Terrible knews coming from FlyTampa

Dillon · Post by **Dillon** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:35 pm

It seems the trend of doing airports that someone else has done for free/pay and/or Microsoft is alive and well with FlyTampa. If there is one thing that has been learned over the past and that is, it makes no since to keep redoing the same airports that's already been done by others. I don't know why developers do this...

All airports that are being proposed by FlyTampa already have either freeware or payware competition in the community with the exception of Dubai Intl, WHY???

New York La Guardia -- There are multiple freeware versions around, one version in particular is payware quality.

San Francisco Intl -- Simflyers already has this in the works and Microsoft has included this in FS9 by default.

Seattle-Tacoma Intl -- Already in Flight simulator by default. This area is hard enough on framerates without an add-on package to make it worse.

St. Maarten / Princess Juliana Intl -- Microsoft has already done a great job reproducing this airport, not to mention other additions to the default and/or scenery packages for this airport are present in the community.

With airports like Portland OR, KMDW, KPIT, and countless others that have never been touched why would you guys return to doing airports that have been done over and over and over again (just to say I can do it a little better). How many KSFOs do we need when we don't have one single Indianapolis or Nashville International Airport to choose from.

I know it's every developer's call as to what they wish to produce but your motivations here can't be for profit. Many won't buy another KLGA when they could get one for free but everyone will buy KMDW. Everyone will buy a KSTL or KMEM from you guys but you'll loose allot of us doing something that's already available from someone else and in most cases for free. In reality the only thing more you could offer over what's already out there besides your name on the product is more framerate headaches do to the eye candy. Will we have people walking around shaking our hands when we land??? If that's the case maybe I'll invest my money in your KLGA... Wilco tried to do it this with their Airport2002 product and look at far that product went. They’re efforts would have fared better if the package contained airports no other package had but nooo, they had to do it their way (egos I guess). I don’t think their in the game anymore because when time and money is spent and the profit is not returned, they lost more than they gained and it didn’t have to go that way. Do your research FlyTampa (don’t listen to me) and find out for yourself how far packages like this go. Look at the numbers and see how much can be made from original work versus a company overdoing the same old can of worms. Unless you’re a bunch of rich guys who are just doing it for the love of doing it, your putting yourself in line to have allot of time going out and the return profit could be much less than what it could be if you would have stayed away from work someone else has already beat you to the punch on. There’s way to many airports in the world…

I know some may disagree because their such fans of your work that they would buy anything from you guys but for the most part many aren’t going to pay attention to something they could either get for free or already bought from some other developer.

I hope you guys at FlyTampa reconsider and give us a KMDW, Portland Intl, Indianapolis, etc. I was really impressed with your decision to do airports like Tampa and San Diego. Now things are looking bleak….

Before you bash my post FlyTampa with statements like “what do you know about marketing” and/or “try doing it yourself”, do the research and you’ll see for yourself the error in your scenery choices.

I don’t want to see you guys get burned out by lack of sales considering the time and effort you’ve put in. Since 9/11 it’s not easy these days gathering information on international airports so if your going to risk getting arrested at least make it worth it by making a profit.

Dillon
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haromo · Post by **haromo** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:35 pm

understand this reaction though I don't share your opinion.
Even if a specific airport has been done in the (recent) past I am convinced that Fly Tampa's version will degrade every version of that scenery currently available.
I find Martin's sceneries (a few) classes better then anything on offer at the moment. He has to be one of the better if not the best current scenery designers.
Simflyers cannot be counted to the topdesigners anymore (except KLAS).
Their last KIAH is a laugh in my humble opinion.
The only designers coming close to Martin's quality are latest Sim-wings (Canarie Islands, Madrid, Ibiza 2005) and Aerosoft with their new German Airport series.
Together with Fly Tampa's these sceneries also maintain decent frame rates.

So I will buy every forthcoming scenery from Fly Tampa and actually was hoping for KLAX!!

Happy simming!
Haromo

Post by **martin[flytampa]** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:37 pm

Hi Dillon,

Wrong forum, the new one is here but let me reply on some of your comments.

Dillon wrote:It seems the trend of doing airports that someone else has done for free/pay and/or Microsoft is alive and well with FlyTampa.

I don't think this is a trend, it is simply a matter of perspective (where you live and fly, what other addons you have etc). Let me show you why.

Dillon wrote:All airports that are being proposed by FlyTampa already have either freeware or payware competition in the community with the exception of Dubai Intl

Wrong, there are not one but two freeware Dubai addons available.

Dillon wrote:New York La Guardia -- There are multiple freeware versions around, one version in particular is payware quality.

