Niche market?

[bazzar]

A lot of people have been commenting on why there appears to be a slow down or lack of warbird releases for FSX.

One reason could very well be this;

We have research from reliable sources that the FSX market is divided thus;

70-80% Airliners the rest divided between GA and Military.

So, it is easy to see from this that the risk for publishers and developers is somewhat lowered if they operate in the commercial aviation field rather than fight for market share in a much smaller pool.

So, it would seem that we rely very heavily on the interest and passion of a few to populate our skies with warbirds. And only then it is likely to be a well-known "safe" subject .

I wonder which way "Flight" will go. I have yet to see much evidence of commercial airline content so are they going to ignore the current market trend and start a new one? Interesting.:engel016:

[Tako_Kichi]

All my life I have been on the 'outside' looking in (my mother always called me a 'rebel without a cause' :icon_lol: ) and FSX is no exception. I rarely fly tubes and only do so when forced to when it's a requirement for the Round the Word Race. I don't own any payware tubes at all and nor will I ever do so. In my case all those payware developers who stick to making airliners are losing business as I will never buy from them.

[kilo delta]

Since the onset of FSX and in particular the ORBX packages, I prefer to fly low and slow to admire their craftsmanship. Can't really do that in a tube...so GA and Heli's are my favourite virtual rides. :applause:

[fliger747]

I fly "airliners" for a job.... I get to do flight dynamics for many planes, mostly for warbirds as they are a bit harder for me and you to access. Many do not even have flying examples any more and are in fact important in a historical manner, living on in FS.

Please do not denigrate airliners by calling them "Tubes", they can be interesting airplanes indeed and chalenging to fly well. Precision is the name of the game. Challenging enough that I know a lot of fighter types who have never learned to fly them really well. Aviation has many aspects, I also know heavy pilots who are not good cub drivers!

T

[Bone]

As Fliger said..."I fly airliners as a job"...so it's warbirds, jets preferably, for me. I never heard an airliner called a "tube liner" before until I started hanging out on flightsim forums, and I've been in the biz for a couple of decades now. The only instance was back in my Freight Dog days and we had Metro II's, which we called the "Death Tube". I don't care what simmer's want to call them, I call them a Pretty Dang Good Job, but I don't want to fly one in FSX.

[MudMarine]

I'd rather watch paint dry than fly a tube.

[danielm]

Some of us like to fly all kinds of aircraft in many different scenarios. Say on Monday I might fly a MD-80, on Tuesday I fly a Cessna 185 on dirt strips in Alaska and on Wednesday fly a F/a-18E off a carrier. I suspect a lot us like to experience many different aspects and are not pigeonholed into one.

The more diverse the better we all are.

Best

Dan

[spotlope]

I love flying small GA - warbirds too, now and then, but not as often as, say, my new Skymaster. There are plenty of times when I just want a new challenge though, and I've been pretty engrossed with the PMDG NGX for a few weeks now. Whatever you think about flying transports, this thing is a seriously impressive bit of digital art. Plus it's a huge challenge to learn to fly it right. That's good enough for me.

[falcon409]

One of the things that irritates me about flightsim.com sometimes is that it seems more and more to be populated much like the survey that Baz refers to. . .about 80% Commercial airlines, to include flight plans, liveries that go on for pages, AFCADS for major hubs designated for specific Commercial traffic, voicemods for ATC Commercial traffic and so on. I rarely see anything new in the GA area unless you consider FSX portover mods by the two self-proclaimed portover gurus "new", lol and Military. . . . .very minor stuff.

I've flown Heavies on both the Commercial and Military sides and they have some appeal but I don't even have any loaded in the sim right now and probably won't. As mentioned, it will be interesting to see how deep into Commercial aircraft "Flight" gets. Obviously there's a segment that enjoys that type of flying, but I would hope they don't bank their existence on it.:salute:

[jeansy]

with the exception of the CS 707, im not a "jetliner"(keeping people happy) fan, FMCs dont do it for me, i like my VFR stuff

no interest in buying them, i will stick to my helos and slow fat chicks

[Lateral-G]

I also know heavy pilots who are not good cub drivers!

