Developers that have abandoned P3D or X-Plane for MSFS?

It may well be the case that one of the niche areas for XPlane ends up being cockpit building - whilst MSFS moves more and more into VR as it’s default mode.

I use P3D, XP and MSFS and have a ton of addons. They all have pros and cons. I have noticed that a number of developers have shifted their focus to MSFS. There has been quite the decline in third-party P3D addons over the past few years and it seems MSFS is only accelerating this. There will be a point where I do uninstall P3D and XP (I might get XP12) but when that times I really don’t know. It all depends on how the addon scene plays out. There are a few addons that really keep pulling me into P3D such as those from HiFi and A2A. As it’s been said, MSFS is where the money is going to be.

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Well, multiple monitor support is on the list of upcoming features for 2021/2022. Hoping for sooner rather than later.

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Just Flight has abandoned the Fokker F28 for P3d, and is bringing it to MSFS instead. They have stated that they’re still working on other projects for P3d, and have NOT abandoned that sim.

I own FSX: SE, DCS, X-PLANE 11, and MSFS. (I’ve never owned P3d) I never really used FSX or DCS, but I used X-Plane a lot. I kept it installed until May, when I decide to uninstall it. I had a LOT of money invested in X-Plane add-ons, but I enjoy MSFS more than any other sim I’ve used. Competition is great for the consumer. It’s been obvious that X-Plane has been working on ways to compete. There’s room for ALL the sims. Developers will go to wherever they can make the most money.

Also, to go along with the discussion about older games…I still play Wolf 3D from 1992, and Chip’s Challenge from 1989…but I won’t touch a flight sim that’s 10 years old. They’re two completely different things.

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A someone who’s been watching the JF Fokker F28 page the past year I was bummed to watch the supported title list decrease over the months. It was initially going to be for FSX and P3D.
I was surely going to buy it for the older sims. It was going to be my last FSX/P3D payware aircraft buy actually.

Hi Deer, the information in the last line sits on the development road map. It’s actually the second wish with 1309 votes. It says started and to be released 2021-2022.
The fact that it’s the second wish tells me that it must be more than 1% of the community. But that’s gut feeling, no proof.
I’m looking forward to it as well, but we have to be patient. Gut feeling (again) tells me a year or so. And the comes the question what I will do with my current G9. Will I ditch it for three monitors because of the lack of height? Will I add two G7’s to the side to make it 180°?
Maybe in 2022 Samsung will release G11, being two G7’s in one frame. 2x32” Will certainly solve some of the height issues. And that’s needed because the top and bottom parts of the image get clipped off at 5140x1080.

Whatever we assume or believe, Asobo developed a sim, in just a few years, that vastly exceeds X-plane or P3D in many ways(some aerodynamic features yet missing and needing tuning, as well as SDK impros), or at least created a solid foundation, where gradual improvements, will in a timely manner, at the very least, match if not exceed the other sims. It’s a raw display of power by microsoft. There are things Xplane will never be able to do like msfs2020, simply due to lack of resources and infrastructure, compared to microsoft which owns asobo, bing maps, azure cloud tech etc…People don’t realize how huge it is, that microsoft in a few years of development time already exceeds sims like p3d and xplane in many features and tech, that had been in development for at least 10 years (p3d) and 20 years + (xplane)…At this rate they will smoke the other two sims within the next 2-3 years in every concievable aspect, no matter how hard laminar or LM try. Money, manpower and infrastructure make all the difference here, and Msfs2020 already has a bigger market than xplane or p3d, just a year after release, it’s just a different ballgame…(not in number of add-ons yet, but in money made and customer purchasing power) ofc devs will switch to this platform…Developing add-ons is no charity, it’s about surviving from your work. And let’s face it, Xplane and P3D just aren’t the future…just no. Those are old sims, in both vision and technological aspects and it just shows…Msfs2020 is the future and that’s what flight simulation needed so badly, a new, technologically updated environment with a big team behind it, offering devs a chance to up their game and end the microscopic and almost non-existent innovation, that stalled flight simulation for the last 15 years. I’m happy that we finally can start a new and modern era of flight simulation. People should stop the sim wars and embrace change and innovation.

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Indeed it is, the sim will only keep getting better, and the new update, as we have seen in the last Q&A video brings an fps increase of almost 80%, which is crazy.
Wait a month or two until we get the 787 or maybe until december when we get the 737 and this sim is gonna be lit.

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Yeah, this is more or less what I have been reading about too. In this thread in the P3D forum in AVSIM, multiple 3rd party developers appear to be abandoning P3D for MSFS: A rant from the heart - The Prepar3d Forum - The AVSIM Community

It looks like the exodous from P3D to MSFS is picking up steam, rather than slowing down. This will be exacerbated when the X-Box version of MSFS comes out because then, the market will be even bigger for MSFS, which means more $$$ for 3rd party developers that sell through the MSFS marketplace, and this may even speed up the 3rd party developers to abandon P3D for MSFS.

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Thanks for the information. It was information like this that I wanted to gather in this thread, to see what the 3rd party devs are doing.

It seems like some 3rd party devs that have started new projects for MSFS, have said little about whether those same projects will be ported to P3D, or are outright ignoring P3D for their new projects. However, if that same 3rd party dev is already in the middle of a project for P3D that they have spent a lot of work on, they have an incentive to complete that project since they already put the time into that project and need it to be released on P3D to recuperate their money back. Anyways, this seems to be the trend that I noticed.

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I found this sentence by Mathijs very interesting:

X-Plane users are still remarkably interesting as they keep on buying add-ons. Do not be surprised to see X-Plane add-ons being made, they simply sell.