Sheza (the author) knows that I appreciate his work, but I certainly do not consider the current version with the default ground "payware quality"... PS: payware quality isn't a good expression, many freeware addons like KBOS have shown that quality isn't a matter of pay-or-freeware.

Dillon wrote:San Francisco Intl -- Simflyers already has this in the works and Microsoft has included this in FS9 by default.

I do not know what others have "in the works" (enlighten me please), all I know is that many people who write me are not satisfied with the default SFO.

Dillon wrote:Seattle-Tacoma Intl -- Already in Flight simulator by default. This area is hard enough on framerates without an add-on package to make it worse.

Other than the default airport, I'm not aware of any quality renditions of SEA.

Dillon wrote:St. Maarten / Princess Juliana Intl -- Microsoft has already done a great job reproducing this airport

I could agree on this one (in terms of many addons being available), but St. Maarten is simply one I always wanted to make and now that I have the design know how I intend to do it.

Dillon wrote:I hope you guys at FlyTampa reconsider and give us a KMDW, Portland Intl, Indianapolis, etc. I was really impressed with your decision to do airports like Tampa and San Diego. Now things are looking bleak

IMO here is where the matter of perspective comes in. Did you know Tampa had two freeware addons available? Miami had one payware and at least one freeware. I have not researched all of your suggestions, but I'm sure we would always be able to find at least some addon for it. What I'm trying to say is just that there are countless addons for almost everything in FS that a single person can't be even aware of. If we all (payware, freeware devs) went by the rule not to do what has been done we would really have to go down to very small airports in the case of the USA.

Dillon wrote:Before you bash my post FlyTampa with statements like “what do you know about marketing” and/or “try doing it yourself”, do the research and you’ll see for yourself the error in your scenery choices.

Noone gets bashed in this forum

I fully understand your opinion and I even agree with parts of it. That is why you will in fact see FlyTampa-Midway being made eventually sometime this year. Same goes for San Jose, Houston Hobby and many others. Not all airports I intend to do are on the official "upcoming list", those are just the ones I'm 100% certain about. As I stated earlier, I do prefer medium airports like TPA and SAN as well as airports with interesting architecture and features like Dubai.

Dillon wrote: Since 9/11 it’s not easy these days gathering information on international airports so if your going to risk getting arrested at least make it worth it by making a profit.

It is actually much harder to get information on airports like MDW than it is on SFO simply because of the huge number of photos (pre- and post 9/11) that are available.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 7:14 pm

IMO here is where the matter of perspective comes in. Did you know Tampa had two freeware addons available? Miami had one payware and at least one freeware. I have not researched all of your suggestions, but I'm sure we would always be able to find at least some addon for it. What I'm trying to say is just that there are countless addons for almost everything in FS that a single person can't be even aware of. If we all (payware, freeware devs) went by the rule not to do what has been done we would really have to go down to very small airports in the case of the USA.

Thanks so much Martin for your responce... I'd like to make a point is saying let's leave out all scenery that was designed for previous version of FS out of the discussion. Many of those sceneries don't work correctly with FS9 anyway. Now I challenge you to find scenery freeware or payware for airports KIND, Nashville International, KPIT, KMDW that's on the level of let's say SHez which you say itsn't payware quality... There are plenty of airports in the US that haven't been touched for both FS2k2 and FS2k4. Anything before that doesn't count. That's my point but It's up to you what you want to design and I must respect that. You guys do great work and It's good to hear KMDW will get produced sometime this year. For the sake of argument I'd like you to find some decent scenery for the airports mentioned above for FS2k4. This you will see is why I say there's so much out there to do. Freeware airports that someone uploaded with only a few building added to the scenery shouldn't be counted in this discussion. I'm talking about work were someone actually sat down and thought about what they were doing... :roll:

Joseph29 · Post by **Joseph29** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 7:31 pm

San Francisco Intl - I haven't heard about Simflyers doing this airport, but Im glad FlyTampa is doing SFO I like FlyTampa's scenery a bit better. Also we now have a choice of which SFO we like better and buy the one we like the best.

Seattle-Tacoma Intl - almost ANYTHING is better than the detailed default FS2004 airports! (I already replaced 7 of the detailed airports with scenery)

St. Maarten / Princess Juliana Intl - See responce for Seattle

La Guardia - Yes there is a very good freeware avalible for this airport (and I have it) but Im sure alot of people would like to take LGA up to the next leve of detail of a payware airport.

I do agree there are alot of airport that could and should be made. In time maybe they will all be made.

B777ER · Post by **B777ER** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 7:35 pm

As long as Maring has the static planes in there, I will buy them :mrgreen:

Marcelo · Post by **Marcelo** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 9:52 pm

Oh god, please. Microsoft default sceneries sux, no matter if they're "detailed" or not. Their "detailed" airports are just less terrible than the default ones.

