Where is Microsoft heading ???

[Lucky38i]

1 hour ago, tfm said:

My personal guess is that this business model basically worked BUT, as usual these days, what got the better of them was just sheer greed: why make shed-loads of money by honouring the original promise , if you can make even more money by breaking that promise and releasing a "new, improved" version which, alone, will receive the updates originally promised for v2020?

I think there was good arguments for a new sim. FS20 retained a lot of things from the esp platform that at times held back the sim or resulted in endless prototyping particular features that were never as great as they could be simply because they were supersets of a poorly built architecture.

So in my opinon Asobo were fair to create a new sim which particular fundamentals were from scratch rather than tied to the esp platform. We can see this with the new flight model in xwind situations, intertial modelling as-well as ground modelling just to name a few. Now a lot would say, why not just make it an update? Not everything can be an update especially core rewrites. I'm not going to assume Asobo's architecture but it makes sense why certain things can't just come in a fancy update.

They however, shot themselves by tying it to a year date as the sim clearly wasn't ready for release. Personally, I think the really greedy part was the bean counters forcing a release on a product that clearly wasn't ready. However, people keep pre-ordering content signifying to executives that their actions don't have consequences.

[jspilot]

2 minutes ago, Lucky38i said:

I think there was good arguments for a new sim. FS20 retained a lot of things from the esp platform that at times held back the sim or resulted in endless prototyping particular features that were never as great as they could be simply because they were supersets of a poorly built architecture.

So in my opinon Asobo were fair to create a new sim which particular fundamentals were from scratch rather than tied to the esp platform. We can see this with the new flight model in xwind situations, intertial modelling as-well as ground modelling just to name a few. Now a lot would say, why not just make it an update? Not everything can be an update especially core rewrites. I'm not going to assume Asobo's architecture but it makes sense why certain things can't just come in a fancy update.

They however, shot themselves by tying it to a year date as the sim clearly wasn't ready for release. Personally, I think the really greedy part was the bean counters forcing a release on a product that clearly wasn't ready. However, people keep pre-ordering content signifying to executives that their actions don't have consequences.

See I think this is exactly where the franchise went wrong because if this whole “start from scratch with 2024” thing is really true than that also means they likely have two distinct teams working on the sims since whatever they do to one can’t just be plugged into the other.  That’s going to mean that resources are divided and how does that make much sense for a company?

The biggest issue with 2024 is the everything is streamed from the cloud decision.  Frankly- it’s been a catastrophe from what I can tell.  Even the streamers with mega computers are running into issues far more regularly than they should.  Was watching V1 yesterday and he had a crash on stream which he said had never happened before in his years flying 2020.  I mean that’s indicative of how going in the direction they have has limited the amount of people who are going to be able to even fly the sim because if you don’t have a very good internet connection and a very good PC 2024 is- at best- a lateral move and might actually be a significant downgrade because all those users likely already have 2020.

Again what they need to give this franchise is a soul or purpose.  I believe career mode was their effort but that’s just been poorly to terribly done and I suspect that’s going to be the Achilles heel of this release.  If they can’t fix that and or are not willing to open it up to 3rd party- far better aircraft— it’s going to be dead.

[AnkH]

I also think that releasing the MSFS2024 as stand-alone version with full streaming and not as an big update for MSFS2020 was the absolutely wrong decision. More workload for all addon devs, splitted community, re-introduction of already fixed/workarounded bugs, new bugs etc. basically corrupted a community constantly growing over the last four years prior release of MSFS2024. 

To me, it was sadly a big step in the completely wrong direction...

[Lucky38i]

34 minutes ago, jspilot said:

That’s going to mean that resources are divided and how does that make much sense for a company?

I really dislike this angle and people who seem to not work in companys use it all the time. if I have 20 modellers but there's only 5 things to model, why would I not issue the other 15 modellers to a different project?

There's certains tasks in developing anything where adding more heads to the problem does not result in faster results, and often times can lead to a more fragmented situation. We know that Asobo has grown as a company immensely in the 4 years (bearing in mind they don't only work on MSFS), so what use is there deciating their entire workforce to one project? Why do people keep pushing this angle especially for large companies.

37 minutes ago, jspilot said:

The biggest issue with 2024 is the everything is streamed from the cloud decision.

That's not a poor decision, there's companys out there that stream much larger amounts of content in live situations than MSFS does without problem. MSFS 24's problem is an architectural issue. Which goes back to my original point, the product was not ready for it slated launch date.

 

39 minutes ago, jspilot said:

 I believe career mode was their effort but that’s just been poorly to terribly done and I suspect that’s going to be the Achilles heel of this release.  If they can’t fix that and or are not willing to open it up to 3rd party- far better aircraft— it’s going to be dead.

Career mode, clearly has the fundamentals to be a great addition to the sim but is plagued with bugs. As I've originally said, this product was not ready for release and I fully put the blame on executives here. I highly highly doubt any of the developers on this project that it was ready for release but it's not within their control the determine that.

It's very clear 2024 should've never been released for 2024. However, from what we can see there's very good fundamentals in this new sim let down by poor architectural planning and a plethora of bugs on a product that should've never been released in the state that it did.

