This was a good and honest review! What I needed to make a decision to buy or not.
Thank you!
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Most definitely 5 likes if we could !
This is a bit like getting a whole box of Toffee. Sticks in the throat and is a little hard to swallow.
Looks nice in the video! We will see how this plane is going to develop 
Those who had complaints about the autopilot, they’ve apparently changed something in the upcoming patch: AP issues - Manual Flight. Auto Flight - AEROSOFT COMMUNITY SERVICES
Q: "just wondering if you could elaborate on what exactly the update fixes? Is it to do with the engagement of VS mode when already climbing or something else? "
A: “BOTH.”
ROFL … Mathijs Kok is a Man of few words …
No specific mention of the Outbound VOR radial tracking “issue”
Ref Outbound VOR issue (wont track)
I was playing about with this, doing STUPID things, and for some in explainable reason, tried hitting the REV ILS button on the AP !!!
And amazingly it started tracking the OUTBOUND radial correctly !!
Should not do that, but it did
This is probably a BIG Clue as to what t has been coded incorrectly
A VOR is NOT an ILS that has a back course.
Anyway, as a temporary work around, you can track an outbound Radial, if you select REV on the AP !!!
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As I understand it the Flight model of this plane was crafted by an Expert? So I have to ask the question why were default values used? Maybe this has nothing to do with the Flight model but one would of thought than an expert on this level would have tweaked everything? It does seem the modified values made by some or one great person/s seems to make the auto pilot work better!
Just another question that does not sit easy with me.
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the autopilot is not working. Set altitude…use vs…altitude reached…increase speed and altitude hold lost and altitude increases/…same for altitude dercrease. How could they release this product???
BW
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Wow. And that is precisely why I rarely wade into the AVSIM waters. Too many sharks. Makes this forum seem like a bunch of old buddies playing a friendly game of poker.
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Meanwhile, over on the Aerosoft MSFS Twin Otter forum, MK (who tells it like it is) had THIS to say:
"The simple fact is that there will not be a lot of real complex aircraft that run fully inside the sim for some time to come. What we did in FSX and P3D for the Twin Otter Extended would likely be possible but it would be mighty complex and would result in a more expensive product. The Twin Otter Extended started out as a product that was 10 euro/dollar more expensive this one, had less models, a far less extended manual and did not look nearly as good. It simply is a different product, different project definitions. If you take inflation in mind, the new Twin Otter is 13 euro/dollar cheaper.
Let me give a bit more background.
FSX addons stopped selling around 2015 (the release of FSX Steam did boost it and to our surprise, COVID did as well). But we stopped doing FSX add-ons around 2014 because there was simply no market.
P3D add-ons replaced that to a certain degree. But the amount of potential customers was fraction of those we had for FSX. At the best of times there were possible 20.000 users willing to pay for add-onsm on P3D. Now these are rather special customer, they are very much into systems. An only English manual was okay. Support was limited because these customers are pretty educated. This led to add-on around and over 100 dollar/euro. If one of those 20.000 customers wanted your product it did not matter a lot what it cost. But P3D add-on stopped selling in 2019, commercially it is dead as a dodo. Just checked what has been released in 2021. If somebody released a expensive product it came with guaranteed discount for the MSFS version.
MSFS add-on sell like it is 2005 (the previous heyday of FS add-ons). Instead of 20k customers you have 2 million. Sales numbers are simply incomparable. BUT, a big but… you are dealing with a very different kind of customer. Around 20% of CRJ customers did not understand why the flightplan would not be activated (you need to copy if to the active FP). Around the same percentage had problems starting the engines. Around 5% said they wanted their money back because ‘it did not work’ (of course after telling them to check the tutorials that was sorted out). Not a problem at all because sales were so good we were happy to hire more support staff.
So what we end up with is a very different market. A very small high end, who for the largest part is not even considering moving to MSFS (and I think that is a correct decision) from P3D. And a huge market that is just getting into Flightsim and does not have the experience most people on this forum have. The middle bit seems totally missing at this moment and is very hard to get to. That is why most not released DLC you see discussed is either very complex or rather simple. Inside the sim (marketplace / Xbox) or done in a way that makes it impossible to get on the marketplace and Xbox. Now, clearly some things went wrong in this release and we are evaluating that to make sure it is not repeated. We have fixed (or at least to some big degree) all the known issues that are in our control and that update will be around soon.
