Bad ideas and failures are many times stepping Stones to success.

Paul, I see your point but if you want to fly you terrific A2A bird to a hundred airports tomorrow no one says it would have to be a rented, payware, freeware or default. That would be up to you as it is and always has been. Why not the option?

Don't need new business ideas because of big brother? Come on now. We can't go through life that paranoid. I hardly think renting sim airports is going to be the vehicle of tyranny. That's definitely a threat to peace and prosperity but I doubt this would matter one way or another.

Besides, this isn't anything that's going to happen soon so no issue to worry about.

This idea would only work if they would manage to publish their products bug-free. And of course, it should work from day 1 on every machine. If not, what to do? Refund the 3 Euros for a single use? How do you prove that the scenery did not work? Do you really take the hassle to fill the forms for a 3€ refund? And what about Installation? Take EDDK as an example, 3.3GB download, several minutes Installation. Do you really want to run through downloads and installations all the time prior flying somewhere?

Sorry to say, but in this "concept", there are so many questions and potential issues, this will never happen. At least not within the next 10 years...

8 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

Bad ideas and failures are many times stepping Stones to success.

Hi Vic,

Its awesome to have discussion with you about this because I can rely on you to be honest and kind, I appreciate you.🙂

Concerning success or failure, flight simulation is in a class all by itself. There is nothing like it in the whole world. LM calls it an ecosystem, and that is an excellent term for what we have. Finely balanced and sensitive to change that would upset that balance. Flight simmers could be considered the anti-bodies of this ecosystem. Excellent products and ideas are nutrients,  and bad products and ideas are a disease. 

DTG Flight School lead to DTG Flight Sim World --- was Flight School a stepping stone to success? No, because of the exclusive and very sensitive ecosystem we have. 

I answered twice about "why not the option", but I will try again, see what you think:

Let's try this angle. Try to imagine if Lockheed Martin never developed P3D, and for the sake of this discussion, lets assume X-plane did not exist; there was only the MSFS platform FSX 32-bit then MS Flight with endless DLC just to "complete" the sim to FSX features. How long would that have lasted before that once vibrant ecosystem totally died? I would say about a year maybe two at the most. How long could developers continue to develop new concepts for FSX with the awful OOM threat? So 40 years of success turned to total failure over a new kind of business model. Now bring it back to "reality", we have LM that became the stepping stone to success (carrying on the way it was, so to speak), for us to enjoy in peace and freedom. Why disrupt the ecosystem?

The ecosystem relies on flight sim consumers supporting the wonderful developers we have, and a rental system would surly disrupt that (prices would have to go up as a direct result of rentals). If anybody says it would not, I ask please explain how this would be good for the ecosystem? How could developers manage a (new) rental system, maybe a rent to own, and purchase system part time. Eventually developers will find themselves overwhelmed with (say 30-50%) additional tasks for the rental portion of the business, they will be compelled to either go with rental or sales. If rental wins we consumers lose. Even If rental does not win, damage is done. The developers for the most part have day jobs and can move on, flight simmers have nowhere to go except to Xbox!🤡

If you do try to imagine all this, like I suggest, with the knowledge of what we have had and now presently have, you will discover how blessed we are. To disrupt the ecosystem with a new way of doing things (like MS and DTG and several others have tried and are currently trying), is suicide for the ecosystem.

That said, I'm not opposed to options, I'm just opposed to options that could/would lead to ruin.

More ideas/solutions:

Jose Rubio at FSAerodata is working on bringing our P3D default airports to more current standards:  https://www.fsaerodata.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=136 and I see this as a much better solution for our ecosystem....a good stepping stone.🙂

 

17 hours ago, abranpuko said:

 

yes! we also could do it with planes:) why not?

Rob, the dev, could answer that better than me.

Wow!

I am glad to know that the theme "airport rental" has given conversation. In general, I keep the same philosophy of thought: everything is possible, and having only one option is always negative.
Knowing that there are several types of users, the businessman who rents airports would be focusing his work on the users "who wish to rent them" and not "the others".
That easy.
For example, I would rent.
I have another idea. It occurs to me that if tomorrow I have scheduled 4 flights, there would be a rental package for simmers that fly a lot. With option to purchase, etc, etc ...
The great thing about Prepar3d and other simulators is that they offer an architecture capable of creating and generating new ideas in their use.

And the wonderful thing about good entrepreneurs is that they generally make something that did not seem important then become indispensable. But it is true, before they have to overcome many stones.
For example: real traffic. I rent it for a month, and I use it a lot and sometimes I do not. But I love it. Because it is up to my demands.

I am sure that very soon new options will emerge. ! 🙂 yeah