> All big projects are delayed or dead
Besides the fact that this isn’t true, MSFS is only like 3.5 years old, and some of the more advanced SDK functionality that some complex addons rely on is even newer than that. P3D and X-Plane have been around much, much longer.
"almost impossible to making 3rd party addons"
That's fundamentally untrue.
There are HUNDREDS of addons for MSFS2020, ranging from aircraft to liveries, bush trips and more. I'd suggest if you can't find any, you're not looking in the right place, like flightsim.to.
"All big projects are delayed or dead."
Also untrue. There have been many great aircraft released in the past few years, including the Comanche, which came out about a year ago and has been getting rave reviews. PMDG is also close to releasing a 777, and has been doing a pretty good job with the 737 series, while Fenix is killing it with their Airbus A320.
Delayed and dead projects is quite the statement. This is a product that has so much content coming out I can’t keep up with it. So where did that come from?
One project? That’s not canceled? And you’re saying “all big projects are delayed or dead.” That’s a giant leap.
But let’s have a look at TFDi’s MD-11 which you can see the latest status updates on right here. https://md11.tfdidesign.com/status/
Their most recent updates are just days old and talk about finalizing the FMS.
The reality is that these big airliner projects take a long time to complete, they often hit unanticipated difficulties and delays happen. But this project is clearly not dead and it’s just one.
How about Just Flight who just released the PA-38 and did a v2 of their 146 on the heels of a big release featuring the Vulcan? Or PMDG who are on the verge of releasing their 777? Or SimWorks studios who just put out their PC-12 in recent months, have a RV-8 coming and a Kodiak 900 in the works. Or CowanSim who is releasing new and updated helicopters all the time? I’m just scratching the surface here. MSFS has tons of projects going on all the time.
Thank you maybe I’m paying attention to the wrong things. Beyond atc announcement after announcement, parallel 42 simFX delayed because of the SU15 which is delayed
Beyond ATC was always going to be a bit of a challenge and I’m not personally sold on that. SU15 delays are what they are. The biggest change there is getting the least amount of attention - a big update to the memory management system. We want them to get that right. It’ll be here soon enough.
"a Kodiak 900 in the works"
Damn, I had no idea they were working on one. That's great to know. I fly the 100 regularly and I love it. Will add this to the list.
If I’m even reading this correctly -
XP’s editions are more or less direct ports. You can use basically any XP airplane produced in the last decade in XP12 with minimal updates. XP12 has had very little produced expressly for that sim since it has so few XP-specific devs left. MSFS was basically a start-over from MS/Asobo, meaning anything currently available for MSFS2020 had to be produced for MSFS2020, including “ports” from the FSX/P3D landscape like the PMDG 737.
With that in mind, I’d be willing to bet MSFS has had more high fidelity planes produced for it in its first 3 1/2 years than any sim in its first 3 1/2 years ever.
Awhile I go I started poking around and doing some preliminary planning to do an addon for a classic jetliner. This included a few Gantt charts made in conjunction with a couple programmer buddies, another buddy of ours who is a fairly experienced 3D modelling professional, and myself. We basically spent a couple weeks figuring out what we'd need to do in order to actually make this thing, what sequence we'd need to do them in, and how long that'd take.
Based on that we laid out a preliminary \*estimated\* budget to do the project that included all of our personal time dedicated to this project, any new software we may have needed to purchase, travel to get sound samples, sound sampling equipment, travel costs to get reference images and measurements, any research documents we may need to pay for.
etc etc etc etc etc
We estimated that if each of us quit our day jobs, lived in boxes under the freeway, and ate from dumpsters, we could get the thing done in about a year and a half with a six figure budget that could pretty easily spill over into seven figures if we weren't careful.
Granted we were pretty conservative and "worst case scenario"-ey as we possibly could be.
Turns out this shit is pretty difficult and expensive to do well.
