So Lockheed Martin have released Prepar3D 3.0 and to say the response from some of the community has been rather ugly is really being nice. So far there has been 3 camps they are:
- The people who realize that software costs money to develop and understand that eventually you have to pay for it.
- Those who don’t feel 3.0 is worth paying full price for as they feel it’s more like newtek’s release of LW2015 a bug patch version at full price
- Those who want to complain about 2 and the fact that it’s not 64bit yet.
I will say that I’m in the 1. camp though I do understand the feelings a little of 2 because part of me feels that 3.0 is really more a bug fix, however I also understand that software isn’t free to develop it costs money to pay for the coders and it requires a lot of hours both to hunt down bugs and to add new features. So far people have gotten 2 years of updates from 2.x that isn’t bad, it’s about normal cycle for software and if you remember Microsoft did simular FS2004 – FSX ??? The only reason you’ve not had to do that ‘cycle’ is because that’s right FSX was the last ‘Decent’ release from Microsoft. And No i’m not going to get into Xplane 10 here because tbh it’s a different type of platform (multiplatform for a start).
That being said LM really should look at offering upgrade pathways rather than ok you pay full price each time, every other major software company does it and sorry Lockheed most people are not Government Agencies who can afford to pay full price, you’d get a lot more people jumping to the upgrades if you did say 150$ for users to upgrade 2.5 pro – 3.0 etc just saying.
Now the other camp of course is the ‘Well LM didn’t make it 64 bit so it sucks and it’s 2015 get with the program’. Ok loo there are benefits to 64 bit but there are a lot of ‘oh *beep*’ moments that are going to happen when and if LM ever upgrade to 64bit and the biggest of these is that you are going to loose EVERY plugin, DLL etc every written for Flight Simulator. Eg the moment that LM takes P3D 64bit you can kiss backwards compatibility goodbye.
BS I hear some yelling, no sorry it’s the truth, when you compile an application you have a choice 32bit or 64bit the two modes don’t get along, at the moment every DLL every compiled for FSX or P3D is done under the 32 bit instruction set, that includes evrey .Gau file ever written and the moment you compile the main application in x64 ‘boom’ they stop functioning. That means that basically every addon every written stops functioning why? Because every major addon uses some form of compiled code, be it the Direct Sound gauge, a simconnect gauge or something like object flow etc every one of them is a compiled DLL and every one of them would break.
The only fix to that? Every one of those DLL’s be they .DLL or .GAU has to be recompiled in visual studio as a 64bit instruction set and there are HUNDREDS of those files and some of them are no longer even supported by their original coders. So Not only will you now be paying LM for a new version but you’ll also be paying the developers because I can tell you most aren’t going to offer that for free.. It costs them $$ to upgrade all their products not to mention all those Dev’s who do ‘joint’ compatibility products won’t be able to do so as easily.
So Really no matter what LM do there screwed.. If they don’t make it 64bit they get people screaming, if they do than those same people are likely to scream that their addons no longer work.
Can’t have it both ways people. To be honest I’d rather LM give us sloped runways etc eg REALISTIC airports because Runways aren’t flat.