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Another good company closing its doors.

Hey they were some old timers in the flightsim industry. I used to fly there helo's in the past.
 
Well that was the next logic step I quess..Never heard of them and from what I see on their website no wonder..How can you sell something like that this days ? Maybe the screenshot are deceiving but i,ve seen better looking freeware for most of those models..You have to keep with Nemeth Design ,Aerosoft, Alphasim and other few top notch helicopter designers.It,s called progress.I think the days when one single guy could make a payware model from start to finish it,s kinda over. The quality standard that CptSim ,A2A and Aerosoft models have today requires a lot of man power.
 
I'm someone else who bought their Hueys and will miss those particular models (no-one else seems interested in the early "short body" UH-1s, everyone does Ds or Hs) but I think the world has significantly left them behind. Sad to see them go? A little, yes. Surprised? Not so much, unfortunately.
 
yago9 said:
Well that was the next logic step I quess..Never heard of them and from what I see on their website no wonder..How can you sell something like that this days ? Maybe the screenshot are deceiving but i,ve seen better looking freeware for most of those models..You have to keep with Nemeth Design ,Aerosoft, Alphasim and other few top notch helicopter designers.It,s called progress.I think the days when one single guy could make a payware model from start to finish it,s kinda over. The quality standard that CptSim ,A2A and Aerosoft models have today requires a lot of man power.
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I make models by myself. Not always. The Epic was on my own, gauges, textures, sound, mesh, everything. I grew alot of gray hair and it took a year, but I did it. I wish I had a gauge maker back then to help out but everyone was busy.


Personal viewpoint on the industry;

* Sales are way down, the sim world has slowed down
* Models take way too long now to create. Making a plane in one year instead of 1 to 3 months has ripped peoples profits apart. Figure the time invested to build a model spread out through 5 to 8 people, cuts from royalties from websites, taxes, any advertising, costs for managing (surviving) in business, what else do you have? Play money... Nothing big time.

Piracy has also put a huge dent in sales.

I think we are in a sort of bottle neck. A new sim came out that was very demanding to build for, and was very demanding on hardware, and that caused a huge ripple effect of people quitting the developing biz.

It is a shame to see such great teams shutting down instead of growing. It is a very demanding field to work in and takes tons and tons of time and talent and concentration. It isnt as easy as it looks. When someone in this field says 'their blood sweat and tears', they mean it.



Bill
 
Lionheart said:
Piracy has also put a huge dent in sales.
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We've been through this before. Even Bill Gates has spoken publically saying that piracy has a negligible effect on a software developer's profits. Pirates don't even consider buying software, they either pirate it or they don't. Therefore, no money is lost because nothing was ever going to be bought. What is lost is substantial, but it's not monetary.

Furthermore, you can't say "piracy has put a huge dent in sales" because piracy is an unknown metric that cannot be measured. When I worked for a small hardware store, my boss would always blame dissapointing numbers on the opening of a Home Depot several blocks away. That situation could neither be measured or controlled completely. The only thing we could do was pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and offer FAR better customer service. Whining about piracy won't help, but I'm sure additional anti-piracy measures can be instituted.


What I'm saying is; we can't sit around and watch our hobby dwindle while complaining about ghost problems like piracy. While optimum pricing for a developer may support a 60 dollar price tag, is that good for the hobby?
 
Fiscally you may be right tigi, but the effect on a small developer seeing his months or years of hard work sitting there ready for bit torrent download just hours after the official release must be devastating and very demoralising.
 
Roger said:
Fiscally you may be right tigi, but the effect on a small developer seeing his months or years of hard work sitting there ready for bit torrent download just hours after the official release must be devastating and very demoralising.
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I'm becoming rather frustrated by some of the developers when it comes to 'Piracy Issues'.
If one takes the trouble to let them know their work has been stolen and where it is available, the reactions fall into four distinct groups.

1:'Thanks, but we believe this is a fact of life'.

2:'Thanks, we've been able to have it removed'.

3:Several weeks after being notified.....'Thanks but I don't read my emails very often'.

4:'Thanks but I've never been able to get anything removed from 'xyz' download site!!! It's all a bit too hard.'

While I have nothing but contempt for the thieves, most of the time the stolen property can be removed from the down load hosting site, they DO have a policy to protect themselves.
However, once something ends up on TPB then that's all she wrote.
While most of us are only too happy to keep watch, in the end it is up to the 'Legal Owners' to request a site remove their stolen property.
:isadizzy:

I almost overlooked the 5th group:' ---------------------------------------', the few who never reply either way!
 
I'm not going to comment on the piracy issues but I would like to comment on the cost and charge aspect of this.

