Continuation of product development for X-Plane and Prepar3D?

[EnQ]

I understand that Orbx is still enjoying the landrush situation on MSFS2020 but I would really hope that Orbx will return to develop P3D and X-Plane products as well and not just focus on a single platform from now on. As X-Plane is in dire need of good area scenery I would hope for more TrueEarth products in particular.

 

For XP, what I would really love to see is coverage for Scandinavia - I'm still in love thinking back to FTX Norway on P3D, and in Sweden ESGG, ESMS, ESSA also are really fine airports which are already in Orbx's portfolio but not available for X-Plane unfortunately; it's hard to generate those areas in a reasonable quality using Ortho4XP so there should definitely be a market for paid addons. Other big opportunities could be TrueEarth covering central Europe, in particular Germany due to a large flightsim community here (maybe P3D's GEN and GES could be converted?) and parts of more (south-)eastern parts of Europe which lack any consistent good quality orthophotos on Google Maps etc. so Ortho4XP is not really usable there. Since XP11 has an eternal summer, single-season ortho scenery has absolutely no disadvantages on that platform (I just don't understand why someone would prefer single-season scenery over full FTX regions with 5 seasons on P3D). With XP default scenery looking rather poor texture-wise even a conversion of just auto-gen based FTX non-/semi-ortho scenery could sell for the XP platform.

 

I've just tried to get back into P3D but framerates of 8-20FPS just won't do it anymore after having flown almost a year just with XP11 at ~30FPS (not just eye candy but it also improves manual flying if the plane is not stuttering). While MSFS2020 may look nice (eye candy) it is not ready for IFR online flying yet (lack of good aircraft, SDK etc., MSFS2020 just is an early access product mainly suitable for VFR right now). The old platforms will stay and the XP ecosystem has really grown over the past years with Orbx being an essential part of it. It would be very sad if Orbx would solely focus on MSFS2020 from now on.

[Dr_Watson]

I'm with you on this one, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  The lack of response pretty much sums up the future of XP with Orbx.

A quick glance at the Release Announcements sub forum tells you everything.

I really tried to like MSFS but it's not what I'm looking for, hopefully in the future it comes good.

Unfortunately it's taken all focus away from XP.  It seems Orbx knew about MSFS way before the community, were developing for it way before we knew, the airports seem to be far quicker to make (especially when you look at the releases from other vendors who took 6 months for a small airport for XP, now release 1 a month for MSFS).  The MSFS community is bigger...so Orbx follow the $$$.  Can't blame them for that!

However, it's poor that what they have done for XP, or at least in my experience, has left a sour taste with me.  Trying to fix problems with EGPH..."it's not our scenery", trying to fix EGPB..."it's not our scenery".  Would love to buy Vienna, but it's made by Gaya, so I will stay well clear!  Would like to get the runways fixed at Leeds, and Meribel, they follow contours, but they have sharp angles instead of slopes...but I really can't be bothered to check who made the scenery, will there be support, will it be a girly handbag fight between developers over it.  So I'm happy with what I have, and hope MSFS gets some TE scenery like XP has.

[Graffix75]

I certainly hope so! I mainly fly airliners so I've been spending more and more time with XP11 and P3D lately.

I fly US west coast a lot and was really hoping to see KSJC for XP11 ..... plus, the TE products makes a diff after getting used to MFS2020 eye candy.

[Matt McGee]

I don't think it is a secret that the speed at which some of the MSFS scenery is being released is at least partly due to the reduced development and testing needed for airports that have already been developed and released for P3D or XP11.

 

My knowledge of Orbx's plans is just from these public forums and they seem to indicate continued development for P3D and XP11. 

I would certainly understand if developers were shifting their priorities to the new kid on the block, if that is where the most customer demand is.  But perhaps they may just be initially focused on the low hanging fruit of converting good selling P3D and XP11 airports to MSFS.

 

Sorry I can't tell you about any of the recent testing that I have done on scenery for the various sims. 

[JOM4021]

I sincerely hope that they will continue developing for P3D.

MSFS is for the time being just good for low-level VFR flight in a Cessna, and nothing else. High altitude scenery is awful as, being satellite imagery taken at different times, it lacks the consistency that we see out of Orbx regions. In some areas (e.g. Solomon Islands), it even gives the feeling that there is snow because satpics were taken with some cloud cover ! And I am not even talking about all the bugs (flight model, server connection problems, etc, etc..).

So, I am back full time to my P3D5.1 with Orbx sceneries flying PMDG's 737 and MilViz's KA350i and hopes Orbx will keep on opening new areas to fly to !