So I watched the recent twitch stream from last night I believe and the latest news on development within the sim. Is it Jorg I think so but not sure, sorry Jorg if I’ve got your name wrong.
Anyway there was something that was said that caught my attention. The ATR and its recent release, lots of criticism on fidelity in the forums and probably unjustified but I won’t go into that here. That is not the purpose of this post, so please refrain from criticising the product here if you can. I think there is a more important point to bring to light.
He mentioned that the manufacturer of this particular aircraft didn’t want certain systems to be modelled. And that had me asking questions of fidelity and that if the manufacturer defines what the developer can develop then what will be of the future of the sim?
I get the legalities and the confidentialities and all the corporate tickle tackle that I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever. Leave that for lawyers and accountants. Disclaimer over.
I suspect the road ahead might be one of certification granted to certain fortunates who can obtain the necessaries to even be able to develop certain aircraft. What does this mean in terms of fidelity? What does this mean for the smaller developer? Is a licence going to be required down the road at a cost to develop aircraft for MSFS? And if so can it be that free trade will be encouraged in the marketplace or will it be monopolised by the bigger budgets?
You see I look at it this way as a consumer, I want full fidelity aircraft to fly. I do not mind at all paying top dollar for hard work and fidelity but I will not pay for mediocrity and certification and the above scenario will likely become the latter.
At that point I will no longer be a consumer and most likely check out and fly irl only.
What’s your thoughts on this matter? I know it’s the elephant in the room but…
But a failure is a failure and usually unexpected. It is in no way indicative to the manufacturing providing it is done to spec. Also it’s extremely rare, a failure that is. They all have to abide by certain standards and operate within the law so maybe I’m missing something here?
The system IS modelled, it just isn’t modelled to fail…
This is up to the manufacturer of the aircraft that is being built / licensed from. How some can do it and others cant? I guess that’s manufacturer dependent or if the developer just does it on their own.
Obviously an organization like Microsoft can’t just go throwing stuff in as it leaves them liable.
But if I just make my own Cessna 172 and model an engine failure, doubt anyone is going to come after me. If I even went and got the license to do it in the first place.
But back to your original post stating that a system wasn’t modelled, I don’t believe that is true, it’s all there, just not modelled to fail.
So maybe that’s more your question? Why do some systems have failures and others don’t? That was also answered during the Q&A, manufacturers wishes.
It’s a reputational risk they’re guarding against. And each manufacturer has a different risk appetite for that.
Edited to add: also operational risk associated with underlying systems intellectually owned by other manufacturers, and how they integrate those systems. It’s not just about secrets, it’s also to protect against potential litigation should a real world incident occur, and it directly involves a component owned by someone else, and how they chose to integrate that component.
In general, if the potential downsides/risks outweigh any good public relations benefits/branding, or if they feel they don’t have sufficient control of how their product is portrayed, licensing is usually denied.
Liable for what? And on what grounds? It’s a simulation nobody is going to lose their life crashing a virtual plane into a mountain. Am I going to sue Microsoft or manufacturer for the emotional distress of not modelling the failure system correctly. I mean comon it’s ridiculous, not you as I appreciate you trying to shed light on the matter but the situation.
I’d get laughed out of court it’s absurd. This is the purpose of my post in that the absurdity of legality from a simulator that does no real harm to anybody who is in a sound state of mind.
Is this absurdity leading to paying for access to develop aircraft? And of course the outcome of that on smaller devs.
A license from the manufacturer to use an aircraft manufacturer’s aircraft and likeness has always been legally required. The vast majority (there are some exceptions) of addon developers have never asked for such a license and instead opted to develop aircraft anyway, and most (but not all, Gulfstream has historically sent cease and desists, for example) manufacturers see this as trying to get blood from a stone; these companies are too small to really litigate against and so traditionally look the other way.
For someone large like MS, obviously operating without licensing is a horrible (and potentially litigiously expensive) idea. For the remainder of the addon market, I expect it will continue to mostly operate in gray and/or dubious legal territory simply because the economics dictate it, from both sides.
However I don’t see any real world event that should happen, using MSFS to support a legal case. Lawyers look here!!
The intricacies in the coding alone would make it laughable. However I do appreciate your response.
You didn’t make the rules and neither did I, but my original post is how it will affect the sim when we take these matters into account. In terms of fidelity of course and how that affects smaller developers.
