Frooglesim News
Results 1 to 22 of 22

Thread: Frooglesim News

  1. #1

    Frooglesim News

    A very good YouTube post about the state of FS. Highly suggest you all watch. His opinion of course, but at the very end he does bring up a few points that I had not thought of previously.

    https://youtu.be/4ujKNoCVvVM
    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  2. #2
    Senior Administrator Roger's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2000
    Location
    EGCD...they bulldozed it!
    Age
    71
    Posts
    9,775
    Saw that myself earlier today, Rick. Some interesting thoughts from Pete on the machinations that may occur in time.

    We've closed the FSW thread here in the FsX forum, so I will move this to the FSW forum, which we will leave open for information
    SYSTEM :
    OS:Win7 Home Premium 64 bit UAC OFF!
    DX version Dx10 with Steve's Fixer.
    Processor:I5 4670k overclocked to 4.4 gHz with Corsair CW-9060008-WW hydro cooler
    Motherboard:Z87
    RAM:16 gig 1866 gigaHz Corsair ram
    Video Card:MSI 1070 8 gig ram
    HD:2Tb Samsung 850 evo SSD

    To err is human; to forgive is divine

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by 000rick000 View Post
    A very good YouTube post about the state of FS. Highly suggest you all watch. His opinion of course, but at the very end he does bring up a few points that I had not thought of previously.

    https://youtu.be/4ujKNoCVvVM
    I have never been interested in Steam as an alternative for my FSX use and as such have never cared about how all that works and had no idea that Dovetail was building a new Simulator. I guess I had heard the name FlightSim World knock around in discussions on the FSX forum but had no interest at all in even looking at it.

    Having said that, and given what he had to say at the end, despite the demise of FSW DTG in theory is now holding a very large sword over the heads of two very successful and lucrative programs. I hope, as does Pete, that what might happen. . .does not happen. It could be very devastating.
    USAF Retired, 301st Fighter Wing, Carswell AFB, Texas
    My SOH Uploads: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...erid=83&sort=d

    Current System Specs:
    FSX/Accel | Windows10 64bit
    Motherboard: MSI760GM-E51(MS-7596)
    CPU: 3.9GHz AMD FX-4300 Quad-Core | RAM: 16GB DDR3 1333
    GPU: NVidia GTX 970 (4GB GDDR5)

  4. #4
    I personally, do not believe that Lockheed will "have a problem" . They are just too big. XPlane needs to make things a LOT more user friendly for developers in particular. So Dovetail might well pull the plug on FSX Steam. So what? they pulled support for it already. FSX will continue to exist as long as developers continue to support it. It is that simple.

  5. #5
    I too don't believe that DTG will be able to touch LM. You're talking about one of the world's largest military contractors. Compared to DTG? It's laughable. LM's agreement with MS would have been bullet proof from a legal stands point. I work for another extremely large aerospace company. We operate like a small government. I'm sure LM operates the same way. There's no way that when they offered the software in the way they did that their attorneys would not have dotted every I and crossed every T before they pushed forward in the form in which they are executing their product. Here's what IMO would happen. IF a case is taken against LM, they will bleed DTG of funds until they can't afford to keep it going. This isn't just some random software company we're talking about. Again, just my opinion. Purely speculative. Plus, P3D existed prior to FSW. So I think, it would be a moot point
    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  6. #6
    SOH-CM-2020 gman5250's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Location
    KMMH
    Age
    72
    Posts
    2,284
    Blog Entries
    4
    Well...after listening to Froogle end to end I come away with one or two opinions.

    First...I'll hang on to my pristine FSX boxed set because it is going to become a commodity. Fine, but it's not for sale.

    Second...the idea of DTG going after Lockheed Martin in the legal arena brings up a fundamental legal principal. Money, money and more money. LM has limitless resources to grind DTG into fine powder if the occasion were to arise that DTG filed a damage suit. It is highly doubtful that DTG has the resources to tackle such a legal entanglement, and the corporate decision to move forward would be the death nail of the company. I doubt that the various contributors, vendors and licensees would be inclined to support such a decision.

    On the whole, DTG would be wisest to lick their wounds, re-evaluate their corporate strategy and go back to selling entertainment that will appeal to a demographic which will support their business model.

