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FSTramp Users Rejoice!

DaveB said:
Thanks for that Ed.

I remain unconvinced I'm afraid. The math could be argued without agreement until the cows come home so it's pointless commenting further. I'm not in a position to fund the last 4yrs R&D only to have it disappear in 12months.
ATB
DaveB:)
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Yep, I understand and I'm afraid that many others who might have taken the leap with the latest upgrade will feel the same and simply pass.
 
falcon409 said:
Yep, I understand and I'm afraid that many others who might have taken the leap with the latest upgrade will feel the same and simply pass.
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Ed, I read Helge's reply to your email and like many others who already have FSTramp V5.6 I will be passing on V6.0 until he realises that he has made a grave mistake.

Can you imagine how many versions of the DH Dove, Chipmunk, Viscount, DC-6, DC-3 Just flight would sell if the charged an annual fee for you buying their aircraft?

Is see no sense in his logic. A one off registration fee would sell more versions of FSTramp than he will sell now.
 
AussieMan said:
Ed, I read Helge's reply to your email and like many others who already have FSTramp V5.6 I will be passing on V6.0 until he realises that he has made a grave mistake.

Can you imagine how many versions of the DH Dove, Chipmunk, Viscount, DC-6, DC-3 Just flight would sell if the charged an annual fee for you buying their aircraft?

Is see no sense in his logic. A one off registration fee would sell more versions of FSTramp than he will sell now.
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Pat, how long have you had FSTramp?
 
Just a few words...
I have been a very happy user of FSNav since I discovered it, and that was really the very best payware addon I purchased at these times.
When moving to FSX, I decided to purchase FSTramp, considering that even if the flightplanning ability was inactive, it was still a very useful addon to me, and also to provide some (financial) support to the developper, hoping that flightplanning was integrated again into the addon.
I later moved to P3D, and was still using FSTramp, basically as a moving map, a radar screen, a good way to check my navigational calculations, and also to follow my flights progress, autopilot being off or on.
Under FSX, and P3D, I have been using Plan-G for flight planning itself, but still prefered FSTramp as moving map or radar screen, as running inside the simulator, it was using less resources on my own PC than running the simulator + Plan-G.
When FSTramp v6 popped-up, my very personal choice was to buy this version to gain sufficient, not to say nearly complete, practice of this software. And my finding up to now is that this is really a very useful addon. But due to the new pricing policy, I only purchased a 1-year licence, hoping that with the time, the developper will come back to more reasonable price levels.
I can understand that we, the users, might be requested to give out some good money for each new major version (I did it for version 2.5, then for version 3.x, and will do it for version 4.x and following), but not for a time period only.
Not to be pessimistic, when a new version is out, you can purchase it. But if you pay for a given time period, are you sure there will still be a development team when your licence expires?
On the other hand, I can not understand that an argumentation is given on basics from the professional world, as flightsimming is not our job, it is only our leisure. And where I fully agree that hard work deserves a compensation, I actually find that a yearly fee in those ranges is not "within my budget". Being born in 1952, I expect to be a happy flightsimmer for many more years. And definetely, if the rates schedule has not improved, I will return to the FSTramp v5.6 + Plan-G combination when my v6 licence expires (unless some other good similar application has been released by an other developper, of course).

So, for the moment, I am on the learning curve with FSTramp v6 (my FSNav memories are too old), and just to mention a very precise questionning, being a VFR flyer on old roaring props, I use, and generate from time to time, flightplans where waypoints are where radials of two navaids are joining. (So far I have not reached the last page of FSTramp's help file, although this is on my daily "improve your knowledge" list)...

All the above being of course my own thoughts, opinions, decisions (right or not), and of course applying only to me :friendly_wink:

Philippe
 
falcon409 said:
Pat, how long have you had FSTramp?
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Ed, I have been using FSTramp since about 2011 and the licence I purchased then is still active as I have just re-installed 5.6 after looking at 6.0 and not liking what I saw. Not even a chance to try it before you paid for the licence.
 
Helge has released the latest version 6.1 and it appears he has read the feedback from here and has actually taken note of it. I have downloaded and installed 6.1 and I entered the code I got with my original registration/purchase and it appears to have worked as I now have the full map. Will soon know when I decide to do a flight.
 
Doesn't appear to address anything we showed displeasure with, namely the pricing system. Just looks like some follow up fixes and not much else really. The longer it goes and as long as he sees any increase in sales, the pricing decision he made will remain. We'll simply have to deal with it. . .or not.
 
I'm a little intrigued by comments of some saying its a 'bit' much when it comes to price. The pricing to me is simply nuts. All the comments about programmers costs etc is actually total nonsense in a business environment. Doesn't matters what something costs to produce, its only 'worth' what the market is willing to pay. When I did my business studies, that was the golden rule, be it under or over pricing.

I'll not buy it on principal, however good it is.
 
IanHenry said:
I'm not really sure what FSTramp is, is it similar to Plan G? If so why pay for something that you can get for free? I run Plan G on a networked computer and I'm very satisfied with it.

http://www.tasoftware.co.uk/

Ian
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Ian, it's the FSX/P3D version of FSNav. Produced by Helge who also produced FSNavigator. I tried PlanG and while it works ok, what I did find was that it was slow as molasses. If I removed all data displayed from the map it moved quite nicely, but until he finds a better server than IE to handle data it will always drag. FSTramp on the other hand will display all data in any form you select and move smoothly and for those who used FSNav in it's heyday, there was no learning curve at all. . .FSTramp is FSNav. Where it has failed the user is in Helge's insistence that it go from a one time purchase to a yearly subscription which is ridiculous really.