Accuracy, ergonomics and “look and feel” can always be obfuscated and enabled by code. As I often tell folks, for USD120 which is around what I paid for the Prem-Dlux license, I’m not getting a Level D simulator, which is what the average person on the street “conflates” to what they expect the out of the box experience to be.
Suffice it to say, as a student pilot myself, I’m probably getting 80 percent of what would happen jumping into an average flight school trainer plane, which is the only RL experience I can confidently equate to. The rest requires a level of fidelity, including physical modeling like a full motion base, that is obviously not within scope or reach. As always, Your Mileage May Vary (R).
Certainly don’t take what I said as an endorsement of the historical status quo. I think, on the whole, that having manufacturers involved is by and large a huge net benefit to the ecosystem. There’s only so far that the FCOM and a few pilots can take you; talking directly to engineers is far more insightful and can enable you to build far more personality into the plane. Also, manufacturers generally don’t like their representative product to be junk, so that weeds out folks that would otherwise slap something together.
Failures are nice and all, but hardly a requirement. Very few simmers will ever use them, and every real life pilot absolutely rolls their eyes when talking about a sim with failures; yes, handling failures is a part of piloting, but it is a tiny, vanishingly small part of a daily pilot’s life.
Good points and yes I agree with everything you said.
However the purpose of my post is litigation to develop, and the possibility of that excluding lesser budgeted talent from producing high fidelity addons.
Well, I do not see an Elephant in the room at all… If the Mfg. does not want some systems modelled for this MSFS, I would ask, what systems ? Really ?? Did they really say that… Do you not want your plane in the sim at all ? Are we talking random engine failure choices, Navigation systems failures… Really ? What the heck would a mfg. object to ? We can always “simulate” engine failures by flipping a switch… or flipping a switch on a nav radio and the list goes on an on… They model simulated failures on our motion sims all the time… My goodness, this is Flight Simulation GAME !
Not to make your point for you, but the obvious example to fidelity and manufacturer permission:
How did Beechcraft/Raytheon agree to the King Air having a G3X? And MS/Asobo had a ProLine already modeled in the CJ4 at the same time which would have been the correct avionics fit for the turboprop twin.
Not to be that guy.
But many have asked that question in the past, I don’t think you’ll get an authoritative answer.
The Elephant in the room is the smaller devs being pushed aside and bigger corps monopolising the market. Where that ties into my original question is one of which what does that mean in terms of fidelity? Licensing and approval costs money if you are going to develop legally. But if you ‘meridian’ decided to make planes for MSFS I would want you to be able to.
You see I like to encourage talent and if a market is free and open for access then good things happen. If it is closed then maybe not the case.
Well, it means nothing from my point of view. Microsoft wants to label their products as being officially licensed by a manufacturer (in this case ATR) and also the other way around (as Microsoft being a big player in general) as it’s also an aspect for marketing of a product.
The “small” devs usually won’t go this far. They create their products usually without bothering the manufacturer and use whatever documents are available in public (POHs) or rely on insiders (pilots/mechanics). The only thing they have to ask the manufacturer for is licenses for branding of the aircraft, and that since the sim released if I’m correct here.
The bigger devs like PMDG have got other licensing models and cooperations in place for years, they got likely access to more in depth technical documents from their history as they create also products for the B2B market. In the end it’s more easy for them to create a high fidelity product but they also pay a price for this
Yep, I think the stats on failures usage must be pretty tiny. Even the PMDG’s etc must have low usage of those features, as simmers want stuff to work and things to go wrong because of stuff they do and not RND. There’s probably a market for it but can’t be big, intuitively.
Real life pilots, at least the commercial ones (in my experience) tend to get really prickly if you point out failures don’t happen much anymore - a lot of them basically see 95% of their job being about contingency and emergency procedure/management. I’ve done sit-along check rides in level D’s that left me a nervous mess, with failures flipped on by a devil in a booth and it cements I’m happy with ‘entertainment software’ fun on types that’s two seater complex.
What’s the saying… “An aircraft may disappoint a good pilot, but it won’t surprise him.“
Yeh I understand that but as a consumer I want fidelity. The way I see that being healthy is an open market, and access to the market for new developers. I have no interest in the legality of such matters.
You keep saying that but as was stated multiple times in this thread, when the parties involved are large corporations with large IPs, it’s all about laws and contracts. That’s how it is, has always been and will always be. No offense, but none of them really worry about what Mr. DaveTheBrick69 considers a litigable issue or not.
Conversely, small devs always operate in a grey zone and that will continue, nothing has changed. There are no new factors constricting the market.
