6 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Then it WOULD be a SAD world we lived in. Would be a bit like N.Korea. 

Thank you @Ianrivaldosmith , The beauty of the word we are living in is when we are in a place that everyone can express their opinion with freedom and respect and learn something from other people. I respect and listen (read) everyone even those not agree with me or even trying to ridicule my words.

I develop and sell software and when a customer call to my phone to complain I listen carefully everything they have to say just in case they are right or have anything interesting to add.

I don't understand why people get that defensive in forums no matter how polite we post, but probably is a part of this freedom we are talking about.

I don't know about the majority of all users, but I am sure the majority of Mac and Linux users are enjoying it. This is a niche were Laminar customers will remain loyal.

Even on my 10+ old hardware: Intel® Core™ i5-4690 CPU @ 3.50GHz × 4 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, I am getting between 25 and 35 FPS in the demo area, downtown included.
So performance wise, I have nothing to complain.

Except for the sparse trees (something others reported already) I don't have anything to complain about.

On the plus side, I observed there is much more traffic on the roads than in XP-11.

Moneywise, I currently don't have money to spend, currently we are on a strict budget, also with winter coming. 60$ may not be much to some people, but for me, in the current economic climate, it is a lot.

Honestly, if I had the means, I would invest in a beefy new iMac right now, to run XP-12.

And I would love to adventure outside the demo area and 15 minutes time window.

2 hours ago, XST said:

The reason is very clear: just pure business. MSFS users are counted in millions while XP users are counted thousands.

So, aside of the developer feelings, loyalty and love… making much more money for the same effort makes lot of sense to them.

This right here.

Devs are in the business to make money. If you can invest 1000 hours and $50000 into creating a product (hypothetical numbers here) and you have 2 paths to market it to, are you going to choose to market it to an audience of a few tens of thousands of potential buyers, or a market of millions of buyers? It doesn't take a business management degree to see the former option makes zero business sense whatsoever. You have the potential to increase revenue exponentially by choosing the latter option for the same investment.

This has nothing to do with feelings or loyalty. It's about business. And business will go where the money is. And the devs that are choosing the former option based solely on loyalty and feelings are doing so at their own detriment. 

Edited September 9, 20223 yr by Crunchmeister

As an old-time XP user, I've been reading these threads with interest... regardless of whatever single sim or multiple sims one might be invested in currently, it's always important and great to have healthy competition in the flight sims arena since then us users are always winners. Given the size of the LR team I suppose whatever improvements they've done in this XP12 beta is about what could've been expected maybe... I'll be up front and say that I've never really cared for Austin's bluster, and it was certainly ironic how he's been trying to push a false narrative leading up to the XP12 release that XP is all about flight simulation while MSFS is all about visuals.. while a bulk of what they've focused on is in trying to improve visuals, and only after MSFS came out since before that they were always dismissing visuals and more realistic world representation as unnecessary.

In any case, they seemed to have at least improved a fair bit compared to vanilla XP11, but therein lies the interesting situation which I keep hearing from long-time XP users... A non-trivial amount of them feel that XP12 is no different from XP11 + various add-ons. V1 Simulations did an extensive first look using the Toliss A340 below and that was his main conclusion, even going to the point of saying that XP11 + add-ons such as Enhanced Skyscapes is better than XP12. My take is that XP has returned to its niche status, loved by that core base of XP followers, and of course those who only use Mac or Linux, or those who don't care to be connected to the internet in order to use a sim, or those who have a curious hatred for all things Microsoft :), etc. It's not going to increase mindshare amongst 3rd party developers, certainly not when MSFS continues to capture and corner most of that, and MSFS is also not standing still as it relentlessly marches forward on all aspects of flight simming. I get that it's in Austin's and his followers' interests to keep disparaging MSFS and trying to portray it as X or Y rather than a full flight simulator, but that just doesn't fly any more as reality completely says otherwise. I'd say the advantages XP has over MSFS as it stands now when it comes to core flight dynamics is far far smaller than the advantages MSFS has over XP when it comes to world-representation/lighting/weather/avionics/etc. That will be accentuated even more when MSFS SU11 releases in November with a major beefing up of its default fleet and core aerodynamics, and adds core support for helicopters and gliders.

But, like I said at the beginning, if XP/MSFS/P3D/etc can keep upping the ante in meaningful ways, then even if you're only using one sim it's still goodness all around as there's nothing like competition to keep pushing everyone ahead.
 

