More candid insight from Aerosoft's project manager on MSFS, the CRJ, the SDK and the add-on market

After that post I can’t understand how this is gonna end well: https://www.justflight.com/in-development

Just Flight don’t list any titles for MSFS in development, is that your point?

I imagine they will wait for SDK maturity.

Even a new engine only wont help though, they need help from somebody like Google and their map data/servers etc. to compete. For now they are oke, but in a year or two when everything works as it should, there is no reason to use X-plane. So I hope for them they are already working on that.

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What exactly are you working on and need help with? Yesterday I asked a simple question of why Asobo doesn’t provide a changelog, which is a logical thing to do if you provide a SDK. But somehow I dont think they care much for 3rd parties at this stage. Only a select few (like Aerosoft).

Well said, and i agree, there has been and still is some who have an agenda .

Great post can’t wait for the A330.

ahem… https://www.justflight.com/in-development/dc-designs-f15-c-e-i-eagle-flight-simulator

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The answer to it is simple.
Microsoft was the pinacle of flightsims for many years, and X plane did not draw any great amount of users from MS as X plane developed into the sim it is today.
The Microsoft simulator folks stayed with FSX and/or it’s derivatives, Steam and P3D.
When MSFS was announced, it looked amazing. It had great reviews and 3rd party developers were promising quick releases for MSFS, so no one wanted to by any more addons for the MS sims.
It would be wasting money, as they were just waiting to purchase the new MSFS and then the new releases for it.
The X plane people became very dedicated to X plane. They have no intention to leave it, so they are still purchasing add-ons for it.

I left P3D for X-plane and have been enormously happy. But, the weather is awful, and fixes and improvements with weather and lighting have either been ignored or continually kicked down the road.

If X-plane can get their act together and produce better weather, seasons and good lighting, especially at night- they would give MSFS a run for their money.

I’d go back in a minute.

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Mathijs can always be relied apon to be clear and concise.

Not spoken to him for years but was always a pillar of reliability.

A rare breed in the Payware community for sure.
Regards
Rick Piper (Has been Developer) :wink:

This is the kind of sincere communication skills I would love to get from Asobo. There is no problem saying the truth, without any make-up

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It’s almost like you haven’t watched a single Q&A.

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I did. It feels like they are being taken care from more intelligent questions. Not saying they lie, What I mean is, it feels like they have a script and they don’t step outside that script, the whole streaming feels like it has been prepared for them to not take any risk. Its my opinion though, if it’s fine for you, ok then.

“Rigged” doesn’t mean what you think it means, especially considering that they often interact directly with people in the Twitch chat. :joy:

Incidentally answering questions live like Asobo does in the Q&A is much more challenging than writing on your own time on a forum.

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anyways, not trying to convince anyone.

In past Q&As, they definitely dodged some question by shifting focus to something else, a tactic well used by politicians. But for the most part, I feel like they answer things as frankly as they can. There’s always going to be stuff they can’t talk about for various reasons, and are usually pretty open about not being able to talk about it.

And by the look of “Oh sh*t…” on their faces when some tough questions are asked, I don’t see it as being scripted beyond the list of points and questions that Jummivana has prepared.

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That’s right. Us project managers definitely have a way of finessing our answers to make sure we don’t say something that could be wildly misinterpreted, or give insight to something that’s still very much WIP and there’s no clear way forward.

That being said, they’re definitely not expecting these questions; there’s a difference between the answers a project manager gives when they see these questions coming, and the answers they give when the audience asks a question they’re not expecting. They definitely come prepared for questions on general topics, but it’s obvious that they aren’t given these questions in advance of the Q&A; these are real on-the-spot answers.

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In any case, some people have implied a lack of sincerity on their part, and I honestly don’t see that. I’ve seen some avoidance tactics and sidestepping that didn’t really answer the question asked, but nothing that implied scripting.

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One key reason I feel P3D has remained popular is the enormous community of developers that support it as was done in the previous versions of MSFS before it. Follow the money as the article basically stated. X-Plane is a great platform that is not quite as strong with the depth of developer community to support it, and that’s more out of economics for the developer than the platform itself.

That’s why I keep P3D. The serious “study-level” airliners are just not that prevalent in XP and those that are tend to be a little off, in my opinion. For some airliners, GA and helicopters, XPlane is a solid simulator. MSFS2020 would be my go to GA simulator if I had at least one solid, deeply simulated GA aircraft. Right now, I only fly the GA stuff really just to take in the excellent world Asobo have created for us to fly.

With XP, the platform allows developers a level of access that we currently don’t have in MSFS2020, yet, the return on investment isn’t there for them. I imagine the MSFS SDK will evolve as it is currently hampering developers to the platform. If that continues, I feel we will see a similar scebarui to X-Plane. Lots of just “good” stuff but not a lot of “great”.

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This is pretty much the opposite of what Mathijs Kok says. The point is that P3D isn’t popular at all, and is steadily losing popularity among developers as well.

Kok has mentioned that sales for P3D addons are very poor, and recently they’ve simply flatlined.

That’s not surprising, considering that according to Aerosoft’s estimates, it has sold 20-30k copies overall. That’s not popular. It’s peanuts.

I’m not sure where the idea that P3D is popular would come from anyway. Lokheed Martin never even tried to make it popular. It’s not part of their core business, the pricing policy is ludicrous, and they do literally zero marketing. I can’t think of many software products that are more pigeonholed into the niche of a niche.

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