But the flip side to this is that if developers took the silent road then we would hear: "Why didn't you tell us?? We just purchased ABC and now you released DEF." All of this is a no win situation for developers, and the way it is handled may be the key point.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Sales and Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_dev_team.jpg http://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_proud_supporter.jpg

I think the underlying reason why we get oursleves in the jam to begin with is because the developers are just as excited as the customers about their own product and want to share it.The problem is that doesn't work well from a business standpoint. We're guilty of it ourselves. We've announced a product, here from all the customers, then decide to add some more cool stuff, someone then goes on vacation or a computer crashes, you see the domino effect here. It never ends and the developer isn't a full time business so they aren't in the financial position to recover from the slow downs by either putting someone on full time or replacing someones equipment like a full time bsuiness would.As much as I hate to say it, I think for now the best solution is not to tell anyone what's coming down the pike until it's either in actual beta or ready. The flip side of that coin is sometimes an early annoucnement can be beneficial if the developer needs more source material because someone will always offer their help. That's also the up side of this business that I don't think many other industries have.That's kind of the way I see it sometimes.

Tom:Brother, I feel your pain. I totally agree with EVERYTHING you said.The flight sim community has to be one of the few known to man where a large section of customers are greatful to pay their money and be told how to speak, how to act, when to be angry because of all the favors that are done for us in terms of 3rd party add-ons. Favors that come at a price for which we should be greatful! Lets take a typical support request email for a $55 addon:"Dear sir: Your aircraft is so wonderful and spectacular. It is the best for FS2004 yet and I appreciate all the time it took to release such a great product. I'm not nitpicking and I didn't want to disturb you, but I noticed that none of the great features such as cockpit instruments, engines, etc are actually working and my computer crashes each time while simultaneously bursting into flames causing 3rd degree burns to most of my body. Again, I'm not angry or anything. Again, keep up the great work!In that instance you will probably get a response to your plea.NOW, let's translate that a bit to:"Okay, I've just paid $55, NONE of the #### flight instruments work, I've already found 45 bugs (bugs listed below) in the first 3 minutes, my computer exploded and set my body on fire and I'd like to know how in God's #### green earth could anyone with an IQ higher than grass push this piece of ##### garbage out the door?"In that instance not only will you not get help, you'd probably be banned!! Imagine that! The customer is penalized for being angry for being disappointed with his/her purchase!!! WOW! Of course, of no fault to the developer at all right?THe problem is, the latter is typical of a real world customer who is very frustrated with a product for which he/she paid and it did not live up to expectations and is fuming mad as he/she contacts support. Support's job in turn is not only to provide support BUT TO DIFUSE THE ANGER AND REASURE the disappointed customer. It comes with the territory. It is insanity to tell a customer to change his tone or be banned as if one were giving away free prizes and someone was unhappy with his free gift!The majority of developers here want the money, but not the frustration of customers who are not happy with their purchase (ESPECIALLY in a no refund paradigm). In this community however, one can get away with it and even worse, so many condone this insanity that it is now accepted as the status quo! I don't buy into this "more flies with honey than vinegar" stuff. If the product is made available for free sure, but if it requires payment then the "honey" has already been given in the form of a credit card, get ready for the vinegar baby because I wanna know what hulking pile of dung I just wasted my money on!!!!Heck people even make excuses such as "don't bother them they're busy GIVING you a great product" or "we should be greatful that they are LETTING us have this product" or "the bugs are okay, and I am sure you will patch it, go get some rest since you worked so hard". HA!!!! Sorry, but I just can't seem to find the tears welling up in my eyes. They are in BUSINESS. Business is HARD WORK. If you don't want to be bothered, or you need rest then owning a business in not for you. It is not all reward, there are many lumps attached with each purchase! But lets step back a moment. Do you know why the development team is not usually a part of the customer service staff in most companies? It is because developers usually don't have the temperment or the ego-control to deal with the customers. Developers develop, and customer service serves and usually developers only act as 3rd level support as a last resort because companies try to keep them as far away from the customers as possible. Of course, the model here is very different.Next, as a project manager I can tell you that the majority of products are cycled through development without proper project management discipline which is why the dates always seem to get blown out. It is pure ignorance to think that developers find out two minutes before release that the deadline won't be met; they knew WELL BEFORE! However, the lack of professionalism and experience in relaying that to the customer is astonishing which also shows a lack of knowledge in managing customer expectations. What about information management? It seems that everyone knows how to generate excitement though advertising, but once the crowd is hooked the only way to control that is through a constant stream of USEFUL INFORMATION (By the way, "it will be ready when its ready" is NOT USEFUL INFORMATION!!!!). You provide useful information, and the masses are satified and controlled whether it is good or bad news. DON'T do it andtwenty threads asking when the date of release will be appear because the DEVELOPER FAILED TO PROVIDE INFORMATION!!! Again, this is not the fault of the customer. The anger generated with every recent release is NOT the fault of the customer either. You advertise something, you build expectations, you don't manage that expectation and it will lead to disappointment. Continued disappoint leads to anger and frustration which cannot then be passed on to the developer without putting a " :-) " after every sentance for fear of being labled a troublemaker.That said, there are MORE than a few troublemakers who are unhappy no matter what is released and it is understandable that the developer gets annoyed and frustrated with this select crowd who just want to complain. Similarly, the extremely complex nature of software assures that no software title is released without bugs and many don't understand this either.The bottom line is that the FS community products are a unique breed and would make an interesting study if that is your thing. The talent here is staggering to the mind and the fact that developers are able to replicate with 100% accuracy what PhDs at Boeing and Airbus took decades and billions of dollars to implement is beyond belief. Most of all, the genuine caring that we all have for each other is what makes this hobby so endearing.Personally, I don't think that things will change any time soon without some changes on both sides of the fence but I am too old to pretend that the emperor has clothes when in fact he is stark raving naked! Sorry for the rant.Mike T.

