Tabs, I obviously dont know your financials like you do, but I would be suprised if the overall spend on FSX addons last year was not significnatly more than what MS made from fsx sales.Am I wrong?Admittedly we're an abnormal sample here on avsim, but we are keeping a lot of small devs in business.

It doesn't stop them selling a $10 per month licence to anyone who calls themselves a 'developer' though.

What will stop them is if Microsoft puts their foot down and requires them to confirm that said buyers actually are developers.

Edited January 5, 201214 yr by Mountain Man

There is no problem with them selling the full licence to any avsimmer who is using this for simulation/training etc. Thats many/most of us. As we all know, its not for gaming but i can live without hoops in the sky.

Edited January 5, 201214 yr by OzWhitey

P3D is not going to be the future, unless they dramatically increase their user base, and that is going to take a single-user retail release (in my opinion).Most simmers are not going to pay $500 for a commercial release, or pay a $10/month user fee.Licensing agreements can be renegotiated.

That certainly applies to me.. unfortunately, I cannot justify this kind of expense, though it may seem a pitiful amount to a lot of people. I love this hobby, but I have limits within our family spending... times are quite difficult for many of us sadly. If P3D really does offer the leap that John hints of in its V2.0 incarnation, then it will be hard to look on and have to 'make do' with FSX, but if the pricing structure does not change that's what I will have to do.

Edited January 5, 201214 yr by Novation

What will stop them is if Microsoft puts their foot down and requires them to confirm that said buyers actually are developers.

I believe the case can be something like this: contract between LM and MS states two possible licence models for FSX-based P3D: so called developer licence with monthly subscription and full commercial licence. I believe contract doesn't demand that Lockheed should get any proof how the subscriber is using his licence, it merely defines possible licence models and perhaps that there can't be no retail licence for normal consumers sold on the BestBuy or GameStop. Besides, it would be very difficult to prove if customer is truly developing for the game or not, hence no specified proof is required.This is of course just my guess. I'm no lawyer and not even US citizen, so I have no true knowledge of US company regulations and legislature.Think about this P3D thing as a whole. For LM, it is really small business even in the case that P3D makes itself to very popular enthusiast sim. So, why an earth LM would risk a clear lawsuit in with P3D? I believe this case would be very easy for MS in court as LM is selling it completely openly in their website and discussing about the program in enthusiast forums, like here in Avsim.Does somebody really think, they are that stupid in LM? I don't.

If the software is $500 and the price doesnt fall then that isn't such a bad thing. Think of like this - every 18months or so I am forking out £500 for new mobo/cpu/gpu etc to get that little bit extra performance from FSX. It doesnt matter how fast the machine runs or how many upgrades I do over the coming years - the bugs in the FSX engine will remain.At least this way for $500 the engine is brought up to date and any current or future hardware will boost the performance and we will then also have the bugs fixed and the engine improved. Even if it was £500 then $100 for major updates I am fortunate enough to be able and willing to pay. After all I could take up golf which would cost me a lot more than that!Doesnt sound a bad deal at all to me.

Edited January 5, 201214 yr by graham3278

John V - I hope they then paid you for all the products you gave to them

Edited January 5, 201214 yr by graham3278

This is very good news :) I hope LM doesn't run into any issues with this.

Agreed. When P3D V2 comes out and there are some major improvements, and EZCA/NGX are updated for P3D, then I will do another hardware upgrade. Until them I am not investing any more money in hardware only FSX addons.

Thanks guys for the answer.Now, how can this excellent community ( except JSkorna ) could help you Orbx in tuning the engine ?Will this engine equip Prepar3D 2.0 ? When ?Again thanks a lot

Poor Jim, have you two fallen out?

We've had Flight alpha code running in-house for well over a year; about 25 of our team installed a few builds. We've been talking to MS for over two years about Flight.I have to apologise to this whole forum because I sent Alain Needle a PM about a year ago since he was pestering me so much. And I let him know a little too much info. Oops, you guys have suffered for that lapse, sorry.Long story short, we spent a lot of time working with MS on white papers and looked at the code, gave them copies of all our products, told them how to do it right. They even used screenshots of our 1S2 Darrington in their mission dialog boxes, so they must have installed our scenery into Flight at some point, LOL!About March 2010 everything went quiet despite promises of new builds. Later in 2010 we were told to go away, no SDK will be shipped.Thanks MS, for all the fish.I've been a good NDA citizen and kept my lip zipped as best I can, although I saw there were some leaks last year from other disgruntled devs.Bottom line for us is that a closed environment with an in-game app store does not appeal to us since we cannot generate income from such a proprietary arrangement. I doubt that a belated SDK will arrive quickly enough for us to hold any interest now. The studio IMHO should not have stopped talking to third party developers but a decision at VP level must have been made to internalize the project.As for Orbx FSX will remain our core platform for at least 5-10 years and we will run Prepar3D as a parallel platform. We're porting all our stuff to P3D over the coming months. P3D V2.0 looks crazy cool, although I am under NDA with LM. We will release about 30+ products for FSX/P3D this year alone, including about 5-6 new regions including some in Europe. We're doubling our regions team and investing in FSX/P3D R&D as quickly as we can. We see no reason why anyone would walk away from 5 years of FSX addons investment to a new simulator. The future from our perspective is very bright.

Prepar3d can only cater to nich market and FSX is a die-ing sim. So looks like you will be developing for two nich markets. Kind of what X-Plane 9 was.Ive been playing X-Plane 10 and I like it allot better then FSX with ADD-ONS. XPX is the future! So I won't be buying anymore ORBX ADD-ONS, so you can take that to the bank JV !

P3D is the way to go. I have been using it since ver1.2 came out a few months ago and flythe PMDG NGX. It's a dream come true for the serious flight simmer/professional.I am counting the days till ver 2.0 gets released.It will replace FSX on our FTD's.Fred.

Ive been playing X-Plane 10 and I like it allot better then FSX with ADD-ONS.XPX is the future! So I won't be buying anymore ORBX ADD-ONS, so you can take that to the bank JV !

Fair enough. I'm just anxiously waiting to get my hands on A2A P40 and taking that baby out in ORBX world. Omnomnomnom :(

There is no problem with them selling the full licence to any avsimmer who is using this for simulation/training etc. Thats many/most of us. As we all know, its not for gaming but i can live without hoops in the sky.

The Prepare3D EULA reads with my emphasis:

1. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this EULA, Licensor hereby grants Licensee a fully paid-up, nontransferable, nonsublicensable, nonexclusive license during the Term of this EULA to use the Software, but only on no more than one computer at any one time, only by no more than one user at any one time, and only for purposes other than personal/consumer entertainment.

My emphasis.I assume that is intended to reflect the agreement between MS and LM. If so, MS has every right to require that LM ensures that P3D is not used for " personal/consumer entertainment".The reality is that any "avsimmer who is using this for simulation/training" is using it for personal/consumer entertainment and that's the reality the law will recognise.

Edited January 5, 201214 yr by mgh

The Prepare3D EULA reads with my emphasis:My emphasis.I assume that is intended to reflect the agreement between MS and LM. If so, MS has every right to require that LM ensures that P3D is not used for " personal/consumer entertainment".The reality is that any "avsimmer who is using this for simulation/training" is using it for personal/consumer entertainment and that's the reality the law will recognise.

But how they are going to prove that you are not developing for it using developer licence?

If you guessed the lawyers, you win the golden ring...

too soon Tom, too soon... :(