Medellinexpat

In upcoming releases for me XP12 has come a huge way in the past six months in improving the product. Therefore a deep breath and slow down in updates won’t be unwelcome, nor I guess for developers. As for XP13 perhaps critical there is where MS are going. Isn’t this the point in the script when they wave goodbye and leave their partners to carry the load? The other rather intriguing thought is whether AI in terms of coding will mean faster deliveries and tidied up code. Will there be an impact on scenery and aircraft developers in terms of faster development and therefore less cost? Will AI open up the market to new developers most notably on the scenery side? Will AI help transform packages written for MS into XP content? Will AI allow non commercial developers to work on a more even playing field? A few months ago the future for XP12 looked a little dire. Laminar deserves credit for their recent work.

On the availability of hardware where I live (South America) there’s been no real change and the best limited towards what Amazon is prepared to send you from the US. You in Australia seem to have had better supplies but one wonders if in the US there is about to be a crisis. Presumably much of what is sold is manufactured in China and nearby and therefore may carry heavy tariffs or just not be available at all. Other hobbies, model railways in particular, are already raising the alarm and talking about $1,000 locomotives. There’s been an increase in hardware offerings but one wonders how the current situation in the US will impact manufacturers. Will some of the new products become financially unfeasible without a vibrant US market? MS rather than Xplane of course drove this expansion in flight simulation and therefore the demand for ever nicer hardware. $400 joysticks and people buying up what is available for secondary market sales and lifting prices ever higher might prove a dampener on at near term growth at least in the US.

Good news but I am a bit confused that the video attached is for the 320 series, not the 321. Yet I can’t see the 320 sound pack on the Org store even though the video is at least a month old.

Releasing NGS scenery in stages makes sense, but perhaps for another reason than its availability. Part of the issue for a flight simulation is providing ‘Global’ scenery. Just how much of that Global scenery (subtracting of course the oceans) is actually ever used? My guess 5-10% of the earth’s surface if that. Then adjust for those remote territories that people only fly over at 38,000 feet so the detail is overkill. Perhaps the answer is have Xplane track where people fly and then use that data to build scenery detail levels. Of course there will always be exceptions cases, but they would continue to have the existing level of detail. There have to be huge areas in the Far North (Canada, Russia), Antartica, Africa, Australia (sorry Stephen), Central Asia and South America that no simmer, at least for VFR has ever visited. Having access to the whole world, like MSFS has, is a nifty trick, but wasteful. Data, and perhaps AI might have you understand what scenery you really need.

Adding in that the release of the new MS FS seems to have gone so spectacularly badly (there is even one of the Hitler parody videos of him trying to log on) perhaps now is the time for nice steady progress by Laminar?

Seems like a good update to me. However this article has made me realize that the update, at least temporarily, will have moved my Airac back from the current month that I had as a subscriber to the 2306 one provided in stock XP12. On the account login it is very subtle (I did not notice it for a while) but when you set up an account it links automatically to my Xplane subscription. Using the same email address for the account that you used when buying your subscription is perhaps important?

In terms of streaming I’m generally perplexed with what a poor job aircraft developers do in putting their own content up. They have plenty of access to their own product and put up two minutes of footage that tells you very little. Scenery developers are even worse with large amounts of the footage often shot at night, convenient for sceneries often little better than stock. Discord hasn’t also created the situation where there’s a sort of insiders access and little for a more general buying community. I don’t need to be intimately involved with every day of development but some effort in building a prerelease buzz might help sales. It is also worth considering that there are plenty of alpha and beta releases out there which are called ‘updates’. One developer, who might be responsible for a set of CRJ aircraft, often has updates but the general feel of the products remains at best Beta offerings. After several years. As for going off to MSFS is that community any less picky? Compare the Toliss release of their 339 with Aerosoft’s (now there is a name from the past) debacle of an A330. Even worse for Aerosoft there’s no Mathijs Kok to blame anymore.

Yesterday I was watching a Youtube video about the state of the hardware issue and it did make me wonder how much of an issue that was in people not moving from XP11 to XP12, as that may require an upgrade in hardware. I myself upgraded my PC in anticipation of XP12, not a cheap or easy thing to do where I live. The argument in the video was that the hardware market is a mess. Effectively you have Nvidia dominating the market and for pricing their high end cards being very expensive. Their current competition is losing ground and in some case suggesting that they will not be competing at the higher end of the market. Current stocks of the existing Nvidia cards are becoming difficult to source as Nvidia moves towards the new 5000 series. What the pricing is going to be on those is not yet known, and remember the issues with the 4090 on release? The one thing you can still find is scalpers believing that their trove of 4090s are still worth a kings ransom. Then there is the processor market with the leader, Intel, in the middle of huge reliability issues with their product - a story where motherboard manufacturers hardly come out well either - and a new chip range on the horizon. Will people eagerly open their wallets to Intel? Will the existing generation be fixed? Will the next generation sell? Add in that some of the water cooler manufacturers are struggling to stay afloat (no pun intended) and of course the constant demand for high end components from AI developers all looking to try to perfect the alchemy of turning base metals into gold. Bottom line to move to XP12 you may well need better hardware and the current market with lack of competition, high prices and new products on the horizon hardly make this the perfect time to upgrade. MS may run into this problem when they release 2024. Their 2020 product may seem just fine for those who want to avoid the $3-4,000 upgrade their new game needs.

