AirSimmer A320 RELEASED

[RedSpinnaker 35]

Well not me since i have the ET version since 6 months back. I

[Mike T 208]

"Although it was always our intention to release a completely bug free product, the realities of the current economic crisis effecting all of us to some measure, have forced us to reconsider and to release the Basic edition before each and every bug has been fixed. Although we are proud of what the team has accomplished thus far, we want to categorically state that, even though none of the remaining bugs are critical to product performance, we are by no means satisfied with the state of the product. We are absolutely aware of every bug currently unfixed in the Basic edition and commit to you that our team will not rest until they are dealt with through frequent updates via the AirSimmer Tablet PC. We appreciate your patience and understanding while we proceed to fix these remaining imperfections."The problem is NOT that Airsimmer decided to release a "basic" version with an "advanced" version to follow, that in itself is Airsimmer's own business decision to make. The problem IS, however, that they have released a product that even THEY are not happy with, that THEY admit to being buggy, that THEY wished they would not have to release, that THEY admit is knowingly imperfect, and they expect US to understand. The release of any complex software is bound to have bugs, but releasing a product with bugs that you KNOW are there, asking people to pay for your buggy product and then publish an admittance to this malpractice is astonishing. And not to say that this is a product under development for a year...this has been years in the making filled with Airsimmer promises and product bloviation. Is there any doubt that there would be an outcry when you promise to deliver a Rolls Royce but deliver it unfinished with further payment due so that it can perform like a Rolls Royce in the future? Who does that? And where else can this be justified except here in the FS Community?Sorry, but a company's economic woes are not the issue of the consumer and in this case Airsimmer is in essence asking for a "bailout" by the consumer at $40 a pop so that the company can stay afloat long enough to release the actual promised product at an additional $90. And not to say that the bailout includes a reward to the consumer for purchaing a basic and admittedly buggy product either! The consumer is then is penalized for their kindness to the tone of an additional $90? Has this community gone insane? This is not made up foks, this comes straight from Airsimmer!If they are having financial issues and not enough people purchase their broken basic model what then? In no way, shape or form is a company going to make a windfal with a broken basic product that competes against no less than three other mature advanced products with more of the same product in development! Airsimmer has yet to release anything except press releases and 1 (repeat 1) basic and buggy product, so there is no track record established. And if the company is so financially hurt and they don't make enough on the basic product I can promise you there will be no advanced product especially if the broken basic product leaves a bad taste in the mouths of those brave (or crazy) enough to purchase it.The argument here is not "basic" vs "advanced", it is the wanton MALPRACTICE of a company releasing a product they know to be unsatisfactory by THEIR OWN standards, not MY standards, not YOUR standards but THEIR OWN standards and THAT my friends cannot be explained away. What they are saying is, "Help, we don't have enough money to complete our project, so give us 40 bucks, we'll give you the unfinished thing that we have and then if enough people pay us, we'll be able to finish the advanced thing and you can pay us 90 bucks for it." This all boils down to the fact that Airsimmer NEEDS your 40 bucks or they won't be around to sell you an advanced product. In the end, its all relative. What's in a name and what's it worth to you? I point to LDS who has released only ONE aircraft yet the LDS name is congruent with excellence. The mere mention of an LDS anything gets people excited and when they release another product people will line up to buy it on reputation alone, that type of publicity my friends is priceless. Airsimmers too has released only one product...apparently they are willing to sell their good name for a price, and that price is $40. The Airsimmer fiasco is self created and can be summed up in two words. EPIC FAIL.Good Luck.

[ck2703 0]

"Although it was always our intention to release a completely bug free product, the realities of the current economic crisis effecting all of us to some measure, have forced us to reconsider and to release the Basic edition before each and every bug has been fixed. Although we are proud of what the team has accomplished thus far, we want to categorically state that, even though none of the remaining bugs are critical to product performance, we are by no means satisfied with the state of the product. We are absolutely aware of every bug currently unfixed in the Basic edition and commit to you that our team will not rest until they are dealt with through frequent updates via the AirSimmer Tablet PC. We appreciate your patience and understanding while we proceed to fix these remaining imperfections."The problem is NOT that Airsimmer decided to release a "basic" version with an "advanced" version to follow, that in itself is Airsimmer's own business decision to make. The problem IS, however, that they have released a product that even THEY are not happy with, that THEY admit to being buggy, that THEY wished they would not have to release, that THEY admit is knowingly imperfect, and they expect US to understand. (..)The Airsimmer fiasco is self created and can be summed up in two words. EPIC FAIL.Good Luck.

