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neilhewitt

Giving up on Ultimate Traffic Live

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Today I flew into EDDB for the first time. Obviously it's only been open in RL for a little while, although the scenery itself (Aerosoft) was available a while back and doesn't seem especially 'modern', but unsurprisingly it's not on the UTLive 1 schedule, and there's no AI traffic there. It might be on the UTLive 2 schedule, but I doubt it, and the v2 beta is buggy as hell anyway so many people have given up on it. 

There's been literally no communication at all from the developer (or Flight1 the distributors) for six months. We were promised updated beta builds, and we got precisely nothing. This is just a repeat of the situation prior to the v2 beta, when the community had been asking for a schedule for an update for literally years and getting absolutely no response.

It's a disgrace that a commercial product can continue to be sold to users on this basis, and I've honestly had enough. So I'm moving to AIG, no matter how much pain that causes me (I looked at it once already and TBH I found it confusing as all hell and I'm a developer in RL and am used to using complicated software). 

This is such a common tale. The typical deal is that there's one lone developer, perhaps using a distributor like Flight1, and if that one developer has issues or just loses interest, the product dies. Sometimes they do come back, of course - Pro-ATC/X just got a point update after I think nearly four years of radio silence, but that's almost certainly the only update for 2021 and they still haven't fixed the problem with reading taxiway data from MakeRwys 5.x (unless anyone knows different? I got no taxiway info at ORBX EGHI today). I was on the verge of looking into using PF3 for my IFR flying and TBH I still might. 

Anyone else looking to drop UTLive 2? Any other add-ons that you rely on killed stone dead by the 'absentee developer' syndrome? All my threads tend to be 'have a rant' threads and this one is no different 🙂 Have at it!


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No rant, just nine letters..

AIGAIM OCI

Cheers,

Mark

 

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4 hours ago, neilhewitt said:

Today I flew into EDDB for the first time. Obviously it's only been open in RL for a little while, although the scenery itself (Aerosoft) was available a while back and doesn't seem especially 'modern', but unsurprisingly it's not on the UTLive 1 schedule, and there's no AI traffic there. It might be on the UTLive 2 schedule, but I doubt it, and the v2 beta is buggy as hell anyway so many people have given up on it. 

There's been literally no communication at all from the developer (or Flight1 the distributors) for six months. We were promised updated beta builds, and we got precisely nothing. This is just a repeat of the situation prior to the v2 beta, when the community had been asking for a schedule for an update for literally years and getting absolutely no response.

It's a disgrace that a commercial product can continue to be sold to users on this basis, and I've honestly had enough. So I'm moving to AIG, no matter how much pain that causes me (I looked at it once already and TBH I found it confusing as all hell and I'm a developer in RL and am used to using complicated software). 

This is such a common tale. The typical deal is that there's one lone developer, perhaps using a distributor like Flight1, and if that one developer has issues or just loses interest, the product dies. Sometimes they do come back, of course - Pro-ATC/X just got a point update after I think nearly four years of radio silence, but that's almost certainly the only update for 2021 and they still haven't fixed the problem with reading taxiway data from MakeRwys 5.x (unless anyone knows different? I got no taxiway info at ORBX EGHI today). I was on the verge of looking into using PF3 for my IFR flying and TBH I still might. 

Anyone else looking to drop UTLive 2? Any other add-ons that you rely on killed stone dead by the 'absentee developer' syndrome? All my threads tend to be 'have a rant' threads and this one is no different 🙂 Have at it!

I dropped it last week in favor of AIG AI Manager, which is very easy to use.  I have over 1200 accurate flight plans and models now, and the program lets you know when updates are available.  I'm not looking back.


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+1, with the exception of a small number of current Devs , P3d is no longer the main focus for making money , new products few and far between, updates buggy rushed out and some never coming , MSFS is the new cashcow we are down the ladder !

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9900k, RTX3080 12 GB ,maximus hero XI, Arctic Freezer 280 AIO, Phanteks Mesh case, 32GB steel series ram (3000 GHZ) , x3 Samsung Evo's 480 GB for scenery, intel 1660p 2TB nvme for P3D and addons /Scenery, Adata 480GB nvme for OS win11, 2 TB SSHD for everything else, 43" LG 4K TV for the sim(1440P) , second 27" monitor for charts/ YouTube etc. Warthog Stick, TCA ( Airbus) Throttle and Logitech  pedals, Razer keyboard and mouse, oh and a usb fan to cool me down on approach !