"dougal" is right, all his computations mean nothing to the end user. . .it might help justify the time spent in his own mind, but what "was" worth $40 as a one-time purchase now looks much less inviting. Sadly though I don't really think he cares. He's made the decision and he'll stay with it, probably to the demise of an excellent program.
 
falcon409 said:
"dougal" is right, all his computations mean nothing to the end user. . .it might help justify the time spent in his own mind, but what "was" worth $40 as a one-time purchase now looks much less inviting. Sadly though I don't really think he cares. He's made the decision and he'll stay with it, probably to the demise of an excellent program.
Click to expand...

Surely, he'll end up making far less this way..
 
P3D v3.1 here, FSTramp V6.1 downloaded and installed (I did purchase a v6 licence).
There is at my side a new issue that I did not notice with previous versions...
With P3D internal flight planner, with Plan-G, or with FSTramp, you can generate flightplans from airport to airport up to final destination.
As far as I can remember, such flightplans worked fine into FSTramp up to version 6.0, understand when switching the autopilot mode, FSTramp did manage the flight as planned, and as soon as you were overflying an airport, switched automatically to the next airport. (a very nice feature, when you fly low and slow to visit various smaller airports without navaids, for instance...).
With version 6.1, and assuming my rig is set-up the right way, this does not work anymore...
Once the flightplan is loaded into FSTramp, generated by FSTramp or by Plan-G, and the autopilot activated after take-off, the software brings me near to the first airport "en route", and at a short distance from that airport, the autopilot is de-activated, thus flightplan no more working.
Furthermore, FSTramp computes eoc/bod waypoints between each pair of airports.
The only workaround I could find to make my way from airport to airport was to create waypoints near to each airport I want to overfly, and here the autopilot will switch from one created waypoint to the next one up to final destination.
Reading (afterwards, I confess) the help file, I come to the conclusion that FSTramp can fly automatically a flightplan with Touch & Goes at several airports (you can select runways amongst others), but that if you just want to use various airports as landmarks on your itinerary, you must enter in the flightplan only a departure airport, waypoints (user created, or navaids) on your selected way, and a destination airport - but no airport between departure and destination ones.

Do not know how you generate your flightplans, but I happen to think that selecting the destination airport with a specific option, for instance "terminate flightplan at...", and leaving the ability to select airports as waypoints only, would certainly better fit my own preferences...

Blue skies
 
falcon409 said:
Ian, it's the FSX/P3D version of FSNav. Produced by Helge who also produced FSNavigator. I tried PlanG and while it works ok, what I did find was that it was slow as molasses. If I removed all data displayed from the map it moved quite nicely, but until he finds a better server than IE to handle data it will always drag. FSTramp on the other hand will display all data in any form you select and move smoothly and for those who used FSNav in it's heyday, there was no learning curve at all. . .FSTramp is FSNav. Where it has failed the user is in Helge's insistence that it go from a one time purchase to a yearly subscription which is ridiculous really.

"dougal" is right, all his computations mean nothing to the end user. . .it might help justify the time spent in his own mind, but what "was" worth $40 as a one-time purchase now looks much less inviting. Sadly though I don't really think he cares. He's made the decision and he'll stay with it, probably to the demise of an excellent program.
Click to expand...

Thanks Falcon, I think I'll stick with Plan-G, it works fine for me especially being able to run it on another computer.


Regards,
Ian
 
b52bob said:
Much, much, much to expensive especially to one living on retirement funds. Count me out also.
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Yea, I understand completely and as I said, it's a shame that he felt the need to go this route. He may feel it's warranted, but if the end users disagree. . .then he has nothing and it's too good a utility to have it fade away because of an ill conceived notion by the developer. If I had not already purchased it years ago and kept up with the upgrades/updates I would also be revisiting Plan-G.
 
I'm going to play devils advocate here. I am not attacking anyone and there may be a slight joke ( possibly at my expense ) so be warned.

You arent paying for FStramp when you purchase this software. In fact if you purchase any add-on/scenery/utility you arent actually paying for that item. You may think you are but you arent. What you are doing is paying for that persons time, skillsets, knowledge, goodwill of their family and ongoing support for the product. If you start to think of your discretionary purchases in this manner then it starts to make sense.

Further to this. Count the amount of hours of use you may get from that software. Then break it down into an hourly rate. Suddenly it will not sound as bad as you might think... and that add-ons/scenerys are ridiculously cheap ( there is that joke I was talking about ).

I am not denigrating peoples opinions on how affordable ( or not ) the software in this case is. I am just pointing out the different way a person might price their product or a purchaser could view their purchase.
 
Apologies, I am responding five months since the last post, only saw this now as I am following posts around the world on Helge's ridiculous pricing structure.

For me to act as devil's advocate as well, as per last poster, in 99% of distributed software by developers for games, flight SIM's etc., they only bill for a primary number release, such as 1, 2, 3....6,7 etc. All other sub numbers are released free, as Helge did for for all versions up to 5. And they make I'm sure sufficient income as they are all still around. And now that 64bit releases of SIM's are all on the market, it is no good for him to say, that one can revert back to version 5.6 if we are not happy with the payment structure since version 6. Otherwise he will have to recode version 5.6 to work with 64bit SIM's such as Prepar3D v4.0, which currently has not happened, and only version 6.51 to present v6.53 are now able to operate with P3D v4.0.

Personally, I see this as getting very greedy, it's limited to only using old MS FS products and Prepar3D. There are two freeware products of excellent quality, Plan-G (works with all SIM's MSFS, Prepar3D and X-Plane, and Little Navmap (currently the same SIM's as FSTramp), and two other excellent payware products though not cheap in AivlaSoft, but no expiry type payment plan, EFASS and AivlaSoft EFB.

I have stopped using FSTramp due to Helge's poor pricing charges, and it will be a very long time, and radical changes to the pricing before I return.

Regards

Andrew Brown
 
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