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Dovetail Flight Sim World


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Slowly but surely I think. Needs addons, aeroplanes, airports,real-time weather etc, all the stuff that we like. And FSUIPC, Vatsim, IVAO. I can't set up my controls with Simconnect... I don't like starting a flight on the runway, and I hate the 'Game Over' thing when you don't complete a mission, or even when you do. I like to have a look around, pass or fail, and keep flying even if it's a fail. (Same applies to Train Sim.)

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  • Aerosoft
29 minutes ago, mopperle said:

lack of awareness?

reviews at steam:

407 positive

186 negativ

 

I think that any simmer that would know about P3d V4 would know about FSW right? Dovetail did a good job at making sure knew about it. Yet everybody talks about P3D V4 and nobody (on our forums) talks about FSW. The demand for updates to V4 is massive but I can count the amount of questions about updates to FSW on one hand. I find that hard to understand, that's why asked.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

Well, only speaking for me, I was not really aware of this game. Maybe the awareness within the Steam Community is higher. And only a guess: people used to FSX  (or even P3D) might have taken a short look at it and put it in the same corner as the last Microsoft flop regarding flightsimming.

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Well I think many of the p3d and fsx users know about it but simply don't care. I mean with p3d v4 and xplane 11 (and fsx:se) there are 2 very good and complete flight Simulators with plenty of add ons. Why should I care about a not complete (and in my opinion not competitive) new flight sim that can't do as much as the one I'm already using.. 

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As I owned Flight School, I also have FSW installed and working. But as long as it's early access, I'm going to be reticent in putting a lot of time and effort into it.

When I do start it, it still fails to impress. It's better than Flight School, but that's no achievement in itself.

 

Fully keeping in mind that it's early access:

- I'm not impressed (at all) by the lighting system.

- The aircraft look good (the VC's especially look good), but so far have failed to convince me regarding functionality, systems, flight dynamics and sound.

- For it being 'the next big sim' building on the legacy of the MSFS line, I'm seeing a remarkable lack of open-world-accessibility, versatility and all-round usability.

- The User Interface and menu system feels like it's designed more with looks and 'feeling game-like' in mind rather than usability and common sense.

 

And finally, well, it's Dovetail Games. They have already received more money from me than I'd care to admit, and what I got in return has more often than not failed to impress either in quality of value for money. So I'm getting to be very, very critical with what comes out of their offices.

 

That being said, when Dovetail Games Flight Sim World is released out of Early Access, I'll try very hard to look past my prejudices, and give it an honest chance. You never know, it might still surprise me in a good way.

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  • Aerosoft

Good points Tyrion, good points.  I feel that using Early Access was not the best thing to do for them. It does not invite people to see it as a new platform and certainly did not attracted add-on builders.

Would you care to expand on the lack of  open world accessibility? 

 

If it seems I am trying to learn how to avoid pitfalls you might be right. We are working on something that is most certainly NOT intended as a replacement for our big sim platforms but it has a lot to do with it.

 

 

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To keep it simple. It still has a looooong way to got in order to compete with P3D or Xplane. It's still ESP and thus has no advantages in terms of its flight model or physics. So far there are only a handfull very basic (Carenado) GA aicraft that come with the sim - no addons or expansions so far. The UI is horrible and very simplified. It feels more like a game for beginners than a serious flightsim.  I always maintain the stance that the future sim will be the one where all the addon developers go. And this clearly seems to be P3D at the moment. This is also the very reason I haven't switched to P3D v4 just yet, as only a few addons are compatible and most scenery needs to be recompiled for 64bit to work properly. 

As far as Steam goes, I have no problem with it. In fact even DCS is offered on Steam and is doing well. On the other hand, most addon publishers lose a ton of money when they offer their products on Steam and not via their own shop or the well known flightsim distributors. 

 

I'll keep an eye on FSW when it's out of the early access phase and offers me something the other sims can't, which will be a hard task (and I'm not talking just eye candy here). 

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My feelings about Steam?  I am using FSX Steam Edition for a while now, the fact that Steam gets launched every time I fire up the sim does not really bother me but I do not like it either. For me it is just a little sacrifice which is justified by FSX-SE runnning much better on my system than legacy FSX.

I do not like the Steam store either, my 1st Steam buy was a big disappointment. I very much prefer to buy direct from the original vendors.