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9 hours ago, neilhewitt said:

Anyone else looking to drop UTLive 2? Any other add-ons that you rely on killed stone dead by the 'absentee developer' syndrome? All my threads tend to be 'have a rant' threads and this one is no different 🙂 Have at it!

it was the 2nd time he did a runner or was it a 3rd?

 

 

 

Edited by fluffyflops
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3 hours ago, sonny147 said:

new products few and far between

what's missing ..... just an update perhaps but then you enjoy your C172 don't you ??


for now, cheers

john martin

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11 hours ago, neilhewitt said:

Today I flew into EDDB for the first time. Obviously it's only been open in RL for a little while, although the scenery itself (Aerosoft) was available a while back and doesn't seem especially 'modern', but unsurprisingly it's not on the UTLive 1 schedule, and there's no AI traffic there. It might be on the UTLive 2 schedule, but I doubt it, and the v2 beta is buggy as hell anyway so many people have given up on it. 

There's been literally no communication at all from the developer (or Flight1 the distributors) for six months. We were promised updated beta builds, and we got precisely nothing. This is just a repeat of the situation prior to the v2 beta, when the community had been asking for a schedule for an update for literally years and getting absolutely no response.

It's a disgrace that a commercial product can continue to be sold to users on this basis, and I've honestly had enough. So I'm moving to AIG, no matter how much pain that causes me (I looked at it once already and TBH I found it confusing as all hell and I'm a developer in RL and am used to using complicated software). 

This is such a common tale. The typical deal is that there's one lone developer, perhaps using a distributor like Flight1, and if that one developer has issues or just loses interest, the product dies. Sometimes they do come back, of course - Pro-ATC/X just got a point update after I think nearly four years of radio silence, but that's almost certainly the only update for 2021 and they still haven't fixed the problem with reading taxiway data from MakeRwys 5.x (unless anyone knows different? I got no taxiway info at ORBX EGHI today). I was on the verge of looking into using PF3 for my IFR flying and TBH I still might. 

Anyone else looking to drop UTLive 2? Any other add-ons that you rely on killed stone dead by the 'absentee developer' syndrome? All my threads tend to be 'have a rant' threads and this one is no different 🙂 Have at it!

I know Ive mentioned it before but if you want some realism, then psxseecon / lorbylive traffic and realtraffic.

yesterday for example I followed for 13 hours my YYZ to ICN flight and step climbed when he did, taxied out behind him, and landed 5 nm behind him.  as mentioned,  all the way for 13 hours

psxseecon has now updated so you can see the flightplan to/from label and if you use Lorbi Loivve traffic with a 3 min delayed they aircraft will taxi in and out using p3d taxi logic and there you can use pro-atc x with it.

just fantastic, as mentioned before just depends how accurate you want it 

 

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2 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

it was the 2nd time he did a runner or was it a 3rd?

2nd at least.

To be fair to the guy, my understanding is that his wife has cancer. If that happened to me then my hobby job (and I assume it is a hobby job on top of a day job for him) would absolutely go by the wayside. The point is that a) there ought to be more than one developer for a commercial product, there ought to be a succession plan so someone else can take over, and b) the publisher should keep customers informed. I'm not saying we need intimate details, but a notice saying 'the developer is unavailable for personal reasons and there will be no further development on this product until notified otherwise' would let people make their own decision about how to proceed. But Flight1 doesn't want to lose the customer base for the product, so they say nothing instead, and they expect that we'll get used to this. Well, sod that.

Pro-ATC/X is a slightly different case because, AFAIK, PointSoft owns the product and so the publisher is also the creator. The developer had a bad accident of some description requiring extended convalescence. But there's a long-standing policy there of not replying to any requests for information about when or if things will be fixed / added / released. The project manager gets very tetchy when people ask for updates and has in the past put out posts saying 'we will not say anything until we're done, so stop asking'. Months to actual years can go by without any official post or update from the PointSoft team, the forum moderators are as in the dark as the users, and the actual developer never goes on the forum that I can see. Obviously he came back at some point and started work again but no idea how long ago that was, and the usual practice there is to release one point update per year and there is usually total radio silence until this happens. There's a beta test group who I guess know more but they certainly never comment on the forum and I would imagine saying anything would be grounds for excommunication from the group. Everyone else just has to put up with it or go elsewhere. 