    Flight sim is a different animal, the people who support it are distinctly different in their loyalties. FSX third party will undoubtedly continue to support their user base, and LM will undoubtedly move forward with P3D...after dealing with any legalities brought about by DTG.

    The "third rail" topic of the license shall remain open for private conjecture...but I"m not anticipating any changes in my plans.

    What is interesting to me is that the "entertainment" aspect of the MS intellectual property are still a consideration for value. I wonder where that will lead?


    IMO....
    He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
    Thomas Jefferson

    Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake | Cooler MasterAir Maker 8 CPU Thermal Cooler | ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E LGA 1151 | CORSAIR Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB 288-Pin DDR4/3200 | EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB | SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series M.2 1TB SSD | Mushkin Chronos 240GB 2.5 SSD | WD Black 2TB 7200 RPM |WD Black 5TB 7200 RPM | CORSAIR HX Series HX1200 PSU | Windows 10 HP 64-bit

  7. #7
    Didn't quite escape.
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Somewhere in the Middle, UK
    Age
    50
    Posts
    2,342
    You'd never guess that Pete Wright was involved with the "consortium of well regarded developers", would you?

    How about that, following the protracted attempt to get Microsoft to sell the franchise to them, unsuccessfully, the fact that it was sold to DTG so quickly might have been because Microsoft didn't want to sell to the consortium?

    Possibly because MS were aware that there was a lot of competition between said developers, that they had different goals and opinons and weren't exactly likely to be able to hold up as a single entity for any length of time without breaking up? That's my guess, not based on any published evidence, but knowing who was involved and knowing how long MS held out for, they clearly weren't overly impressed by what was on offer. I do also suspect that DTG significantly overbid, though, to agree with his point there. I really don't think they did their homework at all well before deciding to get involved, but they were a single company with a single opinion on how to use the franchise they were bidding for. They had, to someone like MS, a lot more credibility behind their offer than a disparate bunch of developers, most of whom had been roundly attacking Microsoft in public about Flight.

    Anyway. A few challenges to the actual speech...

    First, DTG did engage with the community - and what they got in return was a massive amount of abuse from people who had already, having decided that FSX was dead, bought very heavily into P3D. The sheer amount of bile aimed from this "community" at DTG was appalling to see. That said, though, DTG did try to build their own community, but their reps were on Avsim, they were on Steam forums, they were on their own forums, they went to flight sim shows... It wasn't that they didn't engage with the community, but a lot of the time, when they did, they were met with utter hatred.

    Second, why didn't the likes of A2A or PMDG try and sell products that they were just bringing to market during that period? Because neither company brought any products to market during that period. Other companies, such as JustFlight and Aerosoft, advertise constantly. So why didn't his chosen developers advertise products? Not because they're somehow pious and perfect, but because they had nothing new to sell. DTG were adding products to the line-up (although often they were somewhat iffy and I'm not surprised most people weren't interested) so they were advertising them. Perhaps a little too heavily. Perhaps because I'm used to the fact that TS stuff is almost always on sale, I ignored the fact that FSW stuff was. Why didn't Pete Wright pick up on the fact that the sales weren't just for FSW products, but also for FSX:SE, TS201n and TSW? My guess is he did. he also got the advertising mails, Facebook posts and Tweets from other companies, but he chose to ignore them, to hammer home a single minded point about "evil DTG trying to steal the money from your pockets".

    Third, he keeps hammering on that "it wasn't released". Well, when it exited early access, it was released. You could argue with good ground that it wasn't finished, you could argue that the EA period was pointless, but you cannot say it wasn't released, so why keep saying it wasn't?

    Fourth, he didn't mention why, having had so much opportunity to do so, DTG haven't already used their mythical ability to hold L-M to ransom to do so... Could it be because L-M aren't in breach of their license with Microsoft, so DTG wouldn't have a leg to stand on? Plenty of people are in breach of their license agreements with Lockheed-Martin, but I suspect that what others have said is quite correct - L-M want the developers on board and they know that if they're only selling to a tiny, if lucrative, customer base then most developers will walk away? Don't know. That's conjecture.

