Just flight BAe 146

[Dereksmalls 36]

8 hours ago, Chock said:

I'm just not a fan of the 'we promise we'll finish it later' approach to software releases these days.

It has become the norm in many respects, whereas can you imagine if that was the case for any other business? 'Yeah I know your new car is supposed to have a back seat, but we promise, it's coming and in the meantime it doesn't stop you from driving it, or carrying passengers so long as they sit on a cushion. And yeah I know it doesn't have a speedometer yet, but that's coming soon as well, and in any case, if you follow the other cars and match their speed, you can assume you're doing 30 mph, right?' 🤣

Except it IS finished. The new car analogy is a bit off beam here, but, if you must. It comes with a standard radio. If you want an aftermarket stereo we'll fit one later FOC - just as soon as we get some stock from Sony. 
If it had promised a custom FMC from the off and that had not materialised at the time of release, then you may have a point. However as I (and Dan over at.org) has explained, that's not the case. 

[Chock 17,769]

2 hours ago, Dereksmalls said:

Except it IS finished. The new car analogy is a bit off beam here, but, if you must. It comes with a standard radio. If you want an aftermarket stereo we'll fit one later FOC - just as soon as we get some stock from Sony. 
If it had promised a custom FMC from the off and that had not materialised at the time of release, then you may have a point. However as I (and Dan over at.org) has explained, that's not the case. 

Well, if your idea of 'finished' is a description on the product page which states that feature is going to be added 'as soon as possible after release' (their words, not mine), then I'll agree to differ with you.

[Janov 2,383]

I am not sure I can follow your logic here, Chock.

If you are paying the price for an addon at any rate - would you not get MORE value if you can fly it for a while without the custom FMC right now...and then continue to fly it later on WITH the FMC?

As opposed to only buying it only later when the FMC is in it (and not having it right now)?

I mean, yeah, if you get a lot of interest on the money you save while you wait, maybe, but then I´d like to know the bank that pays you that kind of interest these days 🙂

Cheers, Jan

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Janov

[mjrhealth 820]

26 minutes ago, Chock said:

Well, if your idea of 'finished' is a description on the product page which states that feature is going to be added 'as soon as possible after release' (their words, not mine), then I'll agree to differ with you.

We demand realism than when you get realsim you want it modified to make it what it never was, so much complaining im tired of it all, just the pathetic world we live in. I demand it because I deserve it and I demand it now,,, at no cost...

[Janov 2,383]

I mean - flying the Bae 146 without a custom FMC would be like using a Flight Simulator without replay system or particles or helicopters and enjoying it (while waiting for those promised features to be added "soon" tm) 🙄.

PS: Not meant to "bash" any flight simulator, just an example for how futile it is in todays world to insist on only buying "finished" software.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Janov

[Chock 17,769]

26 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

We demand realism than when you get realsim you want it modified to make it what it never was, so much complaining im tired of it all, just the pathetic world we live in. I demand it because I deserve it and I demand it now,,, at no cost...

I'm not demanding anything and it should be even more apparent that I'm not demanding anything at no cost if you actually bother to read my comments on this thread, instead of simply lobbing a straw man at me.

Because I pointed out that a 55 quid add-on aeroplane (i.e. not a complaint about wanting something for no cost) should probably not be using default features and when it is stated in the product description (i.e. not a demand, a reference to a forthcoming feature listed on the actual product page) that it is going to get those features, then it's probably not a bad idea to wait until those features are finished before releasing it.

This is not a difficult concept to understand, but feel free to ignore my comments if you are tired of all this and that, and particularly if you cannot even be bothered to read someone's comments before attempting to address them, as is quite evidently the case with your comment.

There's enough 'we'll finish later, we promise' going on with MSFS add-ons without the concept migrating to XPlane too. The moving goalposts of XPlane used to be the excuse for why there wasn't much payware for it years ago, but as a stable target platform for developers, it's positively tectonic compared to MSFS these days, so there is no excuse for knocking out products with missing features for it just because 'it's what people are used to'.

If you think this sort of thing is acceptable, then I've got a nice house you can buy off me. It's currently some bricks, in the brickyard, which I haven't bought yet, but I promise it will be lovely when I finish it, so feel free to give me the money for that house now and I'll get it built just as soon as I draw up a blueprint and learn how to build a house and buy a plot of land to put it on and buy the bricks and all the other stuff necessary to make it.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Chock

[peroni 541]

28 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

We demand realism than when you get realsim you want it modified to make it what it never was, so much complaining im tired of it all, just the pathetic world we live in. I demand it because I deserve it and I demand it now,,, at no cost...

