Virtual-Chris

Thanks... that's positive news. I'll probably wait until I hear from you on how the next updates feels. Cheers!

Do we know when this might arrive?

Thanks for the detailed write up. One of the issues I had with the 2020 Kodiak was trying to stick landings on the end of short dirt strips. Landing that plane with weight was dodgy at best as slightly too little torque and you would drop like a rock and be short. You had to keep the torque up at like 800+ and pitch for speed but that was equally dodgy and often ended up landing too hard and fast and bouncing and crashing. Watching Ryan in the real plane would often see him coming in at much lower torque indicating the flight model was flawed at the most critical part of the flight. I could reliably land he Caravan smoothly on any short dirt strips without issue in contrast. Did you fly the 2020 version of the Kodiak? Did you share my experience at all? Has the 2024 variant improved in low torque landings? From what someone else reported in the Kodiak thread, it sounds like the flaps are modelled with excessive drag contributing to the problem at low torque and the new plane has the same issue as the old - requiring expressive torque to stay airborne on final.

Wow. Ok. I’m glad you tried it with some weight because that plane really changes its character based on load. I may need to give this new version a try.

I would love to hear that the Asobo C208B is great as I like that it’s native to the sim, and has a glass cockpit. I know the BlackSquare is going to crush the Asobo in systems fidelity. But what I’d really like to know is how these three fly… with some weight on board. My experience with the Asobo Caravan is that it’s almost too easy… too forgiving. Is that the general opinion or that’s accurate… because the real plane is easy and forgiving? Early reports seem to suggest the Kodiak is still quirky. I gave up on the 2020 version and I don’t really want to reward them for another quirky flight model. I haven’t read the whole BkackSquare thread, but it seems more concerned with system implementation details than flight model, which is maybe a good sign. How does the Asobo Caravan compare to the BlackSquare in flight with cargo… landing on short dirt strips in particular?

I don’t recall his flap settings and it will probably be time consuming to go back and try and find the video. I guess what I’d like to know, is that the 2020 plane required torque to be set at around 800-850 on final to maintain a reasonable glide slope which meant you really had to pitch up to lower speed. But that made it extremely difficult to hit the right touch down point on a short dirt runway - I was often short or long and that isn’t good on a short dirt strip. If you lowered torque to help get speed under control, you didn’t need to pitch as much so it was easier to hit the right touch down point at the right speed (70ish KTS) but it couldn’t maintain a decent glide slope at low torque… it would lose altitude much too quickly. It was like flying on a knife edge to try and hit the end of a dirt strip at the right speed without being short, long, or at the wrong attitude… which was not realistic at all compared to how Ryan could get that plane down so easily. Has this improved? Pleas try landing in Hawaii on HI31 which is a tricky short sloped dirt strip and let me know if you can nail it. I could not in the Kodiak but could nail it easily in the vanilla Caravan.

That’s a shame. I’ll probably do the same.

Can anyone with the new 2024 Kodiak, comment on the final approach at low torque? Ryan would land the plane at 300 torque in the real world, but the 2020 Kodiak would drop out of the sky like a rock at less than about 700 torque. What's the new model like in this regard?

It seems I just picked the worst aircraft to invest in from a developer standpoint, which is somewhat at odds with how popular they were. The Kodiak, the H145, and the iFly 737 were (maybe still are) some of the most popular add-on aircraft in their respective classes but seem to be low priority by their developers. It’s not clear what SWS has been doing. Hype has lost their developer. And iFly seems to be taking their sweet time as well.

It sounds great from a simmer perspective but is it sustainable for MS to continue to invest in two platforms? And what happens when 2028 rolls around and MS has not made much money on 2024 upgrades because many are lagging on 2020. Do they release and support a third sim platform? Do they EoL 2020 to get people to move? The fact things are lagging so much and many simmers or devs can’t be bothered with 2024 is not great for the overall business in my opinion. How do you see this playing out.

Yeah, maybe it’s just the aircraft I’m interested in that are lagging on updates. But it felt like things moved a lot quicker in 2020-2023... There was a lot of momentum. Do you think MS considers 2024 a success? Will they do another overhaul in 2028?

I’m aware of the work on the Kodiak. But I’m surprised given how popular it was, that it’s taken nearly two years to do this overhaul. Last time I flew it there were still issues with the flight model at lower torque settings. I wonder if this pattern is sustainable… if MS/Asobo release an overhaul to the sim every 4 years and it takes 3+ years to get it stable (we’re now almost two years in and not there yet), and very few upgrade until it’s stable it creates a massive multi-year lag between investment and return on that investment not just for MS but for studios doing plane updates. Are we going to be facing yet another sim overhaul in two years, after most have just updated to 2024? How is that sustainable?

Yeah, I think you’re somewhat confirming my suspicions… by saying most gamers didn’t switch to 2024 until SU4 says the upgrade adoption has been very slow… and that means there hasn’t been a lot of demand or money to be made with 2024 native aircraft. Maybe things will accelerate now if there’s a lot more people switching to 2024 after the last update. I think it’s probably not good for the long term health of the ecosystem for upgrade cycles to be so drawn out. If it takes two to three years after release of a major sim update to really attract simmers and devs to the new platform I can’t see MS/Asobo continuing to invest this heavily for such an extended ROI.

There is an issue with the H145 stability in 2024 but the developer is gone so it may never see an update I guess. Not sure if he was Hype or Hype will survive or what. Part of my point is I’m not sure if I’m being unreasonable or not. You think I am being unreasonable, and maybe I am… but it’s been a couple years now since 2024 was news. What is a reasonable time line to expect a 2020 aircraft to be updated to 2024?

Thanks. I’m aware of the status of the items I mentioned, but even if the Kodiak drops tomorrow… is 18 months a reasonable amount of time to update an aircraft that was already working… just not natively? I guess you’re saying it is. It seems poor to me, that Microsoft would create such an upgrade chasm that it takes 2 years for studios to update their existing products to work properly with the new version of the sim. But there also doesn’t appear to be any sense of urgency on the part of studios either. The most logical conclusion to draw from that is there’s very little money to be made. Is that true? Is 2024 not been as popular?