    Now, I am biased here because I don't like Pete Wright. I haven't liked him since way before DTG had any involvement with the FS world (small w!) and this "editorial" shows exactly why. He's full of himself and puts out his opinions as fact, without any evidence to back them up and often when the evidence actually points a completely different way. He always has done and I don't think I've heard him apologise once when he's got it wrong. He's just said that he's "surprised" or "amazed" and gone on to explain how he will eventually be proven right all along. If he has, then I apologise. It's because I don't tend to listen to his rants, so probably missed it.

    I do agree with him that the big opportunity here is for Laminar Research. Lockheed-Martin have no interest in whether DTG succeeded or not (other than had DTG succeeded, it might have solved L-M's licensing problems... ) as they didn't and still don't see them as a competitor. However, a lot of people who had already tied their flags to P3D's mast have a lot of vested interest in seeing DTG fail. Odd that wasn't mentioned as well, isn't it?

    To be honest, it's all a moot point, because it was DTG's management's decisions that led to this point. "We're in it for the long haul, we're in it for the long haul, we're in it for the... we're out." - they kind of lose any credibility that they had, there, don't they? To us, as simmers, however, it means that we've lost an opportunity, though. We now have to choose between a developer that could pull the rug from under our feet at any time and a developer that has a track record of not actually listening to the community either, although, to be fair, that does seem to be changing significantly for the better. I do agree with Mr. Wright on that point - X-Plane is probably where we should be looking and aiming to try and mould into what we want. Maybe DTG will sell the license to PMDG et al, so we can see how well that arrangement actually does stand up to reality, rather than trying to protect their own incomes without diversifying their development paths (which is why they wanted the sim in the first place, after all... No, it wasn't about the community, it was about protecting their incomes.)

    Ian P.

  8. #8
    In have plenty of developer friends and owners, and many end user friends. I think the real reason FSW failed is that most flight simmers who spend money on content, are a fickle bunch. We'rve amassed literally multi thousands of dollars in content for FSX or P3D. It's not that FSW was "bad" it's that at the end of the day, if it didn't offer much more than what we were currently flying in terms of features, people were very unwillingness to spend more money in less, and not be able to have their extensive aircraft hangars brought over. There's all kinds of valid reasons why that shouldn't matter... But the key thing is that I think it DID matter. PBR and true sky were not enough. People wanted PMSG airliners. They wanted A2A Warbirds and GA, they want their Orbx airports. When the realization that those things were not forth coming and probably not going to be forthcoming any time soon, that was enough to keep the paying community members away. Myself included. People are simply unwilling to pay for something that is essentially what they already have in their current setup. There in lies the real problem to over come. In order to be successful in this niche. The flight simulator niche, I mean (I don't include X-Plane because I don't think it competes directly with FS). I know plenty of people that fly both and buy for both. The problem is that for an "FSW" to really be successful you need to eliminate the other almost identical options, or be so much better that you make those options irrelevant. And that simply didn't happen with FSW. Any way. I can't comment as to the individual that Frooglesim is. I don't know him. But, and editorial is just an opinion piece...
    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  9. #9
    Members + IanHenry's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Location
    United Kingdom
    Age
    65
    Posts
    1,607
    Blog Entries
    1
    Suing LM wouldn't be a good idea, they make it very clear what the criteria is for using their products, it's the user's who "bend the rules", LM sell their product in good faith, end of legal action.


    Ian

  10. #10
    Didn't quite escape.
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Somewhere in the Middle, UK
    Age
    50
    Posts
    2,342
    The only thing I'd disagree with that you say, 000rick000, is that X-Plane 11 absolutely does compete with FSX/P3D. Finally. Having followed X-Plane for a couple of decades, it's always been far behind Microsoft's offerings, but even as a die-hard MSFS fan I have to admit that XP11 is finally a direct competitor.

    It does, indeed, include one thing that many airliner fans have wanted for ages: a functional (if basic) FMC within the default aircraft. If you've not seen anything of the Zibo modifications to the default XP11 B737, go take a look at some of what it adds - and that's freeware! XP11 is far from perfect, but nor are FSX, P3D, Flightgear...

    Ian P.

  11. #11
    Very interesting, but to be honest it all sounds a bit " conspiracy theory" to me. Froogle really doesn't like DTG does he
    "Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there".