Nothing personal mjrhealth but you've been writing this same sentence in pretty much every other x-plane related thread and often with poor grammar, do you ever proof read before posting?

 

[Dereksmalls 36]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

If you think this sort of thing is acceptable, then I've got a nice house you can buy off me. It's currently some bricks, in the brickyard, which I haven't bought yet, but I promise it will be lovely when I finish it, so feel free to give me the money for that house now and I'll get it built just as soon as I draw up a blueprint and learn how to build a house and buy a plot of land to put it on and buy the bricks and all the other stuff necessary to make it.

Yes, a house that hasn't been built and a some DLC (that has been built) for a computer game is exactly the same thing. Perhaps instead of 'Custom FMC in progress' it should have been described as 'off plan'. 

What you're describing is crowd funding to finance development. What's being offered is not that. However, this is clearly not an argument anyone is going to win, so fair enough. You have dodged the costly bullet fired by Just Flight and Thranda, so well done. 

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Dereksmalls

[jarmstro 2,402]

5 hours ago, Janov said:

I mean - flying the Bae 146 without a custom FMC would be like using a Flight Simulator without replay system or particles or helicopters and enjoying it (while waiting for those promised features to be added "soon" tm) 🙄.

PS: Not meant to "bash" any flight simulator, just an example for how futile it is in todays world to insist on only buying "finished" software.

Nevertheless I'm not buying it with the default FMC. Or are you demanding I must buy it?

Edited April 30, 2021 by jarmstro

[jarmstro 2,402]

4 hours ago, Dereksmalls said:

Yes, a house that hasn't been built and a some DLC (that has been built) for a computer game is exactly the same thing. Perhaps instead of 'Custom FMC in progress' it should have been described as 'off plan'. 

What you're describing is crowd funding to finance development. What's being offered is not that. However, this is clearly not an argument anyone is going to win, so fair enough. You have dodged the costly bullet fired by Just Flight and Thranda, so well done. 

 

Derek. When will the custom FMC be available? Roughly. Weeks? Months?

[jon b 2,041]

Not wanting to speak for Derek of course, but to answer your question, he wrote this on page 1 of this thread yesterday.....

It will be finished soon (weeks, rather than months or years) 

 

[Dereksmalls 36]

19 hours ago, Dereksmalls said:

Worth clarifying the gestation of this one. 

It was never intended to have a custom FMC, on the basis that the default one in X-Plane was (based on customer feedback) more than adequate - given the real aircraft didn't ship with one. 

However, once we announced the project and started previewing it, we received a load more (contradictory) feedback saying that a custom FMC was a necessity. So, "in response to popular demand" (as they say) we commissioned an FMC and this is in progress now. It will be finished soon (weeks, rather than months or years) and offered as a free add-on for Feedback Group 2. Meanwhile, to satisfy Feedback Group 1, we have released the '146 - As Nature Intended' version. This is finished and, as far as we are concerned, it is a very faithful representation of the aircraft. It certainly isn't 'early access', or, as seems to be the mot du jour, 'a cash grab'. It's complete and any minor bugs that appear will be addressed asap - as normal. 

Hopefully this approach will satisfy both groups. 

@jarmstro - see earlier post. 

[mjrhealth 820]

10 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

We demand realism than when you get realsim you want it modified to make it what it never was, so much complaining im tired of it all, just the pathetic world we live in. I demand it because I deserve it and I demand it now,,, at no cost...

And nothing changes no matter how much time or effort is put into a product people whine and complain about this and that, if you dont like it dont buy it,I am actually quiet surprised we havnt lost more developers due to teh absurd number of complaints. As for my grammer if thats all you have to pick on I guess I hit a nerve,

[danklaue 65]

On 4/29/2021 at 1:47 PM, Chock said:

this is still marketing-speak for 'we've not finished it, and hopefully we'll get around to it, but in the meantime please can we have your money?'.

I can sympathize with the sentiment here.  It's frustrating.  And from an end-user's perspective, this may really just seem like greed and an unwillingness to truly serve our clientele.

But maybe there's another side of developers that end-users don't often get a glimpse into: the risk in some of the investments we make, and the tremendous losses we sometimes go through, if a product we've been working on for years doesn't end up working out.  Tens of thousands of dollars, and months, sometimes years, have been sunk into projects that didn't make it to market.  I've had several situations where I had an aircraft 70-90% done, only to see a competitor swoop in and publish their own version of exactly that plane.  (With one project, this even happened TWICE!  I thought I could still release a plane that was pretty far along, after someone else published that exact plane, weeks before I thought I'd publish mine... only to have a FURTHER competitor publish their version of that plane a short time later.)