T

We have plenty of jet jocks around here that can fly 18's and 15's but put 'em in a Maule and then you'll see how bad they really are.

None of our fighter guys will touch our MX-7. Even our group's chief pilot, who has thousands of hours in T-38's and OV-10's is humbled by the Maule.

[crashaz]

I say planes of historical significance... which warbirds fall under.... but also some other civilian types. Of course props....GA and warbirds.

The pic pretty much sums it up.:wavey:

[pilottj]

I generally only fly tubes (with the exception of the COTS 337) if they are hauling freight...ie 747F, MD-11F...etc. The only passenger tubes I would really fly would be vintage or exotic ones such as the 337. I know I would have fun trying to master a Tupolev or somthing too :) I also will fly Corporate aircraft, so I did get onto the NGX bandwagon, but mainly because I will need it when they do the BBJ version and possibly cargo variants. I also will fly airplanes that I wouldn't normally get into simply to admire the sheer work and time that went into a masterpeice work of FS art such as the NGX.

That being said while I am on a kind of a freighter kick right now...mainly because I see it as hauling my BF-108 to places I want to fly it, I generally prefer GA, Vintage, Warbirds...etc

One reason warbirds might be dropping off is because it might be harder to collect data on them. A2A spends a lot of time and resources gathering data on relatively rare airplanes. They would probably make more releases in a given time if they were doing Carenado's lineup.

For PMDG it really helps when your CEO is an ATP and typerated on the aircraft being developed. I ran the idea of a PMDG An-124/225 by them at their forum that was pretty much scoffed at. They do like to think mostly inside the Boeing/Airbus box there. A PMDG An-225 Mriya(Dream) would really be a Dream...as the planes name suggests, even if it is one of the ultimate airplanes flying on this planet. I am not complaining tho, they build what they know, and I completely understand.

I think as a whole flight simmers tend to gravitate toward the familar instead of the exotic. SOHers seem to be the exception to that rule, as many of us fans of Piglet and Lionheart's exotic creations. But you certianly will see more 737 type aircraft than you will see Beriev Be-200s. I noticed even over at Orbx, folks there tend to be Carenado fans as a whole, flying more familiar airplanes. Carenado has been making some good stuff but like real life GA planes they are a little genaric...thats not a bad thing either, they are simply mimicing real life, most 'modern GA planes in real life usually have similar 6 pack and radio stack layouts. Developers of more exotic and vintage planes tend to generate more interest here it seems.

Cheers
TJ

[MDIvey]

Its nice to know that according to your market research Barry I'm exceptionalhttp://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/images/icons/icon26.gif I like to fly all sorts of aircraft from boxkite to F22 and I have no prejudice against buying any sort of plane if I like it. I buy Cubs, Tubeliners , P51s, F16s. You really need to get your game in gear and get those Lightnings finished that you hinted at...

Matt

[expat]

One of the most satisfying aspects of this hobby is the diversity of types of aircraft - contemporary commercial, classic commercial, ditto GA, ditto military/warbirds, rotory wing - it is immense and wonderful. I will get on a "kick" for a week or so, so right now it is the CS 707 and 727. Next week it will be bush flying Caranedo GA in PNW. Then I may need a fresh dose of carrier ops, e.g. Nam era stuff trapping Alphasim birds, WWII a/c off the Solomons or the F9F Panther landing on straight deck Essex class cv's off of Korea. This sim has it all.

[Ferry_vO]

Mostly classic aircraft and fighters here too, though sometimes I do take the occasional airliner for a few circuits. No long flights though, as I get bored rather quick with those (Pretty much like in real life! Have a 4.5 hour flight coming up next week for a short holiday; not looking forward to that!)

