On 6/19/2019 at 1:17 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

@MarkW, their announcement came so quickly after the news from Microsoft that I honestly don't think they've thought it through enough. I've posted my thoughts on how the next couple of years might pan out on the FSL forum.

They're basing their decisions on unknowns or assumptions. What if P3Dv5 comes out first? They would be compelled to update their Airbus fleet to that version. Not major perhaps but that's the unknown.

Then if FS2020 appears after P3Dv5 and has an SDK available immediately they have to convert those aircraft again. That could be a lengthy or perhaps impossible process. Without an SDK it's a non-starter and FSL would be compelled to stay with P3D.

It seems unlikely P3Dv5 will be released this year given a point update has been released in the last couple of months. FSL could use the next 6 months to continue work on a 64-bit Concorde that is fully compatible with P3D v4.

Even when v5 comes out I'm sure people would be happy to keep v4 on their systems even if just for Concorde because it's 64-bit. Some may decide to stay with v4 for an extended period. I have a fair bit of 3rd party scenery that I am happy with. Others will feel the same.

The rate of updates / new products can be a nightmare for developers and users. Both prefer stability because thet gives you the opportunity to develop and buy new airports etc. If we're in a constant state of flux how can that be good for anyone? It's a nightmare.

I think what is really driving this is the unknown on sales units.  As much as you and I love Concorde (and probably a few hundred more like us) I really question if it will drive the thousands of sales needed to develop the product.   Whereas Airbus of any type sells like crazy and they can count on it regardless of the platform.  its probably a good business decision but sucks for us!

On 6/18/2019 at 4:07 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

 

It's hard to gauge his true feelings about this decision and how much he's treading the party line. I know he's very passionate about Concorde but now that FSL is his main employment there is sense in what he says. Income has to be earned and that means selling bland, boring Airbuses.

Um, not for nothing, but what you may find "bland" or "boring" is not what I (or others) may find bland or boring. To each his own. And in this case, I'd say you're likely in the minority of what people find interesting as far as aircraft are concerned. Additionally, in reading through multiple threads, you seem really negative about this new sim.  I choose to be optimistic and I think it can only help the flight sim world as a whole to have more options and more competition.

To be fair to Ray, anything that delays (or cancels) development of the 64bit version of the FSL Concorde is going to be disappointing for him. We all know how much he loves flying that plane.

12 hours ago, MarkW said:

I think what is really driving this is the unknown on sales units.  As much as you and I love Concorde (and probably a few hundred more like us) I really question if it will drive the thousands of sales needed to develop the product.   Whereas Airbus of any type sells like crazy and they can count on it regardless of the platform.  its probably a good business decision but sucks for us!

Did you reply to Lefteris's invitation to pay for a 64-bit Concorde if you were prepared to cough up around 100USD / GBP? Enough of us did for him to decide it was a viable project. They put development on pause pending news on the new FS2020. Now that Microsoft have announced there will be an SDK that should at least reassure them that they can continue at the appropriate time. Hopefully Microsoft will contact 3rd party developers and give them early access so they can evaluate how much work is involved.

2 hours ago, Bigt said:

Um, not for nothing, but what you may find "bland" or "boring" is not what I (or others) may find bland or boring. To each his own. And in this case, I'd say you're likely in the minority of what people find interesting as far as aircraft are concerned. Additionally, in reading through multiple threads, you seem really negative about this new sim.  I choose to be optimistic and I think it can only help the flight sim world as a whole to have more options and more competition.

I accept that many people love flying the Airbus A3xx. What I find harder to understand is why you still want an A319 or A321 when you have an A320. Just minor variations on a theme surely?

But believe me until you have flown Concorde or seen it fly in the real world as I have you won't appreciate what a fantastic aircraft it is. If it had a glass cockpit maybe more people would be interested but such instrumentation in that aircraft would be totally inappropriate. Do you not have any aircraft with conventional gauges?

The reason I am negative about FS2020 is because its announcement made FS Labs pause development on Concorde and they will only resume once the future of that sim and also P3D v5 becomes clearer. I'm sure you can understand if you had been waiting for over a year already any further delays would be frustrating. It's not the FS2020 sim itelf I have a problem with, just the problems it's caused for FSL.

FS Labs are the only developers with the skills required to create an accurate Concorde model. Andrew Wilson wrote the software that now drives the real Concorde Simulator at Brooklands, England. That was formerly used by BA to train their Concorde pilots. That's how good FSL are with Concorde. I live in hope that now Microsoft have announced an SDK that will improve the chances that a 64-bit Concorde will arrive eventually. I just hope I'm around when it does!

34 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If it had a glass cockpit maybe more people would be interested but such instrumentation in that aircraft would be totally inappropriate. Do you not have any aircraft with conventional gauges?

I don't think it really matters much as to what's in the cockpit. You could put an A320 cockpit in the Concorde and still not that many people will fly it.  I think it simply comes down to, in my opinion, is that most people want to fly the actual aircraft they see flying in the skies today.  The Concorde is grounded.  Therefor not many people really care to fly it.  I get your passion for it and I know there are others that like flying aircraft that no longer fly for nostalgic reasons, but that's just not where the $$ is in aircraft development.  It's just really simple economics I think.  Again, I mean no disrespect to your love for the Concorde nor any disrespect to the aircraft itself by this post.

3 minutes ago, klamal said:

I don't think it really matters much as to what's in the cockpit. You could put an A320 cockpit in the Concorde and still not that many people will fly it.  I think it simply comes down to, in my opinion, is that most people want to fly the actual aircraft they see flying in the skies today.  The Concorde is grounded.  Therefor not many people really care to fly it.  I get your passion for it and I know there are others that like flying aircraft that no longer fly for nostalgic reasons, but that's just not where the $$ is in aircraft development.  It's just really simple economics I think.  Again, I mean no disrespect to your love for the Concorde nor any disrespect to the aircraft itself by this post.