Mike,How come you were'nt that long winded during FSACTN...LOL.I hope the broadband thing in Boeing turned out ok. :-)

Hey Jeff you old salt you!I was actually just trying to kill some time with that long post waiting for the Hiroshima type carnage over at PSS to blow over but I guess my post wasn't long enough :-lolBTW, I FINALLY flew on a 747-400 (Lufthansa) with Connexions Broadband in place but the guy next to me looked at me much the same as most look at Al Gore when he says he invented the Internet when I told him that I was part of the team that developed it :-lolHope all is well at your end.Best regards,Mike T.

ROFL, yeah looks like the trip7 is going to be pretty good. I got it already, not bad so far for a pre-release to the release, but I think they're re-uploading a new version right now.Good to hear from you again. Glad that project went well. Don't be a stranger. :-)

Will do my friend. I'm anxiously awaiting STL, OAK, EMB-120... you're killing me man! Well at least I'm giving my life savings to someone I know, maybe you'll allow me to come by and visit my money in your bank account sometime ROTFLMAO!Talk to you soon.Regards,Mike T.

ROFL, don't worry about anything there, I'll take care of you.STL just doubled in size, btw, due to the real world new RWY. We can't get anything done with all this new stuff going in at all of our airports...LOL.It's killing me to, especially the 120. It's my favorite plane.You can come by anytime, Keep in touch.

This community is pretty unique in that most commercial vendors in it are amateurs.They're not trained professional salesmen nor trained professional software engineers (most of them that is).Many in fact only start charging for their work after first releasing for free for often many years, more in an effort to recover their investment than in any dream of making a living out of it (which most don't).Therefore I expect a less professional attitude towards customer service from them than I do from for example a techrep from Oracle or Novell.When I became an IT consultant I got drilled on expected behaviour towards customers, I got a lightning course in telephone etiquette, etc. etc.Before any first interview with a prospect customer all the people who would go would inspect each others' clothing (suit and tie of course even if on the job you'd dress in jeans and T-shirt).But then we were trained professionals whose lifeblood is that business. Loose a contract and you could loose your job, or worse the company could suffer and colleagues could loose theirs.If you see you'll notice that many of the longtime companies in the business gradually get more professional as time goes on.Of course they still get angry from time to time, and the fact that it's all online and not face to face removes social barriers against venting that anger.This is a well known and described phenomenon. People are more loose when they are not communicating through email or forums than they are when talking face to face or even over the phone.

They were told it would LIKELY be ready at or around a certain date, and the company would do everything in its power to release by then.When they found out they'd be a bit late they said so several days beforehand.Bombarding them with questions about release dates does only 2 things:1) is delays the product even further as they now have to spend more time answering those questions (and no stock answers or you get accused of not caring for customers and only giving canned responses).2) you #### them off, reducing their morale to work hard for you the customer. With customers behaving like those I'd not be hard pressed to work 16 hour days, with customer brimming with anticipation and friendly towards me I work until I drop :)

