747 Classic Progress
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@bodom said in 747 Classic Progress:
@derek said in 747 Classic Progress:
No news at the moment but work on systems is still ongoing.
Hello Derek,
more than a year ago there were previews of an almost finished product or at least what looked almost completed.Then you mentioned that the developer of the gauge coding left or somehow not any longer motivated to fiish the systems? Then the team was replaced and JF announced the whole code must be "reviewed". This was last year in May.
What does that mean? Does it mean the former programmer did not authorized JF to use the existing code? If yes, does it mean anything had to be coded from scratch? Othewise I cannot explain myself the ongoing long delay....
We have made an announcement about this on the JF website. To answer your question directly, the 'ongoing long delay' was chiefly because it is a very big aeroplane and has lots of very complex systems (fuel, hydraulics, navigation etc). The reasons for the additional time it has taken to develop - apart from the size - is that a key member of the systems dev team left to take up a role elsewhere; the work remaining was evaluated and work began again with a new team - some of it from scratch. Developers love nothing more than to work on someone else's code and the phrase "you'd be better off starting again" is one that you will simply NEVER hear ... :-)
Meanwhile, MSFS was released and, once again, this meant we needed to evaluate the work and also decide what impact (if any) the new game from MS would have on the market and whether this needed to be taken into account for ongoing projects. We decided not to release the F-28 for P3D, because the work remaining coupled with the lack of market made it unviable. The 747 at the time was a different kettle of fish. However, it looks like we are now at the stage where, although the 747 systems are nearing completion, the work involved in coupling this to an older model for P3D would be pointless. The cost of simply releasing it (ignoring the development cost) would be more than we would recoup in sales.So, it is now the case that we will need to focus solely on MSFS for this aircraft and look at the viability of a new model to accompany the (relatively sim agnostic) systems. That is probably going to be disappointing to those simmers that are still on P3D and that wanted a study-level 747, but the drastically reduced user base of that sim simply can't support any more development.
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I knew the project was going to be dropped. An old time sim buddy of my used to make fun of me for buying payware planes. He only ever downloaded freeware planes because he always said the people in freeware have a real passion and payware companies only care about money. I see his point now. Its a shame, having spent so much money with JF over the years however after dangling a carrot in front of our faces for years and promising to deliver, even after MSFS was released it was insisted that the 747 would happen and then to not is inexcusable. I wont be buying any more from here again. P3D isn't dead. If you give your word on something, you should deliver regardless of issues on the back end because at the end of the day that isnt the customers problem. For those that also fly Xplane, there is a study level 747-200 for it that is amazing.
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@cptkiddapi said in 747 Classic Progress:
I knew the project was going to be dropped. An old time sim buddy of my used to make fun of me for buying payware planes. He only ever downloaded freeware planes because he always said the people in freeware have a real passion and payware companies only care about money. I see his point now. Its a shame, having spent so much money with JF over the years however after dangling a carrot in front of our faces for years and promising to deliver, even after MSFS was released it was insisted that the 747 would happen and then to not is inexcusable. I wont be buying any more from here again. P3D isn't dead. If you give your word on something, you should deliver regardless of issues on the back end because at the end of the day that isnt the customers problem. For those that also fly Xplane, there is a study level 747-200 for it that is amazing.
Sorry you feel that way. I'm afraid your old time sim buddy's wisdom could also be interpreted as "companies that employ people, pay wages and taxes and provide things that people want to buy, must, at the very least, break even. Those that do things as a hobby don't have that constraint." If we didn't have a passion for the products we would not be here. There are far easier ways to simply 'make a profit'. We do it because we are plane and train enthusiasts.
I am not sure we gave our word or guarranteed anything. No-one has paid up front for something we didn't deliver. We have been working on this with the best will in the world. The team that were doing the development are disappointed. But, at the end of the day, we simply cannot bankroll a project that will cost us a significant amount of money to even release - let alone one that has no chance of making a profit. We owe it to those that rely on us to pay their wages.
