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Control Surfaces not Animated?


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I have no words for this answer.

Vor 1 Stunde, Mathijs Kok sagte:

With the props we limited the animation to make sure we do not overtax the Xbox options, but the rest should work for sure!

 

 I am more and more regretting my invest. Dumbing down a product to make it run on console, if that's the way AS goes, I'm out. Sorry. You cannot animate a prop in 2022? Rediculous. And that for the full price of the P3D version that was more feature rich. A shame.

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I would really like to see two different versions of the product then if the PC version is going to be limited by the XBOX. Executing optimizations are very normal, but to not animate the trim moving (which is quite crucial control element) is a choice I do not understand and it is a disappointment.

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9 hours ago, bendead said:

And it was not possible to release two products, twin otter for PC and XBOX separately and just optimise/remove stuff that will cripple the console?

Looks like the xbox are priority nr1 now. As long as those kids on xbox have a pretty 3D modell to look at its enough to sell it to the masses. Most of the xbox people dont know about systems and how the aircraft should work, so why should aerosoft use time to implent them right. In the end of the day its all about the money.

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On 1/21/2022 at 1:36 AM, bendead said:

And it was not possible to release two products, twin otter for PC and XBOX separately and just optimise/remove stuff that will cripple the console?

 

At this moment this is not possible. 

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i was tempted at first but the decision to dummy up the pc version is a turn off. if the busses are treated the same way i wont buy them either. very disappointed but like everyone says money talks!!! I just wanted to believe that AS was different. a shame....... steve the old fart

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1 hour ago, mousemansteven said:

i was tempted at first but the decision to dummy up the pc version is a turn off. if the busses are treated the same way i wont buy them either. very disappointed but like everyone says money talks!!! I just wanted to believe that AS was different. a shame....... steve the old fart

 

But dear friends, the people that work at Aerosoft do not do these things as a hobby. So off course money talks. If I do a few products that do not make money I will have a problem. So it could very well be that the aircraft product we do are simply not your taste. That can be and is no problem.  But do note that we said the Twin Otter was aimed at the Xbox platform from the very start. We can only hope that Microsoft is able to release it soon on that platform. Just like our friends at PMDG we simply have to be patient on that. 

 

As this is the first aircraft we release with Xbox compatibility in mind, we simply do not know yet how well it would sell. If we listen to our market research and the comments we get via social media, that demand is considerably. Personally I think for aircraft like this one, that are not very difficult to use, the market is massive. But we have to see and that is what we do with this product. 

 

I fully understand that there are simmers that prefer things to be more complex and less 'gamy' and for those people P3D still stays the best platform at this moment. Microsoft Flight Simulator simply has a very different average customer so the products made for them will be different. The companies that work on complex aircraft for the MSFS do so by using the sim only as the display engine and use external code that does the simulation. That method makes a release via the Marketplace (and thus Xbox, if they would care) impossible. For us that is not an option because the Marketplace is by far the biggest distribution channel.  Sure we want Terrain Display and an accurate weather radar (not the default one) in our CRJ, but not when that removes the Marketplace as sales option. 

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vor 28 Minuten, Mathijs Kok sagte:

 

But dear friends, the people that work at Aerosoft do not do these things as a hobby. So off course money talks. If I do a few products that do not make money I will have a problem. So it could very well be that the aircraft product we do are simply not your taste. That can be and is no problem.  But do note that we said the Twin Otter was aimed at the Xbox platform from the very start. We can only hope that Microsoft is able to release it soon on that platform. Just like our friends at PMDG we simply have to be patient on that. 

 

As this is the first aircraft we release with Xbox compatibility in mind, we simply do not know yet how well it would sell. If we listen to our market research and the comments we get via social media, that demand is considerably. Personally I think for aircraft like this one, that are not very difficult to use, the market is massive. But we have to see and that is what we do with this product. 

 

I fully understand that there are simmers that prefer things to be more complex and less 'gamy' and for those people P3D still stays the best platform at this moment. Microsoft Flight Simulator simply has a very different average customer so the products made for them will be different. The companies that work on complex aircraft for the MSFS do so by using the sim only as the display engine and use external code that does the simulation. That method makes a release via the Marketplace (and thus Xbox, if they would care) impossible. For us that is not an option because the Marketplace is by far the biggest distribution channel.  Sure we want Terrain Display and an accurate weather radar (not the default one) in our CRJ, but not when that removes the Marketplace as sales option. 

In this case you are correct, and the products AS makes are not attractive to me anymore.

'Known from the very start' might be true for someone who follows the forums regularly, but it was not made clear in the public announcements before release, that it was considerably dumbed down in this regard to keep it compatible to Xbox.

I know Aerosoft as a company aiming for the middle of the market since the beginning of my simming career 20 years ago. The products were not the most complex, but complex enough to be fun and challenging.

The FSX/ P3D Twotter is a great example. Easy enough to make a quick flight, complex enough to cover most systems and engine limitations.

With the Kodiak in mind and AS's reputation, plus the official presentation on social media, it was clear to me that the Twotter would be on par with the Kodiak or even better.

The price tag, same as the P3D version, suggests that as well from a long term customer's perspective.

 

Now that it is buggy is one thing, and it's sad enough it was released in this state. But bugs are fixable.

Not fixable are limitations which come from some fancy gaming console, mostly used by people who buy it, fly it, but don't seriously sim with it (and stop using the product after a few weeks because it got boring). If that's the market where the money is, be it. But if in consequence this means dumbed down flight models, limited animations, awful sound and less complexity (to not scare the gamer boys), then this isn't for me anymore.

