How long do you expect to maintain compatibility with FSX?

Simon Lyon · Post by **Simon Lyon** » Mon Oct 25, 2010 4:15 pm

Right now you've opened up a whole new market for people developing addons for FSX - potential extra revenue at no additional development cost to themselves, which is great!

And it will hopefully have a knock-on benefit for FSX users as well - by keeping those guys in business and maintaining the attraction of developing for FSX.

But I imagine you're eventually going to hit a limit on what you can do with the inherited code and possibly be forced to fork it away from total compatibility with FSX?

So does your current roadmap give any indication of timescales in which you're fairly sure compatibility will be maintained?

Legacy Support · Post by **Legacy Support** » Mon Oct 25, 2010 7:00 pm

Hi,

Good question. It is our intent to maintain compatibility as long as possible and I cannot give you a timeline for any possible changes. I am not aware of anything right now. As we move towards support of new technologies, it might be that we will be forced to make changes to formats, but that will only be known once we get to that point. If there are changes, we will also endeavour to provide any conversion tools or update utilities as well (if that is possible) for that particular change. Lets get V1.0 out the door first....

whitav8 · Post by **whitav8** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 1:22 pm

It is important to be able to utilize many of the city scenery, terrain imagery, and airport models that already exist for FSX. It would be preferable if the price remain the same unless there is an end user relationship where the scenery price can be passed along to the end consumer. At this moment in time, users of Prepar3D will be looking for customers and developers who can utilize some of this excellent scenery to share their addons. The base level scenery is just not good enough and would make Prepar3D look ancient. Using an i7 980x and Nvidia 480 (or equivalents) would provide excellent framerates. I suggest some relationships be established with vendors such as FlyTampa, fsdreamteam, pc-aviator MegasceneryEarth, Aerosoft, ORBX, and others. Some of these vendor’s scenery will need modifications due to their expected connection to FSX installations so there would be a development cost. But to get traction and momentum, any concept of making the developers and early exhibitors pay 10x to 100x the cost for said scenery will be VERY counterproductive.

Dave Whittington

professionalflightsim.com

623-330-3126

whitav8@hotmail.com

Post by **Beau Hollis** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 2:55 pm

3rd party FSX scenery should currently work in Prepar3D. Most migration issues arise from changes in file names and paths. While it would be preferable for 3rd parties to update their installers, these issues usually have a workaround. Of course you should read through the vendor's license to verify that you have the rights to use it outside of FSX.

Francois · Post by **Francois** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 2:48 pm

Most if not all current 'FSX add-ons' are sold with the explicit limitation of installing it on ONE PC only. That will obviously prohibit any use as part of an Prepar3D product offering.

It means to either contact the publisher/developer for an extended license, or to ask the client to buy and install it separately (not very desirable).

Francois

(still need to fix my profile here)

Legacy Support · Post by **Legacy Support** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 3:48 pm

Hi Francois,

It is recommended that the EULA be consulted for the add-on that is being used. It is unfortunate that more users do not because as you say, most are implicit that they be installed on a single system. Publishers and Developers that join the Prepar3D MarketPlace with Prepar3D versions of their offerings should amend their EULA accordingly to account for commercial usage of their products.

John

ben252 · Post by **ben252** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:46 am

I would add John that it surely must be in PP3D's favour to maintain FSX compatibility as far as is practical to do so. This way the host of developers whose skill has grown with the Microsoft FS family can be 'harvested' as potential producers of packages for PP3D applications.

Legacy Support · Post by **Legacy Support** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 8:23 am

Hi,

Yes, as stated in my previous post it is our intent to maintain backwards compatibility for as long as possible for all of those reasons. Also having an existing and relatively known development environment is of benefit to all, including our customers.

John

Post by **Beau Hollis** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 9:25 am

If we do drop support for some legacy content in the future, the impact on current developers would likely be minimal. The community will still be able to leverage their experience to produce content using the latest SDK. A good example is aircraft models. FSX supported FS9 models, so many developers continue to sell models created with the FS9 SDK. These are then tested in FSX and labeled as "FSX Models" even though they are actually FS9 models down in the file format. It would be fairly trivial for a modeler to re-export these models using the latest tools.

Beau

N4GIX · Post by **N4GIX** » Wed Jan 26, 2011 12:34 pm

Speaking of modeling, are there any plans at all to compile an export module that is compatible with the newest versions of Max?

As you are no doubt aware, the current export module will not work beyond Max 9, and is problematic in use with Max 2008 (version 10)...

Autodesk refuses to license older versions of Max, which makes it impossible for "new blood" to legally enter the development arena, or for those who're fortunate enough to have had Max7, 8 or 9 legally to upgrade.

Bill

beatle · Post by **beatle** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 10:53 am

Hey Bill,

I know that is on the list of things to do, just not sure where on the list it is right now :->. The P3D v1 SDK did include an exporter for Max 2009 (because that's what LM currently uses internally) - not sure how well it works, I don't do 3D modeling software (I have trouble making a cube, unless I program the output file directly :->) and its still a couple versions older the you can currently buy, but hey it's a little closer :->

Tim

N4GIX · Post by **N4GIX** » Sun Jan 30, 2011 2:11 pm

It does? I only see support for Max 9 (v9.x), which is several versions behind Max 2009 (version 11.x)...

Is it possible that Autodesk's weird decision to "rebrand" Max with a new naming/versioning scheme is causing confusion?

beatle · Post by **beatle** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:03 am

Oh, OK. I thought the Max2009 version made it into the shipped v1 SDK, guess not (I don't have the actual published SDK installed, so can't check that).

Tim