"P3D isn't dead" - I am afraid that is not our experience. The shift to MSFS has been faster than any we have seen in the past. Had we known this would be the case, we would have scrapped all P3D projects about a year before MSFS released. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
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Hi Derek,
Thanks for the update and indeed clarification on the 747 project. I agree P3D is dead. in fact, Aerosoft commented on that about a year ago in their forums in relation to their sales.Can I ask, do you intend to place the 747 Classic back on the 'In Development' page in the near future, albeit as an MSFS project? Also, are we looking at years of further development time or has the heavy lifting already been accomplished to any degree and perhaps expect a beta version by the end of 2023?
Many thanks for all the other great efforts you have made. Just Flight have made some fantastic stuff in recent years.
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@derrechtsanwalt said in 747 Classic Progress:
Hi Derek,
Thanks for the update and indeed clarification on the 747 project. I agree P3D is dead. in fact, Aerosoft commented on that about a year ago in their forums in relation to their sales.Can I ask, do you intend to place the 747 Classic back on the 'In Development' page in the near future, albeit as an MSFS project? Also, are we looking at years of further development time or has the heavy lifting already been accomplished to any degree and perhaps expect a beta version by the end of 2023?
Many thanks for all the other great efforts you have made. Just Flight have made some fantastic stuff in recent years.
Yes, when we have some more concrete MSFS visuals and have confirmed the spec, we would want to get something up on 'In Development'.
In terms of systems etc the 747 is very neary complete. However, there is an 80/20 rule in development that says that 20% of the project takes 80% of the time. No definitive timescale as yet - but hopefully a lot less than it has taken to get us to this point. -
Am glad this was made official so we don't have to wait anymore. However I am very disappointed by this news.
I will potentially have a look if/ when I move to MSFS (whenever that is).
The A300 in particular is a shame as for so long it seemed so close to completion.
I will probably take a leave of absense now as there are currently no longer any JF products that are relevant to me (apart from potentially some 3rd party products on the store).
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I knew this was coming for a very long time even-though I was hoping this would be released someday. To be honest I would have been happy if you had at least updated the old CLS 742 to run on P3D4/5 at least we would have had something to use, it was done for the DC-10, no reason why the 742 would have been more difficult, but the moonshot of an uber complex study level must have been to tempting.
I don't blame the JF staff, they did there best, but I do have special contempt for all those who said on this forum "oh I am happy to wait for perfect" rather than pushing for something usable then.
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@joefremont said in 747 Classic Progress:
no reason why the 742 would have been more difficult,
It was impossible, as it happens. The original owner of the IP (not CLS) wouldn't re-licence it. Hence why we decided to make one from scratch.
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@gabe777 said in 747 Classic Progress:
So is there a ETA for this ?
Quarter 1,2 ...year ?
Do you mean an ETA for the MSFS version? No, not as yet. Still evaluating the work required and, what of the work already completed for P3D, can be used/converted for MSFS.
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@derek said in 747 Classic Progress:
@gabe777 said in 747 Classic Progress:
So is there a ETA for this ?
Quarter 1,2 ...year ?
Do you mean an ETA for the MSFS version? No, not as yet. Still evaluating the work required and, what of the work already completed for P3D, can be used/converted for MSFS.
Oh well....even moving to MSFS doesn't makes things better. I think you will need another 1 or 2 years to show something. :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:
In the meantime I bought Xplane 12 and the study level Felis 747-200 which is very good. However, I will keep an eye on that development and decide after release if I also will buy a classic 747 for this incomplete and buggy MSFS.
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@ruddman said in 747 Classic Progress:
I wonder if MSFS was never an option if it had’ve been released for P3D by now?
Of course. If MSFS had not been released there would more than likely still be a significant market for P3D software. As it stands, no such market exists - it disappeared within weeks - which is why we had to cancel the 747 and A300.
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