FSDreamTeam forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: chicagoduffy on July 10, 2017, 07:49:18 pm
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I am a great admirer of FSDT's incredible work for the FSX/P3D universe. Truly mind blowing stuff. I often have to look closely to convince myself that some of these airports are still in a simulator, and not the real thing :D
For me, there's just one thing holding me back from literally giving FSDT hundreds of dollars (Yes, I'm a bit of a sucker for high quality airports)... its not in x-plane.
X-Plane is a 64-bit platform (As is P3Dv4, which is why FSDT is looking to expand there). It has also experienced an incredible surge in new users since the release of x-plane 11 in late 2016. Big scenery devs like Areosoft are beginning to see that converting their sceneries is a viable, money-making idea. Bergen, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Ft. Myers, Anchorage, Oslo, among others are truly stunning detailed sceneries by Areosoft - made for x-plane 11. They are beginning to recognize the market. My only question is... Why not FSDT?
The demand for payware (of all kinds) in the x-plane community has been increasing, and continues to do so with every new user. In my own opinion, the x-plane market has been growing faster than FSX or P3D ever has. 2 years ago, I would have never thought of even proposing or asking this question... but now... there is a tremendous opportunity for FSDT, FlightBeam, T2T, FlyTampa, and other FSX/P3D exclusive scenery devs.
X-Plane is capable of handling some truly incredible sceneries. Look up Areosoft Dallas/Ft. Worth, Fort Myers, Salt Lake City, Baltimore, and Nimbus Simulations (an x-plane only scenery dev)'s Orlando, Phoenix, and Chicago-O'Hare. Not to mention the literally thousands of freeware and donationware products out there, like Boston, San Francisco, Portland, LAX, San Diego, and tons others.
An x-plane realease of ANY fsdt scenery, would be met with much fanfare in the x-plane community. Including an existing one.
- Just offering a suggestion, not trying to sway any opinions
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Big scenery devs like Areosoft are beginning to see that converting their sceneries is a viable, money-making idea. Bergen, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Ft. Myers, Anchorage, Oslo, among others are truly stunning detailed sceneries by Areosoft - made for x-plane 11. They are beginning to recognize the market. My only question is... Why not FSDT?
You should reverse the question: why the only well known developer/publisher which supports X-Plane is Aerosoft ? That's easy: they distribute the boxed version of X-Plane so, they have an additional interest doing so.
We don't have anything against X-Plane as such. But the problem is: it has been years they promised a better SDK, for example by supplying an official exporter for 3DS Max. This was announced when X-Plane 11 was in Beta to be released after the final release. This, alone would be a mistake, because you should release the SDK *BEFORE* the product gets released to the public. We had the P3DV4 SDK in our hands about 6 months before the product was even announced...that's how you do it.
Right now, the only option to export from 3DS Max to X-Plane 11, it's just an unofficial plugin made by some users, with 2 pages of docs. The rest of the SDK documentation is scattered through a number of unofficial websites, blogs posts and forum posts.
Now, compare this, with the almost 4000 pages of the P3D SDK, all in the same place, always updated for each minor build, and professionally supported.
Be sure that, if X-Plane devs will come out with a proper SDK, starting with an exporter for 3DS Max made AND supported by the X-Plane devs, we'll surely have a serious look at it. And with "supported", I mean with a full documentation, an official developers forum not accessible to the public, were we could post questions, reports bugs, and get real feedback about it.
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You should reverse the question: why the only well known developer/publisher which supports X-Plane is Aerosoft ? That's easy: they distribute the boxed version of X-Plane so, they have an additional interest doing so.
We don't have anything against X-Plane as such. But the problem is: it has been years they promised a better SDK, for example by supplying an official exporter for 3DS Max. This was announced when X-Plane 11 was in Beta to be released after the final release. This, alone would be a mistake, because you should release the SDK *BEFORE* the product gets released to the public. We had the P3DV4 SDK in our hands about 6 months before the product was even announced...that's how you do it.
Right now, the only option to export from 3DS Max to X-Plane 11, it's just an unofficial plugin made by some users, with 2 pages of docs. The rest of the SDK documentation is scattered through a number of unofficial websites, blogs posts and forum posts.
Now, compare this, with the almost 4000 pages of the P3D SDK, all in the same place, always updated for each minor build, and professionally supported.
Be sure that, if X-Plane devs will come out with a proper SDK, starting with an exporter for 3DS Max made AND supported by the X-Plane devs, we'll surely have a serious look at it. And with "supported", I mean with a full documentation, an official developers forum not accessible to the public, were we could post questions, reports bugs, and get real feedback about it.
