Flytampa, Flightbeam, FSDT and 29Palms future products to be

[martin[flytampa]]

Dear Flight Simmers,

For the past 11 years, FSX has been our simulator platform of choice. It served us well, and we saw amazing things being done with it by 3rd party developers, offering us very complex airplane simulations, very detailed sceneries, and clever utilities that extended the simulator’s capabilities far beyond what we thought to be possible years ago.

Lately we, developers, start feeling more and more restrained by the underlying platform limitations. While 4GB of maximum ram would seem adequate in 2006, when FSX was originally released, and no PC could handle the detail that consumed that amount of memory, in 2017 we have hardware far more capable, but we just cannot use it because of the software limitations.

The most aggravating problem is the 32bit memory limit, which no hardware can fix, since it’s a core software problem. This not only is the cause of OOMs, but it also forces developers to design a product taking into account this limitation. Some optimizations that might be good for fps, like LOD levels, have a side effect of taking more RAM, so we are often forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, either having a good frame rate and smoothness (risking OOMs), or losing fps and smoothness, trying to save up to the last byte of memory, to prevent crashes.

FSX was born with issues that, after the latest patch in 2007, nobody could have addressed, because the traditional cycle of a new sim every 2-3 years has been interrupted, so we had to live with it, and found ways to overcome it. We found very creative ways to bypass several underlying limitations of the sim, a common example of which is the complexity of creating convincing ground textures, by layering lots of different materials over the FSX round earth model, and other ‘hacks’ which wasted lots of our time in developing and offering support for, and that would have been surely better spent perfecting the art, instead of finding solutions to problems that shouldn’t exist. Airplane developers have been also very limited in their options, and many of them had to reverse-engineer the sim, to hack into it at the deepest level, for example to simply get a more realistic lighting of the cockpit.

But we got used to it, and made good products, which are loved by users.

Recently, the discontinuity between what the FSX engine can do, and what other game engines are capable of, has become a real burden, and it’s hampering our chances for future advancements.

In the past years, we have seen the rise of Prepar3D, which was initially based on the FSX graphic engine, but it has now evolved on its own path, while still maintaining a surprisingly high rate of backward compatibility with FSX.

Prepar3D has a lot more to offer to developers, and therefore to its users, than just backward compatibility. The native SDK is being constantly improved, and it has grown so much, that we are more and more frustrated by the FSX limitations.

But until today, Prepar3D was still a 32 bit application, which means it might have not been possible to look at the native SDK, because many of the things it has to offer, would likely not be possible due to memory limitations. Today, the release of Prepar3D 4 changes everything. Not only we might not be constrained by an SDK made in 2006, but the better features that Prepar3D always offered to us, become now really feasible, for the first time.

Take some of the examples below:

- No "hard" Memory limitations which might cause OOM errors.

- Dynamic Lighting

- Improved human Animations

- Creation of more advanced SimObjects

- Conditional display of objects/textures

- More realistic and reliable ground models

- Improved compatibility between different add-ons (and autogen), due to the new installation method.
Today, if you compare FSX with Prepar3D V4, you have the new sim which offers a solution to a problem (memory) that can only get worse as add-ons get more complex and the hardware more powerful to support them and you also get a generally smoother flying experience and better fps too. And if you buy more hardware, you will get your money’s worth of it, because buying a faster video card or adding more memory will actually be reflected on your sim’s performance.

We believe the platform that will stay for us as the main sim for the next years, is Prepar3D, so we decided to make public a decision that we have been considering for several months already, since the first time we got to see the new sim:

In the next months, we’ll all stop developing new products for FSX.

Some of our products that are already very close to release, such as Flightbeam KMSP or Fsdreameam KSDF, will still be offered for FSX too, and we’ll of course continue to support all our existing releases with bug fixes, but the new products we’ll work from now on, will be designed for Prepar3D 4 and future versions.

We all agree this is the best decision for the future of the community moving forward, and we can only hope that our stance would result in other developers considering the same move. But we also need you, the users, to make this work.


undersigned,

Umberto Colapicchioni - Fsdreamteam
Alessandro Cucinotta - Fsdreamteam
Amir Salehi - Flightbeam
Lars Pinkenburg - 29Palms
George Grimshaw - FlyTampa
Martin Brunken - FlyTampa
Emilios Gemenetzidis - FlyTampa

[Bakern]

Good decision.

Cheers
Stein-Ove

[mcdonar]

Excellent decision, even!

