And make happy the most is a massive human project 
You dont need ortho’s for XP, this is a massive false hood especially if flying Airliners. Now you can scream FeniX, A320NX that’s all great, but what everyone forgets is the actual Flight model as well. And for sure while the Fenix will more than likely be A320 perfection, it wont have the flight model of anything in XP. So it is horses for courses. I complain about MSFS, because it I want it to be the number 1 sim…ASOBO however seem to drag it out!
All you need is:
SFD Global - Not free but not bank breaking,
And the Free X series stuff (https://simheaven.com/simdownloads/x-europe-5/)
If you write off X-Plane because you think it looks garbage, then you should be writing off MSFS because it flies garbage, has Garbage systems and very incomplete systems, although the latest NXI is really taking things to the next level.
None of these are Ortho, and while it is not close to MSFS, its not bad.
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No, it’s really bad. XP looks like a cartoon at low altitude. It’s graphics technology from 10 years ago. The lighting is off, the trees are 2D. That is my opinion of your pictures. Now I know that in the latest XP preview video, LR is showing better lighting and 3D trees, so at least Austin has figured out what the priorities are for XP.
Even if XP gets 3D trees and the lighting is better so that it closes the gap with MSFS, I don’t want to pay for extra add-ons to enhance the graphics. And I don’t want to download TBs of ortho, processing that ortho, and buy a separate hard drive to store that ortho.
Why can’t XP stream satellite/photogrammetry data like MSFS, with a company like Blackshark AI to convert the satellite data to 3D buildings? Streaming satellite/photogrammetry data is the future. I want the landmarks, roads, buildings, houses, geography, etc, to reflect real life. I don’t want autogenerated stuff because it’s not real.
Do you want to Simulate flight? or at the moment low ball flight simulation with HiDef sight seeing? I guess that’s the question you need to answer. Austin has Cleary said its not going to happen, He does not have the resources of MS or ASOBO to do it, so best you stick with MSFS I guess and hope they sort it out.
The next X-Plane will have the latest OSM Data, with pretty much the same system, but much better looking as I understand it.
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So when it comes to simulating flight, MSFS does a really good job. A lot of real life GA pilots have said for example, the Cessna 152 and Cessna 172 fly very well in MSFS. Working Title is advancing the G1000 NXi so it’s getting better and better. For airliners, the Fenix A320 could potentially be the most complex and high fidelity airliner to ever be made for a home market flight simulator (we will see though when it’s released if it really is that high fidelity).
To be honest, XP’s main advantage against MSFS are the number of planes and high fidelity airliners that MSFS doesn’t have yet. But with the PMDG 737 and Fenix A320 coming out, it will signal more and more high fidelity airliners showing up in MSFS so XP will lose that advantage.
As for streaming real time satellite/photogrammetry, plus hiring a company like Blackshark AI to convert the satellite data to 3D buildings, I understand that Austin doesn’t have the money or resources to do it. But I think that’s important because satellite/photogrammetry is trying to reproduce all the geography and landmarks of the real world. I believe the satellite/photogrammetry we have in MSFS now is only the start - it will get more and more sophisticated over the next several years.
As the Other Jean-Luc’s character would say:
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Agree on some things, not on others. But what is clear and what I feel we can both Agree on is we are rooting for MSFS to become the best it can be,
I think the Matts/WT/ASOBO NXI Flight plan code should be the default code 100% its amazing, next level compared to the default.
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Matt I appreciate that. But please understand you have put all this effort in because quite frankly the default stuff was awful.
I have invested a lot of time and money into this SIM as have others. It has only been the work of you WT and flyby wire and PMS that has made and real progress in the avionics department of the SIM which are highly important.
As I have said above your nxi is amazing, but it should of been at this level from the start, not your fault.
So please forgive me for sounding ungrateful or non appreciative of your work, as that is not the case. However you are now part of the SIM and thank god you are, “Heavy lays the crown” as they say.
I do understand what it takes, but also understand where we are coming from as user’s of the SIM… Some of us don’t always feel appreciated too and let down, and stuff gets half fixed then left and that is the case of late… and sadly it is often really important stuff, so be it…but still its frustrating. On the subject of being realistic, I feel its a bit of a one way street at the moment or has been, with us having to be realistic with all that has gone on, but you know that could be argued until dawn and its old ground, but again I do feel it should be taken on board.
My apologies for any offence. Please continue the hard work and I can hand on heart say I do appreciate all the work done and time…despite my complaints. I am just hoping you and the team are given the time to do it. The NXI is next level I had 3 flights in it now, and even the level it is now, it is probably better than other stuff we shall not name (other sims).
