SpaceWeevil
SOH-CM-2024
Can't comment on the rest of your post as I don't have the DC3, but it's only fair to mention that Just Flight DO offer a no-quibble money back guarantee.
About developers, beta testing and other things.
- Thread starter CodyValkyrie
- Start date
Can't comment on the rest of your post as I don't have the DC3, but it's only fair to mention that Just Flight DO offer a no-quibble money back guarantee.
It's not stated as such in theTerms and Conditions on their website. That is why I was so cautious in the first place!
That is a long way short of a no-quibble money back guarantee!
As I said earlier, it really is down to the consumer to be extremely careful with their money. This history of sub-standard product seems unlikely to change, whether it's through incompetent beta testing, poor or uncaring developers, or simple economics based on the business model that it doesn't matter how bad it is, most will still buy it. I'm sure we can all name those developers.
At the end of the day, we only get to find out how good a product is after its released to the paying public. And too many obvious faults are coming to light only after it's been bought and paid-for.
That isn't satisfactory from the consumers point of view and in the longer term, extended gestation or not, is likely only to result in the unwelcome attentions (unwelcome from the developers point of view) of legally-empowered consumer protection organisations and the hasty departure from the market of these corporate non-entities that are actually not companies at all (Just Flight being one exception, to be clear) and therefore having no professional indemnity or liability insurance, probably no tax status, and no culpability or recompense procedure for consumers.
In the meantime, I really think that avoiding purchases in the days and weeks after initial release is the soundest judgment. If the developers want the money up front, then all they have to do is make it right first time.
The great thing from the consumer point of view is if there's an ever-increasing list of developers that are going to have to wait for their income, they WILL have to comply with supply and demand.
And if there are no early-adopters, the ONLY policy that will encourage people to take the risk with their own money is a full, no-quibble, money back guarantee.
One thing that would help a beta testing “process” is leadership from the development team. If you simply hand the model off to the beta testers and wait for the bug reports to come in, a lot will be missed. Milton Shupe taught me this. His beta testesr go out to the “flight line” with a very detailed checklist, a couple of pages long. If I don't use a checklist such as this, I find myself simply flying around going “hmm, looks good”. Beta testing can be a tedious and time consuming job. With a good checklist, anyone can do it, except for the flight model that is, but that's another can of worms all together, isn't it...?
I do agree with allcott on this: It's a software development mistake, IMO, to expect all your bugs to be uncovered by the beta testers. Some of this burden must fall upon the developers in the first place. The less bugs you send to beta testers, the less they will have to find...
I do agree with allcott on this: It's a software development mistake, IMO, to expect all your bugs to be uncovered by the beta testers. Some of this burden must fall upon the developers in the first place. The less bugs you send to beta testers, the less they will have to find...
Meshman
Charter Member
What's even better is to have the paying customers be the beta testers! The scenery addons that I have are from being a beta tester or from a past affiliation with a publisher. I have bought two add on packages that cover an area that I am fond of. The latest package contained two airports. Withing five minutes at each airport I saw (IMO) problems that should have never been in a RTM product. Can you say four foot high taxi signs, just to name one example?
Yet this developer is highly praised in the many forums! But you will also see a pattern of issuing a SP not too long after initial release for all their products. These SPs fix things that should be noticed in a beta testing. My conclusion is that their is no prescribed beta testing. Another package will be released for this area and I'm pretty confident there will be a SP issued a couple, three weeks later correcting things that should have been caught before RTM.
And all the praise will still flow across the forums...
Personally, I would LOVE to find a couple of beta testers for my work. But when they got the airport list with 200, 300, 600 airports to double-check, well, we know how well that would probably work out...
I
icarus
Guest
500 copies at least? perhaps before torrent, etc...you are too much optimistic cody
CodyValkyrie
Charter Member 2016
No sir, not at least. 500 is modest for a large house developer. For a smaller developer, many of whom I work with, I try to reduce my prices if I can afford it myself because I know often that their profit margin is even smaller, including their sales.
I know some developers who are lucky to break even 100 sales. It is a sad reality sometimes.
You might be shocked to hear the truth about Level D simulators that cost 15 million US Dollars. I'm smiling in the picture, but it's a fake smile designed to throw off the IP who's about to give me a job check in a simulator that isn't like the real plane.
SkippyBing
Charter Member
You know that works both ways right? Be careful what you wish for.
Also +1 for what Bone says about actual real simulators rather than computer games, some of them don't even get the physical interface right and they can literally buy the parts for that if they want to.
I agree with most of what's been said in this thread, but this sticks out.