But the simple fact is that the MSFS Twin Otter is darned close to selling more copy in 5 days than the Twin Otter Extended did in 5 years. That is why every add-on developer dropped P3D. That is why so many decided not to go for complex products but for things customers wanted. Nobody has released a seriously complex add-on for MSFS, nobody knows if there is even a market. Looks at my friends at PMDG, would you have believed four years ago they would release an add-on that uses default gauges? I would not. But I sure understand why they did!
So if people say we go for the money, I would counter that we go for the flight simmers that actually buy our products right now. And yes, we love to sell tens of thousands of products instead of thousands. Do we leave the high end simmers behind in that? I think so. But Aerosoft does not create the market, we make what we believe people will buy. I think there will be super high end add-ons for MSFS at some point. I think there is a market for >100 euro/dollar add-ons when the products are good enough to ask for that price. It is not Aerosofts market (PMDG always provided those products for us) but right now, without access to the massive sales on the marketplace? I would hate to invest half a million in that. Just read Robert Randazzo’s comments in the last few weeks and you see why we decided not to go there. Also read why he decided not to go for high end prices. Where we deliver many variants of an aircraft, PMDG products will be highly focused and you will have to buy other variants (and thus the same systems, base modeling etc). A different way of managing the same problem, high end, high priced products are simply extremely hard at this moment.
While it is clear that as project manager I really want the update that solves most of the issues out, I am super happy about the product. It sells seriously well, I did on release and it did today. The whole team has been working 16 hour days to solve and tests the issues we know about. Should they have been attacked before release? Probably. The issue is that when you are dealing with over a dozen of shops, marketing campaigns, Microsoft Marketplace who has been super kind to give us preferential treatment, ect, planning is not only about bugs that need flattened. Delaying a release at a late moment means very serious consequences. If you are a developer with one product and few sale channels that is simply not an issue. I fondly remember when, I as project manager, could decide on a release date. Now I set one and the moment I do, it is set in concrete.
As said, the update we are testing at this very moment fix most of the open issue we have. The sound set is worked on for four days, autopilot issue has been found etc."
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Well that comes across as utterly self-serving rubbish.
Not one word of actual apology for the state of the product they sold or for the misleading and inaccurate information he himself was spreading to try to deflect blame.
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This statement by MK is interesting. I will keep that in mind. I think that I will remember that every time I want to spend money on MSFS 2020.
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I don’t think they should let MK make public statements…he just digs himself and the company a deeper hole every time he opens his mouth
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MK and Aerosoft must be getting something right?
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That’s very true. They’re obviously raking in the cash on this one. I think this is mainly because of the painfully slow release of decent aircraft for the SIM. Decent twin engine turbo props are especially thin on the ground so this was always going to be a big seller…especially after the way it was hyped up by AS.
Not addressing key issues like sound and a partially working AP though may impact future sales in the long run. I know I will never buy another of their products day 1 again and I’m willing to bet many of the people who bought this one early will feel the same.
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That’s very reasonable and Aerosoft DO understand; hence they are working 16 hour days - over the weekend too - to get a hotfix out for us.
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Well that was a pretty big Bus that he just threw MSFS under for serious simmers! I just dont know any more. I feel like there is a huge amount of misinformation going around and I want to get to the bottom of it so I can decide what hand to play. I am done feeding multiple sims, but this has helped if his assessment is accurate…and that is ok. If that’s the direction MSFS wants to go in then that’s all good, but it wont be for me.
It is interesting that he said he is going where the money is, and it is obvious that is not simmers like me! even though I keep buying everything and being disappointed well mostly at the systems and sloppy bugs.
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As I said, MK tells it like it is and the cold fact is that P3D is there for serious simmers and developers, MSFS is definitely NOT for the time being.
P3D gets on my nerves… Ill stick to X-Plane. I think for once we agree!
1 Like