There is a lot of vitriol being spread around concerning Flight - Good or Bad.My question is "Who really stands to lose most, if MS decide to take the role of exclusive shop for addons? Especially if MS can convince that the GAME is worth having?"Think....I respectfully suggest that it could be the Aerosofts, FSAddons, Flightsimstores et al. They will no longer be able to charge their cut for selling addons.Developers may well actually WIN if this comes about and FS invite the community to provide good quality addons...FIRST - the average developer already pays an online shop a percentage of the addon price. Paying MS will not be much different...SECOND - the products will be sold via the MS shop, which despite your hates is a more secure source because pirate copies will no longer be so easy to integrate into the game. So developers who produce the really good addons WILL sell more and not lose out to the pirates.THIRD - for the end user it may well even mean an improvement because there will now be a form of quality control in place - how often have you paid for an addon and then been totally disappointed because it is of really poor quality?Remember, dear reader, I am posting this as a Devil's advocate. Just think about the situation and ask yourself if there is not possibly some method in MS' madness...

these points have been be debated ..... and people fall out on both sides of the issue/scenerio.

Why would anyone want to invent any serious addons to "simulator" which lacks ATC and is based on few boring islands that graphically are at least 3 years behind from what they should look...

Why would anyone want to invent any serious addons to "simulator" which lacks ATC and is based on few boring islands that graphically are at least 3 years behind from what they should look...

Because there might be more regions ready for MS Flight then we all expect? :( As someone else already posted (a few hundred times :( ) you don't really think MS talked with 3rd party developers just to create scenery and planes for one Hawaii island alone...? BTW It is funny to see ATC being mentioned so often as being a major part of the FSX-sim... because a lot of simmers HATE the FSX ATC and don't even use it. And now suddenly we can't do without it...? :( (Let it be clear that I love ATC and use it too: not all the time but it certainly is nice to have and I hope MS Flight will have or get it too!)

Why do people create new weapons packs for games like Skyrim?Just being a Devil's advocate folks. What I know and want do not come into my comments up there. As far as "few boring islands that graphically are at least 3 years behind" please do take a moment to think. Look at some of the MSF screenshots and at some of the NDA breaker's stuff... and be surprised.Looking at the publicly available stuff, I can tell you - they are coming up with hi-res aircraft straight out of the box and seing some of their steep hill terrain detail... miles ahead of FSX - and that is before addons. Besides - have you forgotten the FSX Taster - Princes Juliana airport? MS will be making a whole world available. They say. OK - you have to buy it.Anyway...

FIRST - the average developer already pays an online shop a percentage of the addon price. Paying MS will not be much different...SECOND - the products will be sold via the MS shop, which despite your hates is a more secure source because pirate copies will no longer be so easy to integrate into the game. So developers who produce the really good addons WILL sell more and not lose out to the pirates.THIRD - for the end user it may well even mean an improvement because there will now be a form of quality control in place - how often have you paid for an addon and then been totally disappointed because it is of really poor quality?

FOURTH - Developpers have stated that MS is requiring them to hand over all source code and IP right to MS and that all add-ons will be strictly sold under the MS brand name, effectively destroying any brand value the developper has been able to build up to now.Cheers,- jahman.

Edited January 10, 201214 yr by jahman

Without freeware and independent addon devs say goodbye to many aircraft and real world liveries... MS wouldn't allow publishing those unless approval from manufacturers and airlines were given.

Welll since thats the case say bye bye to your virtual airlines because micrsoft flight will not be able to fly to delta , southwest, and more company destinations. Also say bye bye to PMDG!!! Noone is lashing out to Microsoftloth over this because noone seems to care anymore. If people acted then they would make a global sim sold in stores.

Edited January 10, 201214 yr by me1900

FOURTH - Developpers have stated that MS is requiring them to hand over all source code and IP right to MS and that all add-ons will be strictly sold under the MS brand name, effectively destroying any brand value the developper has been able to build up to now.Cheers,- jahman.

This is the part that I find odd and I am guessing will change over time. The king of the App store, Apple, certainly allows vendors to sell there apps under their own brand name and keep their IP rights. Its amazing how often MS is just a little off.....kind of the like the sibling of a beautiful movie star that just does not look quite right. LOL.

Edited January 10, 201214 yr by MarkW

FOURTH - Developpers have stated that MS is requiring them to hand over all source code and IP right to MS and that all add-ons will be strictly sold under the MS brand name, effectively destroying any brand value the developper has been able to build up to now.

