Good day, jokes aside (in the title), I've been into flight simulation since my Commodore 64 days. I have no education around software development or the economics involved. This is not a developer "whipping" exercise, but throughout Avsim, I have seen many questions or queries regarding projects for platforms other than MSFS which have not been developed or advanced as originally advertised or where there is confusion as to whether a particular project will ever go ahead. I thought we could maybe post here, and the respective developers could "chime in" and give us their perspective? Examples: Latest UGCX, still in Beta since last year, although the MSFS version - PushBack Express (which was released much later) is being constantly updated and has more features. Concorde FSL, etc. Hopefully we can centralize this discussion to get more meaningful feedback from the developers. Regards.

There is a strange sense of entitlement in the flight simulation field. People don't lobby Ford for a model that suits their individual need, they wait for the new model and then choose from the options available. Over here, every day there are demands for this, that and the other, as if the developers have a duty to pander to every whim. Any individual or business that relies on income will need to make products that appeal to the largest possible market and if that involves a change in direction then that must be. Ford don't make products that they know that very few people will buy and payware flight simulation developers should not be expected to either.

 

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Reader

2 hours ago, Reader said:

There is a strange sense of entitlement in the flight simulation field. People don't lobby Ford for a model that suits their individual need, they wait for the new model and then choose from the options available. Over here, every day there are demands for this, that and the other, as if the developers have a duty to pander to every whim. Any individual or business that relies on income will need to make products that appeal to the largest possible market and if that involves a change in direction then that must be. Ford don't make products that they know that very few people will buy and payware flight simulation developers should not be expected to either.

 

Agreed. As I stated, I am not into the economics of development. More into the "hype" from developers regarding the future their product which sways customers into purchasing said product, only to find out there is no future! It's not about entitlement, It's about holding developers to account based on their original sales talk. With regards to your analogy, customers have bought the "Ford" already which perfectly suited their needs. Just the advertised "at time of purchase" free future modifications and tuning are not forthcoming. Regards.

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Peter Webber

1 hour ago, Peter Webber said:

Agreed. As I stated, I am not into the economics of development. More into the "hype" from developers regarding the future their product which sways customers into purchasing said product, only to find out there is no future! It's not about entitlement, It's about holding developers to account based on their original sales talk. With regards to your analogy, customers have bought the "Ford" already which perfectly suited their needs. Just the advertised "at time of purchase" free future modifications and tuning are not forthcoming. Regards.

There is no "holding developers to account based on their original sales talk"   They owe us nothing.  If they change their sales model, change their mind or change their dev roadmap at the end of the day they owe us nothing.  Furthermore, if they aren't updating this information on their own pages/forums what makes you think starting a thread on Avsim to "hold them accountable" for their "Hype" will entice them to come divulge their plans here?  Doesn't seem to me that if they've failed to update elsewhere that starting a thread here "will hold them accountable" 

 

13 minutes ago, psolk said:

There is no "holding developers to account based on their original sales talk"   They owe us nothing.  If they change their sales model, change their mind or change their dev roadmap at the end of the day they owe us nothing.  Furthermore, if they aren't updating this information on their own pages/forums what makes you think starting a thread on Avsim to "hold them accountable" for their "Hype" will entice them to come divulge their plans here?  Doesn't seem to me that if they've failed to update elsewhere that starting a thread here "will hold them accountable" 

 

Maybe you misunderstand (my bad), or maybe I'm not being clear. This is not an accountability thread...wrongly worded from my side. This is to clear up and centralize the questions which users have over their previously purchased products. For example, an Avsim user has purchased product "X" based on the advertising hype and roadmap from the developer of product "X".  To the developer: what is your new roadmap with product "X"? Has it now changed from your original advetisement upon release? Will you be updating in the future, or has your development plans changed? That's it. Just so we can determine the changes in their roadmaps since release. There are so many questions out there in this regard. Was hoping to keep it in one thread. If their roadmap has changed, why should they be so "shy" on telling us? Regards.

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Peter Webber

The questions you raise would make good a FSElite or Threshold article however many developers have already discussed their plans in their own forums and I don't see how you expect any of them to respond to a thread here with such a childish title.

It's been 14 months since they put this up for sale as an early access flight game (May 2020).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/980770/Flying_Circus/

Here's another one some guys set a lot of hope into:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/771800/Deadstick__Bush_Flight_Simulator/

It's on hold indefinitely now, officially.

Kind regards, Michael.

There are certain business decisions you have to take sometimes in order to "Survive". Developing costs are quite high, the cost to develop "anything" keeps increasing over time due to constant changes in technology which makes our jobs harder since:

• New technology doesn't get documented properly, therefore you are left in a situation where you need to re-verse engineer everything these days to get something done. This can leads to months of delays just to get something updated.
   
• New technology gets always rushed due to competition pressure, this lead to us as "Software developers" with just facing bugs / faults which constantly get in the way of productivity. So a simple task becomes a multi days struggle. For example Visual Studio faults that keep crashing to desktop, losing your work and slowing down your progress, platform being developed is constantly changing also, which will be also have bugs.. for example MSFS, P3D or XP performing random CTD during your developing process forcing you to re-start the sim over 100 times a day..
  
  it is the rule of thumb that something that could take you 20 seconds to accomplish, it will really take you 20 minutes in one of you very good days.. even longer sometimes.. recently I was playing with a new feature implemented by one of the simulators and a task i do normally in about 5 hours, well took me 7 days to accomplish!. 
   
• Our development tools costs also keep increasing regardless of number of sales.
   
• Our accountants or government tax department doesn't care about such struggles or our number of sales, they still want their corporate tax and their accounting cost to be PAID on time.
   
• Despite of all these facts.. users want actually to pay less for software, so this put more pressure to software developers since they need to have a ROI (Return of Investment) that covers all the cost, keep the business running, feed your family, pay your electricity, gas, etc. a cost that increases every year like for anybody else.. so you want to do a project that gives you the best benefit vs effort put into it..

So yea, some developers decided they need to drop projects to keep their business alive.. if you analyse the market situation and all the struggles you shouldn't be surprised.. is like asking a farmer why you stopped bringing apples to this market when everyone is buying oranges..

Regards,
S. 

Edited July 14, 20214 yr by simbol