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by IanP View Post
    You'd never guess that Pete Wright was involved with the "consortium of well regarded developers", would you?
    Well, there's a surprise if that's true. I've occasionally found his vlogs to be informative but Sunday's rant (and I'm being generous here) was way off the mark for me. He was very negative about FSW when it was released, even though he'd never tried it. When he finally did try it, he was impressed and said that he had to eat his words. Then when it failed, he basically said that he knew it would happen all along! It's obviously useful having such flexible opinions.

    There were a number of factual errors in what he said (I hesitate to say lies) and the whole thing just seemed to be a deliberate attempt stir things up and then blame it all on DTG. One of the most interesting aspects of watching his video was being able to read the comments left below it. Particularly those from someone called Chris Trott which had some interesting information about DTG and were quite critical of Froogle. In his video, Froogle was very annoyed that DTG had won the rights to the franchise saying that, unlike the other bidders, they had zero experience in flight simulation. Chris Trott reminded him that DTG was made up of many of the original ACES team that had worked on both Microsoft Train Simulator and FSX. In his reply to that comment, Froogle even admitted that he was "well aware former members of Aces were involved with this project". Why, then, would he say that they had zero experience?

    It's worth reading all of Chris Trott's comments (even though they also sound a bit like a rant, at times - but probably justified) and Froogle's response to them. I think that it's unlikely that I'll watch any more of his videos as there was definite evidence of an agenda to this last one.

    I'm not an apologist for DTG - they certainly made mistakes during the brief life of FSW. However, I do think that they had some good ideas and seemed to genuinely want to create something new and innovative. They certainly deserved some of the criticism they got but a lot of it, particularly the very negative comments from people who didn't even own the product, seemed more aimed at sabotaging the project (to good effect, it would appear).
    Last edited by vortex; April 30th, 2018 at 15:53.

  13. #13
    SOH Staff txnetcop's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Wentzville, MO
    Age
    73
    Posts
    5,242
    Blog Entries
    1
    I've always thought of Peter as a negative Nelly unless he gets special attention anyway..so his vlog was a NOTHING event!
    Ted
    Vivat Christus Rex! Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

  14. #14
    I am not sure DTG will pull the plug on FSX-SE. According to SteamSpy.com DTG has sold 1,000,000 .. 2,000,000 copies, so at $24.99 each your talking 25-50 million in revenue (well 17.5-35m after steam takes there cut), . I am sure they made there initial investment back and since FSW is now ended it will continue to be a cash cow for them.

    Unless they have something nefarious up their sleeves.
    Joe Cusick
    San Francisco Bay Area, California.

    I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley.

  15. #15
    SOH-CM-2021 warchild's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Bend, Oregon
    Age
    72
    Posts
    5,466
    Blog Entries
    3
    Welll, It would be incredibly silly of DTG to take on Lockheed. I mean, lets face it. Lockheed manufactures and sells the materials of war, some of them costing nearly a billion dollars each. Dovetail makes games, costing sixty bucks each. Theres no way that the lawyers dovetail can afford could even think of competing with Lockheed in court..
    Only one thing worries me about FSX. Dovetails name is attached to it. I have used Dovetails Trainsim, and Heavy Haul, and even looked at Trainsim world. The marketing and money grab, with a complete lack of inovation where instead they rely on third party developers from the community to add value, is prevalent and sickening.
    The fact that Dovretail can distribute Microsoft products means no more than that simviation can distribute our addons. Microsoft still holds the ownership. Dovetail doesnt appear to have a leg to stand on.
    And frankly, I would LOVE to see an emmergence of X-Plane into the broader community. Especially with Release 11 it's more user friendly and like FSX that even perhaps P3D while still giving you more control over your flight. It's a beautiful sim and well worth the expense, plUS many of our favorite developers are producing addons for it.
    I think froogle makes a lot of good points, but i think the world is bigger, and smaller than he is seeing.