I would gladly request my money back, but I already know the answer.

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I completely agree with you MatzeH84. Personally I do not seeing the Twotter being all that attractive to the xbox audience for the same reasons. I would imagine the majority of the xbox community are going to want modern jet airliners and if this is now Aerosoft's drive to dumb products down for the xbox and force that on to the PC audience where to be fair the more serious flight sim community is, then a lot of business from loyal customers who have purchased and enjoyed your products throughout the years will be lost.

 

I owned the versions for FSX and later P3D, thoroughly enjoyed them and could not praise them enough but the bugs (which yes can and will be fixed) should not have made it through to release and some of the limitations for xbox compatibility have been a total disappointment.  I also find it very off-putting the way everyone has been treated with regard to their concerns such as being questioned as to their real life experience of the aircraft, being told to read the manual (which clearly had not been proof read or checked for inaccuracies with the MSFS release), being told there is no problem, that it is too much work to make something right, blaming Asobo or Microsoft for issues that have since been rectified by the paying customers themselves and threads being locked amongst other things. I had posted regarding an issue I am having and I did not experience that at all but I see many others who have and I feel their frustration, particularly those who were quick to point out that the sounds are terrible and the guy who invested so much time in getting to the bottom of the auto-pilot issues despite being hit with a brick wall most of the time.

 

Sadly, all this makes purchasing future products or replacing my previous FSX/P3D purchases from Aerosoft when they are released for MSFS questionable to me too.

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5 minutes ago, Slado said:

I completely agree with you MatzeH84. Personally I do not seeing the Twotter being all that attractive to the xbox audience for the same reasons. I would imagine the majority of the xbox community are going to want modern jet airliners and if this is now Aerosoft's drive to dumb products down for the xbox and force that on to the PC audience where to be fair the more serious flight sim community is, then a lot of business from loyal customers who have purchased and enjoyed your products throughout the years will be lost.

 

I owned the versions for FSX and later P3D, thoroughly enjoyed them and could not praise them enough but the bugs (which yes can and will be fixed) should not have made it through to release and some of the limitations for xbox compatibility have been a total disappointment.  I also find it very off-putting the way everyone has been treated with regard to their concerns such as being questioned as to their real life experience of the aircraft, being told to read the manual (which clearly had not been proof read or checked for inaccuracies with the MSFS release), being told there is no problem, that it is too much work to make something right, blaming Asobo or Microsoft for issues that have since been rectified by the paying customers themselves and threads being locked amongst other things. I had posted regarding an issue I am having and I did not experience that at all but I see many others who have and I feel their frustration, particularly those who were quick to point out that the sounds are terrible and the guy who invested so much time in getting to the bottom of the auto-pilot issues despite being hit with a brick wall most of the time.

 

Sadly, all this makes purchasing future products or replacing my previous FSX/P3D purchases from Aerosoft when they are released for MSFS questionable to me too.

Well, I can say that I, personally, am very excited about the Twin being available on Xbox. It might be a bit of a niche aircraft, but if many Xbox users just want to fly around and land in weird places, there aren't many better options than the Twin Otter. I think it's also the first float plane available on Xbox which has reverse thrust. That will make float flying way easier. Overall I think it's going to be a great edition and I intend to purchase it ASAP.

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1 hour ago, Slado said:

Sadly, all this makes purchasing future products or replacing my previous FSX/P3D purchases from Aerosoft when they are released for MSFS questionable to me too.

 

But that's good, you should always think if you want a product or not. We made it very clear that this one will use mainly default systems and we had good reasons for that, as I explained a few times.

 

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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So the core message is..  The bugs are being fixed, which is great and what users can expect from a reputable company like AS. The speed for the first patch is amazing and highly respectable though.

But - the core message is as well that simple products sell good enough that there is no need to put in the effort to create more advanced addons.

And at this point I'm giving up. I'll choose my addons more wisely in the future.

Thank you for your efforts.

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47 minutes ago, MatzeH84 said:

And at this point I'm giving up. I'll choose my addons more wisely in the future.

 

As I said, that is a very wise decision! 

 

47 minutes ago, MatzeH84 said:

that there is no need to put in the effort to create more advanced addons.

 

"No need to put in the effort"? Well, I can tell you we put a lot of effort and investment in this project, far more then we did in the Twin Otter Extended, development for MSFS is simply a lot more costly, I think you simply have no idea what is involved. MSFS development costs a fortune, at least if you want to do true MSFS models that use all options and are as efficient as can be (again, something that is simply needed for Xbox with the limited memory it has). 

 

But as sales potential is so much better, it makes very good sense! Clearly not for you, but there is not a lot I can do about that. We said from the beginning that this would be a project using default gauges (and when the update is released these will be pretty solid) and that it would be aimed at our shops, marketplace and Xbox. 


Sorry this product did not match your expectations. That is something every developer and publisher has to deal with. If you check Facebook you will see people who think it is too complex and who are not able to handle it. In fact our support is far more busy with those people then with people who find bugs. 

 

I understand that state of affairs is not what you want. But as said we are doing this to make money. Aerosoft is a company as any other. If you do not like that, just select companies who do not have that as a principle. There is fantastic freeware for MSFS, we support many of these projects, the folks at FBW are good friends for example and they know they can ask for favors at any time.

 

As you say you are giving up, let's close this topic.  Our products do not interest you any more. That is a decision I can live with. 

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