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Bobsk8

Farewell FSW

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DTG = some pretty good folks working for a really bad company.

It comes as no surprise that the executives are a product of Electronic Arts (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree).

I'm genuinely sad to see FSW fail since competition is always a good thing.  I think DTG put all of their eggs in the "TrueSky" basket; but it wasn't implemented well enough to gain the user base needed to continue development.  If it makes anybody feel any better, DTG's poor strategy in this venture probably cost them a mint.

Edited by MadDog
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1 hour ago, Dereksmalls said:

Careful mate. I got moderated for pointing out that it's a big risk for some developers to base their business model around an assumption that this situation will continue.

That's because you are discussing EULA, I'm not ... my statement is about technical difference in application execution and supporting SDK (at the core there are none). 

P3D EULA discussions are moderated because by definition a EULA is End User License Agreement, between the User and LM (or pick your vendor), it's not a "group" decision, it's not someone else's decision.  People singled out P3D EULA for their own agenda to influence someone else's decisions so as to benefit their platform of choice.  It got pretty bad, with commercial vendors from other platforms posing as "users" trying to bring the "fear of law" into anyone looking into P3D ... something they have absolutely no business in doing and certainly not doing it under covert user accounts pretending to be someone else.

Cheers, Rob.    

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Apologies if this asked earlier in the thread, but what is Steam policy for refunding on unfulfilled early access?

Guess I know what the answer is likely to be but money down the drain, sadly.

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21 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

P3D EULA discussions are moderated because by definition a EULA is End User License Agreement, between the User and LM (or pick your vendor), it's not a "group" decision, it's not someone else's decision.

Why can't we ask for advice if we are unsure? For me, flight simming is a hobby - and then I guess the license becomes more expensive. Therefore, FSW was easily accessible - especially for newcomers.

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24 minutes ago, Elvensmith said:

Apologies if this asked earlier in the thread, but what is Steam policy for refunding on unfulfilled early access?

You accepted the software on an "as is" basis. There's no guarantee of any future intended deliverable.

 


Barry Friedman

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3 minutes ago, torium said:

Why can't we ask for advice if we are unsure?

This. Censorship just fosters confusion that could otherwise be cleared up in open discussions. It's a shame.

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Barry Friedman

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1 hour ago, MadDog said:

I'm genuinely sad to see FSW fail since competition is always a good thing.  I think DTG put all of their eggs in the "TrueSky" basket; but it wasn't implemented well enough to gain the user base needed to continue development.  If it makes anybody feel any better, DTG's poor strategy in this venture probably cost them a mint.

Seems like they really lost focus after exiting EA. Instead of finishing the weather engine, they worked on putting out a half-baked SDK that was pretty much useless. Then they switched to developing career mode. Meanwhile they were also working on a jet and also IFR, with only a handful of developers? There's some really nice stuff in FSW such as the autogen alpha-fade which looks really good now, but on the other hand many features are incomplete/unfinished. Finishing a project can be difficult, it's the last 20% of the project that takes 80% of the work. Seems like they would do the 80% part and then move on. That's apparently the DTG culture but I was hoping the FSW team would do better.


Barry Friedman

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15 minutes ago, fshobby said:

You accepted the software on an "as is" basis. There's no guarantee of any future intended deliverable.

 

For a Kickstarter maybe, but IMHO early access slightly different. Implies a tangible finished product at the end. I've asked Steam anyway but fully expect to re-arrange the following word - "No".

Still, should reclaim several GB of HD space... :)

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1 minute ago, Elvensmith said:

For a Kickstarter maybe, but IMHO early access slightly different. Implies a tangible finished product at the end. I've asked Steam anyway but fully expect to re-arrange the following word - "No".

 

If you have FSW, that means you accepted its license, which says you get the software "as is".


Barry Friedman

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1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

That's because you are discussing EULA, I'm not ... my statement is about technical difference in application execution and supporting SDK (at the core there are none). 

P3D EULA discussions are moderated because by definition a EULA is End User License Agreement, between the User and LM (or pick your vendor), it's not a "group" decision, it's not someone else's decision.  People singled out P3D EULA for their own agenda to influence someone else's decisions so as to benefit their platform of choice.  It got pretty bad, with commercial vendors from other platforms posing as "users" trying to bring the "fear of law" into anyone looking into P3D ... something they have absolutely no business in doing and certainly not doing it under covert user accounts pretending to be someone else.