 

Edited September 9, 20223 yr by lwt1971

31 minutes ago, Crunchmeister said:

Devs are in the business to make money. If you can invest 1000 hours and $50000 into creating a product (hypothetical numbers here) and you have 2 paths to market it to, are you going to choose to market it to an audience of a few tens of thousands of potential buyers, or a market of millions of buyers? It doesn't take a business management degree to see the former option makes zero business sense whatsoever. You have the potential to increase revenue exponentially by choosing the latter option for the same investment.

Exactly, and there is a very important feature, not related to a the simulator itself, but a great source of revenue for everyone... the built-in market place.

When a simulator has a built-in marketplace means that ALL of the simulator users will see all the new and updated add-ons immediately, almost every time they use the sim. Is a common repository of add-ons. This means for a developer to sell X times more than spreading the product in different web stores. Plus much more simpler... manage multiple stores is really a headache and a waste of time for a developer. It is also a huge source of income for the simulator itself, who gets all the extra commissions for all the sales made. So its a win-win situation. And developers still have the option to publish in all other web stores if they want to.

Is this related to the users/simmers? directly it is not... they can buy where ever they want. But is a way to get developers interested in the marketplace by multiplying their potential sales amount, and lot of users go where the good developers go, so yes... making developers happy makes good indirect source revenue for the sim company.

LR never said anything about adding a built-in marketplace to XP 12. That was not over the table, no complains. Just saying this is just a small feature along some others that makes the difference when taking strategical decisions to take the company and the sim to the next level.

21 minutes ago, XST said:

Exactly, and there is a very important feature, not related to a the simulator itself, but a great source of revenue for everyone... the built-in market place.

When a simulator has a built-in marketplace means that ALL of the simulator users will see all the new and updated add-ons immediately, almost every time they use the sim. Is a common repository of add-ons. This means for a developer to sell X times more than spreading the product in different web stores. Plus much more simpler... manage multiple stores is really a headache and a waste of time for a developer. It is also a huge source of income for the simulator itself, who gets all the extra commissions for all the sales made. So its a win-win situation. And developers still have the option to publish in all other web stores if they want to.

Is this related to the users/simmers? directly it is not... they can buy where ever they want. But is a way to get developers interested in the marketplace by multiplying their potential sales amount, and lot of users go where the good developers go, so yes... making developers happy makes good indirect source revenue for the sim company.

LR never said anything about adding a built-in marketplace to XP 12. That was not over the table, no complains. Just saying this is just a small feature along some others that makes the difference when taking strategical decisions to take the company and the sim to the next level.

There are some XP developers who choose to only sell their product through one conduit.  I'll never understand that.....

2 hours ago, XST said:

Probably you are right... I don't know what I'm talking about and probably invented or just imagined in my brains half... not half... all the information I posted before.. so don't worry I take it back and I will not do this anymore 🤦‍♂️

Why should we believe you. What evidence is there of any this information given that looks tailored to be nothing more than confirmation bias for those individuals on here who are all eager to agree? 

The numbers  that say 10,000 of X-plane vs 1 million of MSFS is not news any of the 200 developers who went into the ahpa program and are now announce thier product releases.  All the ones who didn't like for example inibuild are looking for business opportunities. And rumors you maybe be hearing are just rumors and not facts. Why should someone disclose their plans to anyone outside of their own business if leaked out could scare their customers.    

40% of the Xplane belongs to the MAC and Linux crowd and that could go up based on one's decision on whether or not they want to stay on the Windows after 2025 with window 10 support ending and are force to go to 11. So that group is not going anywhere and they all know it.

Beside, nothing would really be decided until after the Navigrah survey and the sales figures which I sure is not in because the sim is not out of beta yet.

This is nothing more the fear spreading nonsense just to  satisfy the minds who have already drawn their own conclusion. 

Edited September 9, 20223 yr by BobFS88

5 minutes ago, BobFS88 said:

Why should we believe you. What evidence is there of any this information given that looks tailored to be nothing more than confirmation bias for those individuals on here who are all eager to agree? 

 

5 minutes ago, BobFS88 said:

This is nothing more the fear spreading nonsense just to  satisfy the minds who have already drawn their own conclusion.

You should not believe me, you have to find you own information and have your own opinion. And it has not to be the same I have. And I will respect you whatever it is.

