I wonder if.......?

[Daube]

Quote
"Development costs are spiralling out of control because of market demand for systems depth, content and features"
Same old question...how many of simmers want a "real" simulation? Know many say so, know it takes months, years to mastera plane. Not to mention having to be pilot, 1 officer, flight engineer, etc...

Really don't have the need for systems depth. Alabeo is fine for me, and always wait for a sale, lower price to buy a plane..

regards

The simmers who wanted "real" simulation (let's say "as real as possible") are the one who directed the technical evolution of our sims.
If the majority of simmers were not interested in realistic airplanes that attempts to reproduce the real thing (which is the very definition of "simulator"), and they prefered beautiful but boring aircrafts instead, then the FS series would have stopped a long time ago, and would have transformed into some console software instead, like Ace Combat or such... I believe a great part of the simmers are actually using the simulation in order to see how a real aircraft works, flies, sounds, and all these things that people like me have no chance to do in real life.
... and NO, I'm not interested in spending many thousands of Euros to get a licence. I don't have that money to spend, and I don't have the time to fly and maintain that licence.

Concerning the prices, I would agree with the remark made by Francois. The simmers are looking at the addon quality itself, the price is secondary. An Alabeo plane could not sell at 50 dollars. An A2A plane could not either. An A2A plane with Accusim however, can and DOES sell at 50 dollars.... and it could even sell very well at a much higher price. Same goes with other categories of airplanes. PMDG, VRS etc... these planes are expensive, but nevertheless, they sell very well. The fact that an airplane is more expensive than the sim itself is not a problem at all, as long as it justifies that price by its quality.

 

[Bjoern]

The limits are the 32-bit memory model and I agree something's gonna blow, probably tipped over the edge by 4096 textures and too many of 'em. It's just that we haven't got there yet!

Umm...we're already there as the "out of memory" errors are not a myth, but a direct consequence from using oversized textures, overdetailed objects, overblown detail radii and too much AI traffic without mipmapped textures. Add inefficient gauge design into the mix and you're out of VAS faster than a Mercure is out of fuel.
People are fortunately a bit more aware of this now.

As a simple suck I can't see the point, aircrew who are completely occupied with flying a modern complicated aircraft never view the externals, so why do the 'Real as it Gets' lot want all the outside bells and whistles?

That still remains a mystery to me.

However, a brand new and very complex Motor Racing simulation (pCars), complete with dynamic engine, suspension, engine controls and high resolution internal/external textures, 'the whole nine yards', plus active scenery and weather demands far fewer resources.
Answers on a Post Card will do.

No early-2000s graphics engine. That's why.


By the way, what are you throwing out?
Could use a new GPU (>GTX570) and maybe some RAM (>8-9-8-24 @ 2 GHz).

 

[PRB]

... That still remains a mystery to me. ...

I think there is a growing percentage of FSX users who see FSX as more of an "Aviation Art Engine" than a flight simulator...

 

[Naruto-kun]

However, a brand new and very complex Motor Racing simulation (pCars), complete with dynamic engine, suspension, engine controls and high resolution internal/external textures, 'the whole nine yards', plus active scenery and weather demands far fewer resources.
Answers on a Post Card will do.

No early-2000s graphics engine. That's why.

Not only that but a racing game doesn't cover nearly the same area that a flight sim has to cover. The draw distance isn't nearly as large.

 

[huub vink]

I think there is a growing percentage of FSX users who see FSX as more of an "Aviation Art Engine" than a flight simulator...

Agree!

Huub

 

[bazzar]

The original topic of this thread was to ask why developers price product the way they do and if volume sales would reduce the pricing.

The fact remains. Costs are spiralling, I understand the reasoning most have used in this thread so far but C++ programming is expensive to buy in. That cannot be denied. (actually if a C++ programmer can do this stuff cheaply and quickly, I'd be very interested in talking!) The demands made by stretching the capability of this engine are having a direct impact on coding. The results are much longer lead times on projects. In some cases where the product is very sophisticated it can be years.

That cost cannot be absorbed. it would be commercial suicide. And will the market wait that long for the release of a new subject?

Think of it this way. A computer graphics 3D designer can earn $40-60 per hour (some, more) and a model can take thousands of hours to make.Add in the graphics for art, coders, manual writers and sound studio costs...

The fact is that if developers didn't charge what they do, this hobby would not exist to the level we all enjoy today. It is already heavily subsidised through people working for beer money because they love the hobby. Usually they have a day job to support them. Those that don't are disappearing fast.

I know all the arguments for using C programming, texture economies and memory conservation but the knowlege to achieve all that costs money.And why shouldn't it?

Otherwise we are asking somebody to be an expert in aerodynamics, an advanced C++ and XML programmer, a superlative painter and graphic artist, sound technician, historian and experienced 3D modeller.

Oh and we'd like them to work for about $10 per hour Oh and we only want to pay a few dollars for their efforts. Thanks.

Yeah right.

 

[bazzar]

and to answer your question Wombat...

A racing game or any other comparable game is usually what we call a "sandbox" format.

That is a limited area of play, restricted to a landscape of just a few miles. When you change race venues you are loading in another set of scenery gen to replace the one you were at. Like loading up another separate game.

FSX could have been developed as a sandbox concept but not very useful for those wishing to fly intercontinental distances without needing to load up another "world" every cou0ple of thousand miles. Combat Flight Simulator was a form of sandbox style game because of all the drawcalls required with effects and interactivity. Hence the "theatre of war" concept.

 

[Daube]

Racing or other modern usual games are done in such a way that the "scenery" is fixed, it doesn't need to be computed/built on the fly while you go forward. The scenery is stored in its final form, the game just needs to read the data and draw it.

On the opposite side, games like FS9, FSX or P3D, have to read the source data and then start interpretating it, to build the mixture between your actual mesh (which can change, based on what addons you installed), your actual landclass (same problem), your actual scenery (same problem) and various libraries, your actual textures, etc.... This cost MUCH MORE processing power, resulting in lower performance.

To simplify: it's easy to draw a scenery when you know what to expect, when they give you the final form of what needs to be drawn. Optimisations are "easy" in such cases.
In our sims, the situation is totally different. Because of that, the performance can absolutely NOT be compared.