Much as I love FS9/FSX, and many other game software titles, I find the software upgrade mentality amazing....many of the FS add-on commercial vendors ARE offering free upgrades to FSX and I patiently await their release; Just Flight for example have free upgrades offered on most of their more recent releases, WilcoPub is offering likewise, even Abacus are. Real Air too have upgrades, but in order to make full use of FSX's new features then there is a nominal fee involved. To name but a few.This to me seems most fair and is even 'above and beyond'...they are under no obligation to make their products work in what is ostensibly a new flight sim, let alone do it for free, yet they are...!In virtually anyother business, to get upgrades, new features, etc. then you have to scrap the existing item and purchase a new replacement...Sony won't supply a free upgrade to make you DVD player compatible with new formats, Ford won't mod your car for free unless it is a safety recall issue....I know that software development is a volatile and constantly evolving, mutating entity, and rapid redundancy is a built-in feature; much more so than consumer electronics, or the motor industry, but still, we should be grateful to those devs that DO offer free upgrades, and certainly NOT rant and moan about others that do charge that nominal fee for the (in many cases) hours of work used to make the product work.

I would just like to say that threads like this give this community a bad name, as far as I can tell, the op was just stating a level headed position that represented his opinion. As a result he has, in some cases, been viciously attacked for daring to do this. The posters who so strongly disagree would do their argument a lot more good if they presented it in a reasoned logical manner. With regard to the op, my view is that some vendors do take the mickey when it comes to FSX conversion, whilst others do not and are very generous, we as consumers have a duty to get the best value for money from our purchases and we would do well to take note of others experiences when considering purchases. Happy New Year :-wave

>"Shame on you, Eaglesoft and FSUIPC."Shame on you for expecting Team Eaglesoft to do their months and months of hard work pro bono. Sorry to disapoint, but it is quite clear that these Team Members deserve better treatment than another "cheapskate rant".We've already offered generous discounts for months now and the numbers tell us that a LOT of people find our approach to be VERY reasonable when they consider the VALUE of our work.Your rant would essentially have Team Eaglesoft doing their work as freeware just to satisfy your viewpoint.Sorry, but we are not a freeware team....Happy New Year all:-)

To the OP fine, your opinion, and I respect it. Dont buy it, only you lose out.I certainly will buy upgrades for my favorite aircraft, why? well because I respect the amount of work the "simple port" actually takes. Remember MOST developers are doing FS development work part time because they have families and full time employment to consider. I know this to be true for the majority.Microsoft changed the way many things work - a lot to do with simconnect, a lot to do with texture mapping. I only developed one scenery for Flightsim, freeware as it was, and it was not that brilliant but I did have a few thank you emails. One poster pointed out that Microsoft are giving free upgrades to Vista but only if you got XP within a certain time frame (2 - 3 months before vista appears). Microsoft wont give yo a free upgrade if you bought XP a year ago so why should any FS add on developer give you a free upgrade to a year old product? Also consider that the changes to the FSX architecture are not "simple" or "noddy" or "dead easy" to understand, they make the base product different and it takes TIME and EFFORT to understand those changes. These two items are valuable commodities, most companies charge for their use! Even Microsoft charges!!I wont be ugrading my freeware scenery to FSX! Why? well quite simply 2 reasons, first because I dont have the time and second, there are too many ungrateful people out there who want changes to make a product compatible but are not prepared to help pay the cost.If your ont going to buy an upgrade, then you had better not delete FS9 off your hard drive, otherwise your initial investment was a waste of money!Anyway its the way of the world I suppose ;) Some (unfairly) expect it for free, others (fairly) expect to pay! Its a tough old world aint itSeasons Greetings

>Professional marketeers know how to market>their products... amateurs don't.I think you got marketing and greed mixed up. As a software developer and a follower of the IT industry for several years i can say that it is very rare to force people to repurchase without the possibility to upgrade.If you screw a consumer by not letting them upgrade, then dont expect customer loyalty. To throw back the argument with another analogy, its not like they are buying a new car and have no choise: they CAN copy that car, they CAN get a freeware car from generous people who build them in their sparetime.The way to be successful is to be realistic and not to have fantasies about profits that were never there, like the rest of the entertainment industry do when estimating losses due to "piracy".The way to market a product is to give the customer something that neither freeware or pirated stuff can provide (*). When you have that, you have a winner concept.(* Microsoft is on to something with disabling certain features of the OS without activation/validation, even though that too will be cracked. 10 points for effort though.)