Wow now MS/Asobo are making judgement calls on the legal stance of Dev’s they have no association with nor are privy to any agreements they have?
I think they should be prioritizing fixing the multitude of issues in the sim and their ridiculous update process which does its best to dissuade users from wanting to stay involved rather than sticking their nose into other companies business.
It seems they have no issue with other GTN’s in MSFS which are very clearly breaches of Garmins patent and they are charging for a barely functional unit and thats “ok”.
I see double standards written all over this and i also see “selective” vision at play with numerous addons skating along on very thin legal ice they are happy to admit.
RXP whom i have no association with except being a very happy customer for quite a few years in both XP and P3D have always been extremely upstanding supporting their product at every turn. This is a lot more than 75% of sim devs including some in the marketplace and some not.
The entire concept of accusing a professional software developer of a legal breach is one of the most silly things ive seen any software developer do in many years.
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And accusing publicly !
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Especially now, that RXP has released an add-on for FS2020…
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I may also add my thoughts as a Pilot, Avionics Enginees & Software Engineer,
RXP 430/530 is an outstanding Product, it is way better thant I can image the MSFS build-in ever will be. From my software engineer perspective I totally understand, that most customers of MSFS are satisfied on whatever a GNS430 simulation is build in. For the “some” people who are interested in a real 1:1 sumulation will not justify the time and money to spend to build such a solution. Understood and accepted.
Now my view as a Pilot: In Flight Training, we called the GNS430 the “Glücksrad” (or I guess “wheel of fortune” is the US name for it) as the user interface of that device is, lets call it “advanced”. There is the stand alone Garmin Trainer, where you think you understood everything, but since I had the RXP integration with an Flight Simulator and especially it’s Autopilot, the real training effect “kicked in”. My IFR-Flights and checkrides advanced ultimatively, because I could start really train on the Flight Simulator. So I am willing to pay a 3rd Party, to have the original Garmin Simulator integrated into FS.
Now speaking about the word “Simulator” I come to my Avionics Egnineer personality:
In aviation there are standards like the ARINC 429, which defiens how devices communikate, like APIs. And there are even more Standards, just to enable to have Avionics interchangeable. As I could for example replace my (real world) GNS430W by an Avidyne IFD440 by sliding out the old unit and putting the new one in.
Another point form reality: Specialy (but definetly not limited to) in General Aviation, I guess most of the Panels have some sort of modification regarding avionics. And I want to have the ability to get my Flightdeck in FS as close as possible to real avionic setups. Now I am flying a lot of Turbo Arrow. Thankfully there is now one for MSFS, but I am missing an availibility to buy a 3rd Party Aspen EFD1000 and integrate it, I cannot use the RXP GNS430, I cannot use the current build in GNS430 as it is, sorry to say, so bad implemented, that it has more a negative training effect than a positive one.
And this is what I would like to see from a Flight “Simulator”:
- To have the ability to add (3rd Party) Avionics that can control other avionics, like it could in real world.
- I woult like to have (3rdParty) 3D-Gauges to be added to Cockpits, like in real world (and as it was possible with 2D Panels back then in old FMS) (I know that would require Cockpit Models to maybe deliver “clean panels”)
I understand the idea of having the MSFS closed in a sandbox. But, from personal experience, I think it is very important to review the desing and archtiecture, espcially in an agile development, from time to time, to ensure if it sill the right thing. And to reflect, if the “not invented here syndrome” drives already a protectionism against 3rd party.
So please, please Asobo, enable the writing functionality to avionics. Maybe add a new layer in between the own simulation of avionics and the display functions, so that if required, they could be bypassed. I thins @CptLucky8 has sutiable ideas. If the Autopilot is the issue, maybe make it modular and overwritable? Maybe comunity ord 3rd party can present Autopilot solutions.
So enough from my side, sadly starting now my old P3D to thave RXP to prepare for my next IFR checkride…
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You raise a lot of very good points. I believe @CptLucky8 has talked quite a number of times about the need of addons to be more modular and play well with other addons. Maybe if Microsobo would have been in contact with him from the start, today we would have had modular cockpits where you can plug any module you find on flightsim.to, for example, and it would simply work, like in real life.
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So, at first, as I thought about this, I was imagining needing access to the whole 3D model, and that’s not going to happen. But, in actuality, this isn’t so. Just like there is an Interior and Exterior model, a standard could be created for having an additional “Panel” model within a plane, that could be swapped out for multiple configurations created by users and/or 3rd Parties.
