4 hours ago, ahsmatt7 said:

I think it’s reasonable to presume that any company making aircraft for Flightsim have to do everything in their power to protect their competitive advantage. Why would they throw that away to make a quick buck from work for another company?

How is outsourcing art losing their advantage?

Asobo/Microsoft also out source to Gaya for a lot of things. World Update POIs, airports, AI Aircraft models, scenery props etc

Edited April 6Apr 6 by Tuskin38

2 hours ago, alanw2005 said:

Oh. The Toliss is higher fidelity and better than the Fenix Airbus.

AFAIK, they’re peer level products. We’d have to hear from type rated Airbus Captains to tell us which one is “better”. 😁

And, to be clear, my A346 is the one flying in X-Plane. 😎

14 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

AFAIK, they’re peer level products. We’d have to hear from type rated Airbus Captains to tell us which one is “better”. 😁

And, to be clear, my A346 is the one flying in X-Plane. 😎

Real world airbus pilots rave about the Toliss.
 

 

5 minutes ago, alanw2005 said:

Real world airbus pilots rave about the Toliss.

IRL airbus pilots rave about the Fenix too 🙂 I think it's safe to say with the likes of Fenix, FSL, PMDG, Toliss, etc one can't really go wrong with realism and fidelity. Luckily for MSFS users, they can choose from all of them.
 

 

I wonder why the 700 first not complaining but surely the 800 is the most popular ? 

1 hour ago, DD_Arthur said:

There's nothing particularly secret about this sort of thing but why would they advertise these things? What would be the point?

The end product is still a PMDG product involving a great deal of skilled man hours. They have a core team that do a great deal of everything - including modeling but certain specialisations are simply not economic to do in house.

They've made much of modeling laser-scanned cockpits. That's hardly an area where they'd have their own dedicated team. Their sounds; they've admitted they need to improve them so they've brought in a new sound engineer who's working with a specialist company. Nothing wrong with that. They're leveraging their resources to make the best product they can.

For all I know FSLabs do their own in house modelling but I very much doubt they do all of it and the teams employed by devs like PMDG and the like won't all be full timers.

I mention FSLabs because we know they do other work outside their own development. It's another handy income stream.

I'm not sure what 'secrets' are being given away. The fact is you can code or model anything if you have the knowledge and especially resources. The question is how to deploy those resources effectively. Why bother making something in house that might take months or years when you can buy in that expertise without the commitment to expensive, permanent staff.

In PMDG's case I would imagine that competitive advantage is two decades of experience with Boeing aerodynamics and systems...

Everything you say in this post makes perfect sense. In my opinion though, Flightsim add on companies like Pmdg, flytampa, leonardo, fslabs etc. aren’t like home builders or car companies for example.

When I buy a Toyota, I go into that purchase knowing that there have been a bunch of B2B contracts set up for raw materials that make up the car as a whole. I understand that it was Toyota who designed the vehicle and have contracted things out to get the vehicle made. Same thing goes for houses, I don’t think the builder had a lumber farm some place and is growing and cutting down trees. Or getting stone from their own quarry some place. 
 

so I see your point and it makes complete sense.
 

Going back to Flightsim. If PMDG contracted out the artwork, sound scape, and 3d scanning, what’s left? The systems code and optimization? At this point it’s not a pmdg product outside of the store name, it’s just a collaboration of different companies making one singular product. 
 

I came to the conclusion that PMDG did almost all of their work because during the old fsx days, vscimone was on the forums and showcased pictures of the NGX art work during development. It was said that he was doing all the work. Then RSR said himself before that point in time that the same individual who did the J41 was also assigned to do the md11. 
 

For years RSR has touted PMDG as doing all of their own work. That meant hiring people to their team to secure a skill set under the PMDG banner. 
 

To me, when a Flightsim company outsources work to another company and then says it’s their own, in the end, it’s not. That is a collaboration between companies. 
 

PMDG contracting with cloud services, store front software and other things like that I understood as necessary and was meant to do so. Required even. But modeling, texturing and to an extent, soundscape? Well now you’re just a production company with a fancy storefront and nothing more.
 

I wonder that if all pmdg is are coders and optimizers, do you think they do work for other developers for their aircraft systems?
 

 

 

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

The only secret sauce competitive advantage is the proprietary code. 

Art and 3D are commodity services at this point. Not in that they’re unskilled, just that practically anyone can quickly develop the skill.

OTOH, sound engineering is so highly specialized yet simultaneously such a small portion of the project that they practically must be subcontracted.

So, The main competitive advantage is in getting other people to do work for you and then sell their work at a profit. 

 

1 hour ago, JYW said:

Most of the sub-contractors doing texture work, aren't competing in the same space as the devs they work for.  Gaya are a case in point.  They don't release their own aircraft.  3D REACH are a texture artistry business that are everywhere in Flight sim.  They do all of the texturing for FlightSimWare and a number of other devs.  But they don't release their own complete aircraft - they stick to their area of expertise.

It's no different to an increasing number of devs who contract out their sound work, to the likes of Boris and Echo19.

Great points from both of you. 
 

It’s clear I’m extremely disillusioned with what Flightsim development is these days. At this point I think it’s a load of hot garbage. 
 

I remember when it was a group of people working their butts off to do everything themselves. If they were good at it, they were able to stick around and grow in this niche market. If they didn’t have the skills, they failed.

Now it’s just about who has the most capital and who’s a better production company. 
 

Makes sense though because now we have a ton of “developers” that make half or 3/4 baked products and can do it record pace. Just hire out some other groups to do your work, pay them some money and advertise it as your own. 

