New Version of P3D Coming?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, simbol said:

 It is an interesting business models concept that many successful software houses in the market are adopting (Adobe, Symantec, Veritas, HP, Dell, IBM, etc.), now would you be willing to do the same for Flying Simulation Software? in my personal opinion I don't think this would be the case.

I certainly wouldn't. Any subscription model would mean the end of the line for me. 

Problem with free or paid updates/conversions is that some developers do everything for free and others ask (a lot of) money for the exact same kind of addon. Which to me means that some developers care about their customers and some only care about money. (It actually IS possible, and very beneficial, to care about both!) Some addon developers even abuse the P3D license system and aks more money for 'Pro' versions of their addons while they are the EXACT same as the 'Amateur' versions. Totally no need for that but they do it anyway: easy money. But well, it's a free market. If people keep on spending money on updates that might as well or should have been free, it's fine with me! I might even do it myself! This money grabbing practice does have an influence on my personal purchases: if I am in doubt if I should get an addon it'll lead to me not buying it. If however I am a real fan of an addon and couldn't fly without it, I'd pay anything they'd ask. (Well, apart from a subscription. 😉 )In the end it is up to the customer to go along with it or not. 

[simbol 5,819]

1 minute ago, J van E said:

I certainly wouldn't. Any subscription model would mean the end of the line for me. 

Exactly my point, so when Laminar Research or Lockheed Martin performs fundamental changes to their platform (upon flying simulators users request, IE new terrain engine please! or Vulkan support please!!, we want a new weather environment now now please!, etc.) it forces many 3rd party content developers (me included) to rebuild add-on's that you very much enjoy, so we have no other choice than charge for the upgrade or drop supporting the product for the next flying simulation platform.

It is simply maths Jeroen, nothing personal or against customers, you cannot expect all these work to come just for free .

Kind Regards,
Simbol

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Quote

Some addon developers even abuse the P3D license system and ask for more money for 'Pro' versions of their addons while they are the EXACT same as the 'Amateur' versions. Totally no need for that but they do it anyway: easy money.

Yes, but do we know that for certain? Surely only the developer/publisher of a product knows if it has cost them any additional time and money to update their software to Professional (presumably a reference to P3D v4) status? I recently purchased the P3D v4 (Professional) versions of Aerosoft's Heathrow Xtended and Gibraltar scenery packages, and I was pleasantly surprised that I could get an 80% discount for these if I already owned copies of the P3D v3 versions. This amounted to very little expense, which I was very happy to pay considering that the developer would have needed to implement dynamic lighting, customised runway lighting systems, and other additional features.

Edited October 29, 2018 by Christopher Low

[Guest]

1 hour ago, simbol said:

It is simply maths Jeroen, nothing personal or against customers, you cannot expect all these work to come just for free .

 

Of course! I fully understand certain updates to cost money. No problem with that. I was however talking about the 'exact same kind of addon' where one developer releases an update for free and another one asking money while it most probably cost the same amount of time to get the job done.

[pmb 5,137]

2 hours ago, J van E said:

I certainly wouldn't. Any subscription model would mean the end of the line for me.  

Me too.

I think the Aerosoft model (their "Professional" releases) where they ask for a moderate upgrade fee depending on the amount of reworking/recoding involved is a good compromise, although some people don't like it either. Aerosoft even had this for different MSFS versions with their CD upgrade service many years ago.

Kind regards, Michael 

[skelsey 765]

21 minutes ago, J van E said:

Of course! I fully understand certain updates to cost money. No problem with that. I was however talking about the 'exact same kind of addon' where one developer releases an update for free and another one asking money while it most probably cost the same amount of time to get the job done.

But just because one particular developer can afford (or lacks the business acumen) to give away their time for free does not mean to say that is a) true of all developers, b) sustainable or c) a good thing for the industry as a whole.

