Franschhoek

What's nonsense? Ever heard of a thing called a sale, closing down sale, end of product sale etc. Companies do it all the time!

Sure, my apologies. Thanks for pointing that out. Cheers

Yes Christopher, it is time to let it go. it is 12am where I am and so I am off to bed. I too came to this thread wanting to find out about version 6 and whether it is feasible to buy. All I found was my sim is better than your sim from the "other sim crowd" all very pleased that most developers will not be updating to version 6 etc etc. Somebody had to say something and give a dose of reality. Sorry that you found it mindless waffle and I annoyed you. I usually don't ever comment at all. Cheers

Crumbs! if you think that microsoft don't pay for the servers, pay for their maintenance, dont pay for the data sent over third party lines or even their own lines, don't pay for the data centres, the electricity, the staff who maintain it, the third party contractors down to the tea boy who serves the tea, then I don't know what to say to you. Perhaps you think its all free for them!

Methinks you need to look in th emirror and start pointing your fingers in that direction. Nothing i said was misinformation. And what you are calling conjecturing is really progressive forecasting of future viability. Its a prognosis based on a diagnosis of common sense that the latest fad never lasts forr very long. It based on human nature that the mases that follow after that which is popular now will always abandon ship for what will be popular tomorrow. The economic facts are that MSFS will need millions of new sales every year just to break even and pay the huge cost of millions of terbytes of data flowing through their servers, the whole data centres requried to house the servers and store the data, the continual and frequent mandatory updates promised for 10 years. They are entirely dependant on continual new sales throughout there future existance. P3d on the other hand has never been dependant of sales, is not depndant on sales now, nor will be in the future. It is subsidised by military budgets, by sales of fighter jets and stealth bombers and the smart missiles that are attached to them. Therefore it will remain where others will fall due to market forces.

Sure it has, it is novel, it is new. I never stated that it was not the best today in visuals, default planes that are as good as payware, (but don't tell the developers that). I certainly do not hope, or want, Microsoft to abandon its sim again. I will have to use precise sematics as some will probably take what i say out of context. It is a popular sim, but many gamers who have flocked to it, and note I said "Many and not All' and go to say the majority, That is more than 50% are there as gamers who will likely, but not inevitably, get bored with flying from place to place with nothing to blow up, or compete with. Thus the sim will reach a saturation point and then decline in users. It is the reason MSFS 2024 is being developed which has more action in it. The question that plagues this forum is that P3d is dead, useless and you might as well just get over it and move to MSFS. SOME OF US CANNOT AFFORD THAT even if we wanted to. The fact that developers have abandoned P3d in droves barring the few who realise that they cannot, in good conscience, has become the issue of this thread. My point is that they are still selling addons at the same price that included upgrades from version to version, however there is no longer a version upgrade and there the usual price is a ripoff because that vital bit of version upgrades that used to be included is included no longer. Instead of offering what they have spent a lot of money producing, at reduced rates to those still using P3d, in order to minimise whatever loss selling none of them will incur, they prefer to sell none, rather than offer them a reduced rates, which is kind of spiteful. That is the point of my post! As for MSFS2020 and 2024, I wish them all the best for as long as they last. If they last forever, all well and good. But they will need continual growth, that is more and more people buying it to maintain the cost of its continued existance. Perhaps one should consider just how much server space, bandwidth and data costs it takes to run this sim every day, every month and in the years to come. They are going to need milions of sales every year just to cover their costs, never mind making a profit.

Again you are misconstruing my statement by not completing it - "The millions on the "Other Sim" are there because it is a fad, other than the hard core simmers who have moved there from P3d" I did not end the sentance there, there was a comma after P3d - "The millions on the "Other Sim" are there because it is a fad, other than the hard core simmers who have moved there from P3d, and the minority of newbies who may become hard core simmers." You stated that I should not get emotionally attached to a sim, it sounds like you are very emotionally attached to yours. you say that Microsoft giving up MSFS again is not fact but conjecture, yet one of your main points was that sims come and go - "Those of us who've been flight simming long enough with all the sims that have come and gone know one thing for sure: the only constant is change." Therefore what on earth are you arguing about.