I can't talk for everybody, but for me what you mentioned is my reasoning to choose the planes I want to fly. I want to fly the planes flying in the real world, with the real liveries etc.

@klamal, thank you for explaining the reasons why you wouldn’t be interested in owning Concorde. I’m guessing you’re Norwegian which in itself isn’t a reason not to love the aircraft. Plenty of non-Brits love her.

The reason she was taken out of service wasn’t for any aeronautical reason. The airframe has decades of service. It was a political decision primarily by the French who ironically created  the Airbus which wouldn’t have existed without Concorde.

There was a lot of anger in Britain in 2003 that one wasn’t left in a flying state for special occasions. The Spitfire and Lancaster are much older but they still fly. And British Airways refused to sell to Virgin as Richard Branson wanted to keep them flying.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Did you reply to Lefteris's invitation to pay for a 64-bit Concorde if you were prepared to cough up around 100USD / GBP? Enough of us did for him to decide it was a viable project. They put development on pause pending news on the new FS2020. Now that Microsoft have announced there will be an SDK that should at least reassure them that they can continue at the appropriate time. Hopefully Microsoft will contact 3rd party developers and give them early access so they can evaluate how much work is involved.

Yes I did reply.  Replying does  not convert to sales.  Anyway hopefully this will eventually come to fruition on FS2020....five years from now.  LOL.

5 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@klamal, thank you for explaining the reasons why you wouldn’t be interested in owning Concorde. I’m guessing you’re Norwegian which in itself isn’t a reason not to love the aircraft. Plenty of non-Brits love her.

The reason she was taken out of service wasn’t for any aeronautical reason. The airframe has decades of service. It was a political decision primarily by the French who ironically created  the Airbus which wouldn’t have existed without Concorde.

There was a lot of anger in Britain in 2003 that one wasn’t left in a flying state for special occasions. The Spitfire and Lancaster are much older but they still fly. And British Airways refused to sell to Virgin as Richard Branson wanted to keep them flying.

Wasn’t it also taken out of service because it lost money hand over fist for every flight it did? That plus the Paris crash. 

I love Concorde as much as any other self-respecting Brit, but I don’t think it was purely a “political” reason. 

I think there were a lot of reason, why the Concorde was grounded. Parts of it were political. Parts of it were financial or economical. But I also think that environmental, noise complaints and simply that the airline market was changing were quite big reasons. 

33 minutes ago, Superdelphinus said:

Wasn’t it also taken out of service because it lost money hand over fist for every flight it did? That plus the Paris crash. 

I love Concorde as much as any other self-respecting Brit, but I don’t think it was purely a “political” reason. 

The AF operation probably lost a lot of money, hence their decision which then forced BA's hand as the maintenance costs would be unacceptably high. In its last six months every charter flight was fully booked. The BA flights to JFK less so for the reasons I gave earlier.

18 minutes ago, Anders Bermann said:

I think there were a lot of reason, why the Concorde was grounded. Parts of it were political. Parts of it were financial or economical. But I also think that environmental, noise complaints and simply that the airline market was changing were quite big reasons. 

The most sensitive noise monitoring site was on the Canarsie departure out of 31L at JFK. It always passed. Yes, it was expensive to fly on but most tickets were bought on business accounts so the executives never knew the cost. Even though it no longer flies it's such a  beautiful aircraft it should be in a flight simulator where the running costs are zero!

My speculation, and that is all, is that both PMDG and FSLabs are getting commercial interests in their aircraft as training platforms and that is another potentially very profitable reason why both keep repeatedly focusing on the same couple currently flying planes. PMDG has promised an update of the Jetstream JS41 for a long time and they also keep kicking that one down the road. I have more Airbus and Boeing airliners than I need and doubt I will buy another unless a new simulator requires it. The Concorde and JS41 I would both buy upon release.

Ted

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Even though it no longer flies it's such a  beautiful aircraft it should be in a flight simulator where the running costs are zero!

Undeniably a great aircraft and as a Brit, I'm glad our industrial heritage produced half of her.

That said, Concorde's been out of commercial service for 15+ years now. You can exclude nearly everyone under the age of 25, possibly even 30, from having any nostalgia for the aeroplane - that's a rather consequential part of the gaming market.
Now price it at over $150 and suddenly what was a relatively limited target audience has become smaller again.

747-200, L-1011, 757, DC-10, MD-80 were all produced in much greater quantities so more people got to see and experience them to drive the sentimental attachment.
Everything else currently flying is sought after for the realism factor.
 

22 minutes ago, Ted Striker said:

My speculation, and that is all, is that both PMDG and FSLabs are getting commercial interests in their aircraft as training platforms and that is another potentially very profitable reason why both keep repeatedly focusing on the same couple currently flying planes. PMDG has promised an update of the Jetstream JS41 for a long time and they also keep kicking that one down the road.

I can certainly believe that given the level of detail their aircraft go to. Aerosoft have admitted that they have a valuable contract, may be Microsoft, may be a commercial user. 
Given the choice of few thousand or so sales at $100 with all the concern of whether sale numbers will recoup the development cost, or a fat, one-off, profit-guaranteed commercial contract, as disappointing as it is, it should come as no surprise that the marginal aircraft are deferred time and again.
 

Edited June 21, 20196 yr by F737NG

On 6/19/2019 at 2:17 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

The rate of updates / new products can be a nightmare for developers and users. Both prefer stability because thet gives you the opportunity to develop and buy new airports etc. If we're in a constant state of flux how can that be good for anyone? It's a nightmare.

I’ve seen just that said about X-Plane. Just about get something out and they release a new version that breaks backward compatibility...