If you want study level aircraft BUY THEM. Asobo/Microsoft have MANY OTHER things to deal with IE: old crashing issues coming back in SU7 Autopilot bugs, and so much more. That’s why 3rd party developers are here when it comes to aircraft. So you want extremely high quality aircraft guess what? Better open you wallet pull out your card and pay for them. Because in all of sim history base level aircraft have NEVE been study level with 1 or 2 exception but that’s because they were focused on one thing compared to many things that come with a fully open work sim.
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I think that we will never be totally satisfied as this program tries to satisfy the serious Simmer and also the Gamer.
To make things even more complicated it has to satisfy both PC and X-Box users.
We need to recognise that, probably even within Microsoft, the Simulator is a bit of a strange Duck. Doesnt fit easily into any product category. They are trying to push it firmly into the ‘Game’ category only to find that the compromises that involves, seriously ticks off the die hard serious simmers.
I think we just need to have some understanding of that and do less complaining and be clearer in our voting.
Your points are well made but what are they to do?
The obvious answer is two products. A serious Simulator for the PC and a more ‘Game’ orientated product for the X-Box.
But we know that for all kinds of commercial reasons that wont happen (a dose of realism here) and infact could again kill the Simulator or raise prices substantially.
So we all have to compromise. I think it is as good as it gets to be honest.
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This is a gross generalisation. For many there is little broken content.
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It’s unfortunate as it develops to loose some aspects … for me recently online all players has gone from sometimes brash but usually tongue in cheek silliness to …
MMRRROOOOOUUUUGGGGHHHHH !!! boom I am F18!!!
I guess I sort of teeter between a realist and enjoying seeing others in game but lately 
they aren’t having fun the right way 
I suppose the right thing to do is go VATSIM but … that seems worky.
I’m sure I’ll realign my niche eventually but I agree with the sentiment of the OP in some ways.
This is not so. Much of this Sim is based on FSX that in turn P3D is based on.
Doesnt make life easy for the developers.
Yes I know but we shouldn’t encourage people to think their old FSX mods should work flawlessly in MSFS, even updated they often fall short.
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Who thinks such a silly thing?
The point is that MSFS is infact a continuation of code that in some ways started back in the 80s. There have been many versions and current MSFS is as good as it gets.
But for many of us all those previous itterations are in our minds, we have flown and seen developed.
Trust me, we have come a long long way.
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At a guess those that like to fill their community folder with any crud that moves so long as it’s free.
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And don’t forget, to improve existing stock aircraft to higher level of fidelity using 3rd party experts for free of charge for the customer. Have other simulators done this in the past, or simply left that to 3rd party payware add-ons?
People just don’t give this dev team credit. They’re clearly doing things that go above and beyond what flight simulators have offered in the past; in almost all aspects. They’ve used ground breaking technologies, pumped out content on a monthly basis, they post weekly development roadmaps and live Q&As, they have a very solid connection with the community, they’ve had almost a “yes” policy to new feature requests (even publishing a weekly wishlist led by user votes), they’ve pushed the sim and genre to new platforms which has opened up the userbase, yet things don’t ever seem to be appreciated.
Regardless of genre, this is probably the most transparent and hard working development team I’ve experienced. I’m currently playing 2 other games that have been left with serious bugs for multiple months now with just a few words over Twitter serving as an update to the players. If I were the lead on MSFS I’d probably throw in the towel and not bother after reading half the feedback on this official forum.
People are entitled to their opinions of course, but I for one think Asobo can have all the time they need to polish the problems and deliver on their promises, because not only have they taken on an ambitious project, they’ve continued to be ambitious with it’s roadmap and committed themselves to giving us what we want.
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To be honest… the fact P3D C++ code is still a very solid base for MSFS code and that debugging is easier in P3D… A lot of the work we do for MSFS is still done in a P3D environment. Of course, this is just for the high-end C++ code and not for the basic XML coding.
also because of lack of support for 3rd party dev.
Documentation is weak and the sdk team is ridiculously small for an open plateform like MSFS. And for non official 3rd party (and it is very difficult to be “official”), it is the desert. And the most common answer we have is "sorry, we don’t have enough ressources to implement this feature/fix this bug actually. We feel alone on the dev forum. Sometimes, i’m asking if it is not intentionnaly to avoid having too much concurrency and to give priority to internal products.
if i remember (but i can be wrong), P3D is based on ESP sdk, (like fsx), not really directly on fsx code.
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There are in my opinion four levels of aircraft add-ons. Note that I seriously dislike the misnomer ‘study-level’. I have no idea what that means and have never spoken to any airline pilot that considered any FSX. X-Plane, P3D or MSFS add-on a serious study tool. I have also not seen any DLC developer ever use that term, they know better. It is a term that is used by flight simmers. Any airline pilot knows a real aircraft is more complex, less predictable if problems are stacked and that you fly them not on your own but with at least two people who behave as a team. Crew management is perhaps the most important thing on a flight deck. That is why we focussed so hard on our Connected Flight Deck technology in the higher-end P3D products. Flying an airliner on your own is illegal, no pilot would dream of doing it.
