Some Devs Are Just Out of Touch

[kaosfere 3,115]

Post scriptum, I do not think we are in that situation where freeware leads to the extinction of payware, nor do I think we will be any time soon.   I think there is a flourishing freeware scene like there hasn't been in years, yes.  I personally have downloaded several hundred gigs of free addons.   But I have also bought several hundred dollars worth of commercial addons in just the 6 months or so the sim has been out.  There are some things that may be totally doable by a few freeware developers (ahem the WT CJ4), but of such scope and complexity that the number of those kind of projects -- which themselves don't take the vast amount of effort that creating a complete, high-quality plane from scratch requires -- that can be supported by the freeware scene is limited.   Those larger scale products that need thousands of hours of effort from full-time developers are where the payware market will always flourish.

Edited February 6, 2021 by kaosfere

[Manny 1,293]

My thing is, I'd pay premium for airports in Asia, like in India. I know you cannot get official photographs from the airport in India. They are paranoid folks for whatever reason, but can you get unofficial" photos of the airport or publicly available photos and use your imagination to fill in the gaps and build the airports? Here is an opportunity to build hard to find airports as payware. I know FSDG had Bangalore for P3D but not heard anything from them for MSFS the same airport, even if they don't use all the fancy new stuff and do a straight forward conversion I would still buy it. Same goes for Mumbai airport. Trivandrum? Cochin? The Table top Mangalore? Goa? How about Sri Lanka? 

I am going to stop buying small regional airports of Europe.  I rarely use them.  I'll buy only Mega airports like Frankfurt EDDF or must have very interesting airports like Courchevel. There are so many UK airports. I don't need so many.  Since I am from the US I'd probably buy almost anything from the US as long as they are not priced outrageously or of poor quality.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Manny

[bendead 1,085]

39 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

(see FilbertFlies' reviews).

Thanks for the YT channel 😉

[Ricardo41 5,949]

3 hours ago, Noel said:

I am sure I am in a very small minority here

I suspect a minority of 1....

[Ricardo41 5,949]

33 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

 I do not think we are in that situation where freeware leads to the extinction of payware, nor do I think we will be any time soon. 

The Working Title group and the FlybyWire are taking big bites out of their respective markets IMHO.

[marsman2020 1,310]

The only scenery I have purchased is the payware version of Meigs Field because the developer put out excellent freeware to start with, the price was reasonable, I wanted to support their work, and it's not Flight Simulator without Meigs (RIP).

With Asobo discussing adding a scenery gateway system to the sim similar to X-Plane 11 in the future, I honestly don't see the point in investing in a ton of scenery.  Depending on how that system is implemented, the community may end up improving many airports across the globe in a way that we can seamlessly incorporate into the sim.  The default scenery in the sim is already very good in a lot of places, to where I can land at a grass strip in Alaska and taxi over by the one building at the end of the field, go on Google Maps, and see that yes that is the one building at the end of the field.....

 

[bendead 1,085]

21 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

The Working Title group and the FlybyWire are taking big bites out of their respective markets IMHO.

It shows what can be done by passionate, talented modders, raising the expectation a lot for future paywares, I don't see myself paying 40-50$ for an addons, if the functionality is less than what we are getting on the A32NX or CJ4

Edited February 6, 2021 by bendead

[edpatino 1,964]

Well, at the very end, are we going to buy the Cedars Key payware or not 🤣🤣🤣?.

Cheers, Ed

[marsman2020 1,310]

23 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I see a lot of takers and not many givers in this thread.

When the bar of what's in the stock sim gets raised, then developers need to raise the bar of what they are providing in their products at the same price point.

Many payware developer threads on this section of the forum seem to turn into the developers complaining about something or the other.  Doesn't really invite me to buy anyone's products when that's the attitude they take.  I am not a P3D user but I've seen your many negative statements about MSFS in the 1 thread I looked at on the P3D forum.  Since you're so negative about MSFS, I'd be very unlikely to buy any MSFS products from you.......

Quote

The cost to sell airport scenery with EVERYTHING fully licensed (from fuel sign company logos to the shops that maintains aircraft on site to the parked vehicles) can be prohibitive (kills a project before it starts), especially with prevailing consumer price expectations. 

Funny to see someone from the P3D forum come over here and call MSFS users "takers" and complain about how hard it is to dot all the 'is' and cross all the 't's on how a product is licensed and used. My use of MSFS for my personal entertainment is fully licensed.

Edited February 6, 2021 by marsman2020

[pmb 5,137]

3 hours ago, Manny said:

In P3D I had over 600 Payware airport. I rarely used freeware cause the quality of freeware was bad in the p3D world.  But I bought those 600+ over a 10-13 year period from the FSX Days.

To not leave Manny as an exotic single, I am in the same boat. Maybe it's not 600, but my P3D4.5 scenery.cfg hat 600 entries, subtract 100 base entries, the rest were addons, nearly all Payware.

Like Manny, I focus on certain areas where I often fly and buy nearly all what's available: New Zealand, Australia, Japan, plus a few selected Europeans countries and US States. I certainly pay (too) much for sceneries, but only own very few planes on the other hand, as I nearly exclusively fly GA and prefer to properly handle a few of them instead of a multitude just marginally.

Given the excellent Freeware available for MSFS, I see its relative portion rising, but certainly not to the extent making Payware superfluous.

Kind regards, Michael

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

yea, lets also not forget that 90% of these "amazing freeware" are basically illegal and considered piracy. whenever google is used, for photogrammetry, or for satelite imagery, it is most likely illegal. wheres the harm in that? well, i dont know, probably nowhere, but then whats stopping you to get pirated planes as well? Depends where you draw the line i guess.

[CFIJose 5,485]

45 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Well, at the very end, are we going to buy the Cedars Key payware or not 🤣🤣🤣?.

Cheers, Ed

No!

[CFIJose 5,485]

Since we are talking about freeware vs payware, I'd like to add that I would have probably dropped this sim if it wasn't for the daily freeware mods released by talented creators. I have a HUGE collection of payware airports for P3D that are collecting dust because I'm exploring many little freeware airfield, such as Cedar Key, enhanced by this wonderful community.

[chapstick 2,757]

3 minutes ago, leprechaunlive said:

yea, lets also not forget that 90% of these "amazing freeware" are basically illegal and considered piracy.

Wow, that's such a large percentage. And exactly 90%, you say? Not 89%? Or 91%? Crazy.

[EvidencePlz 276]

Don't like the price? don't buy. Looking at the feature list and screenshots I see that Pilot's have done a great job and introduced some new mechanics as well to create a realistic rendition and local world simulation of the airport and area, and the price is affordable.