FSX Development vs FS9 Development

[Tom Knudsen]

Ref. Aerosoft forum

 

Recently there have been a lot of post about the FSX/FS2004 controversy and also about the fact we do a lot of FSX only products. To avoid repeating that discussion for every product (and yes there are a few very high end FSX only products coming) I rather post and discuss it one more time here. I do it based on the most asked questions.

 

Why do you prefer FSX products?

Aerosoft doesn’t, the majority of customers does, it really is that simple (our market research shows that around 70% of actual customers who are actually willing to buy products prefer FSX at this moment). Of course firstly because Aerosoft is a commercial company that has bills to pay. There are more FSX then FS2004 customers at this moment and this balance moves to FSX more and more every single day. I’ll write it now and will repeat it a few times… we did not stop making FS2004 products, but customers stopped buying them, we create what we can sell. And seeing how Aerosoft grows we are doing a pretty good job. But there are technical things to take into account as well. Perhaps the main issue is that FSX is far less limiting then FS2004 is. Not only in the files we can make for it but even in hardware. We are now working on projects that simply will need more than one CPU core to run because the amount of objects is so large that a single core would simply not be able to keep up. Clearly FSX needs more CPU power then FS2004 does, but even if this is take into account, FS2004 with its single core support will just not be able to run the newer projects until 5 Ghz single core CPU will be available. And that is not likely to happen soon as all development is in multi core machines. Simply put, FS2004 is just not supported by modern hardware. Not by CPU’s and not by the more modern GPU’s. So in hardware FS2004 is at a total standstill. Even if we could make the files more complex there would be no hardware that could run it. Let’s look at it in the three main categories, scenery, aircraft, tools. If you like to see our ideas about hardware, check this out: http://www.forum.aer...showtopic=19406

 

Scenery

In scenery design there are a lot of differences but they have been hard to use because they tend to be slow and not easy to understand. So progress to a new standard is slow but as you will see in the next few months, we now feel hardware is available that can run what we want to do. Most things we work on now will need at least 5 GHz of CPU, that’s the same as a non existing single core CPU for FS2004 and a sub $100 CPU for FSX. Certainly the fact that scenery now has sound and that missions are possible has a large impact, these are features that don’t have a performance impact and most customers really like them.

 

Aircraft

In aircraft design things are more simple. There is a huge set of new options, from far better animation, to better sound to the simple fact we now do not have to face the horrible polygon limit of FS2004. Many aircraft projects we done for FS2004 simply could not be done more complex as the FS2004 compilers simply would not compile them. Now we actually don’t know where the limit is and certainly have not found it. For example the F-16 is so complex that only a fraction could be compiled for FS2004. It is at least 6 times more complex than a FS2004 aircraft could ever be. These days if we ask a aircraft developer if an FS2004 version is possible he will just smile and ask me what bits of the aircraft I would like to have removed. For aircraft joint FSX/FS2004 development is nearly impossible because you will end up with a FS2004 aircraft that runs in FSX. That’s not what we want to deliver at this moment with so many more options available.

 

Tools / Missions

There is not a lot of difference for tools, certainly not since FSUIPC is free for the kind of tools we do. Still making an add-on that links to FSX is easier than a tool that links to FSUIPC that links to FS2004, certainly in support! For missions things are simple, they do not exist for FS2004 and we got great success in selling missions for FSX. Customers love the excitement and options they bring. At shows we got a lot of people hooked on FSX by letting them fly a mission.

 

Commercially things are rather simple. Major stores that we depend on to sell the boxed copies just do not want to store FS2004 products. They will take a box that has the FS2004 version as a free addition but even that can’t be put to boldly on the box. In download we see that FSX products do very well, better than pure FS2004 projects at this moment. Although there still is an FS2004 market, it is limited and declining all the time, commercially it is a dead end where we got very limited time to make money for us and, sometimes, the external developers. A good product will have a life span of two years and even though FS2004 still has a major group of supporters, we think they will not buy a lot of FS2004 products around Xmas 2009. So it is just not commercially attractive to invest heavy in FS2004 developments.

 

But you do still release FS2004 products!

Yes and with great pleasure, pride and most of the time good success. Some of these projects come from external developers that feel they have to do a FS2004 version because their customers demand it. In that case we gladly sell the product, though it has to be said that great care has to be taken to make the FSX version really shine when FS2004 and FSX development are done simultaneous. For other projects the base is solidly in FS2004 and it has been decided to maintain that base. This makes it rather easy to compile the FS2004 versions but sometimes means the FSX version is not a lot more then the FS2004 version running in FSX. Not always a bad thing, but not the progress we so seek is not there. All our internal development, so all the things we start and fully pay for, are now based on FSX, we simply can’t afford to do them for FS2004 as well. The investment to do so would be foolish and irresponsible.

 

So do you still support FS2004?

But of course. Just as we still support the FS2002 products we sold. We also will gladly sell you FS2004 products when we got them. We like FSX but we love FS2004, it’s a good old friend and a reliable simulator. But we are a commercial firm with dozens of people to pay and we got to make money. If a whole load of people would suddenly start to buy FS2004 add-ons we would be very happily start to develop those. Aerosoft produces what people want to buy.

 

But clearly your site shows that FS2004 products are selling more, almost all best sellers on the list are FS2004!

For AES (the no.1) this is mainly because most users have 4 or 5 credit packs so that makes it a bit different. For the other products the main reason is that we sold them for such a long time. FIAT sold more original 500's then they have sold of the new 500.... same reason, same logic. If the best sellers list would show sales per month you would most likely see only AES on the list.

 

But if you would MAKE more FS2004 products people would buy more

Tell that to Sascha in our warehouse. He got loads and loads of FS2004 products we are unable to sell. It's just not true.

 

 

Now should you be willing to discuss this, keep in mind that shouting in capitals and a lot of exclamation marks that it is is clear that FS2004 is better and that more people use that is just venting and not discussing. It's also of no importance because we are talking about customers, not users. Telling me that FS2004 is far superior also is not really an issue because, again, that does not seem to stop people from buying the addons for it.

 

In the end... If you like FS2004 more then FSX, that great, you're not alone. If you want addons for your FS2004 sim we will try to sell them to you. If you insist on getting something done for FS2004 you can always ask us, if we see a market large enough we might do it. Bring 5000 of your best friends who want the same product and the changes of getting it done by one of our teams increases a lot. BUT... in a market where FS2004 sales decrease and FSX sales increase a commercial company like Aerosoft does not really have a lot of choice. It's that simple.

[Geir Teigo]

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