I still boil when I think about this. I've rarely been so... shall we say, "disenchanted" with any company before. I always thought nobody would ever beat our local phone company for sheer disrespect but this goes far beyond anything else. If you think about it, these are bullying tactics not unlike those employed by dictotorial governments. Destroy all free enterprise and remove any desire and reward for the people that make it work. Soon you have Zimbabwe.We've had a week to let it sink in, I thought that perhaps I would see things differently by now but if anything I'm more angry than last week. I still think it's completely inexcusable. I would happily pay $100 or more, easy $200, for a proper base flight sim like FSX that lets you do what we've been doing for 20 years: getting our heads under the hood and making the experience our own pride and joy.I have a thought on where the digital world is going...I sometimes wonder if the "wonder kid" situation will once again reverse soon. We have these young folks who grew up with computers and can figure anything out. But these are kids who grew up in the 80s and 90s, some probably have DOS experience, they built their own 486 when they were 18 and lived through the transition to Windows, and therefore know exactly what's going on when they click a button in windows. Now we have kids growing up on dumbed down operating systems and consoles. Take even Windows 7. I like it, it works well, but if it is someone's first experience of computers, they're never going to learn the first thing. I pull my hair out at some of my clients who have become so stupid, basically thanks to Windows and it's libraries and what not. Nobody knows what a directory structure is anymore. People don't even understand files. People save email attachments and then can't find them. "Well where did you save it to?" I ask. "How am I supposed to know?" comes the answer.This could never have happened in DOS.I wonder if the current 30-40 year old crowd is going to be the most technically gifted computing set we'll see. It's all good going on about how the modern kids can use a fancy phone easily, but using a fancy phone is hardly the same as building your 386SX and troubleshooting config.sys for hours on end, and then writing your own programmes using BASIC, and then arriving at school to see they've invested in their first harddrive, a 10mb thing the size of a VCR.Most people these days don't know the difference between a harddrive and RAM. They don't need to anymore. But this is not a good thing, and Flight! is continuing down this dumbing-down-road.For me, the greatest joy of flight simming is almost not the flying itself. It's hacking the sim apart and putting it back together again, better and faster than before. We spend ages tweaking this stuff.Are the next generation just too dumbed down to bother with this kind of thing? Some of them haven't typed a complete sentence in their entire lives.I can see us in 20-30 years time, in our garages, with our old PCs and our screwdrivers, going on about the good old days like my dad does with his old cars.Point is, Flight! offers absolutely nothing of what I enjoy most about the simming experience.We have Prepar3D for now, thank goodness, but where is this whole trend going? I can't imagine not spending a Sunday morning with 20 folders, 56 cfg files, a few DOS windows, a few XML editors, airport design editor etc all open at the same time. This is what worries me most.

FOURTH - Developpers have stated that MS is requiring them to hand over all source code and IP right to MS and that all add-ons will be strictly sold under the MS brand name, effectively destroying any brand value the developper has been able to build up to now.

Which developers?

Edited January 10, 201214 yr by mgh

Which developers?

ORBX and PMDG that I know of.

FOURTH - Developpers have stated that MS is requiring them to hand over all source code and IP right to MS and that all add-ons will be strictly sold under the MS brand name, effectively destroying any brand value the developper has been able to build up to now.Cheers,- jahman.

I don't see the problem with this. If there is money to made by the developers then why not? I'm sure they will get a mention in the credits somewhere and it's not like 'little jimmy' (some kid) will care if it's a PMDG plane or an ORBX island anyway. The people that do care are the simmers and they will know who made that particular plane/scenery for sure. Surely the devs would just be making a version for MS Flight so why does it matter that they sign this over to microsoft? They would still have their brand and be making add ons for other simulators wouldn't they?

ORBX and PMDG that I know of.

Do you have the links?

Do you have the links?

Hellohere you gohttp://forum.avsim.net/topic/358874-some-thoughts-on-flight/In Short>Eventually we were presented with a picture of how our lives would have to change in order to support FLIGHT:

• All commercial products would be marketed exclusively by MS and we would not be allowed to sell our own products from our own sites.
• No freeware, not even free expansions to our own products. (Think: liveries)
• Unclear controls regarding pricing.
• The inability to market our own products in the brick and mortar retail market without purchasing licenses to our own products in advance of production. (This would increase our costs dramatically, making it impossible to support a retail operation...)
• All developers would be required to pay a sizable per-unit license fee on all FLIGHT products.