13 minutes ago, Carts85 said:

I really think these guys should consider putting this out as payware. We know the quality that FBW can deliver and will no doubt deliver on the a380. Given what is on the market right now and I won’t bad mouth developers but let’s say lesser quality products that are being sold at a price fair or not, how would people feel about FBW putting this out for free given the time effort and skill put into their work. Donations of course can be offered but when we don’t have to the majority won’t donate I imagine and it’s their right to have that choice of course.

Be interested on peoples thoughts on it.

They have always said that they do this for the love of it, they enjoy it and have an interest in improving things, and to contribute to the community.
Some of them are also linked to the Aerospace industry, and earn quite well (relatively).

Donationware tends not to work.  most people just grab whatever is going for free, and donationware funding tends to be light.

So in answer to your question, I would like to see this as low cost payware, 5 or 10 (units of whatever your currency is).  At least it would pay for some expenses and I would hope pay for the developers to take their families out for a good meal as a sign of appreciation from the community.  I know at  5 or 10, I would buy it at a drop of a hat, and I know possibly hundreds (if not thousands) probably would as well.

The issue is of course, once you sell something as a product, there are legal implications.  You have to do agreements, get accounts done, product support implications etc.

Edited March 9, 20215 yr by bobcat999

1 minute ago, bobcat999 said:

I would like to see this as low cost payware, 5 or 10 (units of whatever your currency is)

I think that is essential for sustained development. The project will need to get something back

7 minutes ago, ErichB said:

I think that is essential for sustained development. The project will need to get something back

I also think there is a market for quality products at this price range (5 or 10 Pounds, Euro, Dollars, whatever).  It is quite obvious that people who are not well off are more likely to buy one a month of something like this.

I have often wondered how it scales.  If we accept that quality is a given on an example product, and it is priced at 30, would lowering it to 10 triple sales to compensate, or more?

I suppose that is how flash sales work, so it must work to some degree.  I have bought many a Carenado on a sale! 😀

Edited March 9, 20215 yr by bobcat999

54 minutes ago, ErichB said:

The problem with passion projects is that developers eventually lose interest in sustained development.   People move on, life moves on - and in reality everything comes at a cost - especially people's time.   A project like this , especially with a sim that is constantly being updated - will need constant maintenance, update and support.  I just fear that it will taper off eventually as a freeware product.  Have seen it many times over the past 20 years.   I would be willing to support this project if they put a price tag on it.  

The whole ethos with the FBW project is open source, everybody can contribute. As long as there are people out there with skills and interest in helping improve an A320/A380 the project won't taper off. I'm not worried.

One of the single biggest reasons freeware projects have fizzled in this community over the past 20 years is a territorial mindset that has seen groups splinter and then work to block competing development, even when their own project is moribund. Hard to see how payware solves that problem. I hate to say it, but look at what happened with LevelD. Demand for a 767 and 757 was exceptionally high for years, but PMDG wouldn't touch them because of what seems to have been a gentleman's agreement with LevelD. And the upshot was that the community got nothing.

So no, I hope this will stay freeware. And, more importantly, that FBW never loses their enthusiastic, transparent, generous, and collaborative approach.

James

10 minutes ago, honanhal said:

And, more importantly, that FBW never loses their enthusiastic, transparent, generous, and collaborative approach.

While in general terms I support the ethos, your quote above will be the real acid test. Nothing is truly free, and more so,  no-one will provide 'free' on a sustained basis. This is a highly complex project. But if the opensource concept means that contributors are able to be recycled or replaced with those willing to take it on, it might work.

As long as we don't find ourselves saying, 'well since the sim update 6 months ago, the aircraft's electrical systems no longer work and the guy who was looking after that left the group shortly after'.  We have seen that so many times. 

Having said that, that has never been a guarantee with some payware offerings either...

Edited March 9, 20215 yr by ErichB

9 minutes ago, ErichB said:

Having said that, that has never been a guarantee with some payware offerings either...

Exactly! And at least with freeware you have less cause to complain if support falls off. 🙂

I don't know how big FBW is regarding the amount of people contributing to their developments, but I don't think it'd be unreasonnable that they charge some money for the A380. The price would depend on the amount of effort being put on the development, the complexity and the expected dedication for its updates and user's support. Nothing in the world works really well if it remains free forever.