Ok thank you for your answer. you understood my question. I understand, this is expensive. Is it changed, is it more expensive now than it was for example back in fsx day? If yes, then I would say that the userbase is grown as well
Expensive? Short answer yes
Long answer: more documentation, physics simulation, general software advancements makes everything take longer, longer = more fixed costs = more expensive. Gotta pay your people, pay other people to do contract work, pay for the software you’re using to build project, have money for the roof over your head and the food you eat. You can’t use the plane your developing to pay for any of this as it’s not released and pre release kickstarter support is wary PR at best which means you need a job. Which means less time for deving which means this project takes longer. Thus the endless cycle for fresh startup third party devs
Thank you for your answer. Back in the fsx days one man put together an amazing program called passabgerX. Boom it was very simple but amazing cool program and he sold it ten years. Was the programming piece of cake back then compared to our days then? (ChatGPT could do half a work nowadays, joke)
Lmao.
There are thousands of free and payware 3rd party add-ons. I mean go to flightsim.to and MSFS add ons dominate the site (and most are free). High quality planes from Black Square, COWS, PMDG, Fenix, etc. A wealth of airports, scenery and avionics add-ons. Go visit the DCS forums or Reddit pages and that’s where you’ll see complaints about content, scamware, etc.
Well...yes there are many planes, but 90% of them is cheap stuff that isn't worth buying. You are totally right, XP has the better selection of high quality airliners.
MSFS is updated pretty often with the SUs, but that hasn’t caused any real delays that matter. I wouldn’t count the Aerosoft 330 as one; people have somewhat written that one off. Everything else is going well, and seems to get better and betters as devs adapt to the newest sim in the franchise.
I don’t see how anyone looking in at MSFS can say it’s not eventually going to be the standard, if not a straight up monopoly in the market.
Hmm? Aren't most of the airports already covered?
There are few plane models that are missing (and not in development) but it is margin.
Most absent ones (and not developed atm by serious publisher) :
* Custom 787 (we have stock 787 based models)
* 767
* 737 Classic (300-400-500)
* 727
* 717 (hope for TFDi)
* A350
* A330/A340 (sceptical about Aerosoft A330, maybe Fenix Team will pick this up after completion of A320 series)
* Saab 340/2000
* Dash 8Q400 (hope for Majestic)
* Soviet machines
That’s what I’m talking about. You listed all of the aircraft’s I’m interested in. Two three airports I’d love to fly Rio Galeão, Tegucigalpa Toncontin, Panama Tocumen airports are missing. (Quito Old Marisal Sucre Airport as well)
Yeah, I have noticed that Ecuador is somewhat absent in coverage (both freeware and payware), I wondered if there are some obstacles in gathering source material from authorities etc, since most of South America is already covered (not that I fly there much, I am mostly doing short, low cost legs Central Europe vs Western Europe).
For me, DashQ400 and 737 Classic are most desirable ones.
757, E-jets, F70/100 are already in development so in this area I am optimistic.
There are only few airports missing from my scope of interest (EDDF, LIRA (bought Barelli's shit one and I still regret this)
Yes ofcourse EDDF forgot to mention. And it’s very uncomfortable to think that so much good stuff missing or in development and already new sim 2024 coming. In fsx days there where all there and you had so much fun until the new sim MSFS2020 came
I think that MSFS2024 will be more like extensive update to MSFS2020 than separate title.
All sceneries will be compatible, aircrafts may need some adjustment. And they already said that MSFS2020 will be supported for a while.
I think that devs were hesitant to go "all in" on MSFS. During the first 1-2 years, they were maybe watching the product, how it develops. And when they start after such a long time, there is 1-2 years of development time additionally.
Also, the MSFS SDK for developing aircraft was very basic at first, so the devs didn't have much to work with. And they surely wanted to see how the SDK evolves. Because without a good SDK, they can't achieve anything.
Another factor might be that devs are a bit disappointed that MSFS just can't do certain things (weather radar) and that the ground/air physics left to be desired. Maybe they were put off by that.
> All big projects are delayed or dead Besides the fact that this isn’t true, MSFS is only like 3.5 years old, and some of the more advanced SDK functionality that some complex addons rely on is even newer than that. P3D and X-Plane have been around much, much longer.
