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TravelRunner404

Looks like Steam for P3D - SimStall Announced

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https://fselite.net/news/mettar-simulations-introduce-simstall/

I posted just a couple weeks ago that I thought this was a great idea, not that it’s an earth shattering revelation, but I hope the community keeps an open mind about this project.  I think if done right and with developer support it will be a great step forward. 

I am curious about the business model. If it’s driven by taking a cut from developers that could make things interesting. Orbx will never play ball, PMDG? Who knows. Simmarket should be concerned. 

I personally think they can offer a free version and a subscription version that would lessen the blow on developers as a cut of sales won’t be the only source of revenue. 

More importanlty it’s ambitous and being as it will control a persons install quite extensively I don’t know how forgiving the community will be if the execution gets off to a slow start. 

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I'd give my left arm for something like this, in a full implementation that just works. Once you've got a significant investment into a sim, bought from multiple places, it becomes an absolute nightmare to maintain at one point. If you ever reach the point of having to re-install Windows or the sim, for whatever reason, you are looking at days of installing, finding the latest versions, tweaking, tuning and ultimately, your installation becomes this enormous labor of love that you're scared to lose. Having a Steam-like ecosystem, where it would automatically install, manage, make sure I have the right version and consistency check would be a massive quality-of-life change. Obviously it would need to be an extremely open system with no middle-man, i.e no taking developer's cut and implementing a system that allows each addon to use the developer's own backend in some fashion.

I've even reached the point where I don't want to buy any more addons, after thousands of dollars invested, because it has simply become too much of a hassle to manage and maintain.

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I was literally just thinking yesterday that a Steam-type setup that avoided the need to manage/backup etc. your install (let alone deal with the nightmare of getting it all set up on a new system) would be a godsend.

Of course, I’m not a genius for having had this idea, and the real challenge here is not in the idea but in making it work. I really hope this will turn out to be a sea change in how our sims work, but I’m going to be that guy and point out just two of what I see as likely to be insurmountable issues here:

1) It has to be perfect, immediately. Teething problems with something so complex are inevitable, but also fatal in this case. It relies on enthusiastic and across-the-board adoption by content providers to work. If they balk when it doesn’t work early on, it won’t get off the ground.

2) Less than 100 percent adoption by addon providers: again, this is both inevitable and largely fatal. Ok, let’s say we have PMDG, HiFi, and TOGA on board. But FSDT and Orbx are firmly opposed. Now what? The only way around this is to provide work-arounds so that you can put those addons in on top of the stable install. But that raises its own problems — for one thing, it undermines the whole appeal of “one click/it just works” and creates additional failure points. And what about developers that won’t even play ball to make that possible? (I’m looking at you, Orbx, with your kamikaze dedication to installing stuff into the root sim.)

I hope I’m just being a naysayer and this works out. But I don’t see obvious fixes to those problems.

James

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Steam is a horror story. They screw with your files, while you are sleeping. I would never buy anything on steam again. 

 

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30 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Steam is a horror story. They screw with your files, while you are sleeping. I would never buy anything on steam again.

Yeah, I will never do anything sim related through Steam again.  They clearly care more about their revenue stream than my sim install... don't need that kind of grief!  Nothing but trouble when a tech company decides it knows what's best for the end user.

Greg

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1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

Steam is a horror story. They screw with your files, while you are sleeping. I would never buy anything on steam again. 

While I believe you no doubt, I cannot double your experience. I have been using FSX:SE, FSW, BeamNG (all rarely only), and AeroflyFS2 (heavily) and quite a number of addons at least for AeroflyFS2 and never ran into any trouble. Notably, I like the automatic upgrade features which never failed on me so far.

While you - and even me - may be able to manage the beast Prepar3d is, I find the entry level for newcomers way to high. Any working approach lowering it would be more than welcome and suit our hobby.

I agree to lownslo's remark on the revenue stream, though.

Kind regards, Michael

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Simstall? Unfortunate name. A stall could precede a crash. Have they really thought the name through? 🙄

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Ray (Cheshire, England).
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Perhaps read the actual news piece, before just taking OP's comparison and running with it, spinning negativity on it based on something that isn't even mentioned in the article. Not only that, it's a system developed by an avid flight simmer, specifically for flight simulators, I'm confident with some logic applied that it isn't going to willy-nilly just upgrade at will, override settings, tweaks and mess up entire games. That would defeat the purpose.

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3 minutes ago, Sethos1988 said:

Perhaps read the actual news piece, before just taking OP's comparison and running with it, spinning negativity on it based on something that isn't even mentioned in the article.

Agreed.  Sorry for my part in derailing the thread earlier.  I hope some will find usefullness in the app but I won't be buying into the idea for a while at least.  The one ecommerce "tool" we have now (Flight1) is a royal PITA to work with.  Will have to see how this new idea works before buying into it. 

Greg

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Never say never! Hoooow....evvvv....er....I only know of 2 guys in the sim hobby who agree with one another. No wait....I lied again!. I don't think there are any. Don't much seem like the DEV's like or trust one another. It seems like an awful lot of folk don't like or dont trust the LM "weapons builders" and even more seem to hate orbx and John but they do still buy their products. LOL! It's nice to have the Plan of the Month club but as goes DTG then so goes the world. These pie in the sky ideas are fun to post about but all this stuff just creates constant turmoil and distrust and is most of the reason we can't make a lot of progress with the couple of Sims that actually work. Prepar3d on Steam....really....show me.


Sam

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No Steam for me - not now not ever.

 

Cheers

bs


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Perhaps I should have clarified my comparison. It’s clearly not going to be a verbatim copy of Steam, but a similar concept in that it’s a storefront specifically designed for flight simmers.

i think you have to account for the developers flight sim experience. In fact he helped create the Orbx storefront which is miles ahead of any other developer. 

Dont forget simmarket is pretty bad and a 2005 version of the same thing being pitched here and save for a few developers everyone goes through them. I am sure Simmarket doesn’t do it for free. 

Judging by the 15 posts a day on here about a mucked up sim not working right and zero of them saying, “Prepar3d default f22 issues” there just might be an issue with add on development and how the eco system works together that needs a little help  

I am all for this!

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They are undercutting every publisher and online retailer by a large amount, offering a small percentage of the sales no one can compete with. If this business model is profitable or taking a loss thanks to big angel investors all that drama is going to play out if the publishers catch this in time.

Edited by Boeing or not going

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7 hours ago, Sethos1988 said:

...Once you've got a significant investment into a sim, bought from multiple places, it becomes an absolute nightmare to maintain at one point. If you ever reach the point of having to re-install Windows or the sim, for whatever reason, you are looking at days of installing, finding the latest versions, tweaking, tuning and ultimately, your installation becomes this enormous labor of love that you're scared to lose. Having a Steam-like ecosystem, where it would automatically install, manage, make sure I have the right version and consistency check would be a massive quality-of-life change...

Well said Sethos. This right here is the same reason I'm fully on board with this product. I try my best to keep my addons organized on my HD, and I think I do a pretty good job at it. But if I were ever to have to do a Windows Install or just P3D for that matter, We're talking days, if not a week of getting everything back up and running.


Is it done yet? When will it be released? Will it be freeware or payware? How much will it cost? Any updates on the progress? Will it work for Xbox? Can I be a beta tester? How's the performance in VR?

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Never had any problem with steam, both with FSX SE and X-plane 10 and 11 that i have in that platform, i even found very usefull the check integrity option to recover any game to default with one click, guess not all have the same experience with it.


Marques

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