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A glass of wine and mildly vindictive ponderings


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Honestly it is very simple. I would like to summarize lot´s of opinions in 2 short views.

 

View one: Aerosoft as a supplier

Sales count. P3D addons did count into this, till MSFS came. MSFS has more users = Aerosoft has more revenue. 

 

End of Story: Sell MSFS addon products. Much higher numbers=more revenue. Why not?

 

View two: We customers at P3D

Features we need count. P3D and P3D addons do still count into this. Also after MSFS came. We took time to find that out. We are back because MSFS does not fit into "simulating flights with complex aircrafts" and MSFS does not support my home build setup 

 

End of Story: Stay with P3D and its addons. Much higher fitting rates=more joy. Why not?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Very simple and the answer why, at this moment, "Aerosoft" and "some of us" are going different ways.

 

This may change, as soon as MSFS delivers via the SDK what we like to use and see.

 

When? Very open at the moment. That is what the customers decides and how MSFS/Asobo is reacting on this.

 

IF MSFS consider "simulating complex aircraft" as a niche, then it will never ever happen in MSFS. To expensive, to less revenue.

 

This probably lead already to the split market. MSFS and aftermarket attract VFR flyers in much higher sales numbers compared to those who like complex simulated aircraft.

 

Why I think that? Evidence is already there. Scenery sells. SDK scenery parts got more updates compared to SDK complex aircraft (incl Porting existing parts).

 

Less to no attention on that part from ASOBO (until present).

 

Reaction addon devs

Complex aircraft devs: PMDG, FSlabs, QW are announcing that P3D dev will continue now. Without harming MSFS because it could change in future.

 

Scenery devs are focusing on MSFS.

 

And Aerosoft his CRJ?   It is NOT complex. At least not as complex as we like to have it IF it will be comparable with the actual system depth of all other Aerosoft planes

 

Marcus

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1 hour ago, GSalden said:

MSFS was one big hype and all publicity was loved by many.

Now several updates later : regions are improved but most ac are a mess. If you have the PdL version those extra ac are unflyable. 

 

I still do not understand why you and others do not compare P3D (with default scenery, weather, aircraft) to MFS (with default scenery, weather, aircraft).  If you feel P3D is better in that comparison, so be it. What you are doing is comparing $100 add-ons to a default aircraft, and guess what, the add-on is better. That things like the default AP are not okay means very little. The default one in P3D sucks big balls and that is why everybody is doing there own versions. Again comparing default to coded add-on.  And guess what, the AP in the add-ons is better!

 

I know what some companies state publically, I also know that's not the whole story, if you never were allowed to access the alpha and beta versions you development runs 9 month behind, right?  But if they believe they can find enough customers on P3D good for them.  If you believe MFS will never reach the complexity of P3D, that's also fine. I know some people in Bordeaux who do not agree and are working hard to proof you wrong. Fact is that there is little that you can do in P3D that you can;t do in MFS. It's not all smooth, still a lot of issues, but if a dev runs into one of these issues they talk to Asobo and often a few hours later it is fixed. We don't use the SDK a lot actually. Some things like getting data from outside the sim, like charts, are not possible. The weather systems is not completely described so a weather radar (a real one, that reads the weather in the sim) is not possible right now. But both are in the pipeline.  

 

It is surprising so many people believe P3D and MFS are so different. They are not. To a large degree the code you do for them is exactly the same. For all our aircraft products we have one code base that is for MFS and P3D. And we try to keep them exactly the same. That way things we now do (like CPDLC for the Airbusses) will work in P3D and MFS. Of course we'll update the P3D version! We done an update last week and will do one next week. All with code that was intended for MFS.

 

What I wrote is based on facts. We see our own sales (and of course we sell a lot of products from other companies so we have some idea on how their P3D products are doing right now). It's not pretty and that is why there are so few P3D products being made at this moment. Also so very few updates being done.   Most of that is because these developers are working on MFS add-ons.

 

At the end, if somebody prefers X-Plane, FSX, P3D or MFS does not matter a lot to us.  We love them all. 