When you charge money for something, you create an expectation (and you have obligations in law). Some flight sim developers fail to live up to the expectations of their customers and by and large they seem to regard that as the customer's problem. In a free market with competition you can vote with your feet. But quite often an add-on is the only game in town, or at least the only one that will work for you, so you're basically a captive audience and quite frankly they know it. They live in this halfway house between 'personal project with no expectations, use it if you like but no promises' (which is fine) and 'fully commercial product with a proper support organisation behind it' (which is also fine, not that most customer service organisations are any good anyway... they're not!), where you're paying money but you're not getting the service you would normally expect when you do.

At the end of the day, it would cost Flight1 and PointSoft little to nothing to give meaningful updates on a regular basis about their development progress. Yes, people whining about 'is it done yet' on your forums are annoying. But that's the cost of doing business. Or at least, it should be. 

Of course, the company we all rely on here, Lockheed Martin, is nearly as bad. No official support is provided with your (potentially very expensive) purchase, so you have precisely zero right to expect any replies / updates / info at the official forums. Now of course LM staff do reply, but only when it really suits them to do so. If the sim vendors are doing it, can we be so surprised when the 3rd party devs do it too?

Sigh. Sometimes I hate this hobby. I mean, I don't, but you know what I mean...

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Temporary sim: 9700K @ 5GHz, 2TB NVMe SSD, RTX 3080Ti, MSFS + SPAD.NeXT

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There’s an old saying, “The difference between the way things are and the way you think they should be is a measure of your sanity.”

I’m closing that gap, slowly. Flight simming is the training tool.😎

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Meanwhile... I'm trying to install flightplans in AIG with OCI but it's not exactly one click really, is it? I keep getting 'cannot download this file automatically' and then I have to go manually download from MediaFire or some other useless download site and manually select the file. I get that AI are putting together lots of resources out there on the internet, but is there a list anywhere of the stuff that will just download and install with one click? Because I'd like to just get those first. 

Grrr. It's not been a fun day so far!


Temporary sim: 9700K @ 5GHz, 2TB NVMe SSD, RTX 3080Ti, MSFS + SPAD.NeXT

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3 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

I know Ive mentioned it before but if you want some realism, then psxseecon / lorbylive traffic and realtraffic.

yesterday for example I followed for 13 hours my YYZ to ICN flight and step climbed when he did, taxied out behind him, and landed 5 nm behind him.  as mentioned,  all the way for 13 hours

psxseecon has now updated so you can see the flightplan to/from label and if you use Lorbi Loivve traffic with a 3 min delayed they aircraft will taxi in and out using p3d taxi logic and there you can use pro-atc x with it.

just fantastic, as mentioned before just depends how accurate you want it 

Yeah, I've had PSXSeecon working before with Real Traffic but Lorby Live Traffic as a data provider is new to me. Getting the ATC integration would be the final hurdle holding me back. I will check it out!


Temporary sim: 9700K @ 5GHz, 2TB NVMe SSD, RTX 3080Ti, MSFS + SPAD.NeXT

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47 minutes ago, neilhewitt said:

Meanwhile... I'm trying to install flightplans in AIG with OCI but it's not exactly one click really, is it? I keep getting 'cannot download this file automatically' and then I have to go manually download from MediaFire or some other useless download site and manually select the file. I get that AI are putting together lots of resources out there on the internet, but is there a list anywhere of the stuff that will just download and install with one click? Because I'd like to just get those first. 

Grrr. It's not been a fun day so far!

You can select "skip manual download" before you run a Bulk Installation process in OCI.


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Really is worth the effort though !. Took me 2 or 3 times to get installed properly now no looking back !


9900k, RTX3080 12 GB ,maximus hero XI, Arctic Freezer 280 AIO, Phanteks Mesh case, 32GB steel series ram (3000 GHZ) , x3 Samsung Evo's 480 GB for scenery, intel 1660p 2TB nvme for P3D and addons /Scenery, Adata 480GB nvme for OS win11, 2 TB SSHD for everything else, 43" LG 4K TV for the sim(1440P) , second 27" monitor for charts/ YouTube etc. Warthog Stick, TCA ( Airbus) Throttle and Logitech  pedals, Razer keyboard and mouse, oh and a usb fan to cool me down on approach !

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2 hours ago, Kaiii3 said:

You can select "skip manual download" before you run a Bulk Installation process in OCI.

Hi Kaiii3.

Yes, I did select that. I still got prompted to do a manual download of the file 'AITRSP_v1.8.zip'. Once I did that manually, I was OK. 

I've got the installer running now hands-free. 

NH


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yeah, that will is required for all models so you need to get it, OCI is currently not able to install sounds after a model is already installed.


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