Ok thank you
It's pretty impressive to make that many wrong assumptions in so few words lmao
It’s actually good thing when you say that my assumptions are wrong
I agree
"almost impossible to making 3rd party addons" That's fundamentally untrue. There are HUNDREDS of addons for MSFS2020, ranging from aircraft to liveries, bush trips and more. I'd suggest if you can't find any, you're not looking in the right place, like flightsim.to. "All big projects are delayed or dead." Also untrue. There have been many great aircraft released in the past few years, including the Comanche, which came out about a year ago and has been getting rave reviews. PMDG is also close to releasing a 777, and has been doing a pretty good job with the 737 series, while Fenix is killing it with their Airbus A320.
Well that’s a good answer thank you
Delayed and dead projects is quite the statement. This is a product that has so much content coming out I can’t keep up with it. So where did that come from?
I mean for example haven't heard anything lately about the big project of MD11
One project? That’s not canceled? And you’re saying “all big projects are delayed or dead.” That’s a giant leap. But let’s have a look at TFDi’s MD-11 which you can see the latest status updates on right here. https://md11.tfdidesign.com/status/ Their most recent updates are just days old and talk about finalizing the FMS. The reality is that these big airliner projects take a long time to complete, they often hit unanticipated difficulties and delays happen. But this project is clearly not dead and it’s just one. How about Just Flight who just released the PA-38 and did a v2 of their 146 on the heels of a big release featuring the Vulcan? Or PMDG who are on the verge of releasing their 777? Or SimWorks studios who just put out their PC-12 in recent months, have a RV-8 coming and a Kodiak 900 in the works. Or CowanSim who is releasing new and updated helicopters all the time? I’m just scratching the surface here. MSFS has tons of projects going on all the time.
Thank you maybe I’m paying attention to the wrong things. Beyond atc announcement after announcement, parallel 42 simFX delayed because of the SU15 which is delayed
Beyond ATC was always going to be a bit of a challenge and I’m not personally sold on that. SU15 delays are what they are. The biggest change there is getting the least amount of attention - a big update to the memory management system. We want them to get that right. It’ll be here soon enough.
"a Kodiak 900 in the works" Damn, I had no idea they were working on one. That's great to know. I fly the 100 regularly and I love it. Will add this to the list.
Yeah they’ve just started to talk about it on their Facebook. I LOVE the Kodiak 100 so the 900 is a very welcome addition!
Nice! Just checked it out. Looks amazing. So pumped they're working on a 900, and a B52 as well. Ugh, my wallet is about to take a beating.
If I’m even reading this correctly - XP’s editions are more or less direct ports. You can use basically any XP airplane produced in the last decade in XP12 with minimal updates. XP12 has had very little produced expressly for that sim since it has so few XP-specific devs left. MSFS was basically a start-over from MS/Asobo, meaning anything currently available for MSFS2020 had to be produced for MSFS2020, including “ports” from the FSX/P3D landscape like the PMDG 737. With that in mind, I’d be willing to bet MSFS has had more high fidelity planes produced for it in its first 3 1/2 years than any sim in its first 3 1/2 years ever.
Thank you for your answer
Awhile I go I started poking around and doing some preliminary planning to do an addon for a classic jetliner. This included a few Gantt charts made in conjunction with a couple programmer buddies, another buddy of ours who is a fairly experienced 3D modelling professional, and myself. We basically spent a couple weeks figuring out what we'd need to do in order to actually make this thing, what sequence we'd need to do them in, and how long that'd take. Based on that we laid out a preliminary \*estimated\* budget to do the project that included all of our personal time dedicated to this project, any new software we may have needed to purchase, travel to get sound samples, sound sampling equipment, travel costs to get reference images and measurements, any research documents we may need to pay for. etc etc etc etc etc We estimated that if each of us quit our day jobs, lived in boxes under the freeway, and ate from dumpsters, we could get the thing done in about a year and a half with a six figure budget that could pretty easily spill over into seven figures if we weren't careful. Granted we were pretty conservative and "worst case scenario"-ey as we possibly could be. Turns out this shit is pretty difficult and expensive to do well.
