What is Simflyers thinking?

[Guest Dean]

I downloaded Simflyers' DFW scenery and decided to buy it. The registration key is 76 numbers long! Why on earth would a registration key have to be this long? Not only that but if you add the east and west static scenery, you have to enter these 76 numbers a total of 3 times.

[Guest flightpro08]

Ever heard of Copy and Paste? ;-)Simflyer's has done this to prevent piracy, which was a big problem with their older keys. The new keys contain your personal information (e-mail address, address, phone number, etc.) This way, if the scenery is 'shared', Simflyer's can track the original sender down. Not really a big deal in my opinion.Ryan-Flightpro08 :-coolVATSIM Pilot/ControllerZLA ARTCC Controller 1 (C-1)SAN TRACON Lead [link:www.taxiwaysigns.com]Taxiwaysigns.com Scenery Designer-----------------------------My "Home Made" System Specs:Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz ProcessorTurbo Gamer ATX Mid-Tower with 420W Power SupplyEPoX 4G4A Motherboard with Intel 845G ChipsetVisiontek XTASY GeForce4 128MB Ti4600 (Det 40.41 Drivers)512MB PC2100 DDR RAM40GB Matrox 7200RPM Hard DriveWindows XP Home Edition*No CPU or GPU Overclocking*3dMark2001SE Score: 11298

[01pewterz28 117]

Like Ryan has pointed out the reason for such long Keys are to protect us from people swapping Reg keys to others which had become a big problem. Now we can track if people are posting Key files in forum's, web pages, news groups, ect...We do what we have to do to protect what we have worked on in order to keep the level of theft down as much as we can.JohnSimFlyers.netjohn@simflyers.net

[Guest Dean]

>Ever heard of Copy and Paste? ;-) >>Simflyer's has done this to prevent piracy, which was a big >problem with their older keys. The new keys contain your >personal information (e-mail address, address, phone number, >etc.) This way, if the scenery is 'shared', Simflyer's can >track the original sender down. Not really a big deal in my >opinion. I've downloaded a lot of software from many different sources that required registration keys to activate. How do those companies manage to protect their work with registration keys that require less than than 10 alpha/numeric entries to make?

[ckukmale 30]

Hi Dean.How do those companies manage to protect their work with registration keys that require less than than 10 alpha/numeric entries to make? I dont think they do which is why you have mass piracy. Big corporations lose potentially millions but because they make millions too it doesnt hit them so hard. Think of Microsoft for example or Adobe. You goto various sites on the web and you can download all their latest software. For Simflyers it makes a lot of difference if people are pirating their scenery as they dont make hardly any money at all compared to the big boys and in my opinion cutting and pasting 10 letters or 100 letters requires the same amount of effort.Craig Kiltie

[Guest]

What a pointless topic if i may say.It adds nothing to this community.Unless your computer suffers from a copy and paste malfunction i doubt it would have been a big difference from entering 10 digits.I hear people complain about crazy stuff but you my friend take the award.Cheers

[Guest]

HiI agree with BIK.Simflyer`s is in my opinion among the finest groups developing scenery for FS and cutting and pasting a reg code to help them protect their work is the least I can do for these gentelmen.Ron

[Guest emergency_pants]

Yep.. no big deal.Cut and paste with a chuckle. :)Simon.

[Guest Dean]

>What a pointless topic if i may say. >It adds nothing to this community. >Unless your computer suffers from a copy and paste >malfunction i doubt it would have been a big difference from >entering 10 digits. >I hear people complain about crazy stuff but you my friend >take the award. Apparently you must be fairly new to the forums if you think this is the craziest thing you have ever read. Don't get so pissy. There are better ways to protect one's work than to require a customer to make 76 numeric entries. I completely agree their work is outstanding or I would not have purchased not one but two airports from them. Getting DFW installed has been a tribulation for me and I'm sorry to inform you and the other arrogant individuals that copy and paste is not the issue. My experience so far:1. Install the software and enter 76 numbers. 2. Start the Sim in my FSD Commander 115, who seems to have figured out a far more consumer friendly approach to protecting their outstanding work.3. D**n, the scenery is loaded in demo mode.4. Go to the website and find a file for a new installer that says "Please download it if you are experiencing key recognition problems -e.g. if the demo version installs although you are sure you have entered the correct key." Well with 76 entries I guess it's possible I could have made a mistake.5. Download the new installer, which has the exact same date and file size as the original, uninstall the scenery and try again. 6. Go through all 76 entries to be sure there right. Let's see was the 57 through 60 numbers 0223, d**n, lost track start over again. 7. Yep, every number is right. Install the scenery.8. Start the sim, again loded in demo mode. 9. Repeat 5-8 with the same results.10. Repeat step 9 again with the same results.11. Take a break, visit the forum and find this thread.12. If your concerned about a contribution to the community share with me your experience in loading D/FW. Or is your support of Simflyers so weak you've never purchased it?Once I get the initial scenery installed properly I suppose I could use cut and paste, if the contents were still on the clipboard after starting FS2k2 to determine if the first install went correctly. Fortunatly the second airport I PURCHASED has only 1 scenery set to it.

[1mikel151 71]

I have it and it took me all of about 2 minutes to install. The FPS kill me, but it is a fantastic scenery, considering I live 5 miles from the real deal! Have nad no problems what so ever getting it installed and I had to do it 2 times due to PC problems and upgrades.Michael :-)

[Guest Dean]

Thanks for the courteous reply Michael. I resolved my problem. When I received the email containing the registration number, I printed it off but never noticed that the email scrolled on to the right. When I printed it only the first 76 digits printed, which is why I entered them manually. After I opened the email again I noticed it scrolled on. The registration key is probably more like 150 digits. Obviously, copy and paste is the only way to input this. I'm a little surprised the individual from Simflyers who responded initially didn't pickup on my mistake when I said it was 76 digits. You are right, it is stunning scenery. Worth far more than the 8 bucks I paid.

[Guest]

>I've downloaded a lot of software from many different >sources that required registration keys to activate. How do >those companies manage to protect their work with >registration keys that require less than than 10 >alpha/numeric entries to make? We do it by linking the code we send to the customer, so if we find a number online we check out to who it was send. We find that 1 out of 80 people have problems with entering codes and the longer the code is the more problematic it gets. And you have no idea how many of our users have never used copy and paste:-) And even if they do, they often copy only part of the code or copy the spaces before or after the code... It's a hassle any way you look at it. But untill we find a better way we all have to learn to live with it.Mathijs KokLAGO

[Guest Dean]

>We do it by linking the code we send to the customer, so if >we find a number online we check out to who it was send. There is a unique, four digit code that is assigned to every registration key from Simflyers. It's called an order number and it links all the information required to identify who the original source of the key was. I was going to state this in the thread but since I determined what my problem was I thought I would let this die rather than try to convince the Lemmings there is a better way. This is by no means a criticism of Simflyers who have create wonderful scenery for us to enjoy. Their support has been excellent. Just prior to discovering my mistake, I sent an email to them asking for help. Wolfgang responded asking if I had entered the entire 500 digit code, it's actually 768, which I had not previously. We had a brief and pleasant email exchange about my resolution of the problem. I will certainly buy more airports from them again.