However, the majority of simmers do seem to prefer to fly airliners; a few years ago we visited the Flightsim weekend for the first time and were quite amazed by the number of people that like to fly airliners by the book, alone or part of a VA or VATSIM group. The kind of simmers that have a lot of books with all kinds of procedures with them and only fly using a 2D panel!

Pretty much like in real life the group of FS pilots that fly GA or airliners is much larger than the number of warbird pilots.

[kilo delta]

I fly "airliners" for a job.... I get to do flight dynamics for many planes, mostly for warbirds as they are a bit harder for me and you to access. Many do not even have flying examples any more and are in fact important in a historical manner, living on in FS.

Please do not denigrate airliners by calling them "Tubes", they can be interesting airplanes indeed and chalenging to fly well. Precision is the name of the game. Challenging enough that I know a lot of fighter types who have never learned to fly them really well. Aviation has many aspects, I also know heavy pilots who are not good cub drivers!

T


As Fliger said..."I fly airliners as a job"...so it's warbirds, jets preferably, for me. I never heard an airliner called a "tube liner" before until I started hanging out on flightsim forums, and I've been in the biz for a couple of decades now. The only instance was back in my Freight Dog days and we had Metro II's, which we called the "Death Tube". I don't care what simmer's want to call them, I call them a Pretty Dang Good Job, but I don't want to fly one in FSX.


Just to clarify my own post...

When I refer to "Tubes"..I don't in a derogatory tone. I personally admire and respect ALL pilots from all genres of aviation paragliders,props,military a/c (my all time favourite aircraft is the Phantom),airliners .....even "egg-beaters" ;P :ernae:

Apologies if any of our resident airliner pilots feel slighted by my comments....that wasn't my intention. :)

[roger-wilco-66]

A lot of people have been commenting on why there appears to be a slow down or lack of warbird releases for FSX.
[...]


Interesting thoughts Baz, but I'm a bit unsure if above statement is true.
First of all I think that due to the level of perfectionism and advanced system coding the development time is increasing, thus the output of new aircraft over a given time is decreased for a single dev. Correct me if I'm wrong.
On the other hand, I nevertheless see warbirds for FSX being released or exciting new ones in development all the time. So there must be a market for them out there. Would be interesting to know how many copies of a warbird are sold on an average, or how many have to be sold to cover development costs (also on an average). If those numbers are close to each other it would be a risky business.


Cheers,
Mark

[bazzar]

Well we do a fair bit of work for a number of different publishers and of late we are doing far more airliner/commercial/GA work because that apparently is where the greater sales are.

Personally I love doing warbirds but needs must as they say.

Generally though, as demands increase for more features and realism, dev time inevitably increases which is why it appears that there are fewer releases.

Interestingly enough though when it has been our own sales, our biggest ever seller was the F9F Panther followed by the early Corsairs.

[PRB]

I'm surprised to see such a huge majority into airliners, from that research. Oh well. I like all sorts of planes, although I “gravitate” to warbirds. As Fliger says, the airliners are difficult to fly well, or land well anyway. I don't fly them on long flights (except for race events), just high enough to turn around and land again, since that's the fun part. Then again, that's how I fly most everything in FS. Unless it's a race event, online with other people, flight testing, or practicing navigation of some sort, it's kind of boring just flying from “A to B”, no matter what kind of plane. Our friends in the combat sims would probably agree! I still haven't bought any payware [jet] airliners, but I have a lot of the nice free ones. In fact, my priority of interest probably goes more like this:

1... Warbirds and prop liners
2... Old combat jets (from 1950s - 1960s)
3... Modern GA and air liners
Last... Modern combat jets (RAZBAM A-7 and MILVIZ T-38 excepted)

[huub vink]

Good analysis Bazz. The world of the warbird flyers is small and in my opinion still shrinking. When Ferry had his eye opener at the Flightsim weekend I was there as well and had the same experience. The type of simmers we regard as "normal" is a minority. The number of people who only fly warbirbs is a minority from this minority.