Crumbs, thanks for repeating my talking points in other words. "Sim platforms come and go, thrive and don't thrive Blaa Blaa Etc" You seem to have picked things out of context to bolster your own opinion which you think is superior to mine. I never said all the Hard Core simmers of the Other Sim are ALL EX P3d users as you have worded it above. I did say - The "Other Sim" is now in favour with many, if not the majority, of former P3d users. And why the ignorance regarding streaming scenery from a server in the 'Other Sim" Here is a comment taken from - forums.flightsimulator.com/t/sim-stops-streaming-scenery/280645 "I’ve got a new problem, which appears to have started yesterday. Just wondering if anybody else has seen anything similar. For some reason the sim decides to stop streaming scenery data after about 30 minutes. By the time I reach my destination the game looks like FS5. I don’t have any connectivity issues my end, I have also tried disabling caching to see if it makes any difference, but it doesn’t. It’s frustrating because the save/load mechanic appears to be completely broken so I can’t save, quit and reload." I am glad that you were too lazy to get into my other talking points so that I don't have to comment on them. I am not emotionally attached to P3d, I am economically tied to it. After saving up my dollars to buy each and every addon for my minimum spec PC that is 10 years old, I simply cannot afford to move to another sim, nor get another PC, in the forseeable future. Lastly my whole post is around the concept of constant change and that change will come to the "Other Sim" in time. Having said that, Lockheed Martin as one of the biggest aviation arms manufacturer in world who is not dependant on sales of P3d to keep going and will always need a training simulator will still be there in a more advanced form long after Microsoft gives up MSFS again. That is not emotionalism, but straight forward fact.

And one must commend both GSX and Majestic, who, despite the now limited use of P3d amidst the wholesale move to the "Other Sim" had already upgraded GSX and the Q400 with P3d v6 installers long before P3d v6 was released. Perhaps there are others (one hears word that Active Sky are in a Beta for V6). Perhaps all that is required of the developer is a few simple tweaks. It reminds me of Flight 1 abandoning its GTN 750/650 just before the final version of P3d 5.3.17 came out. All they had to do was update the version number that was compatible with P3d v 5.3.15 to 5.3.17, but simply would not.

PMDG, A2A etc will no longer be updating thier addons, they will not be fixing any outstanding issues, have stated that they have no staff working on P3d addons including not updating for P3d V6. I have never had to request support for any of the addons I have from PMDG, A2A and others. these aircraft are all fully honed and simply just work. There is no need for support. Granted some may have an issue with installing and running them, but generally that always ends up not a being a problem with the addon but with their system. Part of the support that came with the purchase was an unpaid upgrade from P3d v4.5 to P3d v5. Omne woulsd assume an upgrade to v6 would be applicable. I would prefer a no support free addon to one that sells at full price, but with a now limited support that does not include a version upgrade that was always previously included in the sale. nevertheless I do get your point, flight simmers are hard to please, and no matter what we say we will not be changing the developers mind.

Noted and apologies to FS Labs.