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32 minutes ago, Mathijs Kok said:

To a large degree the code you do for them is exactly the same. For all our aircraft products we have one code base that is for MFS and P3D. 

 

So we can look forward to P3Dv5 updates for the Twotter, F-14 and DC-8?. It sounds like the effort wouldn't be as gigantic as one would believe. 

 

32 minutes ago, Mathijs Kok said:

At the end, if somebody prefers X-Plane, FSX, P3D or MFS does not matter a lot to us.  We love them all. 

 

I can point you to several posts you've written in this forum that contradicts that statement regarding P3D 😉

 

I'm actually really neutral in this conversation: if MSFS becomes the ultra sim, then awesome! If it doesn't... well... P3D/XPL sales should improve and developers will return to develop for (in this case, P3D). I think the point here is that a lot of us are willing to continue to invest in the platform and perhaps a company such as yours would benefit from exploring a sort of " Kickstarter " initiative to measure the real intent and attractiveness of listening to those of us who are interested in seeing the products you already have stay current. 

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12 hours ago, Mathijs Kok said:

I might have been a tad vindictive, but you are pessimistic, lol.

That's funny because most of the people knowing me in real life tell me that I'm way too optimisitc and positive - LOL! Maybe I'm a little bit off the line due to my break and coming back after a couple of years it was quite surprising to see how the community has evolved. I agree that 99% of the users are fine but from my impression the remaining 1% are way more vocal and disrespectful than in former days. And yes, it's not only the simming community or gamers, it seems to be the spirit of thesse days - doesn't make it better for me. For the silent listeners sometimes it's really funny (have a discussion DCS world related in my mind where a "serious simmer" explained a real world fighter pilot over and over again, that he has no clue how things are done in real world). However life continues and dust will settle!

 

Regarding the "mysimisbetterbattle": since I restarted my flightsim career beginning of this year I bought P3DV4, P3DV5, X-Plane11 and MSFS2020 and spent a couple of hundred bucks for addons for each sim (yes, I'm crazy) to get them up to a level I was more or less satisfied (weather, sceneries, aircraft, utilities) and it took me an enormous amount of time to gather all the information needed and configure the sims - making a long story short: it was a pain and if I wouldn't have been a real aviation nerd, I'd have given up. There was only one exception: MSFS. This may sound strange for people running a fully configured P3D or X-Plane sim but believe me: starting from scratch I got way better results way eassier with MSFS than any other sim and for me it's clear: although I love helicopters and VR, MSFS is currently next to my DCS Huey the only sim I'm using. OH and I can tell you that even the DCS Huey is fun to fly with an XBox controller ;)

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@Mathijs

 

P3Dv5 or CP are the result of years of evolving. MSFS is just at the beginning.

 

Myself I am a 737-800 flyer ( real size cockpit + Prosim ) and at PS they stated that the current SDK is very far away from being supportive for all complex systems .

 

Give me the eyecandy from MSFS with the stability and SDK features of P3Dv5 and I will happily flying around....

 

 

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As per Enrique's comments above, I agree.

 

While MSFS has certainly attracted some of the existing, but also a large new base of potential simmers, the remaining Aerosoft customer base on other sim platforms should not be forgotten. Rightly or wrongly, I have the impression at least, that Aerosoft have forgotten about their existing customers to some degree.

 

1 hour ago, Mathijs Kok said:

 

What I wrote is based on facts. We see our own sales (and of course we sell a lot of products from other companies so we have some idea on how their P3D products are doing right now). It's not pretty and that is why there are so few P3D products being made at this moment. Also so very few updates being done.   Most of that is because these developers are working on MFS add-ons.

 

At the end, if somebody prefers X-Plane, FSX, P3D or MFS does not matter a lot to us.  We love them all. 

If Aerosoft are committed to serving all sim platforms as Mathias mentioned above, then I am happy to see Aerosoft being successful in the marketplace. Its expanding so there's room for many players.

 

 

I can understand and believe Matthias when he states P3D sales have lost ground, but this was expected given the market hype for MSFS, but MSFS for some is just not ready yet. Perhaps in a year or two when the developers have some exciting, ground-breaking products it will be a completely different story.

