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kerosene31

Major Pain - Please fix for FSX

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Subscription based service with everything except a bootstrapper running remote, sending only results back for rendering.Client logs in to an account that's pay per use with automatic payments through bank account or creditcard.If he hands out his account info (which would be needed) to someone else, he pays for their use (and whomever they hand it out to) as well as his own.This will quickly drive that person into either terminating the account (shutting out all the pirates as well) or bankruptcy (in which case the same would happen for non-payment).The bootstrapper can be freely distributed of course, as it's useless without an account, and can have functionality to request and create an account.Pretty similar to some MMORPGs except pull even more work to the server (it's with many of those still possible at least in theory to put up your own server as the server mainly does communications duty, at least it would in an environment without monsters to kill like FS).

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Guest BOPrey

Indeed, indeed. How much bandwidth do you think a game like this is going to need? On the business issue, how do you handle customer disputes?

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Guest

the rendering engine would be clientside most likely.For FS that would mean the client gets told by the server where it is (altitude, speed, direction, attitude) and the same for everything else.Effectively decouple the physics engine from the graphics engine.Without the physics engine (and other parts of the game engine, like the AI) the software is useless.Display logic is the majority of the CPU load anyway for FS...If an FSHost session can host over a dozen players, several observers, and the host computer can run FS as well with hardly and performance impact, a dedicated bank of heavy servers should have no problems.That should reduce bandwidth use as well to a managable level, certainly little enough that someone on a 256Kb DSL connection can use the product smoothly.I know the idea is more practical for business applications than it is for games, but it's certainly doable.Customer disputes are always a problem, no different than any online retailer and other company dealing with customers.I've no idea about how such a product would have to be priced, but likely something like $25-$30 a month would be the minimum for the average user (pay per view does of course mean heavy users pay more).

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Guest grapesh

Monthly fee and internet connection requirement will immediately kill the success of MSFS. I'm not gonna pay $30 a month to see my FS stuttering because the remote server cannot timely compute the trajectories of my aircraft, my AI aircrafts, my weather, and aircrafts, AI and weather of thousands of other users. You cannot deliver a good real-time physics over the internet.Web-based accounts should only be used to provide web-based features such as real-time weather, career mode, game statistics, real-time traffic, multiplay, etc. If such features have a good added value to FS, then a web account can be used as a copy-protection device. If your server-side log and your local log coincide (and we know that, for instance, all engine hours are logged automatically now in FS9), then you authenticate successfully and receive access to those web-based features. And, if you have 2 copies of MSFS, then you should sync them. If you share your FS account, it means you will need to sync all PCs that run your copy, just to be able to authenticate. Which becomes troublesome if 100 other people are using your account. And even if you manage to sync them all, the "community accounts" are going to be clearly visible from server side due to huge logs, and therefore, easily detectable. It is one way to protect from a wide-spread sharing but only if web-based features are going to be really appealing to basic and advanced users as well.Cheers,

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Do you seriously expect anyone would pay $25-$30 a month to use Flight Simulator when they can buy it for under $30?

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Guest

Just look at the success of MMORPGs... Millions pay such fees every month quite happily despite there being a lot of other games that are far more fun out there that don't require monthly payment.And there won't be an FS for under $30 anymore once a subscription system is put in place.It might be simple for Microsoft (and other OS makers) to ensure that previous versions of certain products don't work on a new operating system as well (though they've not done so in the past, in fact have done the reverse)...So yes, it would possibly be a success, seeing the way the concept is working right now with other classes of software.Remember it's certainly not a new idea, many types of software are essentially released like this already, it's only in the PC market where the idea is relatively new as there's not been highspeed permanent networks been available to customers for that long.

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Guest grapesh

Well, FS is not MMORPG, there is no shooting or quest, or magic dragons, and it is not aimed at the same category of players. I don't know anyone around (well, maybe just one a "very dedicated" guy) who actually pays for MMORPG. And FS is certainly not a subscription-only online paralegal database either. So I don't understand why intentionally making a great product so undesirable for so many present and potential users. You can sell something in addition to FS by subscription only (like rw-traffic) but not the main product!And I don't really understand why you want MS to make their new OS incompatible with your old copy of FS :-hmmm Is it some kind of self-punishment? :)Cheers,

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> but you'd not like it one little bit.>It would not make piracy impossible but would cause the idiotyup..don't like it at all.


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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"So over 95% of all copies are in the hands of people who see it as a passtime and likely drop it after a few weeks like any other game."So 95% would never pay $30/month ($360/year). I don't believe that many of the other 5% would pay that either - having been used to buying FS outright for about that. The potential market's shrinking already.

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Guest

When MMORPGs were first proposed reactions were the same, that noone would pay a monthly subscription fee to use a piece of software when there were RPGs out there that didn't need such subscriptions.Yet here we are only a few years later and MMORPGs are a massive industry that's rapidly becoming the preferred businessmodel for releasing new games.Same is happening in other fields as well...I'm not saying I'd like to see FS go that way, but it's certainly a means to destroy piracy (which is why so many RPGs went that way in the first place).The people only playing it for a few weeks wouldn't have higher cost than they have now, such games always have a free trial period after all.The rest will either have to pay up or stick with old software, and we all know that we're going to upgrade anyway no matter how loudly many say we're not going to...

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If only 5% of the present users of Flight Simulator continued to use it they'd have to pay Microsoft 20 times as much to maintain Microsoft's revenue. If they didn't there'd be no more Flight Simulator - it wouldn't be worth Microsoft developing a new one.

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It seems like the answer to this inquiry got "lost" in this thread a long time ago. Too much info for a simple question. The original question has been answered already!

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Guest davidvoogd

I started a thread on this quite a while ago.Forcing you to put a CD / DVD in the game does not prevent piracy. I'm willing to bet the majority of "hardcore" fs users use the no cd crack just to avoid the inconvenience, and that right there shows how easy it is to get around it.There's no really good reason for it, and I would definately like to not have to put in the DVD to use FSX.

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>I've no idea about how such a product would have to be priced,>but likely something like $25-$30 a month would be the minimum>for the average user (pay per view does of course mean heavy>users pay more).I'm sure your guess at $25-$30 a month was just a guess but...I know of no MMORPG that charges more than half of that (most are at ~$12 a month) and they do offer an online "virtual community" which is the major reason the kids pay to play: to play with their buddies. Unless FS became a true online game I wouldn't dream of paying more than, possibly, a few cents a month, and, for that, I would require a free download of the software (unlikely, seeing it will now need one or two DVDs to fit in). If FS where to become an online game (multi crew, ATC positions etc.), possibly with an RPG aspect (pilot/ATC rank, virtual airline support built in, including "suites" roles, online pseudo economy etc.) things would look different and I'd probably be happy to pay for it, like with other MMORPGs. That, of course, would mean entering a world of cheats (various hacks to reduce cost, alter flight analysis etc) which is common plagues in the MMORPG world.As it is, the charm of FS is the "fiddling" it takes to customise it. Personally, I feel paying for 3rd party add ons AND having to pay a fee every month would be out of the question for me. It simply wouldn't be worth it.Microsoft, please, just put a working key scheme in there and let us put our DVDs back into the retail box for safe keeping.:-) Cheers/Jonas

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I don't mind copy protection *if* it works. However, having the cd in the drive while playing does nothing to stop pirates. All it does is annoy legitimate users.


-------------------------

Craig from KBUF

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