[BoazDK]

Totally support you in this decision! Let's see where the new age of simulation can take us!

[bicha36]

Totally agree with this decision

Regards,

Walter

[liketofly1]

Now its time for all other Devs to move on and take that decision... Good Job!

regards
Richard

[stevefocus]

Looks like John Venema does not agree with this move, he says "Those developers announcing dropped support for FSX are shortsighted and lazy" haha I like John but I dont see why he has to insult other devs. By the way I like the new logo lol.

[precious62b]

How about the sceneries that are already being developed i.e. KPDX, KLAS, KBOS......? Will those be out for FSX?

[GermaineT]

So FlyTampa and the other co-signers decide to dance on the blurry, shaky P3D license agreement, which shows no place for hobbyists, only for enrolled students, software developers, academic and professionals who would use the software for professional purposes. Good luck with that, mates, but the P3D fine print still shows it is, without doubt - despite hype and comments from the Internet, and the hard-to-believe "someone from LM told me" anecdotes - not for entertainment or hobby use. Maybe FlyTampa can make money from all those who use P3D under false pretenses, but that doesn't make it right. Until LM changes the EULA, it is intended for a limited, specific user group, no matter how much people wish otherwise. Anyone who can read can see the requirements. They have not changed. I wish they would. But until then, no sale, guys.

[Benncpp15]

So FlyTampa and the other co-signers decide to dance on the blurry, shaky P3D license agreement, which shows no place for hobbyists, only for enrolled students, software developers, academic and professionals who would use the software for professional purposes. Good luck with that, mates, but the P3D fine print still shows it is, without doubt - despite hype and comments from the Internet, and the hard-to-believe "someone from LM told me" anecdotes - not for entertainment or hobby use. Maybe FlyTampa can make money from all those who use P3D under false pretenses, but that doesn't make it right. Until LM changes the EULA, it is intended for a limited, specific user group, no matter how much people wish otherwise. Anyone who can read can see the requirements. They have not changed. I wish they would. But until then, no sale, guys.

You must have a lot of girfriends. Kicking them off with your knowledge of EULAs.

You can use P3D for Educational, Training, Learning purposes. So if you like practicing ILS approaches, you are all set. No one will ever be able to enforce or prove otherwise.

Relax dude & buy p3d. Its amazing. Or are you just a XP11 troll?

[stevefocus]

So FlyTampa and the other co-signers decide to dance on the blurry, shaky P3D license agreement, which shows no place for hobbyists, only for enrolled students, software developers, academic and professionals who would use the software for professional purposes. Good luck with that, mates, but the P3D fine print still shows it is, without doubt - despite hype and comments from the Internet, and the hard-to-believe "someone from LM told me" anecdotes - not for entertainment or hobby use. Maybe FlyTampa can make money from all those who use P3D under false pretenses, but that doesn't make it right. Until LM changes the EULA, it is intended for a limited, specific user group, no matter how much people wish otherwise. Anyone who can read can see the requirements. They have not changed. I wish they would. But until then, no sale, guys.

But you can use it for simultaion purposes. Shaky p3d license agreement my arse, people who use that argument in my opinion either have no common sense or are too cheap to pay for the pro license.

[streichholz]

very brave.

I like this decision, I will stand behind you guys!

[Kilstorm_McBride]

So FlyTampa and the other co-signers...

I am in support of this group of developers and happy to see they are embracing a solid platform. The reason for the quoting of GermaineT is to ponder the other end of the spectrum. Without P3D, what is left for developers? FSX and its 11 year old code and FSW which no one really knows how 3rd party developers will be able to be part of it or when.

So after so many years of being limited by the FSX code, developers are able to build the scenery they (and the general end user) have been wanting with v4. Putting ones self in a developers shoes you could either develop for something old that will haunt you with customer support issues, something new which has the right stuff & great communication with 3rd parties or whatever FSW will be with no guarantee it will support 3rd parties.

It seems one would either fold up shop or work with where the 3rd party future shines are the choices. Makes it a no brainer to me.

Oh and the reason why I did not mention Xplane or Aerofly is because currently no developers from that group in the OP make products for them however, I lease and use them both as well with full enjoyment.

[Christopher Low]

P3D EULA and license discussions are always good for a laugh. In the real world, if Lockheed Martin agree to sell you a license to download a version of P3D without asking for written, signed and sealed confirmation that you will never use it for entertainment purposes, then you can use it in any way that you like! It really is nobody else's business.