I did have Flight School, completed all the lessons and then deleted it from my system. I could have installed FSW for free but after seeing several Youtube videos I concluded FSW is just not good enough for me. The decision to go for P3Dv4 instead was a no brainer.

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  • Aerosoft
5 minutes ago, CRJ900 said:

To keep it simple. It still has a looooong way to got in order to compete with P3D or Xplane. It's still ESP and thus has no advantages in terms of its flight model or physics. So far there are only a handfull very basic (Carenado) GA aicraft that come with the sim - no addons or expansions so far. The UI is horrible and very simplified. It feels more like a game for beginners than a serious flightsim.  I always maintain the stance that the future sim will be the one where all the addon developers go. And this clearly seems to be P3D at the moment. This is also the very reason I haven't switched to P3D v4 just yet, as only a few addons are compatible and most scenery needs to be recompiled for 64bit to work properly. 

As far as Steam goes, I have no problem with it. In fact even DCS is offered on Steam and is doing well. On the other hand, most addon publishers lose a ton of money when they offer their products on Steam and not via their own shop or the well known flightsim distributors. 

 

I'll keep an eye on FSW when it's out of the early access phase and offers me something the other sims can't, which will be a hard task (and I'm not talking just eye candy here). 

 

 

Why you say it is ESP? It's very much based on the FSX code, ESP is long gone and buried. 

 

Your comment on add-ons on STEAM is not correct. First of all it's 'locked' deal. Just as we are the only ones who can release add-ons for X-Plane on STEAM, Dovetails owns these rights for FSX and FSW.  Our experiences with this are simply very positive. You reach a lot of new customers and there is virtually no overlap with existing customers. Where does your idea that selling add-ons via STEAM is not a good idea come from? As far as we know the vast majority of add-on sales via STEAM are doing fine. I know our FSX add-ons are and are we know that X-Plane 11 add-ons simply do very well.

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vor 23 Minuten, Mathijs Kok sagte:

 

 

Why you say it is ESP? It's very much based on the FSX code, ESP is long gone and buried. 

 

Your comment on add-ons on STEAM is not correct. First of all it's 'locked' deal. Just as we are the only ones who can release add-ons for X-Plane on STEAM, Dovetails owns these rights for FSX and FSW.  Our experiences with this are simply very positive. You reach a lot of new customers and there is virtually no overlap with existing customers. Where does your idea that selling add-ons via STEAM is not a good idea come from? As far as we know the vast majority of add-on sales via STEAM are doing fine. I know our FSX add-ons are and are we know that X-Plane 11 add-ons simply do very well.

 

ESP is the base for FSX and even P3D. Still is. 

 

Sales might be doing finde but isn't Dovetail and Steam taking a big chunk of the revenue? 

 

 

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  • Aerosoft

ESP was a spin-off from FS2004, just as P3D is a spin-off from FSX. Basically ESP was a dead end platform the moment Microsoft pulled development. A serious amount of companies got scr*wed by that decision and it hurt the platform a lot. Only the fact Lockheed did such a fine job in picking up the development for the professional market saved it.

 

And yes, Dovetails and STEAM take a massive part of the revenue, but if these are sales you otherwise not would have gotten it still is money in the bank. I just wonder where you got the idea that add-on devs are unhappy. We rather sell you our Airbus A320 directly because it makes more profit but we know that the STEAM buyer would probably be out of reach of our marketing. 

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vor 3 Minuten, Mathijs Kok sagte:

 And yes, Dovetails and STEAM take a massive part of the revenue, but if these are sales you otherwise not would have gotten it still is money in the bank. I just wonder where you got the idea that add-on devs are unhappy. We rather sell you our Airbus A320 directly because it makes more profit but we know that the STEAM buyer would probably be out of reach of our marketing. 

 

Fair enough. Other devs. have a different view on this, and that's where the community might get split. 

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  • Aerosoft
5 minutes ago, CRJ900 said:

 

Fair enough. Other devs. have a different view on this, and that's where the community might get split. 

 

And that is why I am asking. We do not know about those devs teams. The teams we deal with are all pushing me hard to get there products on STEAM because they are losing sales. If there is no overlap with existing sales (and as said we simply do not see that), not selling on STEAM simply means not taking sales. There are still developers who want to produce add-ons as a hobby and just break even with sales, but those are rare these days. Not a lot of people are willing to invest 500 hours and break even.