And especially stepping from smaller GA aircraft to the bigger planes, it's not just more complexity, longer development times, bigger up-front investments, and more stress that we also have to deal with, but also a psychological preparedness to absorb an onslaught of criticism, dissatisfaction, trolling, etc, as these larger projects don't just attract MORE people, they also attract a different crowd.  So you may well think that that's all more than compensated for by the increased price of the product, that us dev's will get our investments back, no problem... but ESPECIALLY in this economic climate right now, a big plane, towards the end of a sim run, with MSFS2020 having just recently made this market more volatile, it is hard to be able to gauge whether you'll even survive as a company, and be able to retain your team members, if you make the wrong choice here.  Smaller planes represent a more manageable up-front investment, and you can make a lower percentage of your success depend on each product.

So I do appreciate that some people in this thread seem to understand that the choice to publish an aircraft that IRL originally didn't even have an FMS, with X-plane's default FMS integrated, and with a decision having been made to seek to satisfy the apparent desire expressed by our potential clients to equip the plane with a custom FMS, is (to put it mildly), somewhat mis-characterized by what Chock expressed above.  

Like every business, we tend to spend a lot of time considering carefully what sorts of directions we would like to go in our entrepreneurship; and ROI isn't the only criteria either.  If our deliberations keep coming back to "Big plane customers are a tough crowd", or "The up-front investment is huge, and the return is risky", or "We could just stick to what we know, because we know it works"... then you'll see us make decisions accordingly.  We generally enjoy what we do, but some people on the forums do tend to demand more grit from us, if we consider the notion of trying to cater to such an audience.

We took a risk with this plane.  Time will tell if it was a good bet or not... and by what dev's choose to consider worthwhile, it may help reflect on how forums and actual customers (and their attitudes) can shape the type of market you'll end up getting.

[mjrhealth 820]

7 hours ago, danklaue said:

I can sympathize with the sentiment here.  It's frustrating.  And from an end-user's perspective, this may really just seem like greed and an unwillingness to truly serve our clientele.

But maybe there's another side of developers that end-users don't often get a glimpse into: the risk in some of the investments we make, and the tremendous losses we sometimes go through, if a product we've been working on for years doesn't end up working out.  Tens of thousands of dollars, and months, sometimes years, have been sunk into projects that didn't make it to market.  I've had several situations where I had an aircraft 70-90% done, only to see a competitor swoop in and publish their own version of exactly that plane.  (With one project, this even happened TWICE!  I thought I could still release a plane that was pretty far along, after someone else published that exact plane, weeks before I thought I'd publish mine... only to have a FURTHER competitor publish their version of that plane a short time later.)

And especially stepping from smaller GA aircraft to the bigger planes, it's not just more complexity, longer development times, bigger up-front investments, and more stress that we also have to deal with, but also a psychological preparedness to absorb an onslaught of criticism, dissatisfaction, trolling, etc, as these larger projects don't just attract MORE people, they also attract a different crowd.  So you may well think that that's all more than compensated for by the increased price of the product, that us dev's will get our investments back, no problem... but ESPECIALLY in this economic climate right now, a big plane, towards the end of a sim run, with MSFS2020 having just recently made this market more volatile, it is hard to be able to gauge whether you'll even survive as a company, and be able to retain your team members, if you make the wrong choice here.  Smaller planes represent a more manageable up-front investment, and you can make a lower percentage of your success depend on each product.

So I do appreciate that some people in this thread seem to understand that the choice to publish an aircraft that IRL originally didn't even have an FMS, with X-plane's default FMS integrated, and with a decision having been made to seek to satisfy the apparent desire expressed by our potential clients to equip the plane with a custom FMS, is (to put it mildly), somewhat mis-characterized by what Chock expressed above.  

Like every business, we tend to spend a lot of time considering carefully what sorts of directions we would like to go in our entrepreneurship; and ROI isn't the only criteria either.  If our deliberations keep coming back to "Big plane customers are a tough crowd", or "The up-front investment is huge, and the return is risky", or "We could just stick to what we know, because we know it works"... then you'll see us make decisions accordingly.  We generally enjoy what we do, but some people on the forums do tend to demand more grit from us, if we consider the notion of trying to cater to such an audience.

We took a risk with this plane.  Time will tell if it was a good bet or not... and by what dev's choose to consider worthwhile, it may help reflect on how forums and actual customers (and their attitudes) can shape the type of market you'll end up getting.

And you know why I love this plane, its not a boeing nor an airbus thats all you get these days. No one flies planes they fly them selves. Nice to have something different.