6 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

PMDG contracting with cloud services, store front software and other things like that I understood as necessary and was meant to do so. Required even. But modeling, texturing and to an extent, soundscape? Well now you’re just a production company with a fancy storefront and nothing more.

 

I wonder that if all pmdg is are coders and optimizers, do you think they do work for other developers for their aircraft systems?

It's not all or nothing development. PMDG will have contracted out elements.

I can certainly believe they did their own development in the early days but as our simulator products have become more sophisticated and our hardware more capable so development has got more complicated, more in depth, more sophisticated and of course more expensive. 

Efficient project management is the key to all this and RSR seems to have become the master of this.

As far as we're told the PMDG team has some eight guys on the books. I doubt they're all full time employees. RSR himself is fitting this in whilst also being a commercial pilot. Yet they're managing to develop and maintain three sophisticated product lines across two operating platforms right now. Hence the out sourcing.

At the end of the day does any of this matter? They still deliver highly realistic, pleasing, digital representations of extremely complex machines for a competitive price.

Does anyone enjoy their products less than they did in previous simulators?

8 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

Great points from both of you. 

It’s clear I’m extremely disillusioned with what Flightsim development is these days. At this point I think it’s a load of hot garbage. 
 

I remember when it was a group of people working their butts off to do everything themselves. If they were good at it, they were able to stick around and grow in this niche market. If they didn’t have the skills, they failed.

Now it’s just about who has the most capital and who’s a better production company. 
 

Makes sense though because now we have a ton of “developers” that make half or 3/4 baked products and can do it record pace. Just hire out some other groups to do your work, pay them some money and advertise it as your own. 

I can understand your consternation.🤙

IMHO, the specialization and diversification are simply a necessary outgrowth of the extremely high customer demands for the State of the Art. 

Very few people have the “full stack” skill set to produce a High Fidelity addon themselves. Particularly something as complex and sophisticated as a modern airliner.

And even those that do, simply don’t have the man-hours available to bring a product to market. 

I.e., by the time they were finished, the next sim version or State of the Art would have advanced to the point where they’d have to go back and re-do everything. 

It’s kinda like building a house…

So I think this situation overall isn’t about corporate greed, but rather a pragmatic response to market pressures - and WE are the pressure! 😁👍

17 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

It’s clear I’m extremely disillusioned with what Flightsim development is these days. At this point I think it’s a load of hot garbage. 

 

I remember when it was a group of people working their butts off to do everything themselves. If they were good at it, they were able to stick around and grow in this niche market. If they didn’t have the skills, they failed.

And yet we're enjoying the most sophisticated simulators on a desktop PC - or a console - than ever before.

Decent developers are still working their butt's off and are being rewarded for it.

The impact of MSFS has meant this is no longer the cottage industry it once was.

46 minutes ago, Neutrino Flux said:

I wonder why the 700 first not complaining but surely the 800 is the most popular ? 

Because the -700 was the last of the four types to be upgraded to MSFS 2024 native specification. Since they are already working on it, adding the 3D model and texture upgrades to this version makes perfect sense. Of course, the conspiracy theorists will think differently, but.....well, that's just the wonderful world of PMDG bashing at work.

33 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I can understand your consternation.🤙

IMHO, the specialization and diversification are simply a necessary outgrowth of the extremely high customer demands for the State of the Art. 

Very few people have the “full stack” skill set to produce a High Fidelity addon themselves. Particularly something as complex and sophisticated as a modern airliner.

And even those that do, simply don’t have the man-hours available to bring a product to market. 

I.e., by the time they were finished, the next sim version or State of the Art would have advanced to the point where they’d have to go back and re-do everything. 

It’s kinda like building a house…

So I think this situation overall isn’t about corporate greed, but rather a pragmatic response to market pressures - and WE are the pressure! 😁👍

 Very well said! The market is changing. Either adapt or get out! Ha love it!

5 hours ago, ahsmatt7 said:

 

It’s clear I’m extremely disillusioned with what Flightsim development is these days. At this point I think it’s a load of hot garbage. 

We’re in the pinnacle of flight simming, with graphics that have never been better, more high fidelity add-ons than you could ever imagine, and you’re disillusioned?

 

Man, there really is no pleasing some people.  
 

This is the best it’s ever been, ever.   I can’t wait to get home to hop in an L1011 out of Kai Tak, and have it basically be as close to reality as it could be. 

12 minutes ago, ATRguy said:

Then what was for?

The massive catalogue of nearly 100% realistic aircraft we have available?  
 

Photorealistic airports and scenery packages? 
 

Charts and other programs updated as often as real life? 
 

Flightsim in any category has never been as good as this, and you’re complaining that PMDG contracts an outstanding 3D modeler to do work for them that they very obviously weren’t keeping up with on their own, and it looks simply superb?  I’d say that’s knowing your business, and delivering for your customers. 
 

I don’t think anyone here thinks I’m a fool. 

You’re clearly too emotional to have a constructive conversation about this. I appreciate your zeal for your position. However, I’m not in the mood to continue this with you….unless you’re buying the first round. Then I’ll oblige you AND get the second round. 

16 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

IMHO, the specialization and diversification are simply a necessary outgrowth of the extremely high customer demands for the State of the Art. 

^ This.

We drive the FS development market and shape what it has become (albeit indirectly).

Has anyone come across any community that is as demanding as we are? 😊

Actually, the train sim community are even worse. Lots of literal rivet counters over there! 😄