non-professional users is very useful for product development and quality control. These forums for example are a gold mine of testing, bugs and fixes/solutions plus info on 3rd party addons/what works what does not.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at LM HQ-Software Division. These people KNOW their wna...

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2024/a-year-of-innovation.html

[CO2Neutral]

11 hours ago, Luke said:

They care about people who give them money

That was never LM primary funding source, USAF is/was by a huge margin.

[CO2Neutral]

2 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

These forums for example are a gold mine of testing, bugs and fixes/solutions plus info on 3rd party addons/what works what does not.

Some features, the important features most folks here didn’t care about at all … who runs 20 monitors for 360 wrap view or  21 computers to each rendering a display with genlock device to sync frames?  And a many more military specific features.

[sloppysmusic]

55 minutes ago, CO2Neutral said:

who runs 20 monitors for 360 wrap view or  21 computers to each rendering a display with genlock device to sync frames

Home cockpit builders. If you make it possible it will be used. Motion platforms are becoming affordable, screens are cheap these days and old pcs that just need to render one viewport are ten a penny.

Military spec nope. You need taxpayer level of funding to pay for and authorise that :D

[Luke]

16 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

That was never LM primary funding source, USAF is/was by a huge margin.

Please read what I quoted. I was not referring to Lockheed-Martin.

 

[CAP1234]

On 1/4/2025 at 12:25 PM, FPVSteve said:

Have to say given the frustration around MSFS 2024, the uncertainty going forwards and the similarity between 2020 and P3D SDKs it is probably the best time for P3D to become a consideration again. If you are, say, PMDG and hyper-focused on being realistic... do you really care that much about the consumer market of casual flyers? They seemed to make a decent living with the "niche" hobbyist for many years before MSFS existed...

It is highly unlikely developers will return to P3D even with current problems with MSFS 2024. PMDG probably made more money selling addons on MSFS then they did for P3D. I have asked this same question to PMDG and several other known developers few months back, They all say the same thing "No intention of returning back to P3D". Nowadays these developers don't care about realism/realistic simulation but rather focus on visuals and other bits which is ideal for casual simmers. 

[Daube]

6 hours ago, CAP1234 said:

It is highly unlikely developers will return to P3D even with current problems with MSFS 2024. PMDG probably made more money selling addons on MSFS then they did for P3D. I have asked this same question to PMDG and several other known developers few months back, They all say the same thing "No intention of returning back to P3D". Nowadays these developers don't care about realism/realistic simulation but rather focus on visuals and other bits which is ideal for casual simmers. 

You mean PMDG does not make realistic addons anymore, but only eye candy à la Carenado and stuff for casual gamers ? Is that your view about MSFS users and 3rd party developers, really ? Wow ! 😄

The reason developers don't want to develop for P3D anymore is because of the disappearance of the CUSTOMERS. They don't want to spent several years developing a plane and finally sell only one to Ray. Instead, they preferred to continue to produce realistic addons and sell them to MSFS users who are interested. Even freeware devs moved over. What is it that is so difficult to understand for you here ? 

Now, if a new P3D iteration appears with interesting improvements that drag USERS / CUSTOMERS back to it, then some devs might come back because the market starts to exist again. But I'm not very optimistic about this.

[sdirand]

18 hours ago, CAP1234 said:

It is highly unlikely developers will return to P3D even with current problems with MSFS 2024. PMDG probably made more money selling addons on MSFS then they did for P3D. I have asked this same question to PMDG and several other known developers few months back, They all say the same thing "No intention of returning back to P3D".

No matter how good or better than msfs24, a P3D 7.0 could be, it will always lack the most important thing: the visibility and the market power of Microsoft.

Microsoft / Asobo with it's force in the media and the Xbox pass opened a new era for developpers, never seen before: the sim has visibility in the media and is discovered by many new users. Some will use it for a few months, but some will become dedicated simmers. some will use as a pure game while others will use it as close as it gets but the most important fact is that it brings a lot of new users! And developers took profit of that: for instance, I'm sure PMDG sold more copies of their 737 & 777 on msfs than they sold in the whole lifespan of Fs9 till P3D.

