On 9/11/2025 at 12:48 PM, filou said:

I'm sharing this video that perfectly illustrates the overall immersive atmosphere that XP12 offers in its entirety

Great video, that sky looks awesome! The lighting in X-Plane is truly incredible. But then again, what about the utter bright dotty lights on and next to the roads, stationary and moving, that represent traffic (or are some supposed to be lampposts)? They suddenly cease to exist as if there is no highway left, while there clearly is (from 14:15 on). So, when talking about an 'overall immersive atmosphere', I'm kind of confused, because these things are immersion breakers to me...

X-Plane is far from perfect, no matter what its devoted followers regularly claim. On the other hand, the same can be said about MSFS (2024). So, on topic, of course MSFS has never, and will never kill X-Plane. It's to good!

Having said this, in these parts of the forums I sometimes miss respect for what Asobo has accomplished with MSFS so far. MSFS and MSFS 2024 are very mature flight simulators, capable of the same and sometimes even better immersive experiences than X-Plane can offer. And yes indeed, this also goes the other way...

2 hours ago, Litjan said:

But is there space for them on your HDD as well?... or will you need to UNINSTALL this one or that one? 😆

I now have a 1TB SSD, but uninstalling is a ritual 😁

3 hours ago, Litjan said:

But is there space for them on your HDD as well?... or will you need to UNINSTALL this one or that one? 😆

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

I now have a 1TB SSD, but uninstalling is a ritual 😁

I feel a country song coming on.

2 hours ago, Rimshot said:

lampposts

One nice thing with XP is that such scenery items do actually exist in the default sim. You must be in need of a higher quality monitor because I can see them just fine in that sunset lighting.

 

2 hours ago, Rimshot said:

perfect, no matter what its devoted followers regularly claim

Who used "perfect"?

 

2 hours ago, Rimshot said:

I sometimes miss respect for what Asobo has accomplished

That's funny. The other forum doesn't sing loudly enough for you? Odd... Well there's an easy explanation in general. They haven't done anything worth "respecting". Not that it's clear what you mean by "respect" in the first place. The gfx mechanics are all old hat. There's nothing the general public couldn't already find in google maps. In-sim ortho was already done a long time ago. Etc.

I can see how much of their work would be eye opening for a set of flightsim-market-only eyes, but when you zoom out and observe the broader computer industry, it's pretty average.

5 hours ago, Rimshot said:

utter bright dotty lights on and next to the roads, stationary and moving, that represent traffic (or are some supposed to be lampposts)?

A strange observation - MSFS has street lighting but no associated lamp posts, where XP12 does have the lamp posts.

58 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

where XP12 does have the lamp posts.

 

On 9/26/2025 at 12:25 PM, blingthinger said:

No I will not give you my wallstreet insider trading source!! 🙂

For 1) Circumstantial evidence. Their own executive alumni:

https://gameworldobserver.com/2025/07/01/former-xbox-executive-microsofts-console-business-is-dead

More recent executive confession from a couple yrs ago:

https://fortune.com/2023/05/05/microsoft-exec-phil-spencer-admits-the-console-war-lost-sony-playstation-nintendo-switch/

I can see them hanging on to the Live services a la Steam. That's relatively easy to maintain and the proof there is that they're branching out to Sony as an additional distribution outlet. Games won't fully die but the hardware side is all but kaput.

 

For 2): Extrapolating Navigraph survey results.

Also interesting from the next article down from the one you linked:

in an all time record revenue year of $23 BILLION, “revenue from gaming hardware fell by 25% due to a decrease in console sales.” 😮

On 9/27/2025 at 2:56 AM, Litjan said:

But is there space for them on your HDD as well?... or will you need to UNINSTALL this one or that one? 😆

X-Plane is only 25 GB. MSFS 2024 is only 30 GB. So yes, you should be able to install both no problem!!

On 9/26/2025 at 3:54 PM, mSparks said:

It depends too much on how you frame it.

On the one hand, XP12 was Laminars biggest launch ever, msfs2020,2024,dcs,winwing etc is the best we've ever had it.

The biggest launch because the market has grown, not peaked in 2019 like you claimed.