But back to aircraft DLC and what I (not Aerosoft) feel is a correct definition.
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Default aircraft. These have to be usable without any manuals, the checklist should be enough to get it started and flying. If the developer adds a gust lock it means a few thousand people who will write things do not work and that it sucks.
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Low-end 3rd party aircraft. These use default systems, default gauges but can look ■■■■■■ good. The correct price range is between $10 and $20. You might find aircraft that have totally unsuitable systems (like a 2 engines aircraft having systems showing 4 engines). It is the model and how it looks that counts. If the developer adds a gust lock it means a few thousand people who will write things do not work and that it sucks, but the support will have to deal with it.
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Medium complexity 3rd party aircraft. These replace many systems of the sim with their own code and the developer expects the user to understand that a checklist is a checklist and you need to understand flows. That means the checklist is NOT a guide to fly the aircraft but a check if what you did was done correct. That means an aircraft like our CRJ can only be flown if you are willing to read the 6 manuals. Our CRJ, the PMDG DC6 are examples of that. Our Twin Otter is at the low end of that (but it is a simple aircraft). The correct price range for this is between $28 and $68 (without VAT). In this class. If the developer adds a gust lock support will ask them to read the effing manual before complaining.
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High-end 3rd part addons. These do not exist yet. To make these possible we need the sim to mature a bit more. These will range in price between $80 and $200. They will cater for a small number of people, who will love them to death. Initially, these addons will have many parts of the code running outside of the sim. They will use the sim as the 'display engine". This means they have more freedom in how they work, but also that they will most likely never be on the marketplace. As that means you lose a lot of access to customers, you need to aim for far less customers and thus charge a lot of money. A lot of people for whom MSFS is the first sim and who do not understand the costs of making an add-on like this, will say it is stupid, nobody will buy it, yadda yadda yadda… These add-ons will do fine and make some companies a lot of money.
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There’s always a bit of myth on this forum that people who play the sim exclusively on Xbox are then by definition gamers. I can almost 100% guarantee you this is a totally mistaken assumption. I’m willing to guess the vast majority of people who regularly play it on Xbox are serious or reasonably serious simmers who for various reasons can’t afford a decent PC (not surprisingly at the moment) for enjoying the sim on and/or for whom its just easier to play the sim on an Xbox. They just want the simpler more stream lined experience of playing FS on a console.
From what I can see reading around on social media and general gaming forums most gamers out there who got the sim on Xbox to try out have long since moved on to other things. Some will come back infrequently to dabble in it but really not many. Gamers move on very quickly, there’s just too much distraction out there with things jostling for their attention. Lots of people I know who are general gamers got the sim on Xbox, thought it was pretty interesting for about a week or so and then never touched it again. I bet you anything thats a very similar story across the whole Xbox gamer community.
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The weather is broken for everybody and there are a lot of big airports that are either outdated or outright broken or not in the game.
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No disagreement here. It’s a platform designed for 3rd parties to build up on.
The issue is that instead of solid concrete, they built the platform poorly, in a rush, and on soft ground. The more weight is put on it, the more imbalanced and unsteady it becomes.
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Well, I wouldn’t put it that harshly. Compared to a lot of software I have been forced to use at work, MSFS is quite good actually. Could be better of course, but I still have the impression they are working on it and genuinely care that the bugs get ironed out. Problem with large organisations like Microsoft is: they have a plan, and a plan must be followed or heads start rolling. I’ve seen that several times over the past decades with many promising games which were rushed out, and all got the boot from the publisher after a year or so even though they had (and some still have) a great community.
Exactly this. I have no doubt the Asobo team deeply care. Ditto for the MSFS team at MS. However, they’re not the ones calling the shots. Those decisions are made by the marketing and financial folks. They have a long-term plan for MSFS, when paid DLC is being released, when milestones are reached, etc. Jorg gets briefed on what WILL happen by his bosses, and then hands down the marching orders to Asobo and partners. Those plans are strict and inflexible. Launch now, regardless of the state of the software to get peoples’ money and fix it later. Only later never comes, because they end up having a new schedule to follow. And that’s why the foundation is so shaky atm.
In my nearly 30 years experience in software dev, massive failure or horribly broken software launches are always due to management interference and wanting something launched in time for their projections vs when it’s actually ready.
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Silly post. It’s main premise, that the game is increasingly arcade-like because most default planes are not study-level, isn’t even logical.
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Default planes of simulators are never study level, the add-ons make it realistic.
The arcade features, which are optional anyway will only attract more people to the hobby.
They do have to fix a lot of bugs and complete the SDK to make some things possible but i think they are working on it.
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