>>"Shame on you, Eaglesoft and FSUIPC.">>Shame on you for expecting Team Eaglesoft to do their months>and months of hard work pro bono. Sorry to disapoint, but it>is quite clear that these Team Members deserve better>treatment than another "cheapskate rant".>>We've already offered generous discounts for months now and>the numbers tell us that a LOT of people find our approach to>be VERY reasonable when they consider the VALUE of our work.>>Your rant would essentially have Team Eaglesoft doing their>work as freeware just to satisfy your viewpoint.>>Sorry, but we are not a freeware team....Happy New Year>all:-)>>>>>>Nice advert, as an (ex) potential future customer of yours I now have a clear indication of your likely attitude towards customers ... thanks for the warning. If you do represent the company that is.I for one in my business have been taught that customer service is everything and that includes the way you communicate.Nobody expects anything for nothing ... but politeness is free.Happy New Year :-halo

Free if product needs few changes for it to work in FSX.Don't mind paying for a newer product for FSX if it really needed some work done to it; and I do expect it to work.Problem now is not many, if any, actually work correctly in FSX.I think FSX has a lot to do with it and the developers need some time to experiment.I purchased one and it sucks big time because the frame rate is terrible. Went from about 30 to 9. Thatsa nota gooda!

>Nice advert, as an (ex) potential future customer of yours I>now have a clear indication of your likely attitude towards>customers ... thanks for the warning. If you do represent the>company that is.>>I for one in my business have been taught that customer>service is everything and that includes the way you>communicate.>>Nobody expects anything for nothing ... but politeness is>free.>Why be polite?The author of the post went on a rant, and singled out two vendors.He went on with:My proud "Eaglesoft supporter" signature is now gone, as well as "shame on you". And what specifics does the writer of this post know? I'm aware that FSUIPC is a complete re-write, and I know that many of Eaglesoft's aircraft would need a re-write for the flight dynamics, let alone other issues.Some "simmers" are just cheap & expect "freebies" --- SHAME ON THEM! L.Adamson

>I am sorry, but I tend to disagree. I do not know the inner>workings of FS9/FSX, but I highly doubt that an update to FSX>would require a lot of effort unless it has been developed in>a highly proprietary format. Then I'd keep my mouth shut...

>the op was just>stating a level headed position that represented his opinion.The rant (op) started of with "I don't know the inner workings of FS9/FSX but"....That's not exactly level headed IMO, especially when it names two specific vendors and concludes with "shame on you".L.Adamson

Why??Must a customer know the inner workings of a product as well, as the ones who produces it, to question the pricing??I don't get it, why every time someone questions pay ware products, it's treated as trolling or worse. (if it's not one of the vendors, where bashing are allowed)CheersPeter

You want a rant? Here's a rant.You obviously have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever as to what is involved in computer programming or the economies of small businesses operating in a small marketplace. How can you possibly compare a multi-million company like Adobe with a two-man "company" like - for e.g. RealAir?? I am a Unix sysadmin for a community college, and there's not a hope in h*** that I would do what some of these great guys do for PEANUTS. Some - not all - of you out there seem to think that this stuff grows on trees. "Just modify it a bit here and there". Yeah. Try examining, understanding the concept, and then re-doing 135,000 lines of multi-language code - that somebody else wrote - and making it conform to a partial SDK from Microsoft. Some of these works of art were written four/five years ago, and the some of developers team may have moved on. How do you now expect a company to "pull somebody out of a hat" to come in and learn just how a particular piece of code works? I bought FS Passengers for FS9. If they have to re-engineer it for FSX I expect to pay for it. Same with DreamFleet's 727. Some code works. Some doesn't. Most payware is LESS THAN THE COST OF A GOOD DINNER FOR TWO, and people still whine about paying $29.99 for a product that you're going to use for two years or more.How many more times do we have to read this tripe, time and time again??Make your own decision about what you want to buy, how much you want to pay, and get on with life. End of story. Happy New Year.pj