Now, I could imagine 3rd party authors might not like this, as, a lot of work goes into making a consistent interior model, with PBR textures, etc., and this would break if portions of their panel could be replaced. But let’s put that aside for a moment, as, these panel models could actually become revenue streams for developers. They sell a plane with a standard panel, but, design it similar to a cockpit panel is laid out today, a six pack area that could be pulled out and a standard sized MFD put in it’s place, or each slot could get a new instrument, a blank radio stack that could be stacked with multiple components, a right panel area that comes set up to be replaced with different models.
Or maybe 3rd party vendors sell the instrument panel bezel for their plane for a price, including the 3D model source for the panel, and allow people to cut it up at will for whatever instruments they want to put in it.
Now, FSX used to have this, probably still does, I remember you could buy individual avionics for panels, back in the 2D panel days, that could be slid into place, and, with the right hooks in the code, you could build a panel. Granted, this could get expensive for users, as they pick and choose components, but, my bet is @DebtlessPanda97 would pay whatever it takes to build his panel. It’s not going to come close to likely even 3% of the $30,000 or maybe lots more his current panel costs. Maybe $1000 fully outfitted for a software based 3D modeled set of avionics for his panel?
With the right thinking and behind the scenes support through the SDK, this could be totally doable, for many aircraft. Just like people do in real aircraft today.
Of course, this would require a super robost setup on Asobo’s part for integrating avionics systems, but, I bet a lot of that’s already there?
As Matt said above, he’s working with 5 other people, getting paid full-time, and have invested already 3000 hours working on the one NXi gauge. Just to give you a picture of what it takes to develop this stuff. That’s one gauge. Granted, it’s multi-function. But, still. But, I’m sure there’s people out there who’d love to start developing 3D gauges if they could find a market for it, and an implementation that allows them to be applied to multiple planes.
But, let’s reiterate here, an Aspen EFD1000 is probably looking at 2 years of development time for a team of developers, to put it in perspective. There’s going to have to be quite a market out there to support that.
A little bit more technical reason, why the RXP products, as currently constituted, cannot be implemented in MSFS at this time. Although Matt has already answerd this, maybe it’s still not clear to you?
The RXP gauge sets require the related Garmin Trainer programs to be running outside of MSFS, and then he writes further code which displays the output of the trainer in the cockpit of the aircraft and sends data/commands back and forth between the two programs.
Back in the day, he learned a long time ago, how to hack into the various FS products, which he had to do in order to get the graphics performance necessary to display the gauge output within the cockpit. In MSFS, this programming would have to be replaced with a C++/WASM programming layer, which is a standard that MS/Asobo has chosen for programs that interact with MSFS. In other words, now there’s a layer he’s going to have to communicate through that he didn’t have before. Hopefully he’d be able to get the performance required using these tools. Unfortunately, I do know that the WASM standard as implemented for MSFS currently has some, let’s say, inadequacies, that are annoying a lot of developers. I don’t understand them, but I know there are issues.
But, more importantly, no, MS will not allow other programs like the Garmin Trainers interact with MSFS. So, I think that pretty much kills it right there for being sold on the Marketplace in its current form. Which is a paraphrase of what Matt said above. And it’s not about legal issues. It’s about system security. Any time you allow a program from the outside to interact with your program, you’ve opened up a security risk. Pure and simple. This is not happening on Xbox, period. I don’t know how many times Matt has to repeat this.
But, folks, let’s take a step back. Business relationships, no matter how well intentioned, take a lotttt of time and work to come to fruition. Matt and Jean-Luc are communicating, MS/Asobo are aware of Jean-Luc, the process has begun for Jean-Luc to sell an idea(s) to MS/Asobo, and for MS/Asobo and Jean-Luc to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. It’s not going to be done by tomorrow, if ever. But, it’s certainly not going to be discussed here any further. At least, not until it’s done. And the result of that will likely be a press release.
This thread has completely fulfilled its purpose, and, now it’s up to the parties involved to decide whether they want to work together and produce something.
Hopefully I haven’t written too many inaccuracies in my interpretation of the state of affairs here. Sorry it took so many words.
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That’s the whole point Geoff. Essentially, the panel object described above is a 3D model. And the gauges to be sold would be 3D model gauges. Is there a limit on the number of models that make up a plane? If there is, there doesn’t have to be. My bet is there isn’t, but, I haven’t studied.
And, yes, it would depend on coordination between the plane modeler and the layout of the spaces these models go in. Either, the author sells the panel model, which would provide the source for the panel model, or they define the shape of the opening and coordinates that would be available for models to slip in.
