Hi everyone.
I wanted to start a discussion. What do you think was the bottleneck that we’ve waited almost two years to see some add-ons to be released.
I mean we had seen some add-ons but PMDG 737 was released recently as well as Fenix. We see GSX has also been released recently but it took almost two years for us to see them.
Was the problem SDK? Or instable sim performance?
Just curious about your opinions.
Best
Well, stuff takes time. You don’t just simply snap your fingers and create an airplane. The more complicated and involved the add-on, the longer it takes to create it. Also many creators have other things they are developing, for this sim as well as others.
The visual quality. Older flight sims seem to have Nintendo64 game graphics compared to Flight Sim 20, that´s why all third party developers had to seriously ramp up their cockpit quality, cockpit realism, and the overall graphics quality also on the outside of the airplane.
And of course the complex systems in airliners. That Fenix with all the electric systems and the hydraulics and pneumatics - pheeeew that´s some intense coding and hundreds of pages of program code to bring realism that far, and bring her to life!
Any Simulation I’ve ever encountered that includes modding support for the community takes time to get going, as seen here and with other genres you get that initial rush of quick & nasty conversions then the real quality stuff comes later.
other than in ‘the Matrix’ no one can just wake up from a nap a full fledged ninja assassin - takes time and effort and lots of both
Creating visuals is one thing. Designing the mathematical model behaivng like real airplane is completely different ball game.
I often wonder myself how can someone other than airspace engineer who actually is part of the team responsible for design and/or maitnance of said aircraft or aviation inspector, how anyone else can obtain detailed enough data necessary to create such model. Must be something I am not aware of existing, like open source math models of generic cruiseliner that can be tweaked to fit particular aircrafl make/model. Still, hard to imagine mafh model would actually reflect the real airplane. Unless developed with effort mentioned above.
My 5 cents from seasoned engineer.
It’s intesting that people still act like this sort of thing is new. Even going from one version to another (FS2004 to FSX) took years for top quality Add-Ons to go over. It took FSX at least just as long to finally get going and “replace” FS2004.
And this is not going from FS2004 to FSX. This is like going from FS5 to FSX. In fact there is less time from FS5 to FSX than FSX to this one.
The Fenix A320 released barely three years after MSFS was even announced. Granted they already had tools to play with. It’s still some impressive pace there. So if anything Add-Ons are releasing quicker than usual.
To be honest, all the visual quality is most probably done by the fantastic MSFS engine.
The same high-fidelity add-ons for X-Plane also has 4k textures and 1 GB in total size. The modelling quality is to be honest, is not too far off in terms of details. Welp, most XP airliners are even more detailed with their own explorable virtual cabins, openable cockpit windows & doors and such.
Model behaviour / flight dynamics is probably the second thing, as each simulator treat aerodynamics differently. Old MSFS uses data tables, which can be easily compared with technical data, but the 2020 one uses a “modern” X-Plane-like blade element simulation. I think most ambitious developers would try their best to take advantage of this new model, which could prove to be challenging.
Another plausible thing as has been shared by PMDG last year, is the very limited SDK, which probably didn’t allow as much customisation as a lot of developers would like to have. In the past, developers can just develop their own separate modules, simulate their systems outside the MSFS and interfaced using FSUIPC. They don’t need to wait for MSFS / Aces Studio to open / decrypt the MSFS simulation module for them to tweak over, because there were hardly any simulation modules in the previous generations of MSFS default engine.
It takes a lot of time to develop a quality add-on.
Some companies release products when they are half done and some can afford to wait until they are 95%+ done.
The initial feedback often reflects where the product is on that spectrum. Unfortunately, the reputation a company forms during those initial few days will follow them for a long time even if they fix the issues and deliver a great product a bit farther down the line.
This is why we’ve seen a lot of sh**ty add-ons in the first year and then it got better the 2nd year and it will be better the 3rd year.
P.S. The lack of a well documented SDK also plays a role. But companies who persevere and figure stuff out sill find ways to do it. Fenix is a great example of that.
The SDK was probably the biggest culprit. It took almost a year before it reached a stage that was really suitable for more complex 3rd party add-ons and what many would consider to be basic stuff added to it. It’s still very much a work in progress, but it’s a huge improvement now. The SDK will just get better with time.
So this definitely delayed the more complex planes like the PMDG 737 and Fenix Airbus series, and likely prevented them from being built earlier. These planes take a ridiculously long time to build even when everything they need is there. The SDK is the foundation on which all these complex add ons are built. It’s hard to build the building when the foundation isn’t complete.
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