That's a shame. I wonder how XP has been able to stay in business against Microsoft/LM and be continuously developed all of these years without substantial SDK support. Do you know where their market been all this time? Do they have a bigger commercial market for training devices than ESP/P3D ever had or something? Or do they just have a large enough cult following like a low budget movie that keeps making sequels?
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I wonder how XP has been able to stay in business against Microsoft/LM and be continuously developed all of these years without substantial SDK support.
You are confusing the viability of the market for the sim itself, with the viability of making payware addons for it, which demands a proper and fully supported SDK.
X-Plane itself has always been viable for its author, because:
- Austin Meyer is a genius, and his metabolism is 4x the one of the rest of the human race, and so he's like a whole squad of developers.
- He works with a very small team, compared to many that work for Microsoft or LM. At the heyday of FSX, Microsoft had more than 100 developers working on FSX.
This means X-Plane could sell 1/10th of what FSX or P3D would ever sell, and still make a satisfying amount of money to its authors, so it could be continually developed.
Do you think our view is particular unusual amongst commercial developers (except Aerosoft, for obvious reasons) ?
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Do you think our view is particular unusual amongst commercial developers (except Aerosoft, for obvious reasons) ?
I know they're a small company and therefore don't need to sell as much as MS or LM. I'm was just wondering where that market is/was. Over the past 20 years I only know one other person (a fellow pilot) that used XP. I've also seen P3D and Flight1 products used in commercial trainers but I've never seen XP being used. I don't think your view is unusual. It makes perfect sense to me. I'm just adding to the discussion - not questioning your motives. The only developer I question is T2G and their terrible product support/customer service.
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Do you think our view is particular unusual amongst commercial developers (except Aerosoft, for obvious reasons) ?
No, I don't. I use both sims and the two companies that sell each sim have different philosophies, with regard to 3rd party products. LM encourages payware 3rd party developers to add features to the base sim and that has allowed LM to spend their in-house resources improving the old FSX graphics engine to the point where it is almost not recognizable (except for the file formats and the fact that it is limited to the Windows OS).
In contrast, LR has always encouraged its community of users to develop freeware plug-ins and scenery to improve the base sim. The result is that XP11 has so many freeware add-ons available, that the market for payware products is reduced. That is not to say that the quality of the freeware airports in XP11 is comparable to payware scenery in P3d, almost all of it isn't even close. There are probably 20 or 30 payware XP11 airports worldwide that match the best P3d payware in quality. The difference is, that many of these airports are either small or in parts of the world where a typical user might not want to fly. I think that this situation will eventually change, as the XP11 user base become more demanding of high quality scenery.
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Hey FSDT,
I am a X-Plane user and would also like to see FSDT in XP11. I personally emailed Austin Meyer at x-plane.com and he said there is a great SDK for XP11. Could you guys please make some of your products for XP11? It's worth mentioning that with the release of XP11 v 11.10b6 there is a new SDK (version 3.0) so it's improved.
http://prntscr.com/h8h9fz
Thanks,
Harry Linsenmayer
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Would love you guys to try it out Umberto maybe just covert one of the smaller airports in fsdt library. :) love p3d v4 but man the night lighting on x-plane 11 is amazing.
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ORBX has starting working on sceneries for XP 11 so tje future of XP (as far as payware) is looking better. I have XP 11 and I must agree night lighting is much better than P3D v4 however day lighting is better in P3D. As stated, users of XP have depended so much on freeware it reduced the payware demand greatly. Users of FSX/P3D have spent $$$ on their payware and the because most of the add the realism needed in a sim, ei GSX, HD airports, REX, and numerous devs who add animations, animals, birds and people.
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Unfortunately, OBRX cancelled project X a while ago that's why I'm going to FSDT. I think converting a smaller airport would be a good idea.
Thanks,
Harry
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ORBX has starting working on sceneries for XP 11 so tje future of XP (as far as payware) is looking better. I have XP 11 and I must agree night lighting is much better than P3D v4 however day lighting is better in P3D. As stated, users of XP have depended so much on freeware it reduced the payware demand greatly. Users of FSX/P3D have spent $$$ on their payware and the because most of the add the realism needed in a sim, ei GSX, HD airports, REX, and numerous devs who add animations, animals, birds and people.
Orbx cancelled out.
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Orbx did cancel...but there back on x-plane now.
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It would be interesting to see if developer like FSDT start supporting xplane. I am really liking xplane now and can't afford to buy addons for both platforms.
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Are we sure ORBX started again?
I agree. I have already put forward too much money to XP11 and just can't switch to P3D4 or FSX at the moment and it'd really be awesome if FSDT made their sceneries and GSX for XP11.
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Are we sure ORBX started again?