It's obvious to me and almost certainly all the other devs too, that, though the cost(s) of making a plane with all the bells and whistles and textures and bumps and gauges that are amazing etc etc... has gone WAY up, we're not able to raise our prices without incurring screams of rage and wrath. Honestly, I do understand that most of you feel that 30 bucks is the MAX that we (as dev's) should be charging however, I can tell you now that after the costs and expenses are taken into account, we're making very little, if any, of that 30 bucks. I'm not saying that we (devs) should raise our prices BUT... you, as our clients, must be prepared to accept the fact that you are leaving us no room to manoeuver. We're all trying to stay within the status quo, but... beleive me when I say to you that we would all like a raise too.

KC.
 
I don't mind paying for quality. I've paid 30 US dollars for something that wasn't worth half of that (pisssed me off), and I've paid 30 dollars for something worth twice that (made me happy). All in all, I want to pay for what I'm getting, and I'd rather dispense with the surprises...good or bad. I'll pay 60+ dollars if it's really worth it...but, it's gotta be good.

The VRS F-18 Superbug is a nice model, but what I don't like about it is the anti-piracy aspect of it. You can't use FSrecorder with it because of the anti-piracy coding. You can't fly in multi-player with someone who has the Superbug. If you want to reformat your hard drive, you need to transfer your license back to VRS first. It's nice, but I wouldn't have bought it if I knew about this.
 
Bone said:
The VRS F-18 Superbug is a nice model, but what I don't like about it is the anti-piracy aspect of it. You can't use FSrecorder with it because of the anti-piracy coding. You can't fly in multi-player with someone who has the Superbug. If you want to reformat your hard drive, you need to transfer your license back to VRS first. It's nice, but I wouldn't have bought it if I knew about this.
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The anti-piracy software has NOTHING to do with why it doesn't work with multiplayer or FSRecorder well. They do work actually, it is just that certain aspects of the software simply do not work due to the high level of custom coding to make this aircraft operate like the real one. This is inherent in many complex addons, such as the 377 from A2A, PMDGs planes, Arianes, Captain Sim, etc. How do I know this? I made the official videos for the product, and used multiplayer AND FSRecorder. Lets not get our stories crossed. These issues are only made worse by the fact that FS in general does not support these features from developers well, making them often break down in such scenarios (multiplayer, shared cockpit, etc) in order for them to create a reasonable simulation.

AGAIN, this has NOTHING to do with the anti-piracy software!

As for re-licensing the software, it only takes a few minutes if that? What is the problem? You spend 3+ years working on some software only to see it ripped by kiddies. The software is simple, with online activation that only takes a few seconds. It is no more onerous than Microsofts registration system, but without the phone calls.

I don't see the problem....
 
The answer to your comment about only taking a few seconds to transfer a license back is this, Cody: "My hard drive spindle just snapped."

Not as common as it used to be, but it still does happen very regularly. And yes, it is damned hard to see illegal copies of your software on the net, but overzealous copy protection removes those very customers you are so desperate to increase to keep unit costs down.

After the mess surrounding the release of Spore and the vast numbers of people who were unable to ever use it because every attempted activation used up one of their three "lives" for the key, EA have dropped the system entirely from Sims3. The majority of people don't object to copy protection, but they do object a lot to not being able to use a product they have paid for the right to.
 
Hey CodyV, I queried the FSrecorder issue on the VRS website, and according to them it is a result of the anti-piracy coding. To run the Superbug, the guages have to be initialized with your license, and the license only allows you to initialize one set of guages...ie, the set you are going to use to fly the Superbug. You can't play back the Superbug because the software see's the recording as an un-initialized Superbug. That was their answer to my querry, so if I'm ignorant, then it's because they gave me an answer for dumbasses. Also, I tried multi-player with a friend who has the Superbug, and it didn't work.

Look, I strongly believe people should be paid for their hard work, and making a high quality FS model is hard work. I don't begrudge the makers of a model that incorporate stiff anti-piracy measures, it's just that I don't want to pay for something that won't let me get what I want out of it as a legitimate user.


P.S. If you were able to use the VRS model with FSrecorder, I sure would like to know how you did it.
 
Ian, this isn't rocket science. It also isn't a very intrusive system. You simply put in a few details, which were given to you when you purchased the package and VIOLA, it activates you. It takes seconds. To me, this is not more harsh than the system that Aerosoft has, and takes nearly as much time.

With this same system I COMPLETELY upgraded my system (new mobo, CPU, hard drives, Vista, etc), utilized 5 different betas and never once had an issue.

This to me is no more intrusive than the Flight1 wrapper. Again, I don't see the problem. I actually takes longer to set up the control system properly to give it a "true" fly by wire system, because of a VERY serious flaw with FS and how it recognizes controllers than it does to install.

If a legitimate key is not utilized, the program simply won't work.

My only aim here is to extinguish misinformation and clarify how the system works, and franky it is getting a very fallicious and unfair shake, mixed in with information that SIMPLY ISN'T CORRECT.
 
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