I would think of the second one. Like today with the SDK (from my understanding) there is the scenery editor, where you can place any 3D Object in the world, attached to the world. We would “just” need such an editor for the aircraft model (interior and exterior) to attach 3D Objects to an aircraft, as you maybe want also to attach antennas/radomes on the aircraft (like the current Just Flight Piper: Having a dual GPS530/430 setup in the cockpit, but the corresponding GPS antennas are missing).
Looking at Flyinside, they got it manged in P3D in VR Mode (and I guess also in the FSX) to place pop up windows (which also can be 2D Panels) anywhere any direction in the Cockpit:
https://flyinside-fsx.com/Features/VirtualWindows
So just like that: placing 3D Objects which are being able to render gauges.
Now if we look at instruments like the Aspen or the G5 or any other Glass-InRepleacement-Stuff: they have acutally quite some depth on the panel and could be already easily be placed over existing panels, in front of existing instrumentes. Even with a GI275 the display plane would just need to be a bit in front of the old instrument, et voila, panel upgrade without any involvement from the aircraft model vendor. Now if the vendor also delivers a “clean” radiostack: again the JF Arrow as an example: you can select between differen GPS/Comm models, so their basic cockpit model must already have a clean stack, where they put their stuff on. So just make that state accessable. Effort for the aircraft vendor so far: propably a lower two digit hour count. Effect for Cockpit customization: I guess nearly 90% of most interesting modifcations could be already coverd with that.
Now if the panel would be setup as previously the 2D panels where done: There is a cockpit panel with standard instrument cutous, and the vendor places his own 3D Gauges configurable inside. If you want to modify: change configuration. That would be a ~99% percent solution.
I am really more into thinking to have the cockpit model nearly as is, and just add dynamically 3D Objects like during runtime.
Quiet, yes: As an example: an hour on a PA44 with Flight Instructor is around 800€. Back then, I spend at RXP ~120€, $50 for P3D and 20€ for a PA44 Model. Once. So with a fraction of the cost of an flight hour, I could spend hours getting familiar with the wheel of fortune and especially in combination with an STEC autopilot and did not waste any time on that stuff later on the aircraft.
Now that is what I call as business case. And that is, what I want to call a “Simulator” for.
If you make a complete 1:1 replica: definetely. And that is whay I don’t see it coming from Asobo. As I don’t see a good GNS430 from them. But you could start with just the E5 functionality, and go one from there.
And community can be strrong, as the FlybyWire A320. Or just as @N6722C : he already modified the transponder display, now he just would need to create a 3D Model or find somebody on flightsim.to or github doeing that.
Would that approach break the vendors intention of the consistent interior model? Most likely. Will it hurt? That should be a decision of the customer/user. Personally: It hurts me more, to have a nice, integrated looking stone-age Audio Select Panel and a Transponder that is not usable anymore in Germany, than even having a not integrated-looking, but full working 2D Panel of a GTX330. And in real live the devices are also NTSC: Never the same color.
I don’t need it on the store. And there should be no need to be on the store. RXP wasn’t on the P3D oder FSX store.
Then make a safe interface. Maybe add REST/websockets, to have ethernet and be already able to connect Tablets and devices. But there is already one: Simconnect, where your external application can manipulate stuff, like frequenceys lights and stuff. But not VOR/HSI deflection and autopilot stuff. And I think that was the main issue in this topic. If it would be just the display issue within the Sim: I would totaly be happy if the trainer runs outside in a separate window, as I always have the RXP GNS on my second screen. Especially this GNS: I don’t need them displayed in the Virtual Cockpit, as controlling them is quiet hard compared having them permanent as 2D panel on a second screen. But I need them to manipulate the VOR/HSI and controlling the autopilot in NAV mode.
Being able to control the COMs externaly, but not the VOR/HSI/AP is not a security topic, from my point of view.
Nevertheless, the MSFS is great, nice graphics with good performance. But I want from the Simulator to do that, what I could do before in previsous Sims, maybe more and in a better way than it needed to be take place in the past.
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Why is this still not a thing? Asobo is really working hard to pre-sell Xplane 12 something fierce with this attitude.
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Or working hard to finish G1000 and start a GTN 
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Clearly what RXP needs to do is just make a lousy garbage plane like Bredock3D’s hideous 737 MAX then they’ll be able to get in the marketplace as a fully fledged Marketplace Developer like Bredock3D.
Backdoor your way in with shovelware! The Casuals will seemingly buy ANYTHING, so it’s Win/Win!
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