If higher quality airplanes means both longer development times and higher costs (and we don't know that it does but Im assuming it will push things in that direction), I think it'd be good to have some sort of agreed upon return policy so we can more safely invest in the developers workmanship.  I've always tried to be careful about which planes I bought but there are several that I really liked that I probably wouldn't have purchased at a higher price.  If we do end up with fewer planes that cost more, it would help if there was an easy return policy like Steam has except that I think two hours may not be enough time. Im not really sure how much time would be good but...something.

 

call it LLC:  Limited Liability for Consumers.  it promotes investment.

Edited November 12, 20196 yr by sightseer

As ever with these things I think there is a balance between the consumer and the business. I think we’re moving beyond the phase where digital goods are non-returnable though. I think the steam model works quite well for this sort of thing though - it gives you long enough to make sure it works, isn’t fundamentally broken and is approaching what you thought it was. However, I don’t think people should just be able to return things just because it turns out they don’t like them. 

I actually would like to be able to rent aircraft for a few days, that would also allow us to test them before buying. Maybe the amount payed for the rent could be deducted from the purchase fee in case of a purchase. Most of the time I fly in my favorite planes, but I do love to check out some other aircraft once in a while. I've bought several aircraft in the past just to be able to try them out, but if we could rent them I might take way more aircraft for an occasional spin.  

Renting is a really cool idea.  Sometimes it takes a while to get into an aircraft and discover that the GNS or GPS doesnt work correctly.  In the past if a developer consistently let me down I just learned to avoid them but oddly enough there are other planes that have what some would see as major flaws that i really enjoyed like Iris's C27J Spartan (Im only guessing others had a problem with it -- I seemed to be the only one ever trying to promote it)

Due to a certain less than honest element that exists in the software environment I don't think you're going to see renting or lengthy try out periods on any game. 

Unfortunately that is the world we live in. 

5 minutes ago, 188AHC said:

Due to a certain less than honest element that exists in the software environment I don't think you're going to see renting or lengthy try out periods on any game. 

Unfortunately that is the world we live in. 

That’s not true; Flight 1 has a long standing 30-day back money policy.  For that reason, they’re my preferred  vendor. Although, I like simmarket too...

Edited November 13, 20196 yr by kingm56

I forgot about Flight 1. Are there others with this policy that I have forgotten about as well? 

3 hours ago, sightseer said:

 If we do end up with fewer planes that cost more,

Let's hope that development is easier (less time consuming) which will lead to more add-ons in a given amount of time.   

I know that was discussed in some of the threads they (MS/ ASobo) saw, so hopefully it was taken to heart.  In the past some dev methods were extremely time consuming -- much time was spent staring at a load% bar in the sim, rather than designing your object...

As for buying -- caveat emptor.  Except at Flight1.  :)

What I would like is a much easier way to produce aircraft by users. 

I think that's a great idea!

Actually with all the review videos you can watch in 4k on youtube about new addons, for me it is all I need to see if the quality will be enough.

From a development standpoint it would require some heavy handed DRM ( Digital Rights Management ) to do something of the sort , trial period or leasing the amount of " paperwork  "  would be prohibitive and add to the cost to the consumer .

Most respectable developers will return a clients investment if their product is not running on the users machine , this does on occasion happen where multiple drives and hardware configurations defeat the best efforts of the service department .

There are companies who are not well reputed for service or answering emails , they are fewer than they were , people don't buy from them and they stop making new products , unfortunately their legacy products remain on the market trapping the unwary , Its forums like AVSIM that identify those products and warn us about issues to expect .

Best CJ