Excellent post, mate. I think noone might have stated the situation any cleaer.RegardsChris

[oldbear 33]

Excellent post, mate. I think noone might have stated the situation any cleaer.RegardsChris

Quite. Mike has encapsulated it perfectly. His post should be pinned somewhere prominent.It's a real shame though.....Ian

[protzler 0]

The Airsimmer fiasco is self created and can be summed up in two words. EPIC FAIL.Good Luck.

Wow Mike, Great great great post!

[slait 169]

Agreed, Mike. Well stated. Those that cannot see the complaint being made after that clearly are blinded by the rear end that they have their lips firmly planted to. Hopefully Airsimmer will make it right, but if they don't my money will stay right where it is.

[Guest Longyear]

So how does it compare to the Wilco Feelthere Airbus?

Aside all the understandable frustration and disappointent of how airsimmer have handled this marketing fiasco, I, like Brian, would still like to hear from people who have bought, on how this compares to the feelThere A320 (Airbus Series 1) ?- How is start up ?- Are FMGC / FCU modes like OP CLB and CLB working ok ?- How is the FBW / "autotrimming" ?- What are the limitations of the MCDU ?- Can it follow a flight plan ?- Are FCU functions and/or the Heading control keyboard assignable?.......these are some of the questions I would love to hear comments on.Davido.

[Airbus 14]

Agreed, Mike. Well stated. Those that cannot see the complaint being made after that clearly are blinded by the rear end that they have their lips firmly planted to. Hopefully Airsimmer will make it right, but if they don't my money will stay right where it is.

Where is PSS when you need it! :( I have been flying the PSS A320 for years so I guess a few more won't make much of difference to me :( I can wait for "an advanced version" if it ever comes out!Airbus

[Guest captbdel767]

And that is my real problem with it.Tim

I think whilst the timing was alittle hasty but given the current nature of development costs etc I do feel this release will "support" the finalisation of the "Advanced" product which will be fantastic. I support the product if only to say that I think the cost of the "basic model could have been less given the imperfections at such a early release stage.I support the progress that has been made in producing the Airbus as it is complex and also given the fact that software piracy will play its part in loss revenue for the developers. I won't mind spending some cash on it - supporting our hobby. I support the hard work, the openness of the forums run by AirSimmer, I'm very please with the fact that AirSimmer will be around for a long time to come - given our support of a "beautiful" young product and FS company.We should not deny that other FS software vendors have also released "buggy" products some worst then others so come on...get behind AirSimmer.We need developers enticing us with new ideas and products that reflect our growing need to push creative boundries in Flight Simulator, this makes our flight sim expereince ALL WORTH WHILE. :( I'll still wait for the advance version though! :(

[kiwikat 506]

I support the hard work, the openness of the forums run by AirSimmer, I'm very please with the fact that AirSimmer will be around for a long time to come - given our support of a "beautiful" young product and FS company.We should not deny that other FS software vendors have also released "buggy" products some worst then others so come on...get behind AirSimmer.

Openness of their forums? You've got to be joking. I'm a FSX user and I'm scared to even post on their forums. You can see what happens to FSX users when they post there. I've never seen such a gathering of FS9 a really excited user. As an unregistered visitor on their forum, the support section isn't open either. So there is no way to see what problems people are reporting unless you search on third party forums.This is happening more and more often. Developers need to stop releasing unfinished products. Stop releasing planes without VC's, major systems, soundsets, whatever. Simple as that. If I were testing a project and the developer wanted to release it unfinished I would kick, scream, kick, scream, and kick and scream some more until they changed their mind. I simply would not allow it.I will not endorse nor spend a cent on a company that doesn't release finished products. This ain't rocket science. They knew what they were doing and they knew the consequences. I'll wait for the PMDG bird, FWIW. :(

[RyanB 0]

I'm using a Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.8GHz, 6GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator RAM at 1600MHz, Vista 64 Ultimate and a Nvidia 8800GTX all plopped onto a EVGA X58 SLI board. :D

No No, Software!!! :D

Gotta stop you here Ryan - that isn't a "bug", it's a fonts issue caused by people who have a particular service disabled in Vista/Win7 per certain so called "tweaking" guides. All that was and is needed to rectify it is copying a single font file from the FSX/Fonts folder to the Windows fonts folder manually. If the service is disabled, the copy fails during the install. If it's enabled as it should be then the copy works just fine. There's nothing at all wrong with the FMS as far as this is concerned.Do we have bugs? Certainly, but I do believe they are/were extremely minor and affected a very small percentage of our users. The MD-11 in particular was called one of the smoothest and most bug free releases in FS history by numerous reviewers and users alike - that airplane was released feature complete and 99.9% bug free.