Mike,I am with you.This has to be the most bizarre, thin-skinned group of suppliers that I have ever encountered. And I believe you hit the nail on the head.In a lot of cases in this small community, the programmer also provides the support. As a former vp of business development for a small (100 employee) medical software/services company, I have also been in charge of software development projects, marketing and follow-up support teams. We kept our programmers in the back room, chained to their desks and discharged the batteries on their cell phones.I don't mean that as a slam at programmers, either. I also wouldn't have let customer support personnel do any programming. Different talents and skill sets for different jobs. Warm and cuddly doesn't usually meet programming deadlines. Ooops! Did I just say an obscene word? I know of one airport scenery developer that announced a forthcoming product almost two years ago! They could have built a full size replica of the airport in two years! Programmers generally don't recogize deadlines. Now, can you imagine a design team for Ford or GM saying, "Uh, we ran into a few unforseen problems, boss. We will be a year or so late in releasing next year's models."In this cottage industry setting, the two roles often mix and in many, if not most, cases, without great success. The thing that I find really amazing though, is that the programmer/support guys are also often the OWNERS of the business. Yet they still can't pull themselves out of the pouty programmer role to see a wider perspective of the whole process. It is like, "I spent months programming this thing. Don't tell me that it isn't great! I KNOW it is great! Oh yeah, and by the way, I own the company, so screw you, you twit, for being nasty. You get no support!" (A variation of this actually happened to me AFTER I got on my knees and apologized.)In the real, non-simming world, those three roles don't usually mix. When they do, you almost always see some variation of the the above scenario.Finally, these thoughts are generalizations. There are certainly outstanding exceptions. Unfortunately, they are indeed the exceptions. Jim Skorna is right about the "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" problem. But Damian is a good example of someone who maintains the balance and perspective, as do Steve at Flight 1 and Justin at FS Genesis. There are very few others, even though some other products might be excellent. Some almost seem to go out of their way to snub or put down customers.Okay, I am through. I didn't intend to see if I could write more than Mike . . .Wilson

Yup, and that's marketing.We are working on a huge product which is so large it is being released to customers in stages.We started marketing it about a year before it was planned to be ready to ship, with a prospective release date set.We didn't make that date for a variety of reasons (poor planning, setbacks, rush jobs cutting into our resources, one guy on the team getting killed, etc. etc.).Sure some customers started asking questions, but most probably just looked at their contracts and saw that the date mentioned was only an indication and no guaranteed date and accepted that.Are they unhappy? some of them are, or were until they got their hands on the finished product and now can't wait until they are allowed to work with it (we have a policy to have all customers run the product in a shadow environment for a few months to get used to it and smooth out the problems that invariably pop up because of different configurations).The most eager people of all to get things out the door were in fact we ourselves, with our company management close behind.We're the ones who loose out on our profit share when there's no revenue generated, and our honour is at stake...

I think our own devers hear it more from me and Jason than anyone else...lol. Who want's it more?, us or the actual customer.In any case, as payware company where money is involved we do have to evolve and start operating at some level like we're a real company. You have to keep pushing no matter what and strike that balance between an awesome product and dev time. That's not easy with all of us being FS junkies, so we try to counter that with sheer manpower. Then you start running into communcations issues (big time), and when you need source files (textures-for instance), they just can't be uploaded, even to our monster server. Your talking TB's worth of stuff, so you have to use the old fashion mail system or FedEx.The trick is to first find the right team (those who are good and have time), and then to produce. That is very, very, very, hard when choosing from a pool of developers from within the FS industry. There have been times I would rather have some people who never knew of the sim that were actual 3d modellers, etc, and who can read SDK's. I can say we probably have the best developers ever assembled, but if we don't produce, no one will every know that.The other thing is that I personally don't mind at all (usually, the questions regarding, when it will be out because that tells me that people are still interested.) It's when they stop, I get really worried.If you're not a full time company, then your dev time is really going to be long. The only way around that is to hit a home run and put some people on full time and let it roll from there. If that can ever be done, we'll see. In the future beyond FS9, I think things will change a lot in this business for the better, but don't take my word for it.It's really interesting and, yes, there seems to be a lot of thin skinned people around in this business, that part has always amazed me as well. I've said it before and I'll say it again, either get in or get out, but don't complain about while your in the thick of it, it'll just drive you crazy.

>"I spent months programming this thing. >Don't tell me that it isn't great! I KNOW it is great! Oh>yeah, and by the way, I own the company, so screw you, you>twit, for being nasty. You get no support!" I love that so much I think I might have to use it ;-)Well I would, except for the fact that I can't recall even one nasty post on the DF727 forum! In fact, I don't even think I've locked a post since it released, which is amazing given there are 5,000 messages!!!There is a chicken and egg thing going on here with this service issue, and I honestly don't know the answer. I guess not suggesting a release date avoids disappointment; releasing an accurate and bug free product must help too. But if someone starts being mouthy in the forum AND they are factually incorrect, then I could see myself jumping on them.http://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...BANNER_PAUL.jpg

That's just because that nasty guy Lou beats you to it and deletes them all Paul :-halo :-lolAnd we all know you've hired a bunch of midgets to make all those posts :+