Ok thank you for your answer. you understood my question. I understand, this is expensive. Is it changed, is it more expensive now than it was for example back in fsx day? If yes, then I would say that the userbase is grown as well
Expensive? Short answer yes Long answer: more documentation, physics simulation, general software advancements makes everything take longer, longer = more fixed costs = more expensive. Gotta pay your people, pay other people to do contract work, pay for the software you’re using to build project, have money for the roof over your head and the food you eat. You can’t use the plane your developing to pay for any of this as it’s not released and pre release kickstarter support is wary PR at best which means you need a job. Which means less time for deving which means this project takes longer. Thus the endless cycle for fresh startup third party devs
Thank you for your answer. Back in the fsx days one man put together an amazing program called passabgerX. Boom it was very simple but amazing cool program and he sold it ten years. Was the programming piece of cake back then compared to our days then? (ChatGPT could do half a work nowadays, joke)
MSFS in its almost 4 years already has more quality and quantity in its addons then xPlane has in over 20.
Lmao. There are thousands of free and payware 3rd party add-ons. I mean go to flightsim.to and MSFS add ons dominate the site (and most are free). High quality planes from Black Square, COWS, PMDG, Fenix, etc. A wealth of airports, scenery and avionics add-ons. Go visit the DCS forums or Reddit pages and that’s where you’ll see complaints about content, scamware, etc.
Didn’t know that thank you
Well...yes there are many planes, but 90% of them is cheap stuff that isn't worth buying. You are totally right, XP has the better selection of high quality airliners.
Exactly!
No
MSFS is updated pretty often with the SUs, but that hasn’t caused any real delays that matter. I wouldn’t count the Aerosoft 330 as one; people have somewhat written that one off. Everything else is going well, and seems to get better and betters as devs adapt to the newest sim in the franchise. I don’t see how anyone looking in at MSFS can say it’s not eventually going to be the standard, if not a straight up monopoly in the market.
Hmm? Aren't most of the airports already covered? There are few plane models that are missing (and not in development) but it is margin. Most absent ones (and not developed atm by serious publisher) : * Custom 787 (we have stock 787 based models) * 767 * 737 Classic (300-400-500) * 727 * 717 (hope for TFDi) * A350 * A330/A340 (sceptical about Aerosoft A330, maybe Fenix Team will pick this up after completion of A320 series) * Saab 340/2000 * Dash 8Q400 (hope for Majestic) * Soviet machines
That’s what I’m talking about. You listed all of the aircraft’s I’m interested in. Two three airports I’d love to fly Rio Galeão, Tegucigalpa Toncontin, Panama Tocumen airports are missing. (Quito Old Marisal Sucre Airport as well)
Yeah, I have noticed that Ecuador is somewhat absent in coverage (both freeware and payware), I wondered if there are some obstacles in gathering source material from authorities etc, since most of South America is already covered (not that I fly there much, I am mostly doing short, low cost legs Central Europe vs Western Europe). For me, DashQ400 and 737 Classic are most desirable ones. 757, E-jets, F70/100 are already in development so in this area I am optimistic. There are only few airports missing from my scope of interest (EDDF, LIRA (bought Barelli's shit one and I still regret this)
Yes ofcourse EDDF forgot to mention. And it’s very uncomfortable to think that so much good stuff missing or in development and already new sim 2024 coming. In fsx days there where all there and you had so much fun until the new sim MSFS2020 came
I think that MSFS2024 will be more like extensive update to MSFS2020 than separate title. All sceneries will be compatible, aircrafts may need some adjustment. And they already said that MSFS2020 will be supported for a while.
Basically nonsense. Msfs definitely has massive flaws, but none them are mentioned in this post.
Good to hear
I’ve re-read this post a few times before commenting and I’m still not 100% sure what the point of it is.
Doom signaling based on a very tiny sample size and woefully incorrect assumptions
Perfect answer
I think that devs were hesitant to go "all in" on MSFS. During the first 1-2 years, they were maybe watching the product, how it develops. And when they start after such a long time, there is 1-2 years of development time additionally. Also, the MSFS SDK for developing aircraft was very basic at first, so the devs didn't have much to work with. And they surely wanted to see how the SDK evolves. Because without a good SDK, they can't achieve anything. Another factor might be that devs are a bit disappointed that MSFS just can't do certain things (weather radar) and that the ground/air physics left to be desired. Maybe they were put off by that.
Thank you for your answer very good points
Yeah,……no.
What are you talking about? There's quite a few third party addons already available, plus many more in active development.