1 hour ago, XST said:

Probably you are right... I don't know what I'm talking about and probably invented or just imagined in my brains half... not half... all the information I posted before.. so don't worry I take it back and I will not do this anymore 🤦‍♂️

Certainly you invented or imagined the 1:1000 users ratio. This takes away credibility from all the rest you wrote... 🤷‍♂️

1 minute ago, Murmur said:

Certainly you invented or imagined the 1:1000 users ratio. This takes away credibility from all the rest you wrote... 🤷‍♂️

I never said the ratio 1:1000, that was never my statement, I said exactly "MSFS users are counted in millions while XP users are counted in thousands. " which doesn't mean at all that the ratio is 1:1000. Was a way to express that you can access to a million of potential sales in MSFS whereas in XP will be only thousands for the same thing.

This is not even a sales comparison between XP and MSFS units sold. Numbers are based on a potential market targeting taking also in account the built-in marketplace in MSFS.

Was a estimation of a potential marketing target comparison for developers, never a ratio of units sold.

Again, You don't have to agree with me, neither believe me if you don't want, just please don't change the meaning of my words.

40 minutes ago, Poppingcork said:

There are some XP developers who choose to only sell their product through one conduit.  I'll never understand that.....

I think It is a matter of time and resources. Dealing with a seller is always a headache and time consuming. So when they have someone that sells reasonable enough, they don't want to have extra headache. This happens mainly with single freelance developers, not big companies. Some of them can not have revenue even as a main work for living so they have other jobs too. Having just one seller makes everything easier.

Sometimes sellers give you a great deal if you don't sell your products elsewhere.

30 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Certainly you invented or imagined the 1:1000 users ratio. This takes away credibility from all the rest you wrote... 🤷‍♂️

Doesn’t remove any credibility at all. It’s a very well written piece. Anyone can see that unless they take offence from it. 

3 hours ago, XST said:

And yes! scenery matters. I know is not the most important feature when you are flying at 10000 feet. But people want it, just because its is possible these days and other sims have it.

A good indicator for just how important "scenery" is can be found in how much money and effort is spent trying to improve default scenery in XP and P3D, and this applies to most everyone in this very subforum and P3D well-even those who take solace that "their sim" has the superior "flight model" or other esoteric features of a desktop flight simulator.  Why is this the case?  Why is it that people will pay $59 for the base sim, then hundreds to thousands of dollars to make the experience visually believable?  Obviously it plays a massive role in the total experience and comes down to enhancing immersion.  Despite the lamenting by veteran simmers that MS did not prioritize those other aspects of a flight sim in favor of getting visuals and performance to a completely new level is testament that they clearly knew what they were doing.  I've always maintained the really hard part was moving to streaming satellite imagery along w/ AI to improve the 3D objects, and that getting to those components of a more complete sim were far easier to accomplish because that has already been done in multiple sims so is just a matter of tedium and work to get the SDK up to speed as well for 3rd party integration.

 

For better or for worse, MSFS is marketed as a mass market product with general gamers making up a large portion of sales and said user base via GamePass and Xbox. Although I don't think there are any credible stats available that would back up the 1:1000 ratio, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this number wasn't in the ballpark of reality. Even if it was 1:100, that would still be huge. And I'm pretty sure 1:100 is a pretty conservative ratio.

That said, a large number of said gamers will never stick with the sim long-term, particularly many Xbox users. This group will move on to the latest, greatest thing when it launches and come back to MSFS occasionally. But many of them exposed to it will get bitten by the flight sim bug and join into the hobby full-time. 

This makes MSFS far more mainstream as a product. Like it or not, XP - as good / better as it is in so many ways - is still very much a niche product. There is a huge disparity in the user base, and MS is dominating. 

13 minutes ago, Noel said:

Despite the lamenting by veteran simmers that MS did not prioritize those other aspects of a flight sim in favor of getting visuals and performance to a completely new level is testament that they clearly knew what they were doing. 

This is how they got the mass-market appeal. Appeal to everyone with visuals unlike anything ever seen before in a simulator. They build a frigging digital recreation of the entire planet and then put a flight sim into it. And no one can say with honesty that the visuals aren't light years beyond what other sims can offer. The catch is being the online services are still iffy at times and photogrammetry can be underwhelming when it doesn't load right. It leads to those melted landscapes that Austin loves to make his main speaking point about how bad MSFS is visually.  This is the exception, not the rule. 

Now, the nuts and bolts of the flight simulation are being worked on. We're seeing the SDK maturing significantly to the point that PMDG and Fenix were able to launch their wares, putting another nail in the "But you can't get study level airliners on MSFS" argument. We're seeing sorely missing features like multi-monitor support being added. And we're seeing CFD being added to the flight model. Wind gusts are now a thing. METAR-based weather around airports is now a thing. And the list keeps going. 

X-Plane still does a bunch of things better. There's no arguing that. But that gap is closing. And anyone who says otherwise isn't looking at things objectively.