 

The good news about this that Dovetails required full licensing of ANY brand name used in the product. Meaning we had to remove and fake all brands shown in a scenery (try doing that for Vegas). But now they seem willing to accept the products exactly as we sell them and that will speed up things tremendously. 

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2 hours ago, Mathijs Kok said:

Would you care to expand on the lack of  open world accessibility?

 

I'm not sure I used the right description. What I mean is the lack of options when creating a starting scenario, the way the sim tries to lock you into a to-from flight, yet lacks of a decent flight planner,...

Do keep in mind that I haven't used it much yet.

 

As for the Steam aspect of it, I don't mind at all. It's very user-friendly in installing and running. I am worried about them making it into a closed environment though. I'm not really tempted to use steam for Add-ons.

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First of all the P3D crowd went straight to v.4 probably not even considering FSW. But with FSW out of early access with most features in and developers able to do addons and sitting on Steam FSW is probably going to do fine. As of now I dont find much to do in it.

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Thank you so much Mathijs for open FSW topic. I play FSW for awhile and keep report any bug I found to help Dovetail improve their sims.
I've only 25 hours on FSW, but I feel FSW is a very great simulator, especially rain on the window. I see many people complain about flight dynamic, honestly to say it's not so different compare to P3Dv4, which I also own. FSW has even A2A accufeel come with, which I find it fun to hear sound and some improve flight dynamic from FSX.
Problems that I have with FSW are low fps issue, as in Dovetail Flight School. Strangely I've no problem about fps at all in P3Dv4, even my computer is quite old (5 years old).
As many comment before, I agree that their UI is bad. It provides basic setting that I can't play with slider to balance setting to fit my system, however I already suggest this to Dovetail.
I also hate to start on the runway and hope to see the new option to start at the gate with Cold and Dark option.

About Steam platform is quite big problem for me.
Once I had problem with Steam Client, which I can not use Steam for the whole weekend, so I can't launch any game that I've on Steam.
FSX:Steam Edition and Dovetail Flight Sim World are both depend on Steam Client. In that time I can't access to both of this simulator.

In my opinion, I would like to use a Standalone Simulator, like P3D or FSX Box Version instead.
I've no problem with multiplayer at all, as FSX:Steam and FSW offer multiplayer on Steam, because I also use another cross platform community like FsCloud Virtual Airline VAS.
So now I can fly with my friends who use X-Plane 11, FSX and P3D in the same time.

About add-on via Steam Store.
I'm a person who use many Simulator, for example if I want to fly A2A C182 but I don't have licence for P3D, I just move to fly this aircraft in FSX.
Many of add-on such as Weather, Aircrafts, Sceneries from many developer are support multi platform. That is what I would like to buy, instead of lock platform.
In FSW it's very complicated to put freeware scenery / freeware aircraft to work with. Mostly cause CTD. But in P3Dv4 is a different story.
I have to dig into cfg file to put add-on scenery to make it work in FSW, which does not mean it is going to work 100%. Compare to P3Dv4, I just load P3D and put in the Scenery Library option, finish.

There are a lot of things that I don't like about FSW, especially the light system, texture and colors, while P3Dv4 blow my mind, especially using P3D with PTA. But as the conclusion I still want to use FSW and see it improve better and better. At least we have choice for the flight sim newbie to choose as an alternative budget flight simulator.
My friends, who are still young said to me that they can't afford P3D because of its price, even Academic Licence.
FSX and FSW is still the good alternative for them to enjoy flying with a budget add-on to pay. Thus, the payment system helps them to effort flight simulator, because they have no Paypal account, credit card or online banking. They can just go to buy Steam Wallet from retailer to buy add-ons that Dovetail offer on Steam Store.

In my opinion, I think first things that simmer will choose any Flight Simulator platform is how the graphic looks. I see many people hate FSW so much because it looks ugly, while FSW is actually similar to P3D in term of code and flight dynamic, only different with performance, features and FSW still in an Early Access. Some people forget about that.

At the end I'll see how FSW community growing and decide again when FSW is already out of Early Access.
But now after I decided to move from FSX to P3Dv4. I'll not turning back to FSX again.

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I own FSW since day 1 (and owned FSc before). I wouldn't call it actually that bad. Its scenery looks perhaps even better than Prepar3d out of the box. But who cares? I have a fully stuffed Prepar3d4 which is miles ahead on scenery, available aircraft, all sort of 3rd party support etc.

