xplane 11 on steam no way

[pauly227 0]

I puchased my copy of steam from Amazon not from steam.

steam have total control over your software do people realise the very big down side to going the steam rout,

first unless you have a fiber Internet the download can take up to 15 hours on disc about 2 hours the up to 7 hours for updates.

give me the disc any day. the other big problem if steam goes down good by flight sim X I can't understand why any one would pay good money for a program you don't own some times I like to fly of line see how far you get when steam control your software, finally if your Internet is down find somthing else to do why would any one not want to buy the discs costing a few pounds more this software is far to good to place in the hands of a profit hungry company and keep the well deserved profit for Laminar. happy flying

pauly227

  

[charliearon 3,023]

From my understanding of Steam and flight Sims, they can be used Offline and no Steam connection needed.

[dmarques69 316]

I think you are overreacting a little bit but ok...yes the "problem" with steam is that you need to go online, in every game, no just flight sims, if their servers are down you cant play anything, but in XP a lot of plugins only work if are online, xenviro, Jar plugins, flight factor you name it, the majority of them have licence online check... so i dont understand whats the big issue!

Edited August 9, 2018 by dmarques69

[Chock 17,769]

You can use Steam game content offline easily: From the main Steam window, go to the Steam menu and select Go Offline then click on Restart in Offline Mode. Sorted. And contrary to your belief, you actually don't own any of the software you have paid for, regardless of whether that's via Steam, or as a downloadable exe file, or as installation files on a CD or DVD. What you actually pay for is a licence to be able to use that software.

Valve is not some profit-hungry monster appropriating profits from Laminar Research against its will either. There is a very good reason why companies such as Laminar Research choose to sell market their products through Valve's Steam interface. It is because it literally costs those companies absolutely nothing to have their product promoted and made available to over 125 million registered Steam users, of which, over 33 million are active every single day. Every sale they gain via Steam is one they'd potentially not have gained any other way. And to give you an idea of what those Steam user numbers mean, the entire population of Australia amounts to just under 25 million people, i.e. there are five times as many registered Steam users than there are Aussies, or to put it another way, every day there are considerably more people playing on Steam at any one time, than there are living on the entire continent of Australia.

Yes Valve takes a cut of the sales cost of the software, but do you somehow imagine that other sources of software distribution and advertising would simply promote and distribute XPlane out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. Any enterprise which can offer the opportunity to promote a product to 125 million potential buyers is obviously gonna charge for the privilege, and most companies are smart enough to know that is a lot of sales opportunity they'd be missing out on, not to mention an absolutely astronomical advertising budget they'd be looking at too, in order to get that sort of exposure through regular advertising channels. For very many people, they've actually only heard about products such as XPlane because they were on Steam! 

Beyond this, companies which sell on Steam don't just get the money sent to them from sales and nothing else, they get a very sophisticated set of analytical data tools made available to them which provide all kinds of demographic data about who buys and uses their software sold and used through Steam, and this allows them to tailor products to suit that demographic. So there is a whole lot more to selling through Steam than most people imagine, and when you understand that, it's not hard to understand why so many companies choose to do it. Yes you could say that they are paying for those services with the cut which Valve takes for having them use Steam, but really, do you know of any other software distribution network which can provide that level of analysis and exposure across the entire world?

Edited August 9, 2018 by Chock

[ziggy 47]

I use XP11 on steam offline......

[zmak 331]

My understanding is that hard core xp users prefer to buy from the developer direct so they can install a second version to test add ons , something you cant do with steam. 

Edited August 10, 2018 by zmak

[SoJourned 65]

On behalf of Amazon stockholders, thank you for your purchase.

[janbergwall01 10]

9 hours ago, Chock said:

You can use Steam game content offline easily: From the main Steam window, go to the Steam menu and select Go Offline then click on Restart in Offline Mode. Sorted. And contrary to your belief, you actually don't own any of the software you have paid for, regardless of whether that's via Steam, or as a downloadable exe file, or as installation files on a CD or DVD. What you actually pay for is a licence to be able to use that software.

Valve is not some profit-hungry monster appropriating profits from Laminar Research against its will either. There is a very good reason why companies such as Laminar Research choose to sell market their products through Valve's Steam interface. It is because it literally costs those companies absolutely nothing to have their product promoted and made available to over 125 million registered Steam users, of which, over 33 million are active every single day. Every sale they gain via Steam is one they'd potentially not have gained any other way. And to give you an idea of what those Steam user numbers mean, the entire population of Australia amounts to just under 25 million people, i.e. there are five times as many registered Steam users than there are Aussies, or to put it another way, every day there are considerably more people playing on Steam at any one time, than there are living on the entire continent of Australia.