I'm not sure what you do for a living, but if I had pots of money and some spare time I could pitch up and say to your employer, "hey, why don't you let me do that for free?" (or, perhaps, "hey, why are you paying Jeroen all that money -- I'll do it for half the salary."). Would you be prepared or able to take the pay cut to compete with me? In a race to the bottom, the end result is that only the very biggest companies (who have enough fingers in enough pies to absorb losses) win, whilst the smaller outfits either go out of business or are forced to diversify (in the FS industry, read: get 'proper' jobs to pay the bills and do the FS stuff part time, when they have the time). Does the consumer win in such a situation? Well, maybe in the short term you might get some cheaper products and free upgrades from a few big companies churning stuff out for a minimum cost/effort. But in the long term you potentially lose a lot of the richness and passion from the wider industry....

If I'd bought a Ford Mondeo in 1993 it would be absurd for me to pitch up to Ford and ask for the new model for free. It would be equally absurd to expect to get it serviced for free for ever as well. But for some reason people seem to expect that with software...

As far as the professional FS developers I have been around and in contact with are concerned (from a number of different companies), I can barely think of one day (including weekends and public holidays) where there hasn't been any development work, and every P3D point release has required some level of work to get products running properly and efficiently. Most of it is very un-sexy stuff that, whilst integral to the running of the product, doesn't really get seen by end users, but it all takes time and skill to achieve.

How much of a good software developer's time would €50, or even €100 buy you? If your employer turned round one day and said "actually, I don't think you've really done anything *new* this week, so we're not going to pay you," how long would you be prepared to keep that up?

Of course, it would be great if we could all have everything for nothing, but the reality is that everybody's got bills to pay and mouths to feed and that has to be paid for somewhere down the line. There's some great freeware stuff out there from some very generous people, but when we all demand more and more detailed sceneries, aircraft, weather engines and the like, and we want them all to work with every sim platform we've ever owned or are ever likely to own, with 24/7 support from the developer at the click of a mouse... at some point that becomes unsustainable for someone working in their spare time and that is where we have to appreciate that in every walk of life you ultimately get what you pay for and the number of true rip-off merchants just out to squeeze the customer for every last penny with no regard for the product or the community is vanishingly small in comparison to the number of guys just trying to deliver a quality product and make ends meet.

If you look at the FS market, for the most part the add-ons which cost the most are the ones which provide a unique level of detail and a unique feature set. There are often other options out there, but on the whole the general consensus is that they lack the depth of the more expensive product. Does that make the developer of the more expensive product greedy, or does the price just reflect what you as a consumer are getting in return? If it were possible to create truly comparable add-ons for half the price or with free lifetime upgrades etc -- at some point one has to ask oneself why nobody has yet gone out and done it.

In the UK (as I suspect in many places) there's been a rash of major high street stores closing down recently, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the people who never set foot in any of these places because they were too busy ordering from Amazon. Be careful what you wish for...

[Mitch24 194]

On 10/27/2018 at 7:42 PM, Boeing or not going said:

When Pete Dowson is on vacation a new version is close to releasing. I thought LM said this year for P3D4.4? 4.3 is the best now but performance with dynamic lights has become worse for me and at sunset and sunrise also low FPS.

He needs a vacation from what?? His last vacation?

[Drumcode 1,893]

16 minutes ago, Mitch24 said:

He needs a vacation from what?? His last vacation?

Yes

[vgbaron 3,620]

4 hours ago, J van E said:

Some addon developers even abuse the P3D license system and aks more money for 'Pro' versions of their addons while they are the EXACT same as the 'Amateur' versions. Totally no need for that but they do it anyway: easy money.

Couldn't be further from the truth, Jeroen. There are many reasons for differing charges for differing versions - all having to do with licensing. There are many of our dev's whose main business is selling product to commercial clients. The sim community is just a small part of their business. Due to their pricing structure for commercial products they have to hold the price line. I know of several who do this. To say they do this simply because of easy money is completely untrue.

As for some devs charging for upgrades vs free - many of our devs are one person shops - they cannot afford to give it away - period.