[Ianrivaldosmith]

My question is regarding saturation. What happens when the marketplace/ addons are at a point where people stop purchasing them? There are only so many renditions of an A320 one needs to purchase. That applies to all addons. 

Edited January 23 by Ianrivaldosmith

[JBDB-MD80]

1 hour ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

My question is regarding saturation. What happens when the marketplace/ addons are at a point where people stop purchasing them? There are only so many renditions of an A320 one needs to purchase. That applies to all addons. 

The best A320 addons are not even sold on the Marketplace and the best one on the MP is free but I get your point. There are thousands of rubbish addons sold the MP BTW.

 

Edited January 23 by JBDB-MD80

[jspilot]

1 hour ago, Lucky38i said:

I really dislike this angle and people who seem to not work in companys use it all the time. if I have 20 modellers but there's only 5 things to model, why would I not issue the other 15 modellers to a different project?

There's certains tasks in developing anything where adding more heads to the problem does not result in faster results, and often times can lead to a more fragmented situation. We know that Asobo has grown as a company immensely in the 4 years (bearing in mind they don't only work on MSFS), so what use is there deciating their entire workforce to one project? Why do people keep pushing this angle especially for large companies.

That's not a poor decision, there's companys out there that stream much larger amounts of content in live situations than MSFS does without problem. MSFS 24's problem is an architectural issue. Which goes back to my original point, the product was not ready for it slated launch date.

 

Career mode, clearly has the fundamentals to be a great addition to the sim but is plagued with bugs. As I've originally said, this product was not ready for release and I fully put the blame on executives here. I highly highly doubt any of the developers on this project that it was ready for release but it's not within their control the determine that.

It's very clear 2024 should've never been released for 2024. However, from what we can see there's very good fundamentals in this new sim let down by poor architectural planning and a plethora of bugs on a product that should've never been released in the state that it did.

2024 should have been a paid add on for 2020 and that’s evident by the amount of issues and by the OP’s original post that 2020 still has more active users. 

[gunther]

Wow! Thanks! I'm off to play FOL now!

[Lucky38i]

1 minute ago, jspilot said:

2024 should have been a paid add on for 2020 and that’s evident by the amount of issues and by the OP’s original post that 2020 still has more active users. 

I do appreciate how you wholly missed my point and instead decided to double down. Did you even bother to read any of my posts?

If somehow FS24's feature set could've even been a paid addon for FS20, why do you imagine that it's launch would be seamless if the standalone product wasn't? I really do stress you to read both of my posts entirely, if and when you decide to reply.

[andy1252]

1 hour ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

My question is regarding saturation. What happens when the marketplace/ addons are at a point where people stop purchasing them? There are only so many renditions of an A320 one needs to purchase. That applies to all addons. 

I suspect that if they get the new environment working properly, so that things like the career stuff work and the digital-twin problems like bad PG and LODs are sorted, then people will come up with all sorts of new categories of addons. Scenery will always present opportunities for further development, and who knows what sort of avatar addons might pop up. I could see third-party careers being developed, if the SDK covered the basics, for example.

To me, a potential problem with the Marketplace is more to do with trust. With this iteration (2024) they've already created a situation where previously purchased MP items are unavailable (without a degree of deviousness) within the sim. Speaking personally, I'm now even less inclined to buy stuff from the Marketplace from here on if I can get them elsewhere. It's definitely the bottom of my list as a desirable shopfront.

[jspilot]

14 minutes ago, Lucky38i said:

I do appreciate how you wholly missed my point and instead decided to double down. Did you even bother to read any of my posts?

If somehow FS24's feature set could've even been a paid addon for FS20, why do you imagine that it's launch would be seamless if the standalone product wasn't? I really do stress you to read both of my posts entirely, if and when you decide to reply.

Yes it would have been far more seamless because the entire sim would not be being streamed and it would have shown the consumers respect since they told us 2020 would be supported for many years and then went in a totally new direction.  The poor of this thread is the direction MSFS is going.  It seems like they are going in the direction of asking customers to pay 70 bucks for what is essentially a paid add on.

What about your original post do you want me to comment on?  

[Lucky38i]

15 minutes ago, jspilot said:

entire sim would not be being streamed

That's a feature set of FS24. It was literally a USP for a smaller client among other things. So I'm not really sure how FS24 being an addon would been done seamlessly.

As I've originally said, good in practice as demonstrated by other companys and their services but poorly executed by Asobo, or at least initially.

[bhx22]

Nobody i know uses Steam so its not really conclusive i imagine millions don't.

[davenicoll]

This may sound rather blunt...

 

Who cares, I'm along for the ride. I just marvel at what we can achieve sitting in our own homes...

[Tom Wright]

35 minutes ago, davenicoll said:

This may sound rather blunt...

 

Who cares, I'm along for the ride. I just marvel at what we can achieve sitting in our own homes...

100% agree. I got into flight simming with FS2004 nearly 20 years ago. I could never have imagined how far we'd have come from then to now, especially in visual quality, the progress is simply astonishing.

Edited January 23 by Tom Wright