On 9/26/2025 at 3:54 PM, mSparks said:

A basic useable setup that can flight sim is probably at least $2,000, probably more like $3,000

joypad flightsim has seemingly failed.

Msfs on ps5 with a psvr2 will bring that down to like $1,100. That is better, will be growth there, but it is still very much out of reach for most people.

If you don't include the price of the console, it is way less. The problem with flight sim is that your average PC cannot run it well. You have to spend a lot of $$$$ on a capable PC. There are 100 million Xbox + PS5 out in the wild right now, so most user that would play on console already own a PS5 or Xbox. The only thing needed would is the joystick/throttle and rudders which could cost $200 - $500 USD on amazon for a decent to good setup. When I wanted to run FSX, I spent about $2500 on the PC alone and it still struggled to run it.

Edited September 28, 2025Sep 28 by brinx

On 9/26/2025 at 6:25 PM, blingthinger said:

I can see them hanging on to the Live services a la Steam. That's relatively easy to maintain and the proof there is that they're branching out to Sony as an additional distribution outlet. Games won't fully die but the hardware side is all but kaput.

Xbox hardware is changing but not "Kaput". They are building an Xbox handheld (a la steamdeck) and next gen consoles, confirmed by president of Xbox. Rumors suggest it might be more like PCs with a unified storefront and the ability to run steam games. The details are not public. But they signed a multi-year partnership with AMD to co-develop the silicon so new hardware is 100% coming. 

Edited September 28, 2025Sep 28 by brinx

47 minutes ago, brinx said:

The biggest launch because the market has grown, not peaked in 2019 like you claimed.

2019 -> 2020 market looked like this

We are barely at 10% of the 2019 -> 2020 peak, that didn't move somewhere else in flight sim, it just vanished to entirely different genres, and in the context of games the peak wasn't even that large.

57 minutes ago, brinx said:

f you don't include the price of the console, it is way less. The problem with flight sim is that your average PC cannot run it well. You have to spend a lot of $$$$ on a capable PC. There are 100 million Xbox + PS5 out in the wild right now, so most user that would play on console already own a PS5 or Xbox. The only thing needed would is the joystick/throttle and rudders which could cost $200 - $500 USD on amazon for a decent to good setup. When I wanted to run FSX, I spent about $2500 on the PC alone and it still struggled to run it.

sure, and with PSVR2 all you need is the PS5 and PSVR2 and the game which brings the entire setup down into the $1,100 range - that can stimulate growth, we are a way off that being a real thing yet, but planned is better than not planned. 

->The only thing needed would is the joystick/throttle and rudders which could cost $200 - $500 USD on amazon for a decent to good setup

Is, imho, the bottleneck, because you only need them for flight sim, we are kinda there now with the Quest 3 and a PC, but for that you are starting from the $x,000s for the PC, which isn't large numbers of people and will never be accessible to large numbers of people.

for the last 3 or 4 years its been XP,DCS,MSFS2020 and 2024 trading market share, the market itself at best has moved sideways. XP has been taking market share, P3D lost it.

(me waves to swiss, guess that means you read our little thread)

1 hour ago, brinx said:

But they signed a multi-year partnership with AMD to co-develop the silicon so new hardware is 100% coming.

100% as far as corporate hot air is concerned but still too many mixed messages to take seriously. The ps5 situation casts a shadow. If you're the world leader/victor in an industry, you have no need to run to your biggest competitor to sell product. That they are doing exactly that is not a good sign for the product line. The Asus handheld partnership is them testing waters. Fuzzy announcements like the AMD partnership are empty talk until the hardware actually surfaces, especially given that the announcement came right around the same time that it became obvious that they had recently sidelined their own handheld development.

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

2019 -> 2020 market looked like this

You keep hanging your hat on steam numbers. You don't need to do a guessing game when Microsoft themselves have revealed statistics. You fail to understand that tens of millions have access to it via game pass (me included) and will not show up on steam. Also, a first-person shooter will always be more popular than a flight simulator. Why not get your information directly from the source over at MSFS? I was watching one of the dev streams where the head of MSFS said that in Japan alone they had a couple hundred thousand active players each month. That is a single country and not even the largest market. Jorg said the largest market for them is the USA and Germany. With these numbers you can understand why WinWing is now able to offer an MCDU at $147 whereas in 2019 you were looking at $700. It just "economy of scale" in action, a larger market equals cheaper prices.