Cheers, Ed

 

 

47 minutes ago, ErichB said:

While in general terms I support the ethos, your quote above will be the real acid test. Nothing is truly free, and more so,  no-one will provide 'free' on a sustained basis. This is a highly complex project. But if the opensource concept means that contributors are able to be recycled or replaced with those willing to take it on, it might work.

As long as we don't find ourselves saying, 'well since the sim update 6 months ago, the aircraft's electrical systems no longer work and the guy who was looking after that left the group shortly after'.  We have seen that so many times. 

Having said that, that has never been a guarantee with some payware offerings either...

Well it's true what you say, every open source project has this fear of sidelining and just die. However, this is the job of the community, us, if we show that we are engaged, as simple being in their discord just contribute with ideas and keep the whole project alive, it will attract new contributors. 

Of course, there will be contributors in FBW, just say, okay due to family matters, I can no longer contribute, then rest assured, if the project is alive and kicking, there will new contributors jumping in and filling up the space. Therefore, the least we can do here, join their discord, help them out with ideas and input, for example Andreas Guther who did the custom autopilot and auto thorttle has some mathematical issues to tune the auto thorttle and I am pretty sure there are folks here in this forum that are knowledgeable and willing to help with input, it doesn't have to be coding.

And it regards to payware, it doesn't work as payware, there are like I don't know over 170 contributors and no entity owners and the whole thing is licensed under MIT, so yeah doing this as payware, it will be a very very big legal challenge, same goes for Working Title.

 

58 minutes ago, honanhal said:

And at least with freeware you have less cause to complain if support falls off.

Ordinarily, that holds true.  But this is the Avsim forum.  Portal for all flightsim related angst - real or imagined.

16 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

And it regards to payware, it doesn't work as payware, there are like I don't know over 170 contributors and no entity owners and the whole thing is licensed under MIT, so yeah doing this as payware, it will be a very very big legal challenge, same goes for Working Title.

Very good point.

Already ordered some more popcorn. This will be fun.

This is what I am most excited about.  We never had a good A 380 in FSX/P3D.  

 

10 hours ago, Carts85 said:

I really think these guys should consider putting this out as payware. We know the quality that FBW can deliver and will no doubt deliver on the a380. Given what is on the market right now and I won’t bad mouth developers but let’s say lesser quality products that are being sold at a price fair or not, how would people feel about FBW putting this out for free given the time effort and skill put into their work. Donations of course can be offered but when we don’t have to the majority won’t donate I imagine and it’s their right to have that choice of course.

Be interested on peoples thoughts on it.

I'd absolutely pay them for it.  Paying for the 380 would be the best form of love letter from the community for their work on the Neo.

Just a disclaimer - this is my personal opinion here. From my experience thus far, in order to make a proper, high fidelity aircraft for a flight simulator, it requires an INSANE amount of manpower and time. If you're making a payware aircraft at this level, considering the relatively small size of this hobby, it's going to need to be priced fairly high in order to break even or turn a slight profit.

 

I know most people aren't a fan of PMDG or FSLabs pricing, but given the amount of research and development time that goes into it, compared to the demand of a complex airliner in an already niche hobby, it makes sense. This brings me to my next point. In my opinion, the economies of scale for high-quality aircraft addons simply don't lend themselves well to being payware. I feel that a well-managed, free, and open-source projects can provide a comparable experience, and should become the norm in flight simulation.

 

With something free and open-source, you can have far more people contributing to a project than you can possibly afford if you were hiring developers for a payware project. There's an abundance of experienced folks out there who would love to contribute to these projects in their spare time that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get on a payware project, simply because they already have existing, stable jobs and families, and don't want another strict commitment to worry about (not to mention salaries - at least for me, if I quit my regular job to work on a payware flight sim project full time, I would probably earn less than half of my usual pay, and it would quickly turn from a labor of love into a chore that I need to worry about to pay the bills).

 

I'm absolutely thrilled with other projects taking this approach - the Working Title CJ4, the Aero KC-10/DC-10, and the Parallel 757 are just a few excellent examples that come to mind for MSFS. I can't wait to see what the freeware ecosystem in MSFS will look like a year or two from now.

2 hours ago, VFXSimmer said:

best form of love letter from the community for their work on the Neo.

Well, do what I did and donate. No need to wait for the A380...

https://docs.flybywiresim.com/donate/