Im flying FSX for years now and before FSX i have flown FS9 for years and years. For those people not acquainted with Flightsimulator from Microsoft. FSX represents the whole world with a lot of basic airports and some basic planes. It contains a basic weather module. It is possible to take a plane, check departure - destination airport, time, weather and off you go. The basic airports are graphically awful to look at. The planes exits of flat textures and have minor to no realtime instruments. Since time, various companies rose with add ons for FSX. I do not know how much add ons have been made so far but it must run in ten thousands. Airports with extremely high detail has been released to be bought as add on. PMDG creates boeing replica's. They made it into Times with their newest boeing 777. 90% of the realtime instruments are simulated. It is amazing! Sound packs, weather module software, planes, scenery, name it and you can buy it for FSX as an add on. I have spend hundered of euro's on Add ons and the default FSX software has becopme just a basic layer piece of software. Why is this not happening with a race sim? Why arent there decent add ons like weather modules (like real weather for the location you race, off line and online would be great!). Tracks, not converted but decent made tracks with all gimmicks (maybe even laser scanned). Cars...the same. I would pay for decent high quality add ons. Would you?
of course i would pay for high Quality Content - i already did btw.. i am also playing flightsims, mostly x-plane
Maybe because it is cheaper to produce those addons? Weather for flight proposure is always online http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METAR and easy readable for machines. Also for laser scanning tracks you have to rent them, but building airports can be done by looking at pictures in detail.
Yes, iracing is the leader in pay content. Quality content? > lol Mod wise you have a wide variety of options including installing iracing, and uninstalling iracing.
If you want to pay for stuff, Iracing is waiting for you, they have laser scanned track, they have cars, they have leagues. They have all that you can pay for. Otherwise you have Rfactor 1 and/or 2 , hundreds of cars for the formers, much less for the second but increasing day after day. More seriously, while flightsims are a niche market, racing sims are even more niche. The reason is quite simple: while almost everyone with proper training can land an airliner, racing against other people and performing better than them, is not for everyone, other than training it require skills that are hard to acquire.
They do exist. http://www.unitedracingdesign.com Excellent quality as well. Most sim racers don't want to pay for mods though, they feel modder's should produce high quality content for free... but there's plenty of other heated threads about this debate so no need to start a new one.
I do both, race and flight sims. Honestly, I'm not much into payware though, for either one. I'm not saying the developer of a really good airplane or racing car doesn't deserve a few bucks for it, I'm saying I'm cheap and would rather just use the free stuff (of which there is a ton of) for both. I kinda look at it this way. I'd rather take a flight in a real Stearman than pay for a model of one in a game. Same for racing sims. I'd spend my money at Sebring to drive a car before I would buy add-ons for a game. But I did buy a number of planes for Rise of Flight, so I'm not 100% against it. It just isn't something I do very often. And besides, the planes for RoF were like me, cheap, lol.
First and foremost, Microsoft FSX is actually used as a training tool for real pilots, so there is a real world reason for the production of newer and newer content. This is especially true for all the hardware that you can buy that will increase the reality of what you see and do, such as modular gauges and instruments as well as power quadrants, radio boxes and flight controls. You can literally have 20+ devices connected to the USB of your computer to simulate everything in realtime. MS FSX does have issues though, and that is part of the reason that so many mods have been made for it, not to mention that the sim is very dated. The initial release of that sim was in 2006, which gives it at minimum 7 years to collect all those add-ons. This sim is technically only about 7 months old, so there is still quite some time before the potential for mods has the same amount of time to develop. Second, though everything looks very nice in FSX, the detail of the models and such is actually quite a bit lower than the cars that are currently available for most modern sims. FSX relies on textures to give detail, where driving sims rely on both model and texture to give detail. Take a look at the size of the downloads for those add-ons for FSX, the file size is usually large due to the size of the textures. You will notice that there are not really any other flight sims that compete with FSX that have been release since that sim came out. This means competition is weak, so nothing is pushing that platform to update as often as racing sims. I am not saying that there are not good alternatives for FSX, I am just saying there is nothing really new currently or in the near future for new flight sims. 777 is doing some work all the time, but MS started and then killed their newer flight sim MS Flight. I am guessing that either the market isn't that great or MS feels they have done all they can to improve the sim. I currently don't fly due to lack of controls, though I would almost consider trading my G27 right now for a Saitek X52 system. The only thing I would need other than that is a real pedal kit instead of the car pedals I have.
FSX Really? for me FSX is Gran Turismo 5/6 and X-Plane is rFactor 2, also for mods, in flight sim you have to model the plane and the cockpits and just some airports but in race sim you have to model not just the car but the track, and thats a huge work. And yes, i do flighsim also, not so much like racesim, some times i play Wings Over Europe fully modded, and its a lot of fun.
Yes afaik is X-Plane the only simulator which can be licensed by the FAA for pilot training and can be bought in a home version by everyone.
Actually, x-plane can not be FAA certified. Thats not how it works, it is a combination of approved controls and software. FSX can be certified by FAA for certain use scenarios as well and has been. FSX with the right planes has a flight model superior to xplane with bad models. xplane with the right planes has superior flight modeling to fsx with bad models. That's how it works. It is more to do with the aircraft developer than the simulator itself. Back to the OP, I just can't see the market being there for people to make mods with the expectation that they make a profit.
There is really no comparison because racing and aviation is two different worlds. I have much experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9.1). I am very good at landing a plane, taxiing, performing SID/STAR procedures, some VATSIM experience, Can read a chart, can scan all instruments for hours and look at scenery, install mod planes and scenery, tweak it's performance, VERY complex thing. You actually have to learn alot! For the thread author's topic, I make an example. They mentioned the PMDG (Precision Manual Development Group). PMDG is licensed by Boeing. I owned the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies for FS2004. It has complex systems. You have to be able to know how to control each one implemented into the add-on. It is a very beautiful add-on. It takes me 30 minutes taking my time to get the heavy metal in the air doing it right with no warning alert sounds. If the plane is not setup right it will pretty much annoy you to your brain wanting to pop out. Flight sim has no competitive model. It's model is solely learning a skill that is high paying in the real world. Racing is sit there with a wheel and drive as fast as you can shifting gears trying to avoid collisions while trying to keep your position in the pack from being over taken and trying to overtake the racer ahead of you. There is no comparison. The only 1 similar trait is both racing and flight sim have force feed back and rumble effects. This does not make them comparable. Both are different in physics. As far as fun, that is personal preference. Some may enjoy both or one of the other. I feel I have proved this in a strong accurate manner.
I kind of agree that the two can't be compared. I love both, and to me both are completely different, more to the point... they make me different. In one I like getting a new multi-button-pushing plane, gotta do things right. The other, just give me visuals, the sense of speed, and I'll find a way to set my hair on fire. Planes = reading manuals, Cars = go fast. FSX, I can be convinced I need a new fancy add-on Racing in rFactor, I never think about an add-on
Flight simmers are a completely different breed than simracers. I know there are some fancy simrigs out there but you can look on youtube at flightsimmers rigs and think "wtf, that guy is nuts". These elaborate flight sim rigs put simracer rigs to shame. Just one example here.
