honanhal

I saw your post first and immediately thought “oh, that sounds like back when, right after MSFS was released, Rob A. was making the bold argument at Avsim that actually P3D looks better!” And then I click over to that thread and, ah, well. 🙂

I have a strong suspicion of the same thing (and I think we're talking about the same developer). Fingers crossed.

At some point (I think maybe post-SU5?) they significantly changed the way the weather engine worked. To put it in the simplest possible terms, instead of what appeared to me to be a fairly sophisticated system that built very convincing looking cloudscapes, including thick, opaque, overcast layers and a huge variety of depicted cloud types, it got replaced by a system apparently similar in basic operation to how ActiveSky worked in FSX or P3D: to build a big cloud or a cloud layer, stick a bunch of cumulous clouds together in the shape you want (of course, this being MSFS, the component clouds are at least fully volumetric, not sprites). That's not the worst possible way to do a weather engine -- sometimes it looks pretty convincing and I imagine there are performance benefits -- but there are two big drawbacks I see: 1) Sometimes it looks way off, creating clouds that just don't resemble anything you'd ever see in the real world. (For example, I'd include the shots by Matt_Photomode and Parorng in this category.) 2) Even when the clouds it generates look plausibly like real clouds, you lose all the variety. It's all cumulonimbus all the time, rather than stretched out overcast or numerous other subtle cloudscapes. Someday I'll have time to go back to my screenshots folder and post some before/after shots to showcase the subtlety and elegance of the before weather that's been totally lost. James

I'm going to call it right now: this is going to be the next frontier for non-GA flightsim. A developer that can do this well (i.e. not like the X-Plane addon I've seen that has an animated copilot that looks RIDICULOUS), will have set the bar to meet. This is the innovation piece, raising the bar, that has so far (all due respect to PMDG and others who are putting out good work) been rather notable for its absence when it comes to airliner addons for MSFS.

And for a while this wasn't the case -- clouds at release and for some time after looked absolutely stunning. To have had that for a time, and then lose it, is what really breaks my heart. (And what really leads to madness is that so few others seem to see a problem here at all, let alone want it to get fixed. They had a screenshot contest to showcase the clouds! They're obviously not embarrassed by them...)

For me, even offering one or two days worth of historical weather would solve 99% of the problem. You'd never have to fly with midday weather at night and vice versa.

It's hard for me to read this announcement as anything other than the "deer in the headlights" as I've come to expect from FSL. (I would preface that with "I'm sorry to say," but, as others have said, any sympathy or goodwill I had for FSL disappeared instantly and irrevocably with their malware stunt.) They're just now preparing to turn to MSFS? Nearly two years into the platform? And they're going to start with an aircraft that's 1) already available in the base platform, 2) has a very high-quality freeware available that is going to continue to be developed and enhanced during the whole lead-up to FSL releasing its own product, and 3) is about to face direct competition from a payware product that, if it delivers even 70% of what it's promising, will set the new "study-level" bar to beat for addon aircraft on any platform. Good luck with that!

Did anyone even read the story? Dude was 57 years old. Clearly, it's all about Generation Z and their lack of boundaries! 🤣

Indeed. I'd actually say this pricing structure actively discourages customers from buying more than one variant, as the marginal value you get actually decreases with each additional purchase you make. I'm not a marketing expert, but generally sellers try to structure it so it's the other way around! Assuming (and I'm being generous to PMDG here) that about 80% of the code, art, and sounds are shared between the models, anyone who buys more than one variant is putting about 80% of the price of each of their subsequent purchases toward paying PMDG for the same thing, all over again Then again, "convince customers to pay you multiple times for the same thing" is as good a description as any for PMDG's overall business model in the last 5-10 years. 🙂 James

AIG has seemingly created bad stuttering for me in some situations with the FBW (not sure the FBW had anything to do with it, it's just what I usually fly). It was particularly severe at KATL -- FPS down around 20 and a lot of long frames, and then I closed AIGTC and it was butter smooth and the FPS more than doubled. So some combination of KATL, AIG, and/or the FBW not interacting nicely together. I've also noticed that airports without enough parking spots can cause bad AIG-related stutters as AIGTC injects new traffic ever second or so. Payware WSSS Changi is basically unusable with AIG for this reason, for example.

This is well said. It’s impossible for us to know for sure what’s behind this timetable, of course, but I’m puzzled by the folks here insisting it is *unthinkable* it represents an attempt to sell more of the less popular variants. Would that be a war crime? No. PMDG is within their rights to play these games, just as I’m within my rights to roll my eyes at what my instincts (and experience) tell me is a disingenuous hand-waving explanation from RSR.

There's a serious quality and price mismatch with FSDG, unfortunately. It was an issue for some of their stuff even in P3D, but for MSFS these prices are simply delusional. I say that with no pleasure -- especially as I want to see more African and Asian airports and scenery -- but you just can't justify these prices. I'd love to know the thinking behind *increasing* their prices with MSFS when even a cursory glance at the market would tell them they should have been doing the opposite...

I see what you’re saying, too. But I think you’d have to agree the proposition that very few people will buy a study-level plane, even if it’s priced low, hasn’t actually been tested (until the Wing42 product at least). Even the lower-than-expected prices we’ve seen, like the PMDG DC-6, have been baby steps, not an aggressive pricing strategy. And the planned pricing for the Bae146 definitely won’t put that proposition to the test… (For whatever it’s worth, I’m reasonably interested in the BAE146 as an aircraft and what you’d probably call a “hardcore simmer,” but at this price point, I’m out. And I’m sure virtually no “casual simmers” will be in either.) James

This is a classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, there’s absolutely no doubt that if you set a very high price for an addon (let’s just stipulate that “higher than the cost of the base sim” is a very high price) only people with either a strong interest in the plane or more disposable income than they know what to do with will buy it. And when the anemic sales figures duly come back, there will be a line of people here saying “see, this was a study level addon and only a few people bought it, which proves the study-level market is exactly the same (ie small) as it was with P3D. And that’s why developers are forced to price these study-level addons high, because their sales are low.” You see the fallacy here? (Hint: what effect does increasing the price of a product have on expected sales?) The real test of “can a study-level addon attract a lot of buyers?” is something aggressively priced like the Wing42 Boeing 247. That’s as niche as they come. If it now sells well — we’ll see — that will be strong evidence that pricing Is more likely to scare off purchasers than whether an addon is “study-level.” James

Exactly. It's an app to download more apps. What problem was this app supposed to solve? James