Yes Valve takes a cut of the sales cost of the software, but do you somehow imagine that other sources of software distribution and advertising would simply promote and distribute XPlane out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. Any enterprise which can offer the opportunity to promote a product to 125 million potential buyers is obviously gonna charge for the privilege, and most companies are smart enough to know that is a lot of sales opportunity they'd be missing out on, not to mention an absolutely astronomical advertising budget they'd be looking at too, in order to get that sort of exposure through regular advertising channels. For very many people, they've actually only heard about products such as XPlane because they were on Steam! 

Beyond this, companies which sell on Steam don't just get the money sent to them from sales and nothing else, they get a very sophisticated set of analytical data tools made available to them which provide all kinds of demographic data about who buys and uses their software sold and used through Steam, and this allows them to tailor products to suit that demographic. So there is a whole lot more to selling through Steam than most people imagine, and when you understand that, it's not hard to understand why so many companies choose to do it. Yes you could say that they are paying for those services with the cut which Valve takes for having them use Steam, but really, do you know of any other software distribution network which can provide that level of analysis and exposure across the entire world?

Very well written, Chock.

I've been a Steam customer almost since the start and now have more than 50 games and sims in the Library. And it works flawlessly.

I had some hardware problems recently and had to make a Win10 repair. Since I have all the games on separate hard disks (SSDs) I just had to start up Steam and could use XP11 in minutes after repair. If you run into some kind of trouble, then the verification tool in Steam is useful. It will fix corrupt files and download only the faulty ones. Same for upgrades which are made automatically. You can also, if you want, run betas.

There's a lot of BS around Steam, mostly from people that don't use Steam because of lack of knowledge. For me, it's extremely convenient. I always buy games and sims online nowadays. Then you can upgrade or buy a new computer and continue where you stopped before the switch just by moving the SSDs to the new computer. I have done it several times.

My 2 cents

 

Edited August 10, 2018 by janbergwall01

[Delta111 29]

Thats funny, Steam is profit hungry company, so he bought it from Amazon....What a hoot....Whats a DVD anyway....?😀

[Swe_Richard 1,172]

Yeah, I was sceptical about Steam when I first heard about it back in 2009(?). Then I realised how convinient it actually is and bought a couple of titles. Hooked ever since. It turned me from an "always buy physical media" to a "never buy physical media".

I will probably never buy another piece of software on DVD again, and as of writing this I have 170 games in my Steam library. One of the best things with Steam for me has been the discovery of genres I would otherwise never even notice. I remember at one time seeing ads in Steam for 95% off on a number of Train Simulator DLC + base game. Being (at the time) totally uninteresed in trains I first thought "meh" but then thought "what the heck, it's practically for free, why not give it a go?". It turned out I actually enjoyed it and it sparked an interest in trains and now I enjoy myself from time to time in Run8 trying hard to not break couplers when going up steep hills.

Steam is an excellent service and has been just about flawless for me for almost ten years. 

 

[Paraffin 2,197]

I buy new X-Plane versions direct from Laminar, partly to support the company, but also to get access to all the beta versions instead of just the release candidate betas. 

Nothing against Steam though, I've used it for years and have 119 games in my Steam library (egad!). I do worry sometimes about having most of my gaming eggs in that one basket, but then they're just games. I'd survive if Steam disappeared tomorrow. The convenience is worth it, when re-installing to a new system.

I also like not having to keep track of too many logins and passwords from different retailers, or having my credit card info spread around in too many different places. It's still necessary for X-Plane addons from places like X-Aviation or the .org store, but I try to keep it minimal. 

[Bloody 2]

I just want to add here that Laminar runs a "beta" branch on their Steam Version which makes it available to install and run the Beta Version of X-Plane there, too. 

[Boomer 1,619]

21 hours ago, SoJourned said:

On behalf of Amazon stockholders, thank you for your purchase.

Gawd knows Amazon.com needs the income...

[Paraffin 2,197]

8 hours ago, Bloody said:

I just want to add here that Laminar runs a "beta" branch on their Steam Version which makes it available to install and run the Beta Version of X-Plane there, too. 

I may not have the latest info on this. Last I heard, the Steam beta versions were only for the release candidates (marked "RCx"), and not the earlier betas before the release candidates. Has that changed?

[soaring_penguin 428]

4 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I may not have the latest info on this. Last I heard, the Steam beta versions were only for the release candidates (marked "RCx"), and not the earlier betas before the release candidates. Has that changed?

Yes, it only arrives a day or so later on Steam, and if a showstopper is found in between, you will have to wait for the next (fixed) beta.

From a developer stance, the beta is not to have early acces to features, but to be able to find bugs before the stable version is released to the public.
I remember the many times I had to roll back because of new introduced bugs.  So only if you are willing to put up with this, and are willing to report those bugs to Laminar, you should subscribe to the beta.