brinx

Yes. It applies to every company, whether it is Laminar Research, Microsoft, Boeing, or Airbus. It's just business 101: First impressions are everything. The company should provide clear, easy-to-follow instructions if additional steps are required. The other user implied that a customer's lack of patience says something about their intelligence if they don't want to waste a day piecing together instructions from across the web.

This statement could not be further from the truth. First impressions are everything. It doesn't matter if you are selling an add-on plane, a new car, a new TV, or any other product. Every successful company knows that once customers are gone, they may never come back. It is up to Laminar Research to ensure X-Plane wows you on your first try. The blame should never be on the customer to scour the net to figure things out. A technical writing course emphasizes that you need simple, clear, concise instructions for the customer. If there are some additional configurations required, Laminar should provide easy-to-follow instructions. Time is money, and most customers don't have the patience if there is an alternative product. It has nothing to do with curiosity or intelligence.

Is Prepar3D not a Flight Simulator, used for military and civilian training? What is a flight simulator for you?

Yes, you are correct. Technically, it is not free. In my case, I was already a Game Pass member for other reasons, though.

I'm not surprised. I never put too much weight into the navigraph survey. It is interesting and gives a rough idea of where things stand, but it does not reflect the entire flight sim community IMO. I would say this survey is more reflective of the most hardcore flight sim users(e.g those willing to pay for navigraph). Jorg tends to be open with statistics on their Developer live streams. He said, two-thirds of users were on MSFS 2024 and one-third were on MSFS 2020. The xbox/pc split was like 60/40, or something like that, which indicates that they are underrepresentation going on in the survey. I believe the two biggest factors are Game Pass and Xbox. I didn't buy MSFS 2024. However, I've been a Game Pass subscriber for years now, so I use MSFS without directly paying for it. There are likely tens of thousands of users(maybe higher) like me using it for free via Game Pass, which wouldn't show up in the Steam numbers.

I agree with you. That looks impressive. Photogrammetry will continue to get better. The manpower to model a city with this level of detail would be astronomical. I recently learned of a few games using this for their terrains.

I guess anything is possible, but I think you are wrong for a few reasons: The same thing was said about MSFS 2020. They are still investing heavily in 2024; the current roadmap goes until at least 2028. I believe they said each photogrammetry city costs at least $1 million to fly the planes around to scan, and they have more cities and countrysides planned. They seem committed this time around unlike the half-baked effort of MS Flight. They have deals with many companies now, including Lufthansa for LIDO charts and recently signed another with Embraer to bring more planes to 2024. 2024 is light on resources. It loads way faster than 2020. I bought an Asus Zephyrus G14 laptop over the weekend (16GB Ram, RTX 4060). The download for MSFS 2024 was only 8GB, and the current installed size is only 26GB. Even with this small install, I was able to get detailed scenery anywhere in the world. MSFS 2020 would have eaten up at least 150GB of my laptop harddrive. 2024 definitely had a rough start with the streaming, but it seems to be working really well right now. The laptop runs a bit hot because it is so thin, but I was surprised at how smooth things ran. Because of the thin client, I'm betting that 2024 will be further expanded to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.

Better start a new thread instead of turning this one into a MSFS vs Xplane comparison. Goran said this is an Xplane announcement thread. I also don't think you're allowed to post beta 12.2 issues here because it's not a “post your problems in the new beta' thread according to what I'm reading, 🤷‍♂️ even though this is a beta 12.2 thread. Maybe it is a "post your excitement with beta 12.2" thread. But, I'm not sure about that either. I didn't realize restrictions were being placed on what aspect of beta 12.2 can be discussed here, though.

In your original post, it sounded like you were saying you wished the 350 felt more like the Beluga/A310, which didn't make sense to me because they are entirely different planes. You have since clarified that you were referring to a specific aspect, not the flight model as a whole. Fair enough and understood. Here, their 350 pilot is discussing Inertia. Some users believe the 350 should feel similar to other Airbus models (e.g., A320), a point also discussed here. Here they also mentioned inertia again. I'm not sure if these are the points you're referring to.

What does this nonsense have to do with the point I was making? How would the flight model of a Beluga tell me anything about an A350? How would the flight model of an A320 tell me anything about an A380? How would the flight model of a B737 tell me anything about a B787? Seems you are still missing the point I made.

The Beluga is not a suitable reference for judging an A350—completely different planes. I wouldn't want my A350 to feel like the Beluga. Being from the same developer or sim is irrelevant. In fact, the beluga is more comparable to the A300. I think the OP understood my point and agreed.

In that case, a comparison of the flight factor A350 vs the inbuilds A350 would be more informative. A comparison of the Beluga's flight characteristics with those of the A350 does not make sense to me, as they are in totally different categories, and I'd expect them to fly differently. Similarly, you wouldn't compare a Cessna to a 320. Generally, it comes down to the developer's skill, in my opinion. There are planes that fly great in both sims, and there are planes that fly terribly in both. There is no guarantee that a plane will fly better solely based on the simulator.

Why would you want the A350 to feel like all these other planes? They are completely different planes. It's not a A319 vs A320 comparison. It also blew my mind when users said the A400 didn't feel like an Airbus. Watch the last Inibuilds dev stream on YouTube from a few days ago, they addressed whether it should feel like the other planes.

That is ridiculous of them. I don't see many people paying $120 for an aircraft. $70-80 is already considered high for the top-tier planes on the MSFS platform. Even worse, is this a subscription model? Who would pay for annual access? Yeah, they are going to learn a hard lesson. $5 for 30-day access is an interesting offer, though; I would pay the $5 if it were applied to the full purchase price. It sounds similar to renting the plane to try it before buying it. The question is, what does lifetime even mean? I am an advocate of that as well. They should charge whatever they feel is a fair price for their work. On the other hand, the customer could also decide not to buy it if we think the pricing is ridiculous, as is the case above, in my opinion. I like the idea of a tier system. Many games are already using this model with standard editions, deluxe editions, etc. I typically fly normal ops only, so I'm happy with a high-fidelity plane. I don't need every single circuit breaker modeled if it means a price reduction (standard edition). The premium edition would be the so-called "Study Level" for those who want to spend $$$$$ for all the bells and whistles.

FYI, Alt+Tab for switching on Windows. There is no need to touch the mouse, and it reduces Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI) by avoiding the mouse.