But is the growth in simulation games in PC based flight games? MS are very shy about releasing usage numbers but have said that flight simulation is a niche interest. Now the Steam numbers miss a whole lot of stuff but MSFS usage from there is pretty flat line these days, suggesting despite the millions of units sold the actual user community is pretty static. A lot of growth in simulation games is likely to come from the mobile sector as well rather than PC based activity. Personally I believe the flight simulation market is pretty saturated. How sales go with the new MSFS2024 will be interesting, but they are unlikely to mimic the 2020 release. But a new MS release will once again impact Xplane. If nothing else MS advertising, both paid for and unpaid media articles together of course with the online vloggers, will swamp anything Laminar does. Does Laminar do any useful publicity? MS also reads that wider sim player market better than Laminar. Much of the new audience is younger and the idea of a multi player 20 minute ‘challenge’ is more appealing than a recreating a transatlantic commercial flight. That market share isn’t interested in Austin wobbling on about the physics behind the latest tweak in the flight model. The answer for Laminar isn’t simple. In some ways MS failing with 2024 might be the best hope. It needs very high spec hardware, so expect a lot of negative user feedback on release plus the unit sales will likely be a fraction of 2020. How MS beancounters react to the sales that might be Laminar's best hope.

Although my coding days are long gone into the distant past I have the feeling that an exec to do this (you know the location of the input files and the destination) is probably embarrassingly easy for anyone who knows what they are doing. Likely much easier than the plug in that comes with the sound pack.

Thanks and the video does show that it’s not a complicated process and I’ve worked with sound packs before. Has there been any thought to having a Mango utility to rerun the updates (for all packs) on a regular basis. Something along the lines of having all of the sound packs stored in designated folder and then a utility to transfer them in windows to the correct aircraft files? Probably not difficult. In your video for example keeping the original zip file could be considered important if you need to rerun the process at a later date. The utility would save on future downloads. I’ll likely buy the 319 pack now but making this process easier for people - beyond the first run - might be worthwhile. If you have several sound packs it’s easy to forget about one or more when an aircraft has been updated, a fairly common occurrence as XP12 evolves. Having a utility might even encourage brand loyalty when new packs are released.

Sound packages can be excellent, but equally they can potentially be tiresome to live with. Two issues. One, when you move from engine type to another do you need to update the files to the correct sounds - or does it store both? Second, if you use an updater like SkunkCrafts does the updater see the ‘rogue’ files and overwrite or delete them? Interested in buying this but the developers don’t tend to explain the installation process or when the files may need to be reinstalled again. Any opportunity to include some detail around this in the review?

I currently have a 9 and X-Organizer runs without any issues. Incidentally it is not a program that runs in the background while you are running Xplane. It’s a set up app that you run and then you launch Xplane from it. Once Xplane is launched X-Organizer has finished its work. XToolbox is a companion program by the same developer you might want to look at, again available on the Orgstore,

While understanding your point FSX aircraft were not compatible with MSFS and until MSFS 2024 is released in December we won’t see whether developers look for ‘upgrade’ fees for existing MSFS content. MS does seem to have said that existing content bought from their shop will work in MSFS2024, but work and having full functionality are two different things - as you know from XP11 to XP12. It is also worth remembering that each new version of Xplane has come with new features so to take advantage of those features work is needed. Your comment about MSFS being easier for developers is interesting and perhaps worthy of an article from a developer on the subject. Moving to MSFS makes little sense at the moment with MSFS 2024 on the horizon. One thing to look for there will be whether MSFS2024 is heavier again on hardware. Personally I am happy with XP12 but each month Stephen and his articles are seeding my mind with doubt about the gap to MS.

One thing I use is XOrganizer that allow you to choose which sceneries and plugs ins get loaded or do not. Therefore in the New York are I will select the add on airport I am flying to/from and disable any other add on sceneries in the area. Available from the Org store and for me a critical part of my flight planning. As for the rest of your comments I agree. Adding MSFS eye candy scenery would likely lead to more people leaving as you would need a heavy duty rig. That may change in time of course but reading the forums decent performance is an issue for many people as it is.