We flight-simmers are a tragically fascinating bunch. A close knit collective that’s united across the world, regardless of religion, encompassing many different lifestyles, all brought together by one common passion – frolicking the virtual skies. It’s perhaps because of this the community can end up being divisive, taking sides to an argument and fighting to the bitter end. This is best exemplified by the “sim vs. sim” war some like to have between the mainstays in the scene, Prepar3D and X-Plane – the latter of which has really progressed in maturity as a platform and 3rd party add-on support in the last year or so.
One of X-Plane 11’s biggest victories is how it’s managed to convert so many large ESP-platform developers, who used to ridicule X-Plane, into viewing the platform as a viable business option for future products. Outfits like UK2000 and FlyTampa previously turned their heads at the thought of XP, but both now have products out for Laminar’s sim, the former which openly embraces X-Plane with an aggressive product conversion plan. In fact, I suspect many of the developers found themselves in a “hat-eating” moment when it turned out just how much traction X-Plane was gaining in the flight sim community.
Though, predictably, not everyone rushed to the new platform and understandably so. Why would an established developer flood resources into a sim that hasn’t had time to mature? After all, X-Plane could just be a ‘fad’. Besides, why develop for XP when you’ve got a loyal fanbase of customers willing to open their wallets for you on P3D? I’m sure X-Plane die-hards is begging to differ here, but that’s how businesses work. If you hadn’t noticed, people actually develop flight sim add-ons full time now and thus banking their livelihood on an unproven platform would be ludicrous (Bitcoin, anyone?).
But who cares about “livelihood” – why don’t these guys develop for the undisputed king of simulators? You can see the results of this line of thought in the comments section of any major ESP-developer’s Facebook feed. Exhibit A: FlyTampa – Their latest post is a teaser of their next P3D project – 6th comment down reads; “When can we expect the next XP scenery?”
Let’s take a gander at some of their other posts, shall we? Next post we find the same commenter, this time on a post about Prepar3D PBR. It reads; “FlyTampa life; X-Plane with PBR: No attention. P3D with PBR: Wow guys look at this! “
This particular individual is consistent too, he makes an appearance in four out of five of FlyTampa’s latest posts (at time of writing) – all of which were about Prepar3D. Not to mention the same guy ia also spamming PMDG’s Facebook page with similar remarks. Of course, this individual isn’t an outlier, because you see these kinds of comments and behaviour everywhere on both sides of the argument.
One other incredible example of “begging” I’ll bring up today is from Orbx’s 2019 roadmap announcement back in December. This was big news, with a two-hour broadcast encompassing all of Orbx’s endeavours in the next year. CEO John Venema started the stream off with Prepar3D news – certainly the right decision – after all, they’re Orbx’s largest customer base by far. That evidently didn’t please the die-hards though as within half an hour of the stream going live, the live chat was filled with delightful comments such as “ONE YEAR MORE, P3D WILL BE GONE”, “STOP WITH P3D…X PLANE 11 YOU WASTE TIME” and my personal favourite: “Fast fwd please, retired people won’t spend that much money on its favourite prehistoric piece of software, we want to see some new gen stuff XP11”
Shutting other platforms down to convince developers to come over is a big no-no. It also brings me to say that this constant X-Plane diehard attitude puts off prospective users too; by scaring them away – that means less potential growth for X-Plane userbase, and consequently, a less appealing incentive for ESP-based developers to come over. If you spend any meaningful amount of time in Prepar3D circles you’ll know the sterotypical X-Planer I’m talking about – the obnoxious and ready to pick fights X-Plane “fan”. I want to believe that the X-Plane community is good-natured to its ESP-counterparts, but increasingly I’m thinking people need to do a few lessons on basic online etiquette.
This should go without saying, but stop the beseech. Wouldn’t we want the X-Plane community to be open and welcoming to users and developers alike? A place where we can put aside our differences and enjoy the one common passion together: virtual flying. Users bemoaning the lack of X-Plane development are shooting the community in the foot by painting us all a negative picture, like working in a business – you represent a wider congregation of like minded people.
Not only will moaning to developers tarnish our chosen simulator’s reputation, but it’ll also actively dissuade potential new users – something a growing platform certainly doesn’t want to do.