Some people just like to pay for everything . Well, as long as there is a market for it, there will be people buying (I repeat) the *same* product twice.I never said I that I would like to spark a controversy. I merely posted my disappointment of a few companies "policies" who try to make a quick buck with a compatibility upgrade that is traditionally offered by 95% of the the rest of the FS (and entire Windows) developer community for free or for an upgrade pricing.I never said that I expect developers for free and I never said that I am not willing to pay for an upgrade, but in the case of Eaglesoft, I am stunned that I am required to pay full price for the, again, same product. I didn't even get a discount for an upgrade from the SR20 to the SR22 - and both planes are virtually the same. Same panel, same textures, same everything. I can't really see anything unreasonable or controversial with this.

As I said, I don't expect you guys to work for free, but I do expect that your products are being offered at a pricing that can justify a compatibility upgrade.Total: #123.80 for virtually the same product, even with the limited discount it would be $86, which almost exceeds the Ariane's pricing. I just want to find any reasoning behind this other than making 4x the cash on one product.You cannot tell me seriously that you spent the exact time on the FSX version than on the FS9 version. Otherwise, please enlighten me why it was so difficult to port your offerings to FSX to justify my purchase, while other developers offer free or substantially lower-priced upgrades?

You are a consumer and have every right to vent. If you feel the cost of a product is too high or have ambivolent feelings about a product price, there is nothing wrong with venting (read: questioning). For some to state that you need to know the work entailed in the building, distribution and support of a product is pretty riduculous. People complain because airfares go up, people and complain because gas prices go up. I don't think that even ONCE I've seen the president of an airline or gas company flippantly announce: "If you don't like it, try running an airline or drilling for your own oil and then complain." To do so would be career and corporate suicide.The CONSUMER (remember, the one that is "always right" since they are the reason you are in business?), has EVERY RIGHT to question pricing, business practices and anything else they wish.With that said, in releation to your post, companies can charge whatever they wish for whatever they wish, whenever they wish. Supply and demand applies dramatically here in the microchasm of flight simualtion add-ons. Payware companies are not a charity and at the end-of-the-day, it is the goal of each person at each company to make a profit.Unfortunately, the flight sim add-on after-market is somewhat of a monopoly in its own right because if you don't like PMDG's prices (as an example and not an indictment of PMDG) for their 747-400, where else are you going to go? If you don't like the price of FSUIPC (also not an indictment of Pete), what else are you doing to use? Heck, MSFS is a monopoly: if you don't like FSX what are your REAL alternatives? Herein lies the conundrum.Look: You have companies like Fight1, for example, that I have to say is a GLEAMING example of the best that this community has to offer in terms of service. For example, you can ALWAYS recover your key if you lose it, redownload a product purchased 5 years ago if it is still available for free, et al. An on the inverse you have many companies that give you 5 days to download a product and then charge you for a lost key, redownload, etc. Neither is right or wrong but as a consumer I know to whom I would rather give my money if given a choice.I can honestly say that your argument not only applies to the price but also to the treatment of customers. In the REAL world, I think every single corporate and marketing department KNOWS not to let the developers anywhere near the customer service department! :-lol But here in this paradigm, the developers are often customer service also and that can get....well, "interesting" in regard to the treatment of their customers.At the end of the day sir, you are a consumer, if you don't like the way you have been treated, or the price or the color, FEEL FREE to voice your opinion. This whole, do it yourself, be nice because..., mentality is rubbish. But in the same token, remember the FS developers are a business and are under no obligation to charge a price that is satisfying to you. At that point you, the consumer, must decide for yourself your course of action. *updated for content