Agreed, it was a great release and no one's going to say otherwise. All software has its bugs though, and that's my point in case

[Guest captbdel767]

Openness of their forums? You've got to be joking. I'm a FSX user and I'm scared s***less to even post on their forums. You can see what happens to FSX users when they post there. I've never seen such a gathering of FS9 a really excited user. As an unregistered visitor on their forum, the support section isn't open either. So there is no way to see what problems people are reporting unless you search on third party forums.This is happening more and more often. Developers need to stop releasing unfinished products. Stop releasing planes without VC's, major systems, soundsets, whatever. Simple as that. If I were testing a project and the developer wanted to release it unfinished I would kick, scream, kick, scream, and kick and scream some more until they changed their mind. I simply would not allow it.I will not endorse nor spend a cent on a company that doesn't release finished products. This ain't rocket science. They knew what they were doing and they knew the consequences. I'll wait for the PMDG bird, FWIW. :(

Guys this is a new product - YES not exactly completely finished and in FS9! I am well aware of the feeling that some FS developers are taking the mikey! with the FS community but they don't stay around to long. Remember PSS? Ariane? etc just a few examples of what I regard as poor quality-poor customer service-high cost packages one is gone the other still around but ONLY just. I'm in no way the biggest fan of Aerosoft the products just don't feel complete and certainly not worth my money from an experienced Flight Simmers point of view. Do they get bashed! at every released NO, well maybe just alittle.I'm sure we will see a change in marketing, business tactic here just give it time, AirSimmer are monitoring the users reaction and will review I'm sure how they proceed. Given some people are not hard core simmers they're ability to use a product that's not exactly meant to just roll out of the hanger thunder down the runway without some knowledge and understanding.Hang in there.. :(

[RedSpinnaker 35]

This is happening more and more often. Developers need to stop releasing unfinished products. Stop releasing planes without VC's, major systems, soundsets, whatever. Simple as that. If I were testing a project and the developer wanted to release it unfinished I would kick, scream, kick, scream, and kick and scream some more until they changed their mind. I simply would not allow it.

This will continue to happen when you have people who are willing to pay $60 to beta test software from a company that has never produced a product. I think AirSimmer will become a case study in psychology. The most vocal proponents of their product are the ones who were "OMG OMG OMG, this is going to be the best A320 ever designed" over a year ago, even before AS came out with their "a really excited user sponsored beta program".You have to hand it to AS though. Their subtitle "The Mathematics of the Sky" is spot on. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush... or in this case "$40 from you now is worth $130 for something that doesn't exist, and may never".

[Guest captbdel767]

This will continue to happen when you have people who are willing to pay $60 to beta test software from a company that has never produced a product. I think AirSimmer will become a case study in psychology. The most vocal proponents of their product are the ones who were "OMG OMG OMG, this is going to be the best A320 ever designed" over a year ago, even before AS came out with their "a really excited user sponsored beta program".You have to hand it to AS though. Their subtitle "The Mathematics of the Sky" is spot on. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush... or in this case "$40 from you now is worth $130 for something that doesn't exist, and may never".

The REAL AIRBUS aircraft on a public test flight as we all know flu straight in to trees! and the engines swallowed a load of pine neddles :( NOW this bird will fly just will take alittle longer to tweak those imperfections, its a hobby after all...if you don't like DON'T FLY IT.Please someone tell us who has NOT released a perfect product?Remember AirSimmer offer a 30 day refund!

[RedSpinnaker 35]

The REAL AIRBUS aircraft on a public test flight as we all know flu straight in to trees! and the engines swallowed a load of pine neddles :( NOW this bird will fly just will take alittle longer to tweak those imperfections, its a hobby after all...if you don't like DON'T FLY IT.Please someone tell us who has NOT released a perfect product?Remember AirSimmer offer a 30 day refund!

That is the most asinine parallel I've ever seen. Bugs being unveiled AFTER release is the normal course of software development. There hasn't been a software package (even LVLD and PMDG) that came out of the gates 100% perfect. Reputable developers only release when the test teams had thought they'd discovered/fixed all known bugs. What they DIDN'T do was say "we know there are still bugs, but we're going to release this anyway and charge you even more money to upgrade to the final (and hopefully fixed) product", which is EXACTLY what AirSimmer is doing.And AirSimmer isn't the one offering the 30-day refund, it's Flight1. Get your facts straight before opening mouth.Can you imagine if Level-D or PMDG pulled a stunt like this? And these would be companies that have already firmly established themselves as reputable developers. They're would be such an outcry the likes of which the community had never seen. What makes AirSimmer (with their "awesome" product) any different? 'cause they're the new kids on the block?