Currently MS are issuing fixes on a more frequent basis than LM , so in some ways its harder for Aerosoft to keep up with this platform as opposed to the evolution of the P3D platform that's now in its 5th generation. Its needs to be balanced.

 

1 hour ago, evaamo said:

I'm actually really neutral in this conversation: if MSFS becomes the ultra sim, then awesome! If it doesn't... well... P3D/XPL sales should improve and developers will return to develop for (in this case, P3D). I think the point here is that a lot of us are willing to continue to invest in the platform and perhaps a company such as yours would benefit from exploring a sort of " Kickstarter " initiative to measure the real intent and attractiveness of listening to those of us who are interested in seeing the products you already have stay current. 

 

For me, I am perhaps also a single data point, in that I evaluated MSFS and am really excited to see what it can offer and it looks to have lots of potential, but for the more serious sim flying I prefer, I have kept purchasing P3D add-ons throughout the last year. I didnt stop buying add-ons either.

The only thing is the majority of products I have been interested in purchasing have been available elsewhere. Perhaps this is where some of the lost sales Matthias has highlighted have come from.

 

 

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37 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Myself I am a 737-800 flyer ( real size cockpit + Prosim ) and at PS they stated that the current SDK is very far away from being supportive for all complex systems .

 

As I written, we do not use the SDK a lot because we mostly build all systems in our own code. Just as any complex aircraft does. And if that code runs in P3D, it will most likely run in MFS.  

What companies at this moment say and what they actually do, differs a bit. They have to manage expectations. In early 2021 you will see a lot of things move a lot faster. 

 

 

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Honestly, some hardcore P3D simmers have been acting in very annoying way, even long before the release of MSFS, bashing other sims like X-Plane at that time and MSFS before it was even released (I own the three platforms). That behavior pushed me away from P3D and its ecosystem to X-Plane (long before the release of MSFS), I was very annoyed seeing some "chosen" ones in P3D circle and the rest of the community is basically out of touch from LM and its development roadmap. I appreciate a company that engages well with the community, with open dialog and transparency and what I can see, LR and Microsoft/Asobo doing very good job with that. 

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21 minutes ago, supera380 said:

While MSFS has certainly attracted some of the existing, but also a large new base of potential simmers, the remaining Aerosoft customer base on other sim platforms should not be forgotten. Rightly or wrongly, I have the impression at least, that Aerosoft have forgotten about their existing customers to some degree.

 

I hate to repeat myself, but this is simply untrue. We have released P3D products in November, not a lot of developers have done that. 

 

For most products we sell we are only the reseller and it is not Aerosoft who decides for what platform to model but the developers. For our own developments like the airbusses, CRJ and some scenery we are still very much supporting P3D. For most we have V5 versions, they still get updates etc and as I said for the aircraft the MFS and P3D development goes hand in hand. It's the same code! So when we add things to the MSF development they can be fed back to P3D and that is exactly what we will be doing. 

 

What I have done was say critical things about V5 because between the original release, updates and hotfixes many things have changed back and for. Things like the EA were declared fully functional, then fixed and then more or less admitted to be still a bot problematic. It has not been a smooth release and many developers were rather critical in the developers forums. Support from Lockheed has also seriously decreased. 18 months back we got fast and quick replies to comments, now it is much harder. 

 

We have a pretty good idea about sales overall because the shop keepers talk to each other, because we sell so many add-ons made by others etc. While individual P3D add-ons might still sell, it is a lot harder. That is why almost all developers moved to MFS and it is only a small amount companies doing very specific products that find it much harder to move platforms. We had for our aircraft also serious serious problems, what makes us different is that we started with MSF 19 months ago. 

 

Can I kindly ask people to read the whole topic before commenting? We keep seeing the same comments and the same reactions from me. 

 

 

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10 hours ago, evaamo said:

I'm on the same boat as Kevin, and while as a business owner myself I perfectly understand and empathize with Mr. Kok, I feel Aerosoft could be doing more a lot more to keep P3D relevant.

 

The Twotter, the F-14 Tomcat, the DC-8? Not even willing to make them work for Prepar3D v5 for a fee? I think it is kind of a chicken and egg dilemma.