I do understand WHY developers have abandoned P3d. Developers follow where the money is. The money is in the "Other Sim" at this time, and the Devs are making a killing. Good for them! They know they have to make as much as they can whilst the going is good. However, these things always run in cycles. FS 2004 ran its course and the devs made their money and then abandoned it. FSX ran its course and the Devs made their money too and then abandoned it. P3d, as far as the devs are concerned, has run its course and have mostly, but not all, abandoned it. The "Other Sim" is now in favour with many, if not the majority, of former P3d users, as well as newbie simmers by the millions. Will these casual simmers, gamers, be as fanatical as hard core simmers in purchasing the latest and greatest addons. However, there are only so many people who are attracted to flight simulators. Flight sim gamers are in a very small minority compared to other gamers. What is so exciting about flying form A to B if you are not a hard core flight simmer. The big thing in gaming is blowing things up or stealing cars or games that have competition, something to win, something to defeat. I have tried to interest many youngsters from age 9 up, offering to teach them how to fly A2A's warbirds and even PMDG's 747-8. None have shown any interest in availing my offer. All of them asked if the Warbirds can blow things up, I said no, they just rolled their eyes. The "Other Sim" will eventually succumb to the cycle and reach user saturation point. Millions will lose interest. There is simply not enough excitment, unless the excitment is learning and perfecting the flight sim experience. The millions on the "Other Sim" are there because it is a fad, other than the hard core simmers who have moved there from P3d, and the minority of newbie who may become hard core simmers. Eventually, sales of the "Other Sim" that everyone is raving about will flatline and then drop. And then, like the 3rd party devs abandoning P3d, the developer of the "Other Sim" will abandon it. They did it once before, they WILL DO IT AGAIN. The servers will become too costly to run due to the drop in sales, it will be come too expensive to maintain. When they do there will be no company to take it over, like P3d did to FSX. The "Other Sim", apart form the core is streamed in from servers. Without the streaming it is just FSX wrapped in a bit more candy What then? The developers of addons will again abandon their clients for what ever comes next, if there is ever another next. THIS IS INEVITABLE. BUT what I do not understand about the current situation is this!!! WHY are, PMDG, A2A, Aerosoft, Just Flight, Flight One, Carenado, FS Labs... just name your developer, who have abandoned P3d, still selling their addons at full price, knowing full well that they will not be supporting the sale with after-sale service. NOW, one would think that a business who had a whole lot of products for a system that was no longer in vogue, would try to SELL AS MANY AT A DISCOUNTED RATE to those who are still using the old system. BETTER STILL, why, since thay have abandoned the product, have no intention of supporting it, enhancing it, ever; WHY DON'T they, LIKE MILVIZ and a few others simply give their protfolio of never to be updated products away FOR FREE. Milviz, now Blackbird Simulations at least had the integrity to release their addons they have abandoned to the community that still uses P3d. NOW THAT IS A COMPANY WITH INTEGRITY. As for those users of the "Other Sim" who are pointing out the reasonableness of developers abandoning P3d, do note, that when the day comes when the "Other Sim" falls by the wayside in the distant years ahead, you will be in the same boat, all your addons abandoned and the enhanced scenery devestaed when the servers are switched off. And when that day arrives, you can bet your bottom dollar that Lockheed Martin's P3d version "whatever" will still be there in whatever form it takes, because their core is TRAINING and NOT ENTERTAINMENT, and they as a company need P3d to train the military pilots of the "Real Planes" they produce as cheaply as possible. Gary Scott

Hi Jim, Thanks for the response. Much appreciated. I will try to reinstall it a couple of times as you suggest. I did submit a ticket for the 30 day refund, however i did send it to the customer service. Kathy from Flight 1 said she would forward this to the developer and to hold off from requesting a refund until the developer addressed the situation. I did note that the .net runtime error was for .net version 4. According to the Flight1 product page it says .net version 3.5 is required. In the utl_client.exe.config it has the following: <configuration> <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <supportedRuntime version="v4.0"/> </startup> </configuration> Could this have something to do with the problem as i do have .net v3.5 installed on my PC. Anyway thanks again for the advice, i will certainly try it. kind Regards Gary Scott Franschhoek, South Africa

Hi All, I know this is the FSX SE forum, however after getting very little response on the UT Live support forum, other then a few reply from licensed users, and certainly none from the support staff, i decided to try here for any solutions to the below problem. I purchased UT Live 2 weeks ago and it worked brilliantly. Now the application crashes when opening the interface to configure it. The dreaded UTLIve has stopped working popup appears and the program crashes. When running FSX SE, UTLive initializes and UTLive is listed in the menu, however no traffic is injected and opening the schedule for the airport Microsoft events list 2 errors. The first is... Faulting application name: UTLive.exe, version: 1.1.0.0, Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.16299.334. The second is a .NET Runtime error... Application: UTLive.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. I have verified the install of .NET version 3.5 SP1 with no issues reported using the .net verification tool. All other addons, and i have many in my FSX SE, run with no problems. I find it disconcerting that UT Live and many other addons by Flight1 have no direct support contact, unlike other expensive addon developers such as PMDG. I have never, in all my years of simming, had to contact any addon developer for support for a problem. This is the first addon that I have purchased that has ever crashed. I have searched Google high and low looking for a solution and in vain so far. Any help from Avsim's experienced users would be greatly appreciated. Kind Regards Gary Scott Franschhoek, South Africa