As the complexity of the product(s) increases I believe we will see less and less freeware unless it's just a dev who has free time and it's a labor of love.

TANSTAAFL!

Vic

[pgde 571]

TANSTAAFL??

[Guest]

2 hours ago, vgbaron said:

Couldn't be further from the truth, Jeroen. There are many reasons for differing charges for differing versions - all having to do with licensing. There are many of our dev's whose main business is selling product to commercial clients. The sim community is just a small part of their business. Due to their pricing structure for commercial products they have to hold the price line. I know of several who do this. To say they do this simply because of easy money is completely untrue.

I'm not saying every developer does this 😉 but some do. If you own the Pro license of P3D they simply (try to) charge you more for the exact same addon. While there really is no need for it. That Pro user doesn't even have to be a commercial client or something like that. They are selling at different prices to similar hobbyists and I call that easy money. I don't want to go into detail (because it involves licenses and I don't want to call names) but it is what it is.

BTW I of course do get it that it also depends on how large your company is or if you are working on your own. But I do know that some devs ask more than needed.

Edited October 29, 2018 by Guest

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, pgde said:

TANSTAAFL

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=TANSTAAFL 😎😉

Edited October 29, 2018 by Guest

[simbol 5,819]

1 hour ago, J van E said:

If you own the Pro license of P3D they simply (try to) charge you more for the exact same addon. While there really is no need for it. That Pro user doesn't even have to be a commercial client or something like that. They are selling at different prices to similar hobbyists and I call that easy money. 

I really don't understand this, are you not sure that you are confusing the name of the add-on's titles with the P3D License? Aerosoft launched many airports with the name of "Professional Edition" not because they are required for you to own the Pro version of P3D, they decided to name them as such to rebrand old products with a new name since they redeveloped previous version of the product in order to be fully compatible with P3D 4.1 and above, they added dynamic lighting to the entire airport environment plus many other features, however:

A) The airport will work just fine with any license type of P3D.

B) You don't have to buy it, you can use the older version if you wish, however the airport will not have updated AFCAD, taxiways, buildings and will use older techniques to represent the night lighting.

C) As stated by others if you have the previous version of the airport (Evolution X version for example), you pay only the upgrade fee, which is around 10 euros.

Honestly I don't know any Flight Sim 3rd party content provider charging different prices based on your current P3D license, they have their own versions of products which have less or more features, for example my "AI Lights Reborn Freeware Edition" will not have the same features as "AI Lights Reborn Professional Edition", but for the record the professional edition will run and work with any P3D license type.

Same thing occurs with many Airplanes add-on's, just because they say professional it doesn't mean you need to have the P3D "Pro Version".

All the best,
Simbol

[pmb 5,137]

24 minutes ago, simbol said:

Honestly I don't know any Flight Sim 3rd party content provider charging different prices based on your current P3D license,

Hi,

A2A has (to my dismay) different licenses and prices for P3D Academic, P3D Professional plus a separate package for P3D commercial usage, e.g.

https://a2asimulations.com/product/accu-sim-c182-skylane-p3d/

Kind regards, Michael

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, simbol said:

Honestly I don't know any Flight Sim 3rd party content provider charging different prices based on your current P3D license,

Well, okay then, take A2A Simulations. They offer their P3D planes at two prices: a Pro one and an Academic one. Both addons are the exact same. The only difference is the price. As they say themselves: “The choice of Academic vs. Professional licences for A2A products (including Accu-Feel) simply reflects Lockheed Martin's own licensing policy for the simulator. Customers are free to choose whichever version they feel best applies to them, but there's no additional functionality included with the Professional version.” So if someone thinks he honestly has no other option to get the P3D Pro license he is er... kindly suggested to get the Pro licensed plane. Why? Not for added functionality. It’s easy money. There is no need at all for A2A to ‘simply’ follow LM’s licensing because quite a few other plane developers don’t.