Yes, a very nice and competitive P3D could drag back some core users but nevertheless, that P3D will never attract a lot of new users. Outside of the core old users like us, nobody really knows P3D, nobody ever seen it on a store shelf and nobody ever seen some promotional videos, interviews, Q & A, etc on youtube. And as it is not the main market for LM, it will probably don't change in the future.

So a P3D 7.0 would probably remain in a niche market, not something that would attract a lot of developpers. So if you are PMDG or Fenix with limited ressources, do you want to spend any new ressource on a new product for msfs or do you want to gamble on a P3D product? I think the answer is really simple. 

 

[G-RFRY]

PMDG obtained a licence from Boeing to create and authentic simulator model of their aircraft. They will run out of aircraft for MSFS when they have completed the range.

[jcomm]

Well,

I regret having purchased P3dv6 (thx @Luis Hernandez 🙂 ) because although I thought it would be accepted with time by PMDG and FSLabs ( the only addons I used with it ... ) I ended up finding out I was very wrong 😞

Unless v7 is a totally incredible version, I will most probably pass ...

Edited January 7 by jcomm

[Luis Hernandez]

I guess you're talking about v6, Jcomm 😂

But I agree with you: I was about to purchase v6, until I saw PMDG and FSL said they won't update will consider later updating their birds. I'm staying in V5 for now.

[sloppysmusic]

3 hours ago, sdirand said:

it will always lack the most important thing: the visibility and the market power of Microsoft.

Ten years ago I had a fantastic Android app called SwiftKey. It worked beautifully and accurately predicted 90% of my clumsy typing errors and fixed them for me. 

Then a company with 'huge visibility and market power' purchased it and slowly but surely destroyed the product. 

That company has a long history of doing this, often fought in court by anti monopoly suits. 

Even Windows is a shadow of its former glory in providing users what they WANT. They won't even let me use the simple and effective classic notepad anymore. I create a custom shortcut to the classic version and pin it to my taskbar. Then every few days even without an update some hidden code actually finds my custom shortcut and maliciously changes MY target to their new version. New icon on taskbar. New .exe. 

Every time I load up p3d it's the SAME. The software is a tool for learning and practicing for me. I can only hope they continue to innovate this product in the future. 

 

[Daube]

27 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

Even Windows is a shadow of its former glory in providing users what they WANT. They won't even let me use the simple and effective classic notepad anymore. I create a custom shortcut to the classic version and pin it to my taskbar. Then every few days even without an update some hidden code actually finds my custom shortcut and maliciously changes MY target to their new version. New icon on taskbar. New .exe. 

I'm curious about this ?

I'm using the current Notepad app without issue on Windows 11, and it's much better than the notepad I had in the previous versions of Windows, in that it doesn't loose what I typed if I close the app without saving.

In the traditional Notepad app (until Windows 10 included), if you close the app without saving, you loose everything. Here you don't loose it, and you even get tabstips for opening several files at once as a bonus. What's your problem with this modern version exactly ? Why would anyone prefer the old one ?

[sloppysmusic]

20 minutes ago, Daube said:

hat's your problem with this modern version exactly ? Why would anyone prefer the old one ?

I used Notepad ++ for what you describe (MS stole that design too lol)

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Then I also use the classic simple NP for temp notes that I do NOT want to keep (i have multiple instances open at once)

So I use TWO notepads

The issue though is them changing MY custom shortcut.

imagine if you clicked your p3dv5 shortcut for example and LM loaded up v6 instead (presuming you had both installed).

or worse if you had MS2020 installed and they replaced your shortcut with 2024. 

You just do NOT mess with your users custom setup. Ever.

Edited January 7 by sloppysmusic

[Daube]

Yep I also have Notepad++ installed on that same computer, and somehow I still use both: Notepad++ and Notepad.

But I still fail to see why you would want to use yet another Notepad...

Now, concerning the automatic modification of your shortcut on the desktop, this is strange indeed, but that's another issue. I would try a workaround by simply renaming the "old" notepad.exe to some completely different name, so that Windows couldn't recognize it as some kind of key word or something.

But again, Windows has never ever modified any of my links, no matter the version, excepted when pointing to a program that didn't exist anymore. So I don't know what's going on...