 

 Cheers

-E

FYI the Twotter works happily as is in v5, just have to install it in the sim folder.. :)

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7 hours ago, Abriael said:

Incidentally, I'm fairly sure Aerosoft is going to prove quite soon that the SDK is good enough for complex AC, much faster than any other sumulator out there. You may have short memory, but I don't. It took MULTIPLE years for aircraft of complexity comparable to PMDG to become available in competing simulators. This is nothing new. The likely truth is that the folks at PMDG naively made promises about release windows without really knowing how much work would be required to port their product over, nor when the SDK would have supported it. That's a very bad idea in any product development field.

 

If you think that Aerosoft CRJ is as complex as the FSL/PMDG, then your delusion is only surpassed by the amount of Aerosoft kool-aid you have apparently ingested. That CRJ was never on par in P3D with the highly complex aircraft and have no doubt that will continue in MSFS. Hence the reason they are able to develop it in the poor state the MSFS SDK currently resides in. 

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7 hours ago, mpo910 said:

And Aerosoft his CRJ?   It is NOT complex. At least not as complex as we like to have it IF it will be comparable with the actual system depth of all other Aerosoft planes

 

 

Actually, from everything we heard so far, this is entirely false. Incidentally, talk for yourself, not for "we."

 

8 hours ago, GSalden said:


You seem not have any idea what you are talking about.

 

Go read the MSFS forums at Avsim and the official MSFS site. Then come back.

 

Flightsim software will always be a niche market. Compare the sales to real Xbox / PD  games. 
 

Also with the MSFS sales you are incorrect :  most users were the  $ 1 dollar game pass testers  and the $ 5 users for month 2 and 3. Regular users have declined a lot now, which is normal in this way. Many uses tried MSFS for fun and now moved on to the next gave to try for $ 1 pm.

 

MS has dropped FSX in an instant without looking back. MS has stopped Flight in an instant without looking back.

 

Asobo stated that the SDK will never be as enhanced as the P3D SDK. So you will NEVER have the same features.

That is allright as the main focus lies on the eyecandy. 

 

Take off your pink glasses, read yourself into what really happens and then come back.

 

 

My god what a trainwreck of a post. 

 

1: Reading posts from haters like you in other forums doesn't certainly represent the overall sentiment for the sim.

2: the "game pass vs others" argument is extremely fallacious. Player numbers are player numbers they aren't less valid because part of them comes from a different business model. Incidentally, the game is continuing to sell, so they're even larger now. You have no actual data indicating that "users have declined." Aerosoft has much better visibility on user than you do, and they're supporting MSFS much more than P3D. That should give you a good indication of how things stand. 

3: Microsoft has already officially announced a 10 year development plan for the game. They already announced MSFS is a "great success" and a "thriving platform." On top of that, they officially announced that they're hiring even more developers both on the Microsoft and on the Asobo sides. So your "they dropped this, they dropped that" is frankly just disingenuous FUD. You don't upsize development teams for projects that aren't already successful and you don't intend to actively support. I know some irrational P3D fanboys would LOVE to see them drop it, but it ain't happening. Sorry not sorry about that.

4: Not only MSFS will surpass P3D on the medium term in every aspect it isn't already superior (and it is already superior in most aspects to default P3D), but it will trounce it. It's extremely naïve of you to think that Lockheed Martin has the resources to compete in a marathon against Microsoft and a massively bigger development team. Not only they can't, but they don't even want to try. Everything LM has done over the past few years shows that they're not interested in really pushing P3D as a core business. It's basically just a part-time engagement for them, which in turn reflects into third-party developer engagement. It's never a good business decision for a third-party to go all-out on a platform for which the first-party won't go all-out.  

 

On the other hand, MSFS isn't just a successful core business for Microsoft Game Studios, but it's also a showcase of their overall tech with Azure, Bing, and more. They have every interest in going all-out with supporting it, and they have already proven that they are. No sim in history received as much free post-launch content as MSFS did in 4 months. That's undeniable evidence of how much Microsoft is supporting the project. 