"Quality" is a relative term. Things progress over time. I would be unhappy with a "quality" product from 2007 if it were released today exactly the same (with VERY few exceptions. Level-D comes to mind). Expectations and "the bar" have risen so fast, some companies are bound to be left behind, for better or worse, whether anyone likes it or not. We customers now have to wait longer for addons and pay a little more, but we are almost always getting the very best.
It has been really neat seeing companies progress since the release of FSX. I've said it in the past- I think overall, IRIS has improved the most. A2A really stepped up their game as well, resetting "the bar" with every release. With the release of their in-house 310, Milviz has shown significant improvement as well and I look forward to their other in-house releases. ORBX swept past most scenery devs and has created the best scenery ever made for FS. There have been some casualties along the way, but there are also many new developers creating even better products.
As a customer, there's not much to complain about these days. There are tons of reviews, videos, and forums to read and watch. It is very easy to make an educated purchase.
Developers that don't meet customer expectations will be called out on it. If you buy a product and enjoy it, let the developer know, spread the word. Feedback is how things improve and progress.
i agree, i will never go payware as the rewards are simply not enough to warrant the work involved. At least with freeware, I choose what I make, how i make it, and how/when it is released. After release if I wish to fix some bugs, i will, if I dont, no loss. If you download it and like it, happy days. if not delete it. you have lost nothing but a few minutes download time. I think it is a crying shame that our FS community has 'forced' more freeware developers to go payware. There is now a lack of good quality freeware developers. It is a sign of the current times we live in that people are looking to make money everywhere now, where 10 years ago, you purchased fs9, and never had to pay again, as everything you wanted was free somewhere.
It bugs me now, that you spend X amount to buy FSX then you can spend DOUBLE that amount to purchase a single addon! crazy. Now to read forums, where these developers then say they loose money!!! So what is the point? why spend months, and months on something, release it, take money from people and end up out of pocket? it would have been better for EVERYONE to release it for nothing, then noone losses a penny?
fsafranek
SOH-CM-2024
Absolutely agree. I've seen Milton's checklists and beta test reports and they instill a real sense of confidence. There is no ad hoc testing. (Although from my real world experience testing software/hardware at HP, MusicMatch, and Yahoo some tough corner case issues are only found in ad hoc testing).
The ALS-SIM Flanker project I helped test was a breath of fresh air in that the FDE guy, John Cagle, gave us descriptions of what he wanted tested with background information and expected results. Other companies
just give you a new flight model and say here it is. No information about what had changed or what this release was focused on. Modelers on the other hand do like to list what they have done in the new release. So you look at those items first and then look at everything else again to make sure they didn't break anything this go around.There also comes a time in every product development where the number of bugs that could still be found in a given time does not justify holding back release. That is a marketing decision. Does it make sense to test for another month when we could release it now and get a month's worth of sales while we still do some testing? Afterall paying customers will be helping us test whether they like it or not. "No, ship it." But that is also when the best PR you can muster better step up to the plate.
:ernae:
SkippyBing
Charter Member
That's a fail on basic economics, if you spend months developing something you will have incurred costs of one sort or another even if it's just the opportunity cost of not being able to do something else. For most developers I'm assuming there's a large expenditure on research materials, I know I've spent a small fortune on books and cds for things I'm building/thinking about building.
If you then give it away as freeware you make no return on your expenditure, even if it was just your time, so you have lost money. If you charge something, even if you don't make a profit, you will recoup some of that outlay and be better off than if you hadn't.
As a long term business plan it's not great, but with the increasing amount of time and effort required to make a quality FSX release it's a way of easing the pain.
Snave/Simon/Allcott,
I can confirm that we do offer a full refund to any customer not satisfied with their purchase. I apologise if this is not made very clear.
Thanks
Martyn
warchild
Charter Member
When I retired from reality in 2002 ( yup, i retired early ) my time alone was worth 80K a year. That means that so far, the development cost on the P-61 has been at least 20K just for my time alone, not taking into account everyone elses time blood sweat and tears.. helll, We got us a hunert thousand dollar project goin here.. Must be nice..
Here's the reality.. Microsoft can sell FSX at 39 bucks a copy because they sell millions of copies. If they had the sales footprint we developers have, you couldnt touch it for anything not approaching a thousand dollars or more. To compare the amount that you pay for a limited distribution addon product, to the price of a massively marketed product just doesnt compute.. And if we were to charge fairly for just time, skills and labor, no one could afford it, even if we divided the cost up over the estimated sales total.
Thirty or fourty dollars for an aircraft is nothing compared to what goes into making it, but its a lot more than a lot of us can pay. truth told, we're experiencing a very unique and golden moment here.. That Warbidsim P-51 os worth well over four times the amount they're asking for, and any A2A product with Accu-Sim is right yup there with it. My own work isnt too shabby either, but i dont model or code.. However, no one could afford it..