I came from flight combat simulators and started to fly FS2004 next to IL2 when I thought CFS2 was reaching its end. I assume I would not be in the Flight simulator world (without combat) any more when there was a real good flightsim which would catch me like European Air War did in those days when ship where still made of wood and men from steel....

Nevertheless the efforts from those who want to provide models for this minority are still very much appreciated.

Cheers,
Huub

[Bone]

Just to clarify my own post...

When I refer to "Tubes"..I don't in a derogatory tone. I personally admire and respect ALL pilots from all genres of aviation paragliders,props,military a/c (my all time favourite aircraft is the Phantom),airliners .....even "egg-beaters" ;P :ernae:

Apologies if any of our resident airliner pilots feel slighted by my comments....that wasn't my intention. :)

No offense taken at all, KD. People call them "tubes" around here, so when in Rome....

[Henry]

I'd rather watch paint dry than fly a tube.
i hope i never have to make that choice:icon_lol:
its all about, fantasy,imagination,personaly i have been knownto fly an ocasional 777
or airbus:running:
H

[Bjoern]

I love the jet-set. Around the world in three days.



- E: And yes, I feel slightly offended by the term "tube".

[narah]

I wonder if quality might be an issue. To compete with the guys doing accu-sim aircraft is certainly a difficult task. This has limited my FS aircraft, meaning whenever a standard is raised, i am "losing" older aircraft. ...And rotorcraft, gliders, airliners and GA. Keeps FS Hangar small. (but expensive)

[hairyspin]

A long time ago I had subLogic's Flight Assignment: ATP. FS3 graphics with big heavies and I got quite into it. You just didn't set up for landing a 747 from 35,000 ft when you were only 10 miles from the runway, duh, you had to plan it out and start the approach from a lonnng way out and use the navaids. Mentally absorbing stuff which really made up for the FS3 graphics.

Now we have more eye candy than you can shake a stick at and I really like warbirds and historic aircraft. Contemporary commercials tend to blur to me, but you'd never confuse a Dragon Rapide with an Anson and the warbird scene is aeronautical history in alloy, rivets, wire and canvas plus so many are so beautiful. Modern avionics are great but I like the challenge of the old clockwork and steam-powered systems, while for mental absorption there's still gmax.

I'm happy in my niche :mixedsmi:

[ryanbatc]

I realize this is the SOH Combat Flight Center, but I have zero interest in old warbirds in FSX. I'm pretty sure I don't even own any. I love general aviation though, and came here because of some decent people, plus I always know what new product coming out because someone will make a thread :)

[robertorizzo]

Flightsimmer since old fs5.0 here.
I think i've flown everything, ga, concorde, constellations, jet fighters, helis, sailplanes, hydros...
I think i didn't fly flies.

[AndyG43]

I'm the polar opposite to Ryan; the chances of me ever flying an airliner in FSX are vanishingly small. Most of my FSX flying is done in Rob Richardson's Brit classics (the reason I bothered reinstalling FSX in the first place, afer it had gathered dust on my shelves for about 2 years - most of my real flying is still in FS9), and I have one or two pieces of payware; Razbam's TA-7, the Carenado Caravan - and that is about it.

I'm finding all this research fascinating, watching the publishers restrict themselves to smaller & smaller niches. I know a lot of people want more complicated, total immersion, every switch real simulations; but a fair few of us just want to kick the tires, start the engine & have some fun - and the more complex (and more expensive) you make it the less likely it is going to end up on my PC, and I doubt I'm alone in that.

Now I'll scuttle off back to my little hole. :icon_lol:

[Roger]

Baz I feel for you. I know the sort of aircraft you like to model and to model for the market must feel a little mercenary. However we have seen your recent work and all are good to own and fly.
As to MS Flight and the ever present Stearman, I don't know but I suspect that if the sim hasn't been postponed (some suggest it has) it may be non-global (we've only seen Hawaii so far) or if it will be totally global then I expect it will be some while in development.
On a personal note, I rarely fly outside ORBX PNW these days and with an extreme amount of tweaking I can only fly low and slow on my elderly pc without the ground textures blurring up so I don't fly too many jets.

