I have thought this since Alpha testing. The Developers should only allow Airport scenery addons and not Landmark addons.
Why? Let’s say hypothetically you already purchased a Tokyo city addon. And then the sim is now coming with a big Japanese update. You will be miffed. And should you even use that addon anymore or not? It may make Tokyo better or worse and in some areas, but not others(?)
So there will be many Bing world and data updates, photogrammetry improvements, autogen improvements. And Landmark improvements we see now with Japan.
Let MS/Asobo update the world and simmers only need to upgrade airports.
I’m torn on this one. You make a very valid point, as long as it’s areas that MS / Asobo will actually update.
But what about less popular areas? They may NEVER get an official world update. But modders may actually want to build up their little out of the way areas around their local airfield with landmarks, etc. This would totally shut them out.
I know with Orbx with the London scenery pack they had to roll back certain buildings that were better in base MSFS than in the pack. So as long as the scenery developers are on the ball id say even if they do drop photogrammetry for places like London, Washington and Moscow, you would hope that Orbx or DD finds a way to have the packs work with their landmarks.
I would definitely say that the scenery mesh quality of the addon packs is better than photogrammetry - but colors and such might be off a bit.
It may be a long time before we get photogrammetry for those cities, and those are pretty hefty scenery packs.
So I think that at least for now they should stay.
I have to disagree. It’s no secret that Asobo plan to update and improve the sim for quite a while, including scenery and data. So, if people still want to go out on their own and buy third-party sceneries, I say let that be up to them.
Besides, wouldn’t airports also have to be banned? Because, the Japan update will be coming with six hand-crafted airports. What if someone hypothetically already bought one of those from a third-party?
By your logic, airport addons shouldn’t be allowed either, because the world updates will also include airports.
It’s absolutely nonsensical to exclude developers from the marketplace because they produce a certain kind of addon instead of another, not to mention unfair.
What you purchase is your responsibility. It’s not MS/Asobo’s responsibility to avoid you being “miffed” because a first-party update conflicts with a third-party addon.
I think it should be up to the consumer to decide. Even knowing that the world will be updated, one might not want to wait till that is rolled out for an area that is the main area a person flys. Therefore they can purchased the 3rd party world update and enjoy the scenery now.
I also feel with world updates coming from the developers, it will put pressure on the 3rd party companies to have to up their game to make sure their products exceed the quality of the “free” world updates.
Selling land mark updates in the market place is a win - win situation if I have seen one - those who want them can buy them, those who don’t aren’t forced to do so and the competition between 3rd party and MS should up the quality of both.
It’s nice they bring updates to a country every 3 months, it’s great! But it’s not likely an update for my country will ever come, so as you say it i’m stuck with the base sim forever? The world is big and they can’t update it all.
We already have this issue with airports. Enhanced scenery for Denver International Airport was included in the Premium Edition, but we also have an add-on for that airport from Flightbeam. Conceivably, someone could start with the Standard edition of Flight Simulator, buy the Denver Airport, then decide to upgrade to Premium to fly the 787. Would they be upset? I guess it depends on why they chose to buy the Flightbeam version in the first place. Presumably, the Flightbeam version provides extra levels of detail and/or realism that the Asobo version does not.
I think when it comes to add-ons, one reason that people buy them is when those add-ons are meaningful in some way. For example, I bought the Carenado 182T knowing full-well what I was getting for the money. I chose to buy it anyway because the Cessna 182 is special to me. Would I be mad if next month Asobo included an a 182 as part of an update? Personally no. It was worth it to me to buy the Cessna 182T at the time and if Asobo were to add that plane, I would just choose to fly the better one. If the better one happened to be Asobo’s, the net effect would be an upgraded airplane that I didn’t have to pay for.
Perhaps a better solution would be for Asobo to provide more transparency with respect to scheduled enhancements so that customers can make more informed choices about buying third-party content.
Such is life - I can’t see how restricting competition would do anything to alter this possibility because if the option to purchase an upgraded 152 was not available - why would MS provide an updated 152?
In my opinion, we should encourage the development of all types of addons, not exclude them. If you bought a landmark, enjoyed it, and later on Asobo releases an update with an improved version of that landmark, what do you have to lose? Bandwidth?
Speaking of that detail, i don’t see anything better on the carenado c152, than the base game c152…but ok…i’m am an airliner purist, not GA. Maybe GA purist/pilots/instructor, might think otherwise than me. I think so far, in the base game, all type of a/c are quite good. When i was FSX’'ing, it was the same…i would even say, base game a/c, were even less developped. People have been spoiled too many years with p3d,xplane, and fsx, and have forgotten where it started from…tiiiiiiiime, is on my side…yes it is🎸
I’m not saying i’m not getting frustrated now…even too much…but that is because of my so many years of FSX, i thinl about it, i calm down, and in the meantime, i enjoy what is enjoyable.
Happy flights all of you!
I’m all for centralised distribution of all MSFS assets. I hate to the bone X-Plane’s way of need to tinkering hundreds of downloadable and installable AND configurable bits and pieces before you can get the flight sim to even resemble something of an simulation.
This is just an simple question of priorities to use/display from central asset distribution.
For example:
will 3rd party payware override Asobo landmarks/airports/sceneries,
will 3rd party payware override free landmarks/airports/sceneries,
will free landmarks/airports/sceneries override Asobo landmarks/airports/sceneries.
3A) is there any (Asobo) qualified free landmarks/airports/sceneries overiding standard stuff
3B) is there any (Asobo) non-qualified stuff which are downloaded and installed by user’s discretion overriding all.
Asobo should designate Community Managers who test uploaded landmark and airport sceneries, and those are then included in official updates. Avoid the time consuming task of having to install scenery addons one by one manually.
Indeed it does, and quite noticeably too. I will also add that I have the Premium Deluxe version and have no issue considering the cost with the additional quality and quantity of the content overall, aircraft system bugs and needed improvements aside.
If I fly in the USA, it’s often from Denver, and the city as you suggested has ‘meaning’ for me. Also not heard of Flightbeam before, was recommended by a friend, checked their previous work, read reviews, thought the asking price was very reasonable so bought it and for me was a good decision.
Did I really need it? No, as what is in the sim gets the job done, and you could argue the same for someone buying, for example, Innsbruck that is on the Marketplace too.
I suppose the lines get blurred when content that in all fairness should be in a sim intentionally isn’t, paving the way for 3rd parties to fill in the gaps.