Perhaps it can feel to developers that they need to get a model out every six months and they feel the crunch of that, but, it's the developer that controls the development and marketing of the product, and it isnt like anyone is going to lose interest.. I watch PMDG take a year, two years or even longer some times to develop a product, and they still sell at least as many as showed initial interest if not more.. Crying that the customers demand a model doesnt get it in my book..
As for Beta Testing?? yes, the developers need to create the test matrix to test against and it needs to be adhered too, but that said, in the four years i've been doing payware models, i have time and time again with each version of a flight model asked that the testers concentrate on specific conditions i need tested, and time and time again, theres been zero feedback. It's gotten to where i have just one person that i directly work with now. That person has been one of the best ive ever seen, and has given me reason several times over to pull out hair in the pursuit of getting the flight model accurate. The thing is, Beta testers for the most part ( not always ) need to be trained. But frankly, most people dont know how to train people and so the results of almost any testing program irregardless of the quality of the developer or project, is left wanting.
Here's the reality.. Microsoft can sell FSX at 39 bucks a copy because they sell millions of copies. If they had the sales footprint we developers have, you couldnt touch it for anything not approaching a thousand dollars or more. To compare the amount that you pay for a limited distribution addon product, to the price of a massively marketed product just doesnt compute.. And if we were to charge fairly for just time, skills and labor, no one could afford it, even if we divided the cost up over the estimated sales total.
Thirty or fourty dollars for an aircraft is nothing compared to what goes into making it, but its a lot more than a lot of us can pay. truth told, we're experiencing a very unique and golden moment here.. That Warbidsim P-51 os worth well over four times the amount they're asking for, and any A2A product with Accu-Sim is right yup there with it. My own work isnt too shabby either, but i dont model or code.. However, no one could afford it..
Perhaps it can feel to developers that they need to get a model out every six months and they feel the crunch of that, but, it's the developer that controls the development and marketing of the product, and it isnt like anyone is going to lose interest.. I watch PMDG take a year, two years or even longer some times to develop a product, and they still sell at least as many as showed initial interest if not more.. Crying that the customers demand a model doesnt get it in my book..
As for Beta Testing?? yes, the developers need to create the test matrix to test against and it needs to be adhered too, but that said, in the four years i've been doing payware models, i have time and time again with each version of a flight model asked that the testers concentrate on specific conditions i need tested, and time and time again, theres been zero feedback. It's gotten to where i have just one person that i directly work with now. That person has been one of the best ive ever seen, and has given me reason several times over to pull out hair in the pursuit of getting the flight model accurate. The thing is, Beta testers for the most part ( not always ) need to be trained. But frankly, most people dont know how to train people and so the results of almost any testing program irregardless of the quality of the developer or project, is left wanting.
Well, I have been churning out freeware for around 4 years now, and incur no costs, other than my Internet bill for research. Gmax is free, and so is the SDK with FSX, so my economics are not false. I stick by my original point. You CAN do it for free, it is just people, as shown above are choosing to have it as their 'occuaption' and therefore need a wage. I accept this, but strongly disagree with the above statememt. My freeware is free. It costs me ZERO to produce
Francois
FS Veteran
ROFL !!!! One can hide but one cannot escape ;-)
CodyValkyrie
Charter Member 2016
Which is still a fraction of the cost of really flying. Furthermore, as new technologies are improved or created, such as bump mapping, etc, development times take longer. At what point do people decide that they are spending more time working on a hobby than their real job? At what point do you eventually want to get paid for your work? This is how I ended up in the business. I went from doing a video that took a few hours to complete, to now often it takes me upwards of 2 weeks.
I am 100% sure that if we did all the work, for no pay, the advancement in technology would not be where it is at in regards to addons for Flight Simulator. Companies like A2A, Orbx, Iris, PMDG, Milviz, etc would not exist because the effort and time (which is money) would be better spent somewhere else.
I have the deepest respect for anyone that produces freeware, and continues to do so. This is no knock on their work whatsoever. Let us be realistic however, that money and human nature drives technology and advancement. So, without getting into a geopolitical and economic debate, I think it is fair to say that without developers making SOME money, the market and the advancements that come with it simply wouldn't exist.
Let's face it, for the little money we do actually get from this work, I think it is fair to say that we wouldn't be doing it unless we loved it. I think that counts for something, doesn't it?
warchild
Charter Member
Amen to that..
Francois
FS Veteran
Yes. Now lets take Microsoft for example....... *cough*..... ;-)