[Pips]

We have research from reliable sources that the FSX market is divided thus;

70-80% Airliners the rest divided between GA and Military.


It would seem that the general feeling here is the exact opposite. As always with surveys, it's the way questions are asked that affects the answers you get.

[bazzar]

Hi Rog :wavey:

Oh it's interesting work and the children have shoes but I have to admit that I do like my old war machines.

Another element which severely affects devs building commercial is the sheer complexity of airliners. These days people want super realism (comparative) and to get that in an airliner is a massive task.

We have just completed an airliner for a well-known "customer" and in the VC there are over 700 individually animated, functional items. Behind those, and this is what people forget, is a mass of bespoke XML and C++ code to make it all work, which somebody has to write and match factory specification on most of it.

And all of this comes after a thorough study and understanding of all the aircraft systems and how they function. A typical airliner reference manual can run to 2,000 pages and more.

We are indeed lucky to get new products for this hobby at the rate we do.

[fliger747]

I had the Sub Logic Flight Assignment ATP and used it when I was first checking out in the 737 to run through a lot of the manuvers like the "High Dive".

I still think the various Corsairs have been my favorites!

Cheers: T

[bazzar]

It would seem that the general feeling here is the exact opposite. As always with surveys, it's the way questions are asked that affects the answers you get.

This is often true but in this case we are talking actual sales, which is the most accurate survey you can get. Remember this is primarily a warbird/ small aircraft site so does not reflect the open market. SOH also is home to a large number of people who don't buy payware but exist for their hobby on the generosity of others.

I think if SOH was the sole marketplace, you would probably not see sales above maybe a few tens of copies of a product and that would be on really good stuff and then mostly warbird/ga.

As Microsoft themselves have commented, there is a vast portion of their market that don't even know that you can get an add-on for their product. It is why we will see them move to the XPlane style, controlled on-line provision marketing. It should open up a lot of possibilities for devs, especially the smaller ones.

[roger-wilco-66]

[...]
I still think the various Corsairs have been my favorites!

Cheers: T


Same here, would be great if a capable developer would do a high class series of the different Corsair types like Warbirdsim did on the Mustang. The aircraft is very popular, and I think it would generate a decent revenue.

Cheers,
Mark

[Astoroth]

I know a lot of people want more complicated, total immersion, every switch real simulations; but a fair few of us just want to kick the tires, start the engine & have some fun - and the more complex (and more expensive) you make it the less likely it is going to end up on my PC, and I doubt I'm alone in that.

Nope, you're not! I'm the exact same way. Couldn't give a fig about systems and fmc and all that. I just wanna have fun. Heck most of the time I fly from a minipanel view, how much further away from total immersion can you get? lol

At the same time, I do still have fun flying just about anything, including airliners to ultralights, choppers to warbirds. You name it, I'll fly it.

[pilottj]

I think the word 'immersion' is sometimes overused in FS. We the simmer create a lot of our immersion level depending by how we fly.

Do you do a preflight? Do you follow checklists? Do you do a full instrument check prior to a flight into IMC? Do you do an engine runup? Do you ID navaids with their Morse Code identifiers before using them? Do you do your 'T' checks when reaching a waypoint(Time Turn Twist Throttle Tires Talk) Do you give position reports when flying into uncontrolled airports? Do you refer to an Airport Info source to determine proper pattern turns and altitude entry? Do you read NOTAMS?

When I flew for real, I did those things. In FS I don't do many of them and I bet a lot of FSers don't because they are for the most part inconsequential in the FS world. Accusim might force us to do some of those things but still our level of 'immersion' depends on how 'by the book' we do it. I could fly a default airplane and feel 'immersed' if I simulated doing all the little things that went into a flight.

If you go to a flight school, they will often put you in front of an computer trainer for simulated IMC practice. These machines aren't particularly great graphically but they do help keep your skills sharp.

Cheers
TJ