 

Plus DT has a very bad track in my tally. I took  part in early DTS discussion topics on Steam. Me and others were not found worth any sensible reply from that DT Martin despite providing pages over pages (500, if memory serves me right) of input. 

 

Then they tried to make quick money with Flight School, which I could only call "ugly" after playing it for 2 hours or so. Didn't they notice the shaders were completely wrong? 

 

Add the flawed AVSIM questionnaire, which was dysfunctional from the beginning and even in later versions clumsy.

 

Now, they're still not there, but - after speaking for 3 years on the project - start an EA game which according to them will  need a long time to mature. This might be a clever approach if they were alone. However, LM and LR  will certainly not wait for DT to arrive. When FSW will reach a status comparable to Prepar3d4 and XP11, LM and LR will be lightyears ahead again. I don't see a way for DT to catch up given their present pace.

 

The meander course of 3rd party support was already touched upon and is still not quite clear to me.

 

Sorry for sounding a bit harsh. Initially, I had quite some hope for this, but based on the present state and the record I find this whole project just lacks professional management.

 

AeroflyFS2, EA on Steam as well, has certainly a long way to go either. However, they have one big advantage: They are just different from Prepar3d as well as XP. FSW, in its present state, appears to many users (glance through the Steam forums) as kind of a downscaled FSX. Who need this? 

 

Kind regards, Michael

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Well, at least for me, I didn't find it attractive. My experience with Steam hasn't been great so far either. Plus, there aren't too many aircraft available (or aircrafts that I find interesting) for the sim nor scenery. I switched to P3D V4 because I saw that the devs were moving its add-ons there so I said that I'd give it a try: and I was not disappointed. I switched from FSX:SE and it was a lot better. 

So, for me, I don't find it attractive because of the lack of add-ons (I think?). You see, that's still a bit painful in V4, I still need my Airbus Series lol, but it's going to be worth it in the end. 

Just my two cents, cheers!

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16 hours ago, mopperle said:

lack of awareness?

reviews at steam:

407 positive

186 negativ

you think these are bad numbers?
Keep in mind people that dont like something write/scream more often then people that like stuff - I think these reviews look really nice.

 

###########

 

 

 

From my personal POV

I think DTG did some great work - sure its nothing new, sure they have some problems (specially in addons and 3d party at all) but they did what the FSX needed, a refresh - a modern and slim interface to attract new player.

 

I think FSW could give new player a change to look into flightssim, I think we are just the wrong audience for that - its more for gamers that want to take a peak into flightsim and I m more then happy to see something like that

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  • Aerosoft

All very good comments, thanks.

 

It strengthens my idea that the simulator should not 'push' the user in any way, it should allow him to select any aircraft, any weather, any location at will. Having an option to 'create a flight' as FSW does is actually a good idea for beginners, but it should not be the only option. When Dovetail started on the project (remember we were competing with them at the time) I told them that my idea was too only add things, not remove anything. And when things would be replaced they should stay compatible as much as possible. If you put P3D v4 next to FSX you will see this pretty clearly. There are new menu options but all the things we used for close to 20 years is still there.

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Mathijs

 

I am pleased to se that Aerosoft are I hope taking a centre route and not allying themselves just to Dovetail Games products. I help run a VA and I know from the variety of members views that the split between FSX, FSX Steam, X Plane and P3D pretty much reflects the diversity within our hobby right now with nobody really knowing which product will be "the future lead platform". However from what I have seen I certainly wouldn't be putting my money on FSW. People generally can already see the price increase that using this will bring for them to use their favourite developer's aircraft. Dovetail it seems are simply seeking to corner a market but have as much chance of that as a "snowball in hell". I am quite sure it is one reason people are turning to P3D and even X Plane as their FSX alternative.

 

I personally still have my old boxed version of FSX which still serves me well but I know a move a new platform will be necessary sometime in the next couple of years. I watch with interest to see what the "real" cost of such a move will be if it is necessary to repurchase your products. I have something like 200 add ons collected over the past 10 years including many freeware sceneries that are excellent. I know any move will mean leaving them behind and as a result fearing a far less detailed FS world for a great deal more money.

 

I commend you for keeping your products useable for newbie and expert alike. Those of us that like detailed, life like representation of systems have plenty to choose from but I know from our own VA the majority of simmers like something not too demanding.

 

I wish you well in what must be a messy and uncertain FS world right now.

 

Tony

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