Good morning, I am a very passionate flight sim enthusiast and I have spent a lot of time and money into making my hobby both enjoyable and as realistic as possible by taking advantage of some of the amazing array of high quality products for the various flight simulators. I started on FS9 and then moved onto FSX followed by FSX SE. I also invested in a quality Flight Sim PC from Chillblast, unfortunately like so many others I have suffered dearly at the hands of FSX's instability and after extensive research I have now purchased Prepar3d which has allowed me to have the confidence to fly without the problems of OOM/CTD errors. I have throughout my flight sim years stuck firmly with the outstanding PMDG products 737, 777 and 747 unfortunately I am unable to run these on Prepar3d because of the different software files between FSX and Prepar3d, my question is why are we being charged an extra 20 and 45 dollars respectively for the 737 NGX and 777 Base Packages for the Prepar3d software (expansion packs are the same price as before)? I have noticed that pretty much most of the big software names like ORBX, Aivlasoft, Fly Tampa, UK2000 and FS Dreamteam to name but a few have all made their products available to download for Prepar3d at no extra charge to the customer. I feel that we are being somewhat exploited which is a shame because they are superb products and I will no doubt have to suck it up in the end and buy them if I want to enjoy my simulator as before, whilst it may not seem a lot of money I would like to know the rationale behind the decision to do that.

Mike - There is a very detailed explanation somewhere in this forum by PMDG regarding their approach to P3D from a legal/liability standpoint and a bunch of other things that would bore you to death but was understandable and convincing enough to calm my initial reaction.

 

A few months of store-brand vs. name brand cereal and I had the PMDG P3D versions paid for and in my hangar.  

Bob,

 

Many thanks for taking the time to reply. I guessed there would be a valid reason for this to be the case and I will undoubtedly pay to have them back in my hangar too as quite frankly nothing else cuts it in my honest opinion. Thanks again for the swift reply. Kind Regards Mike

 

 

I have noticed that pretty much most of the big software names like ORBX, Aivlasoft, Fly Tampa, UK2000 and FS Dreamteam to name but a few have all made their products available to download for Prepar3d at no extra charge to the customer.

 

You'll note that all of these people are scenery or peripheral designers. I don't think any of them have licensing agreements with any entity related to what they've modeled (Fly Tampa, for example, doesn't need to license their VHHX from the Government of Hong Kong, for example). Similarly, people like HiFi and REX don't have to license their weather data from anyone (Mother Nature doesn't have good contact information - if she did, she'd be receiving words from me . For those groups, it's pretty easy to offer that option to people. For developers who license their data from real world entities, however, there are several other hoops to jump through. As such, the license we have can't be transferred between the two, and carries an increased cost (a couple of the reasons why were mentioned directly by Bob, with the rest alluded to).

 

I'm assuming your user name is your real name, but for simplicity, we do require that the name be included in the post's body or signature line. It helps keep things uniform for the mods.

Kyle,

 

I completely understand now, thank you for your informative reply I hope that I did not come across as being disrespectful that certainly was not my intention. Looking forward to pay day when I can get these products loaded in.

 

Once again thank you.

 

Kind Regards

 

Mike Donovan

 

 

I completely understand now, thank you for your informative reply I hope that I did not come across as being disrespectful that certainly was not my intention. Looking forward to pay day when I can get these products loaded in.

 

No disrespect taken. I just figured I'd point something out that few people notice.

 

Thanks for taking care of the signature bit as well.