b737800

You're not alone. I'm the submarine in the parking lot.

It's interesting that people have such polarized views, but that also makes it a pointless exercise in discussion. With that in mind, I'm off to get my $99 worth of play time.

Very true. Don't underestimate "pride / prestige" as a buying motive.

If you want to totally discount the expected market size as a factor of pricing then your post is spot on. I once worked as the head of a software product line and each product of course had sales targets. The sales manager of one of the products (let's call it Wibble for short) came to me and said that Wibble was overpriced by about 30%. I asked what I thought were all the right questions of him and a few months later, when he still wasn't hitting target, the conversation went something like: Him: "My Wibble sales targets are too high. Now that we've reduced the price I have to sell more units just to hit the same figures as I did before. Plus, we need to hire more support staff because there are more people using Wibble". Me: "I quit".

The peanut remark was good. This one wasn't thought out. I can imagine the response from the car salesman when I ask to purchase the newest equivalent of my existing car and then demand an upgrade price (while still keeping the old car) just because it's just an upgraded version of what I already have. Surely they used a lot of the same technology and know-how in the new car? How dare they charge me the same or more. Don't they know I'm a customer! I don't know how long it took PMDG to develop the first version of the 737 and I also don't know how long it took them to develop the latest. However, I could quite easily believe they spent just as much on the latest as they did on the original. I could easily believe they spent more time. The level of detail is incredible. They are simulating a $100M dollar airplane for a market that is far smaller than race games, and the complexity of that airplane with its flight model, options and systems is far more complex than any car I can think of. I've spent a fair amount of time in Level D simulators and the cost is... quite steep. I can easily believe they spent tens of thousands of dollars just on that alone. Just playing devil's advocate here... if it took PMDG just as much time and effort to create the new model as it did the previous, do you still think it's a rip-off to have to pay the same price? I'm with you that an upgrade price would be nice if the effort in producing the upgrade was less than the effort for producing the original, but perhaps it wasn't.

...and I just bought a packet of peanuts for $0.30. You were ripped off for your tarmac.

No thanks, unless it can be done without cost or burden to the new stuff in FS, which it cannot. I'd rather have all manpower dedicated to creating new and incredible things, rather than hamfisting old tech into something new and shiny. It is up to the content developers to stay with the times, not for the simulator creator to hold back.

In this crazy world there is still a huge perception difference between the cost of a "physical" product that comes in a box delivered by Amazon and the cost of a downloadable piece of software, regardless of it's quality. In the last 2 weeks I've spent: $160 on some plastic Thrustmaster pedals (expensive to deliver where I live) $224 on a TrackIR (expensive to deliver where I live) $99 on a PMDG 737 $11 to LM for Prepar3D (again) In my humble opinion, the most overpriced of the above is the TrackIR, even without the high delivery charges, but I'm not allowed to say this as it has a cult following on this forum. it's a good piece of kit, but over priced. I totally get why some of you can't justify the cost/price (they have different connotations). That's totally up to you and down to the value you put on the software, but to attack the company. Really?

Just installed the new PMDG 737 and gave it a go with Oculus Rift S. Have to say. the virtual cockpit is very good. Much better than before. As always though, I now feel sick and have VR goggle face so I look (even more) like a complete tool.

People have been complaining that PMDG haven't offered any upgrade incentives/options and now that they have offered a pretty decent incentive, people are still complaining. The constants here are: 1) People 2) Complaining I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't on the interweb.

A question for those that have registered.... I've just changed my dxdiag file (new PC) and I went over my previous answers. For average internet download speed I had entered 40mbps. Although my published speed is 300mbps and speedtest.net tells me 333.86mbps, this is only to the local ISP. As I live in deepest darkest Asia I don't get anything like this to anywhere meaningful, so I entered 40mbps. A couple of questions: 1.) Should I use 330, as that is what speedtest.net is telling me and in the question MS just say use speedtest.net and don't specify which server location to choose. 2.) How did you write your answer? for 100mbps are you writing 100 or 100 mbps or 100mbps or something else? Thanks

Registration is open again now..... go go go.

I'm sure you meant to write 70 yy (years young...)

I'd love to see a "Vector to" feature, whereby you lookup a geo location or point of interest by name / postal code / whatever and the sim gives you a vector (and distance) to that point.