I agree. I have already put forward too much money to XP11 and just can't switch to P3D4 or FSX at the moment and it'd really be awesome if FSDT made their sceneries and GSX for XP11.
Yep there hiring developers for it https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/144753-want-to-develop-for-orbx/
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Are we sure ORBX started again?
I agree. I have already put forward too much money to XP11 and just can't switch to P3D4 or FSX at the moment and it'd really be awesome if FSDT made their sceneries and GSX for XP11.
Yep there hiring developers for it https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/144753-want-to-develop-for-orbx/
Awesome, now I just need to figure out how to contact the developer here at FSDT to see if we can get XP11 sceneries and FSDT.
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Im also a great admirer of FSDT's work for the FSX/P3D universe! It's sad that OBRX cancelled project X
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Are we sure ORBX started again?
I agree. I have already put forward too much money to XP11 and just can't switch to P3D4 or FSX at the moment and it'd really be awesome if FSDT made their sceneries and GSX for XP11.
Yep there hiring developers for it https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/144753-want-to-develop-for-orbx/
This will be big
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Now that we can suspect FlyTampa going with Xplane as per one pic on theirs Facebook page, ORBX is officially with X-Plane, do we have a chance to see the amazing scenery of FSDT in the world of Xplane ????
I'm ready to spend my money event if I bought all your scenery for P3D ;D
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We don't have anything against X-Plane: this has been said many times. It's just we are simply too busy right now with current things, that we don't have the resources to dedicate to it.
Also, I keep looking at their SDK, and it keeps changing, sometimes daily.
For example, the whole GUI stuff is there, but still has the look of the old XP10 interface, and their documentation says this will be entirely rewritten from scratch, but the issue is, a replacement with the new style interface is not complete, meaning any plugin with an interface is not really feasible to do, right now.
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We don't have anything against X-Plane: this has been said many times. It's just we are simply too busy right now with current things, that we don't have the resources to dedicate to it.
Also, I keep looking at their SDK, and it keeps changing, sometimes daily.
For example, the whole GUI stuff is there, but still has the look of the old XP10 interface, and their documentation says this will be entirely rewritten from scratch, but the issue is, a replacement with the new style interface is not complete, meaning any plugin with an interface is not really feasible to do, right now.
So in other words you will be one of the last to finally go over to XP 11.....while you find a....."feasible" way to interface?
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ORBX just released its first xp11 scenery
Shouldnt FSDT be able to as well?
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I am also sure there would be a good market for something like GSX in X-Plane. I guess we have to wait and see :D
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Yep GSX for sure. If FSDT joined ORBX then XP11 would be my primary sim..just have to sit and wait I guess
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So in other words you will be one of the last to finally go over to XP 11.....while you find a....."feasible" way to interface?
It's not really a question or a race to who's become first or last. It was right not to support X-Plane earlier, because it was really missing too many features to be considered mature.
So, at each and every release, we read again all what's required to read in the SDK, and while we see it's definitely improving, it's still missing lots of crucial features we require, especially for something like GSX, which requires some kind of UI.
And, right now, developers requiring an UI, are presented with 3 equally disappointing choices:
1) Use the existing API, which will result in the outdated and soon to be abandoned old style UI
OR
2) Create an interface from scratch, drawing gadgets like drop-down boxes, list boxes and other UI elements, directly in OpenGL, which is really not a very clever way to waste valuable development time while waiting they'll complete the new UI API
OR
3) Waiting until the new UI API will be completed, which of course is the most sensible thing to do.
In the meantime, we'll probably release some scenery in the mid-term future (sometime in 2019, I guess), which doesn't have all such requirements.
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ORBX are also into AF2 scenery not my choice of sim, or XP.
Ray Fry.
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I am also sure there would be a good market for something like GSX in X-Plane
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ok.... ::)
So in other words you will be one of the last to finally go over to XP 11.....while you find a....."feasible" way to interface?
It's not really a question or a race to who's become first or last. It was right not to support X-Plane earlier, because it was really missing too many features to be considered mature.
So, at each and every release, we read again all what's required to read in the SDK, and while we see it's definitely improving, it's still missing lots of crucial features we require, especially for something like GSX, which requires some kind of UI.
And, right now, developers requiring an UI, are presented with 3 equally disappointing choices:
1) Use the existing API, which will result in the outdated and soon to be abandoned old style UI
OR
2) Create an interface from scratch, drawing gadgets like drop-down boxes, list boxes and other UI elements, directly in OpenGL, which is really not a very clever way to waste valuable development time while waiting they'll complete the new UI API
OR
3) Waiting until the new UI API will be completed, which of course is the most sensible thing to do.
In the meantime, we'll probably release some scenery in the mid-term future (sometime in 2019, I guess), which doesn't have all such requirements.