Indeed: While you're somewhat short on patience, Ron, in my experience much of your response style is (most times :( ) with quite reasonable justification. The rudeness, innuendo and outright ignorant posts you've had to deal with here would have driven lesser mortals out of the business a long time ago. :( Just hang in there. You have a lot of supporters, too.

It is not my place to pardon you as we are bound by AVSIM's Terms of Use. You history of causing trouble in this forum speaks for itself and your propensity to be disrespectful is prominently on display. All these things are fine if the moderator deems it so. However you demerit list must be pretty long given how many threads are locked on account of your inflammations. This disrespectful attitude lost me as a customer long, long ago.

+1and no more advertising in topics asking for product recommendations.

Edited January 4, 201214 yr by kdfw__

Indeed: While you're somewhat short on patience, Ron, in my experience much of your response style is (most times :( ) with quite reasonable justification. The rudeness, innuendo and outright ignorant posts you've had to deal with here would have driven lesser mortals out of the business a long time ago. :( Just hang in there. You have a lot of supporters, too.

Our thanks Paul. :(

Since I brought it off topic I'll post with my thoughts regarding the topic at hand.OP - perhaps you've missed the quality freeware addons out there. Check out Dino's F14 and T45C, Tim Conrad (aka piglet's) planes over at simouthouse.comI once made a simple tower scenery object for fs2002. It took me about 20 hours. Imagine what it takes to make an entire plane or scenery. Obviously there's freeware authors around but it's quite demanding to spend one's personal time to release something without any compensation. Also, from your initial post, it appears you're under the impression that spending money on an addon is ridiculous compared to the price of FSX (or name your platform). You need to consider FSX as the platform, and the addons as software to enhance it.

Ron must enjoy losing customers. He does a good job at it.

Ron must enjoy losing customers. He does a good job at it.

Please understand that we believe that customers are free to make purchase choices as adults and we never pressure anyone about their choices.It really is fine with us if you've chosen to pass on our products. The hobby should be enjoyed in whatever manner you choose. :(

Wise choice Jim.

To the OP, or any other constructive poster: How do you like the 'shared' approach some devs are running? Means offering freeware and additional and refined payware titles? I think it's a model that works well on scenery, while the aircraft regime may be too tough when you plan to offer detailed releases on that zero price level.There are some attempts though. The latest 757 from JF came as freeware and I think the additional variants are payware options. I also saw a nice policy over at IRIS, offering the older titles as freeware while still delivering new ones. I think that's a fair thing and may, if the quality impression is ok, well trigger some loyal freeware users to buy their next plane plus the options.On the piracy thing, I first of all share Ernie's thoughts when it comes to comparing different planes with different audiences and totally different price ranges, and then coming to the conclusion that the protection saved the sales as the only factor. Well, as long as nobody calls that 'method' scientific, I think it's ok to post it though. ^_^Better stuff. I've read quite some reasonable statements from the Orbx CEO on the surely burdensome piracy issue in this small flight sim industry. Well, needless to say that his company is one of the innovative bunch, aiming for the mentioned shared approach with freeware and payware titles going hand in hand.If I understood him correctly, he doesn't aim for low pirate numbers but for high customer ones, with the nice side effect that those are the ones you can count. Sounds easy, but I think some devs mix up the order, or more.However, since your initial post surely had the one extreme ('totally free!') in mind, it's not too surprising to see the other one coming up more or less eloquently and polite. Personally, I think the middle ground might be an intelligent and lucrative basis of operations and some devs already run this approach.On the payware parts, one would really have to avoid the (in my eyes) disasters like failing protection measures which lock out paying customers or force them to deliver DNA samples after changing the mouse. Sorry, couldn't resist.

I build websites for small companies

So..... you build websites... for free/donations?

As someone who develops commercial payware addons, let me just add this for what it's worth:"Expensive" is totally relative. Sure, for a day laborer plying his trade in Indonesia, 20 Euros would be a huge spend. Probably more than a week's salary.But for your typical American or European, 20 or so Euros is nothing. It's the cost of lunch at a semi-decent restaurant.In my view, most addons are selling way below their true value (not to be confused with their market value).Not only are you getting highly, highly specialized software for an extremely cheap price, but you're also often getting free one-on-support with the developer.With a lot of companies outside flightsim, if you want support, you have to pay for it, and it's often not cheap.

"Expensive" is totally relative. Sure, for a day laborer plying his trade in Indonesia, 20 Euros would be a huge spend. Probably more than a week's salary.But for your typical American or European, 20 or so Euros is nothing. It's the cost of lunch at a semi-decent restaurant.

This is very true. Even in a somewhat modern economy like here in South Africa, people with great jobs have great lifestyles, but only here. As soon as you want to buy something from overseas, it becomes far more expensive than it is for residents of the USA or Europe simply due to their stronger currencies. There's not much you can do about this, although developers based in a country like this are going to enjoy greater returns than those based in Europe, simply because every euro you make goes miles further here.The thought of getting a "20 Euro addon" for the price of lunch around here sounds crazy. Now you've gone and depressed me :(

Now, someone please correct me if I am wrong...One thing I noticed when researching the PMDG product line-up, they have the pilots, first officers, mechanics, engineers, etc all involved in their products (not to include actual sounds recorded and rendered from the flight deck during the different parts of flight...which would indicate having to set it up in an actual aircraft and probably pay some good money for the flights that they are recording from). I don't believe any free-ware products offer this level of immersion. I have a few POSKY aircraft and one PA aircraft. Yes they are well designed and handle beautifully, but they come NOWHERE near any of my PMDG products (or even my QW757 series).I have not noticed that at all...my system specs:Intel i7-2600K/quad 3.40GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB SATA, 1GB Nvidia GTX-560 Ti, WIN7

Nope, there is at least one freeware aircraft that for sure does give you that level of immersion, and I'm somewhat surprised it doesn't seme to have been mentioned before: the Project Tupolev 154B2 for FSX, and B2 and M variants for FS2004. Now THAT is a great plane. It's at least as good as many of the high quality payware planes you can get, and has the added bonus of being a widely used Russian jetliner. It's a treat to fly and a challenge to learn. The POSKY and PA aircraft don't get anywhere near the level of quality of the PT Tu-154, and to date I don't know of any addon aircraft that has surpassed the excellence of the PT Tu-154 and being free at the same time.

The reason for the heavy add-on discounting is FSX is really, really old, so the market is saturated with add-ons. We all have the add-ons that we are going to buy, and only a few extremely propular aircraft like the 737 warrant further very expensive development such as PMDG are doing. This means both developpers and retailers are left hung-out to dry for lack of new product to sell. .

True...except for the definitive Airbus.Just imagine how much THAT is going to reward whichever developer manages to pull it off.Ian

I'm somewhat surprised it doesn't seme to have been mentioned before: the Project Tupolev 154

Not mentioned before probably because it is a rare exception rather than a rule.No doubt freeware stuff of that complexity is a collector's item.

Not mentioned before probably because it is a rare exception rather than a rule.No doubt freeware stuff of that complexity is a collector's item.

I also think it's relatively unknown in general, although I'm not sure why. It gets mentioned rarely and it's hardly anytime one of the first freeware planes to be mentioned in threads, even though it's undoubtedly (one of) the best.