Let's just be honest here, MSFS has generated growth in a flight sim market that was stagnant in 2019. In my opinion, even moving it from completely niche to more mainstream. The consumers are benefiting with some of the lowest hardware prices that we could have only dreamed of years ago. As you pointed, Laminar also benefited with the largest launch in their history. They were able to hire more people to the team. There is really no harm in admitting the impact of MSFS. Like many have said, this is the golden age in flight simulation.  For me, it's the best it has been since 1998 when I first started, and I hope the growth continues.

Good luck affording these if things remained like they were in 2019. I would not call myself wealthy, but I have purchased quite of few of these and I'm planning to get the rest. Not really sure why you are denying the growth in the flight simulation market.

32 minutes ago, brinx said:

You keep hanging your hat on steam numbers. You don't need to do a guessing game when Microsoft themselves have revealed statistics. You fail to understand that tens of millions have access to it via game pass (me included) and will not show up on steam. Also, a first-person shooter will always be more popular than a flight simulator. 

There are some 400 million active steam users, gamepass "10s of millions" is still tiny, especially since most of them are xbox one (hence xbox probably not surviving...), and the distribution of users on xbox will be no different than steam.

"The Xbox Series X|S combined sales were reportedly under 30 million units as of mid-2025, with estimates suggesting approximately 28.3 million by June 2024, "

What Im looking at is how things changed, 2019 represented a huge build up in interest in flightsim - my 80 year old aunt was talking about it.

That didn't convert into users, whichever way you cut it. When I say "market" I'm not talking about any single sim, Im talking about all of them, the sum of all users of all sims now is basically identical to what is was 5 years ago give or take a few thousands out of millions, which is also pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago (including FSX).

That is not growth.

Flightsim on xbox went nowhere because flightsim on gamepad sucks for everyone.

I dont expect flightsim on gamepad on ps5 to be any different.

Flightsim on psvr2 is a very, very different offering, but not proven yet, there are lots of ways for that to fail.

Edited September 28, 2025Sep 28 by mSparks

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

100% as far as corporate hot air is concerned but still too many mixed messages to take seriously. The ps5 situation casts a shadow. If you're the world leader/victor in an industry, you have no need to run to your biggest competitor to sell product. That they are doing exactly that is not a good sign for the product line. The Asus handheld partnership is them testing waters. Fuzzy announcements like the AMD partnership are empty talk until the hardware actually surfaces, especially given that the announcement came right around the same time that it became obvious that they had recently sidelined their own handheld development.

 

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

100% as far as corporate hot air is concerned but still too many mixed messages to take seriously.

Well, they are a publicly traded company, and they just cannot make up any lie that they want. What they say impact the stocks and that would result in a lawsuit.  

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

If you're the world leader/victor in an industry, you have no need to run to your biggest competitor to sell product.

Do you know that the cost of making a game is astronomical these days? We are no longer in 2001. The budgets are easily in the 10 of millions or hundreds of millions. Sony's Spider-Man 2's budget is estimated at $300 million. How do you make it sustainable?  Sony's PlayStation competes with the PC, but they have begun releasing games on PC/Steam. Is it surprising if I told you they just released Spider-man 2 on steam this year? Sony also just released one of their most popular games on Xbox. This would have been unheard of several years ago. Why? The cost of making games keep rising. Hardware manufacturers sell consoles at a loss and make it up on the software sales. The developer gets 70% and the platform takes 30%. If you are a business leader and you calculated that you can substantially increase profit by going multiplatform, wouldn't you do that? An example, Microsoft brought Forza Horizon to the PS5 in April, and it was estimated that they already sold 3 million copies. $70 x 3 million = 210 million, before the 30% to the platform. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I think Microsoft 2020 was estimated to be at least 100 million. Free streaming, free charts, massive updates I'm not surprise that they need to increase market reach to remain sustainable. It makes sense from a business perspective