Cheers, Rob.    

Fact is there is a $140 discrepancy and that (IMHO) impacted on FSW. If it were a level playing field and FSW had lost out to, say, X-Plane 11 (in the same way Fly!, Fly!2, Flight Unlimited and X-Plane lost out to FS2000/2002) then fair enough. It's a given that X-Plane 11 and, to a lesser extent, Aerofly2 didn't help FSW - not to mention the vast quantities of hubris sloshing around at DTG. However, I am sure that after the Macbook has been dropped off at Ca$h Converters and they are nursing a lukewarm half at the Kipper & Powell Wetherspoons in Chatham High Street, they will feel justified in loudly voicing some disappointment that MS didn't insist that the barrier to entry was a bit higher for MS's other partner. Of course, if they'd asked us, we'd have told them, but what need had they of the 'community' - a handful of old clowns moaning about scalar values and dew points. 

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I have been a long time user of DTG's train sim franchises and have been unhappy with the path they have forged in that arena as well.

 

At the end of the day, game companies are like any other business in that they need to pay all of their workers salaries with hopefully some profit left over. Releasing a simulation platform is a massive undertaking and the market is fairly limited. Once the big rush of income comes in, it will slow down to a trickle in the future.

 

So, how do you continue to pay all of the salaries well into the future? The answer for most game companies is to develop another game. DTG sees the answer to the sustainable income problem as paid DLC. With their new Train Sim World, they released a buggy engine and were quick to hop over to releasing DLC packs for it which are also buggy. They do fix issues with the game engine here and there but every new DLC introduces new issues and there are plenty of long standing bugs still in the software from the initial release.

 

When DTG first released their classic Train SIm (Railworks) many years ago, it was very open to anyone to develop and release add-ons for. There were tons of freeware and payware content for the simulation. Over the years they slowly locked this down so that they could control all DLC which gives them a path to charge license fees and collect royalties from any other developer that wants to create a product for the platform. With the new Train Sim World they said from the beginning that they would release an SDK and be open to developers but I was skeptical and that hasn't transpired. The only ones that release content for TSW is DTG.

 

I saw FSW as the same exact model as TSW. They wanted to tightly control the DLC so that they could make money off of it and have sustainable income over the long term. The reason FSW failed and TSW has not yet failed is because of the existence of competition. In the Train market, there really isn't any competition and hasn't been for a while other than the very limited Run8. That means train simmers are either forced to put up with sub par content at high prices or skip train simming altogether. If there was ever a high quality, fully featured, third party friendly train simulator released from a competitor, I am sure new purchases on DTG's train simulators would die fairly quickly like FSW.

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1 hour ago, torium said:

Why can't we ask for advice if we are unsure?

Because anyone giving you advice on this matter would be giving you legal advice. Non-lawyers are not allowed to give legal advice and lawyers would generally not give that type of advice in a forum like this. Avsim avoids liability for bad advice by limiting discussions on the topic. In any event, the Academic version EULA is pretty clear. Reading it should give you all the info you need to decide whether it applies to you.

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Walter Meier

 

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39 minutes ago, torium said:

Why can't we ask for advice if we are unsure?

How would someone else be more sure about who you are and what you do with your software than you?  Allowing members to provide legal advice to other members is not something AVSIM wants to be responsible for, hence the restriction.

Please review the Terms of Use you agreed to when signing up for an AVSIM account here: https://www.avsim.com/AVSIM Pages/terms_of_use.html/

Specific section: 

Quote

Freedom Of Speech: AVSIM is not a democracy, and there is no such thing as "Freedom of Speech" in our forums. If you believe that you are entitled to that freedom without restriction and that you should be able to do and say as you please, then reconsider... Please do NOT register.

Moving onto something other than EULAs because there are better things in life ... like I said, it's unfortunate FSW is gone, but I feel there is good that might yet come out of this as those FSW developers did work with the FSX SP2 code base and got familiar with it and expanded on it.  Those developers established a level of code familiarity that may workout to NOT be entirely lost.

Cheers, Rob.

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41 minutes ago, Dereksmalls said:

hubris

Now that's a word I haven't seen in a while ... I'm still optimistic some good will come out of this.

Cheers, Rob.

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Sad to see the killing off of FSW but hard to compete against billion dollar corporations in the business of killing!!!


Russell Shaw

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