Are the developers of Local Legends and other aircraft purchased through Marketplace in 2020 actually being held accountable for fixing them or are we just at the mercy of the developer?
My list (just venting!):
Carenado - Beechcraft Model 18, D17 Staggerwing
Aeroplane Heaven - Boeing 307 Stratoliner, Curtiss C-46 Commando, Ford 4-AT Trimotor
Inibuilds - Bell 47J-2, Short SC.7 Skyvan
Blackbox Simulation - Britten Norman BN-2 Islander
I doubt it, some of the 3rd party payware providers have been excellent, there are others who seem to be in total radio silence. There are a number of suppliers that I will never purchase from again.
I’d assume you’re at the mercy of the developer. No developer is required to make their FS2020 addons FS2024 compatible. But most are that I’m aware of. More importantly maybe, some devs haven’t even been able to update this yet. Notably, Got Friends as of yesterday still doesn’t have the ability to mark their addons as compatible (even if they already are) and they’re a dev who works very closely with Asobo, so I assume many other devs have not been given access to this system yet.
The Local Legends and Famous Flyers are the responsibility of Microsoft to make them compatible with 2024 and I think they must surely be under some sort of obligation to get these working properly in the sim as they come as part of the Aviator Edition.
Outside of this, independent developers are under no obligation to make a 2020 aircraft work in 2024 as it’s a different sim. However I’d say that’s pretty poor business practice if a dev decided to effectively abandon a product.
Out of the rest of the list, at least PMDG seem intent in bringing the DC6 to 2024.
They are all made by third party. That party has no obligation to update them I should think. They were contracted to make them for 2020 and that’s done.
But I would assume MS will pay them to do that at some point (if they’re interested), but I wouldn’t expect that any time real soon. MS/Asobo is too busy trying to make the sim work properly at the moment - half the default aircraft have problems - and the third parties are busy trying to get the other addons up-to-date.
Indeed they are made by third-party devs - for Microsoft. They’re Microsoft planes so it’s up to Microsoft to get them fixed. If they have to pay the original devs who made them to update them then so be it.
We, the customers, are caught in the middle of this. It’s not great
And it should have been done BEFORE the launch. Esp since they were asking $70USD more for the Aviator version. Not a single one of the aircraft in there are 2024 appropriate. Some issues are being fixed and that’s good. My beloved v35 works great now, so I’m happy about that. But initially it had some issues - can’t quite recall what…
Because they sold these aircraft, I feel MS is somewhat obligated to at least make sure they work to 2020 standards - and maybe most do by this point. I don’t have all of them, and haven’t tested all I do have, but I definitely have run into problems.
Only if they were specifically contracted by Microsoft and that support was written into the contract. Simply selling what others make does not offer any guarantees though I’m sure Microsoft makes sure that the product is usable at the start at least. Their definition of “usable” will often be different to ours because many of us can’t even define “usable”.
Obviously, the vast majority of marketplace content is not in that category. So it is buyer beware and why most of us do a search on a product first or wait for reviews.
If you try them despite the “warning”, you will find that they work despite not having been “developer approved”.
I can vouch for:
all these are from Microsoft, not their developers:
Carenado - Beechcraft Model 18
Aeroplane Heaven - Boeing 307 Stratoliner
Ford 4-AT Trimotor
Orbx - DHC-4 Caribou
and finally
PMDG - Douglas DC-6
which for me, with the default livery appears to be perfect.
As ever, YMMV, but trying them is perhaps more constructive than complaining about developers who have, in the main, sold the rights to the aircraft to Microsoft and are not allowed to update them.
(Apologies for the bold text, I can’t seem to get rid of it.)
Moderator edit: Removed the bolding from the text.
In this context not being developer approved does not mean developer unapproved. They may just not have gotten around to doing it, or have no plans to. If you find it works, then great.
But its worth keeping a note of who these developers are, and let that factor in to your future purchasing decisions.
Just turn them all on. Most will work, but most will have some issues, from liveries not displaying properly, to certain instruments not functioning or being able to be bound to the control scheme. Most of them didn’t work 100% in MSFS 2020 either, so I operate a policy of working around the bugs and hoping for a fix some time down the line!
I lost many of my faves with SU1
my beloved mu-2 (yeah i know… i like it anyway) worked pretty decently in 2024, in my opinion.. and now its goooone
i want it back
The MU-2 is still there for me post-SU1, though I own the Aviator’s Edition and I know some of that ownership has been different despite the aircraft being identical. Have you checked My Library to see if it’s there but just disabled?
No, I believe it’s an issue with it being an individual purchase vs ownership through the 2024 Aviator Edition, which is obviously very silly as they’re the same plane.
The only ones you actually CANNOT install are ones with red text there that says “Not available”. I only have 2 items like that. The Blackbird C310R and the extra pack of Comanche liveries I bought (official ones).
But as others have said there are mixed results with exciting and interesting problems to discover in many of the others that can be enabled, even official ones you get in Aviators Editions. Shorts Skyvan animations are broken and only 1 engine works so it’s unflyable for example. Not good at all.
You’d think they are obliged to get them fixed but even if MS pay the original teams (if they are still around), it still comes down to time. When will they be free to do it?
With the total lack of most developers main income stream for nearly half a year now, will they even be able to survive? Or are they working on getting new products ready to hopefully get some cash once they are finally “allowed” to sell them. Their focus being on that, not fixing older aircraft.