You stab around in the dark for it. Literally. Actually it's pretty easy if you keep it in one place or it's roughly where it is in the 3d world. You very quickly stop putting drinks anywhere near the throttle or yoke though, or anywhere else on the desk. They get knocked over so frequently its almost funny. The awkward thing to control is switches. I often hear the word "immersion" used in respect to TrackIR, but after using VR you might quickly come to realise that, on a scale of 0-100, FS without either TrackIR or VR has an immersion level of 20, 40 with TrackIR and 90 with VR. VR is real 3d. You are literally in the cockpit, surrounded by all the panels and instruments. There is real depth. There are however lots of drawbacks too: Flipping switches etc. Resolution, although it's not that bad. Nausea... which can range from nothing to... lots. ...the others already mentioned, such as interaction with the real environment, although cutting that out is what creates much of the immersion. Anyway my TrackIR arrived from Amazon today so I'll now give that a go. My first thought after opening the package is.... it is a lot of money for not much physical kit. Edited for spelling.

I also think the directors of Asobo might be in for quite the payment bonanza. As for the existing add on developers - if their market has dried up then their company value has already taken a dive, so a business sale might already be out the window. They need to adapt and probably already have the creative talent onboard to enable them to do that. Whether they have the commercial vision is another story. Microsoft has certainly put them in a position and short to mid term cashflow might well become an issue. However, it also presents new opportunities for them which hopefully will be good news for us the end users.

Even more issues with my sim supporting TrackIR. That's 2 UPS issues on the same delivery within 3 days. No wonder Asobo don't want to commit.

MattNischan wrote upthread "MSFS's demand peaks will not be able to be pushed around, it's a real time game. It's going to have the most demand during primetime US and EU hours, just like the majority of cloud loads do. So, if MSFS adds 5% more demand at peak times (a ludicrously huge number given Azure's size, but the actual value is not relevant), no impl team is gonna allow you to just eat 5% into the calculated overhead, you still need to buy 5% more capacity in hardware to keep that overhead the same for bursty loads. There's no "free ride" just because you own the hardware." My comments echoed and expanded on that very valid point but by all means, double down on the keyboard warrioring. He also wrote "Anyway, as usual these things tend to devolve a bit into bickering, and I think I've said my piece." which was rather insightful and with that in mind, have a nice day.

Maybe re-read what I actually wrote. Read the words and understand their meaning. Pay particular attention to "economies of scale" and "it is there for peak demand usage". Maybe wind down your tone just a little and give just a tad more thought before you write things such as "you don't have a clue" or "way to twist someones words" unless of course you're that confident that you are the man. "It is a fallacy to assume Azure runs at maximum capacity". Where did I or anyone else write that? What I wrote was "Even the space in the racks would cost at the point the datacentre was full because you've removed the ability to sell it to an external customer.". The fact that resources exist to at least match peak demand does not mean there is no cost for XBox or FS or anyone else to use them unless that usage can only happen during off peak usage from other customers. That is also why I mentioned economies of scale. The larger they get, the smaller the peaks and troughs. If Microsoft's otherwise unused resources start being used for new Microsoft services then they've eaten into their "spare" capacity, which means they need to increase that capacity to retain the same buffer, which means there is a cost involved. Perhaps consider that there are a few of us who might have cut teeth in datacenters right from the beginning. Perhaps one or two of us have been involved with rather large cloud based systems and maybe still are. Just don't let my customers know that I haven't got a clue as they might stop paying me.

No worries. "You're one of the people I'd say knows what they're talking about." - can I put that on my Linked-In page please?

Excuse me? Are you pointing your wrath in the right direction?

Just checked my order status and saw this. I think Amazon might be writing on behalf of Microsoft...

I always preferred a landing strip.

It is a fallacy to think that making use of unused equipment in a datacentre has no cost associated with it. Unless the datacentre owners purchased equipment that they never needed, in which case they would be out of business if they kept doing it, that unused equipment is there for a reason. It is there for resilience / redundancy. It is there for peak demand usage, which becomes leaner with economies of scale. As soon as it is used for something else on an ongoing basis it has to be replaced to cover the original need. If not, it wouldn't have been purchased in the first place. What you don't have to do is build new datacentres, employ and train more staff (although the datacentre might depending on current levels, and they still need to get paid), add new air-con, negotiate new power and bandwidth contracts, add new fire suppression systems, dig up all the roads around the building to ensure all the duplicated utilities have different entry points, buy expensive generators and massive UPS systems and add all the n+1s because that has already been done. Hence it is much cheaper and much faster to get to market if that infrastructure is in place. Even the space in the racks would cost at the point the datacentre was full because you've removed the ability to sell it to an external customer.

Pre Brexit: £69.99 or $89.99 Post Brexit: £499.99 or $89.99