With that I can't agree with you... just see Martin's KMIA and Gary Summons Heathrow Pro. Just 2 perfect examples that microsoft "detailed" sceneries are a joke.

Simflyers KJFK is just a financial example that what you said is not totally true. I'm bringing this up because this is something that can be seen by anyone. Even being a terrible job from Simflyers, their JFK is the 7th product with more sales in Simmarket. We can see that in the main page of Simmarket. No no... Microsoft detailed sceneries are no reason to not do an airport.

SFO from Simflyers ? Oh... Martin, please do SFO for us. By juding from their last sceneries we need someone else building SFO. Or we'll have two screwed up sceneries (Microsoft and Simflyers)

Freeware La Guardia... thought there is ONE good, I think we can see much better from Martin. And I agree with Martin... the ground textures used in the best freeware LGA are really bad.

Seatle is a detailed airport from Microsoft (lol) ? Oh god... even that Microsoft can't do right.

Besides the financial aspects and etc, one thing that is very important is that the scenery designers need material (photos and etc) to design the airports. Just name airports that weren't done yet does not help... there are thousands of airports that weren't designed yet.

But I agree with one thing you wrote... last sceneries from Simflyers are really bad.

Post by **martin[flytampa]** » Sun Feb 08, 2004 7:15 am

Anonymous wrote:Thanks so much Martin for your responce... I'd like to make a point is saying let's leave out all scenery that was designed for previous version of FS out of the discussion.

I wouldn't dare to challange you on that

The thing is that when I hear stuff like "how many LAXs and SFOs do we need", the question is how many options are there for the current version of FS? Believe me that I do check out MS default "enhanced" airports very carefully before making a decision. MIA doesn't count since I wasn't aware of the 2004 enhanced version when I worked on that.

And just to make it perfectly clear: Sheza's LGA is great work and has been one of the best freeware (top 10 or 20) sceneries for years IMO. The current version in FS2004 however is somewhat "dated" and doesn't offer much more than a building replacement.

The reasons for LGA boil down to this: 1) FlyTampa wanting to have a NY destination 2) LGA being IMO the most interesting of the 3 airports (location, overwater runways, nice tower etc)... Add the fact that the other 2 airports are available and you have LGA left. Similar situation with Chicago, thats why I've been looking carefully at MDW for some time.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Feb 09, 2004 3:35 pm

Just wait for SimFlyers PHX you will see once again they are on-top of the BEST of the scenery designers the detail and the new features will well blow simmers away

B777ER · Post by **B777ER** » Mon Feb 09, 2004 4:28 pm

Anonymous wrote:Just wait for SimFlyers PHX you will see once again they are on-top of the BEST of the scenery designers the detail and the new features will well blow simmers away

Both Martin and the SF group produce great scenery. I think it is unfair to compare them both against each other. Both have unique designs that attract users to purchase there sceneries. We should all be thankful that we have both of these companies because without these two, what would we have left?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Feb 10, 2004 8:57 am

B777ER wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Just wait for SimFlyers PHX you will see once again they are on-top of the BEST of the scenery designers the detail and the new features will well blow simmers away
Both Martin and the SF group produce great scenery. I think it is unfair to compare them both against each other. Both have unique designs that attract users to purchase there sceneries. We should all be thankful that we have both of these companies because without these two, what would we have left?

More $$$$$ I am going broke between the two companies

Post by **martin[flytampa]** » Wed Feb 11, 2004 7:53 am

Please no bashing here, I'm sure PHX will be great.

Bodo Mueller · Post by **Bodo Mueller** » Wed Feb 11, 2004 1:28 pm

Both Martin and the SF group produce great scenery. I think it is unfair to compare them both against each other. Both have unique designs that attract users to purchase there sceneries.

Sorry, I have to disagree. The only SF scenery which can compete with FlyTampa-sceneries is Las Vegas and now it looks like that Phoenix will be as good as KLAS. All sceneries in between have bad textures and look "quick made". All in all they are on standards we had for FS2000.

The problem of SF-Scenries is that their qualitiy differs to much from one scenery to the other. Their design standard should be more equal and more custom made.

Wayne_Smith · Post by **Wayne_Smith** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 1:48 am

Hey I think FlyTampa's sceneries are excellent, though I wouldn't mind seeing KPDX on the upcoming list...

MS did an absolutely terrible job on Portland and no scenery freeware OR payware comes even close to representing as it should be. I think FlyTampa would be making a wise move in considering this 'forgotten' airport...just my 2 cents