  16. #16
    I agree Warchild. I have been a Froogle subscriber for some time and he's always been very supportive to the industry (just as he noted in the video) and he does his best to get the word out on new products and developments. The way I recall him presenting the news some time ago about DTG and FSW was purely on the hopeful side of the fence (cautious optimism) and he continued to keep us users updated on each piece of new news from DTG. Again, he did so in a positive light. Most of us have been looking to see the 64bit evolution of FSX with continued growth into the obvious advantages of a 64bit platform. Being involved with more than one of the developers out there and as a long time end user (with actual flight experience), we were all eager to see this happen regardless if it were on the FSW or P3D side of the fence or both. Speculation & supposition were certainly abundant but no hard information came much into the open despite a lot of questions being asked. In the end, we saw both platforms come forth, P3Dv4 was right on target and set to help developers get engaged with all new products and to help port what they already had on hand. FSW, no such luck. Well before Froogle began to speculate doubt over FSW, many of us saw the writing on the wall but we kept quiet as NONE of us were looking to cause any upset or anger between any devs at FSW or in other circles. As much as I pressed to see if there was interest in FSW's direction, it just never happened. Froogle has a lot of it right albeit he's also stating his own opinion (whether good, bad, or indifferent). I can say I don't believe for a moment that he nor any of the rest of us had it in for DTG on this matter, quite the contrary. If they had done things in a manner more conducive to rapid development and portover absent the scalping, I have a feeling things would have turned out differently. Where I think Froogle is way off is his speculation about a DTG lawsuit against LM. YES, that would be suicidal as LM's legal pockets are light years deeper than DTG's and can state from my own processing of major lawsuits that if such a matter were ever to become filed in a court of law, it would likely end up being Dismissed with Prejudice (meaning it would be deemed frivolous and dismissed with no option of refiling similar to Double Jeopardy in Criminal Court). The real question is will there be any legal recourse aimed at DTG? Somebody is going to want their money back and the rights for this are eventually going to be disposed of one way or another (either killed off or re-sold to pay off debts). Who knows.

    Since I have largely left FSX use and assisting in development, I have been largely ensconced in DCS which despite it's few aircraft and scenery options is simply fantastic from the flying and realism experience and with VR, it has no equal. I too am leaning towards X-Plane 11 or later versions and may get P3Dv4 or later versions just to keep the high end MSFS based products I have up and running. Very little time for flight sims nowadays though. Hoping to see more spare time for that in the near future.

    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by StormILM View Post
    ...I have been largely ensconced in DCS which despite it's few aircraft and scenery options is simply fantastic from the flying and realism experience and with VR, it has no equal.
    You've got that right Storm! I still fly P3D, because I can't get my XF-92A, A-12 or F-100D fix anywhere else. However, as far as a true feeling of flight, I've never experienced anything quite like it. Other than in the Milviz F-100D. Due to the what seems like visually the correct sizing of trees and buildings, lighting and the host of attributes modeled natively in DCS. As far as GA goes, you guys have piqued my interest and I will likely be tipped into delving into X-Plane 11. That doesn't mean I'm leaving P3D...if LM continues, they will be setup for the top spot. What I mean is this: If tomorrow they announced all future P3D will be native PBR...that is a game changer, especially with the recent changes in scenery SDK. I've got far too much invested to leave.
    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  18. #18
    BTW....

    DCS world 2.5






    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  19. #19
    Rick-

    DCS Flight Physics are truer to real flight than anything else I have “flown” with the exception of PSX. That said, PSX ships with very limited visuals. The more time I spend with it, the more I like it. Is the Eagle an available Add On? I usually fly the A-10C and have pre-purchased the 18, which I await with great anticipation.

    Best- C

  20. #20
    I just saw the eagle pics posted on one of DCS FB pages. They also have a SU GA in work.
    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  21. #21
    Kind of interested in the Eagle. I have several hours on an S2B (which is the highest performance aircraft I ever flew IRL). That experience was somewhat brutal as the Pitts is starkly more sensitive and obviously more powerful than the C152 Aerobat and Decathlon I flew before hand. I jokingly (actually not so jokingly) say that I didn't actually fly the Pitts, it flew me! I've always had a thing for Biplanes, especially in terms of Aerobatics. I suppose I will need to dust off my old Aerobatics manual by Michael Goulian before getting the Eagle (when it becomes available).

    Anyhow, BOT, looks like out 64bit options will increase more and more despite FSW's demise.

    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

  22. #22
    Funny that, the second plane I ported to FSW was Iris's Christen Eagle (single seat, ain't got no time for dang passengers). The first was the default FSX P-51.

Members who have read this thread: 0

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •