Very sad to read this news. Earth Simulations produced the best scenery in the business and their recent NW Scotland release took scenery development to a whole new level.

 

Thanks to Darren and Vikki for their immense contribution to the hobby and wider community. Good luck to them for the future and I hope their love of simming is rekindled along the road.

 

 

Thanks to Darren and Vikki for their immense contribution to the hobby and wider community. Good luck to them for the future and I hope their love of simming is rekindled along the road.

 

+1.  Couldn't have been said better.

Very sad news...Again Thanks to Darren and Vicky for making some of the best sceneries out there. All the best for the future. 

I wonder if they could join the Orbx team, would be great if Orbx reached out to Darren and Vicki to explore this possibility.

The new EU VAT rules seem to be crushing many home run, internet based businesses.

 

 

The new EU VAT rules seem to be crushing many home run, internet bases businesses.

 

Content creators impacted are going to have to sell their products from retailers...if they can afford to.  I don't know what percent goes to the retailers.  Anybody know?

Well done to the EU for another well thought out scheme :rolleyes:

Content creators impacted are going to have to sell their products from retailers...if they can afford to. I don't know what percent goes to the retailers. Anybody know?

It varies from store to store but Simmarket for example publish their tariffs publicly which is up to 40% of the sale price for non exclusivity. It's a big chunk of the revenue indeed. We formed a great relationship with Earth Simulations after we featured their Isle of Man and Guernsey sceneries in our Q400 training package. We are also planning to use their Scilly Isles in our Twin Otter course. We're looking at ways to see if we can keep these particular titles available.

A nice thought, Ben. I hope it happens!

 

 

It varies from store to store but Simmarket for example publish their tariffs publicly which is up to 40% of the sale price for non exclusivity. It's a big chunk of the revenue indeed. We formed a great relationship with Earth Sumulations after we featured their Isle of Man and Guernsey sceneries in our Q400 training package. We are also planning to use their Scilly Isles in our Twin Otter course. We're looking at ways to see if we can keep these particular titles available.

 

Well, that would explain why they were trying to retail it themselves. 

It would be nice if someone could take the existing titles on, just so they can continue to receive some revenue from the hard work they put into this scenery. I must say always hated the content delivery service at ES (certainly early on) and the site was pretty awful, including a lack of communication on the forum, which didn't instil much excitement. Plus, the scenery areas were too small for most people to get interested in, even the new UK scenery project was way too fragmented, and ultimately expensive. Maybe if the market had not declined as much as it has they would have got through, they deserved to with their talent.

Really hope they reach out and strike a deal with f. ex. ORBX to sell their island sceneries. They would be perfect additions to ORBX FTX EU England etc.

 

 

The new EU VAT rules seem to be crushing many home run, internet based businesses.

 

And yet the Amazons and Googles of this world get away with paying (relativly) little in the way of taxes.

There really is something fundamentaly broken about the EU and the rules it comes up with.

I've downloaded all my ES packs to a spare hard drive, but I'm having issues with the instructions from the help pages, it says...

 

Step 2 (make your first ESI-Pack)

 

1. Click the "Library" Tab
2. Select the scenery you wish to back-up as an ESI-Pack. Click "Mark for install" ( you can select as many sceneries as you like )
3. You will now see an orange  "Make ESI-Pack" button. Click it to start the download process. 
4. When downloading has completed your ESI-Pack can be found in your chosen "Write To" location.
5. If you like, you can now install the scenery from the ESI pack very quickly by choosing the Library/ESI-Packs button. Select the scenery for install just as before from here, and then the Green "Install" button and your ESI-Pack is used by ESI to install the scenery lightning fast by skipping any further downloading.

The issues I have is

1. it says click "Mark for install" I can't because it is already installed. So I clicked "Repair" instead.

2. After saving the packs to my spare drive I can't see those packs on the ES Installer when I click on the  Library/ESI-Packs button.

3. There are no instructions on how to reinstall using the backup downloads. :(

Frustrations with the ES Installer is the reason why I just purchased one addon from ES.

 

I would have bought them all if I just could have downloaded a zip or exe file like regular addons come with, and never had to bother with their bloatware.