In principle there's nothing to say against pushing the boundaries and I'm sure the devs like the challenge of toying with the new features of P3D. Then again from a user's perspective, the control tower experience is really nothing that adds to my experience as a pilot (netiher does excessive detail like terminal interiors). I'm a fan of medium-complexity airports with medium prices, medium development times and good performance. And I'm afraid features like these could lengthen development times and as a result make addon scenery even more expensive than it already is.

 

The freshly released Mega Airport Prague from Aerosoft is a case in point: Apparently it had been ready for about a year now, but the dev wanted to include an all-new groundhandling feature, which hasn't been completed until today. They now opted to release it without said feature and will bring a free update once they got it right (which is of course nice of them). But knowing they could have released it almost a year earlier really makes me wonder whether devs wouldn't be better off releasing a standard version with medium complexity first and then add extra stuff in a paid upgrade?

 

 

Well, developers don't always make decisions purely off of a business perspective.  You have to understand these guys (FS developers in general) are passionate about what they do.  Sometimes they are not satisfied with their work and would rather wait a whole year to release something so they can perfect it to what they envisioned; or they are trying to innovate a certain feature in this case and would rather wait to release it with the new feature.

 

 

Well, developers don't always make decisions purely off of a business perspective.  You have to understand these guys (FS developers in general) are passionate about what they do.  Sometimes they are not satisfied with their work and would rather wait a whole year to release something so they can perfect it to what they envisioned; or they are trying to innovate a certain feature in this case and would rather wait to release it with the new feature.

 

Yes, I totally get that - without this passion or playfulness some wouldn't be doing what they're doing (or they wouldn't be that good at it). And in the end this perfectionism does drive innovation - which is of course what we all want in our hobby.

I just feel it's a pity that this may lead to longer development times and consequently higher pricing - I actually don't own any FSDreamteam product and only one Flightbeam airport (which I got on a sale), because I don't want to spend that much on one single piece of scenery. Don't get me wrong - as far as I can tell they're reasonably priced for what they offer and in comparison to other FS addons, which offer lesser levels of detail. It's just that lesser would still be good enough for me (I disable many advanced features on complex airports anyway to get good performance on approach).