Competition is always good in any industry and its the same for this small niche of virtual flying. Lets get real here, X-Plane will never be able to match the visuals of MSFS but it remains a very competent, easy to manage and fun sim. Its been around since 1995 and while it always be overshadowed by the juggernaut that is MSFS its also not going anywhere.

I use both and they exist happily together on my system. I see MSFS as my scenic low level bush flying escape and XP11 as my airliner escape.

This kind of view blows me away. :wink: I have all 3 sims currently installed - MSFS, P3D, and XP. I find the P3D experience very reminiscent of MSFS - not graphically, but… everything else - the way to operate switches, camera system, DEFINITELY the ATC, etc.

I find X-Plane to be a JARRING departure from that. One - there is NO flight planner. None. I use SimBrief, mostly, but not EVERYTHING is in SimBrief. If I am flying out of some remote Bush strip somewhere, chances are, it’s not in SimBrief. So I have to program my C172 from scratch. Make it even more annoying - the last flight plan will still be in it because the plane doesn’t reset avionics between flights, so I first have to delete that plan.

Two - I have never been able to figure out how to properly use ATC in XP. It’s needlessly complicated.

Three - There is NO WAY to set Baro to match conditions!!! There is NO “B” for that functionality and you can’t assign a key for it! You literally have to request it from ATC and manually set it. Every. Time. I find that to be excruciating.

I am sure XP offers a lot of great stuff too. But those things above really make me not ever fire it up. “Ya know what I need right now? Something that REALLY annoys me. I think X-Plane will do the job!”

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Quite an interesting take on ATC I must say, quite frankly I can’t stand the ATC in any of them. Once you use online networks such as VATSIM you’ll never want to go back. Been on VATSIM since 2009 and I’m very happy, I use it in MSFS, P3D and XP.

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I think it is clear that third party development effort is likely to be predominantly foccussed on MSFS over the next few years. Does that mean all third parties will abandon the alternatives? Of course not. I think is already strong evidence of this trend and it is likely to accelerate if the MSFS X-box launch is a success.

Ultimately, MSFS-2020 is where the money is and companies are likely to devote their efforts when they can make some money. There are actually a few reasons for this:

  1. I think MSFS2020 has made simming more accessible to casual players - you certainly get more out of the box. You can choose to view these people as ‘gamers’ not ‘simmers’ and look down on them because they don’t have home cockpits or don’t do full transatlantic flights using VAT sim for realism, but ultimately the add on developers don’t care that much how their customers use their product, they about how many customers they have.

  2. It is easier for a third party developer to find their niche in MSFS because there is a longer list of planes/airports that enough people want that you might make some money. Most of these have already been done in P3D/X-Plane. Obviously, this will change over time.

  3. For established comapanies with respected products on the other Sims, the potential market for an MSFS version includes people who already own their product but who will be tempted over to MSFS. As a user of these other platform I can see that this is quite annoying, but it’s still true.

  4. Good developers want to do new stuff. I suspect the people who work in Flight Sim now WANT to develop for MSFS, not because it’s better than X-Plane now, but they can see the potential. Read/listen to what the head honcho at PMDG had to say about the MSFS platform when they announced the DC6. If he wasn’t genuinely really excited, he’s pretty good at faking it. He was making the point that the MSFS SDK allows them to do stuff they couldn’t do on other platforms.

  5. I get that MSFS 2020 isn’t yet what everyone wants. However, it seems to be heading in the right direction. Everyone has different priorities, so it might be a couple of years before your priority get addressed in MFSF. Right now there are good reasons for some to keep playing on other platforms, but those reasons are going to decline over time. For those who prefer X-Plane now for it’s realism/stability/performance/whatever will you still feel the same way when MSFS has improved performance, supports multi-screens, has improved flight models, more complex airliners etc or will you just use MSFS and never switch on your current favourite sim again? I suspect many 3rd parties are looking where the market will be in 2 years time and are thinking are we prepared to spend 12 months developing a product for a market we don’t believe will be there in 2 years time.

That’s how it looks to me right now. It’s not impossible that one of the existing platforms will make sufficient improvements to be a genuine challenger BUT it’s going to be really hard. Microsoft/ASOBO seem to be well funded and are throwing a huge amount of effort at this. Any competitor is likely to need a LOT of investment.

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What you really need is a nice cushy semi-arcade game. Enter FS2020.

Now if you want to simulate, use proper flight tools in XPL11. Such as manually setting the baro pressure after tuning in real world METARs etc.

The main thing is, you enjoy your game and I’ll enjoy mine.

Sorted.

always amasing to see the xp fans thrashing msfs.
in a few it might get lonely there…i do hope xp survives tho, a msfs monopoly is not good.

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It will be interesting to see what the next iteration brings but I somewhat do think that MSFS will become a monopoly.

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The problem with P3D/X-Plane vs MSFS in the home consumer flight market is that the civillian home flight simulator market is a homogenous product. If the technology gap is not too large, multiple products can exist. However, if the the technology gap is too big between products, and the products are homogeneous products and the price is comparable, customers will dump the lagging product for the leading product. Right now, X-Plane’s main advantage over MSFS is that it has high fidelity airliners. After MSFS gets high fidelity airliners, X-Plane will be an inferior product with 10 year old technology compared to MSFS.

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So, Prepar3D is a “semi-cushy arcade game” too? By providing the convenience of setting your baro with a key-binding instead of using the dial while reading microscopic numbers on the 172 gauge. Have you SEEN how small those numbers are on the 172? Is that TO YOU what makes something a “simulation” and not an “arcade game”? The lack of ability to assign a baro button? You have some strange ideas.

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No I said FS is, not P3D.

And yes I do have strange ideas sometimes and many don’t agree with me, yet many do too.

Anyway, I’m off for my hot milk and cocoa right now.

The swallows are flying late tonight. Hold up. Never swallows…bats!

G’night BostonJeremy77.