 

50 minutes ago, B777ER said:

If you think that Aerosoft CRJ is as complex as the FSL/PMDG, then your delusion is only surpassed by the amount of Aerosoft kool-aid you have apparently ingested. That CRJ was never on par in P3D with the highly complex aircraft and have no doubt that will continue in MSFS. Hence the reason they are able to develop it in the poor state the MSFS SDK currently resides in. 

 

I suggest avoiding strawman arguments. No one expects the CRJ to be as complex as PMDG (nor it's needed, because PMDG-level complexity is extremely niche), but an aircraft doesn't need to be as complex as PMDG's to be a complex aircraft. From everything we've heard so far, the CRJ is quite complex, and it's actually way superior to anything that appeared in P3D in a similar timeframe. Do you know how long it took for aircrafts with PMDG's complexity to appear in P3D? Go look it up. Since you're at it, go look up how long it took to have aircraft comparable to the CRJ as well. See if it's less than a few months (hint: it isn't)

 

 There are very few doubts that MSFS will have complex aircraft comparable to PMDG's (or PMDG's themselves) much faster than P3D or any other sim did after release. 

 

It's funny how short some people's memory is, unless it's their first rodeo at a flight simulator's launch, I guess.

 

It's also pretty hilarious that some think they can teach Aerosoft how to direct their business when Aerosoft has sales data in hand. There's a reason why this is doubtlessly the most successful flight simulation addon company on the market, and it should suggest that they know quite well how to handle their business and correctly direct their resources. 

 

4 hours ago, Omar Al-Safi said:

Honestly, some hardcore P3D simmers have been acting in very annoying way, even long before the release of MSFS, bashing other sims like X-Plane at that time and MSFS before it was even released (I own the three platforms). That behavior pushed me away from P3D and its ecosystem to X-Plane (long before the release of MSFS), I was very annoyed seeing some "chosen" ones in P3D circle and the rest of the community is basically out of touch from LM and its development roadmap. I appreciate a company that engages well with the community, with open dialog and transparency and what I can see, LR and Microsoft/Asobo doing very good job with that. 

 

Indeed. The toxicity has been stifling. It's almost like some don't understand that P3D and LM simply don't have what it takes to bring this hobby out of absolute obscurity. MSFS' success is a net positive for anyone who actually cares about the flight simulation hobby, both users and developers.

 

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30 minutes ago, B777ER said:

 

If you think that Aerosoft CRJ is as complex as the FSL/PMDG, then your delusion is only surpassed by the amount of Aerosoft kool-aid you have apparently ingested. That CRJ was never on par in P3D with the highly complex aircraft and have no doubt that will continue in MSFS. Hence the reason they are able to develop it in the poor state the MSFS SDK currently resides in. 

 

And we never claimed that and we never priced it like that.  What we do claim is that is a pretty realistic aircraft for day to day flying. If you feel things are missing we gladly hear about them!  

About the SDK, please read what I have written, it does not matter a lot.

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Friends (and people clearly not my friend) I am closing this. I have been reading some rather nasty posts where I have been called very nasty things (all deleted of course, btw dear p3dlover21, very clever to make jokes about my name, there was one I never ever heard, kudos!) and some other posts that I find borderline. 

 

I have simply no idea why MFS crates such deep problems for some people they find it necessary to attack people who like it with such vigor. I simply do not get it. These people are clearly the fans of the very complex aircraft that are at this moment missing in MFS.  None of them is willing to compare stock MFS to stock P3D. They also do not seem to grasp that the hobby is totally changed as we have between 500.000 and a million new users. Most of these users will not be flying complex airliners because they like the flying aspect a lot more than the system management.  We intend to sell the Twin Otter for the X-Box version. The product for PC and Xbox is 100% identical (same code, same models) and we think thousands of people will enjoy using it on that platform, hook up a simple stick and you'll have loads of fun! 

 

I am also not sure why they are so vocal. They clearly love what they have now, the aircraft and the sim is still supported by devs and Lockheed (we will keep updating our aircraft for sure). Nothing has been removed for them.  So why be so upset when other people believe MFS will surpass P3D in any aspect (apart from the military things)? 

 

Why not allow other to enjoy the hobby as they want to?

 

 

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