7 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

If you expand your target market to a population that's not familiar with the product and its use, your support tail quickly gets much longer.

Hmm. But you have like plenty of tutorials that are covering all the basics to advance, for every kinda of add-on PMDG DC-6, Concorde .. etc. With these tons of contents, not sure why you think there will be longer support tail.

Most dev's support is pretty sparse anyway, especially the larger outfits who dont seem to worry much about giving support these days.
Bash one out and carry on with hyping up the next one seems to be the current M.O.

Come to think of it, its always been like that

Edited April 14, 20224 yr by Pathfinder633

4 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

Hmm. But you have like plenty of tutorials that are covering all the basics to advance, for every kinda of add-on PMDG DC-6, Concorde .. etc. With these tons of contents, not sure why you think there will be longer support tail.

Have you ever workd in software development and had users to support? 🙂

 

You won't believe what kind of questions you will get. And if you add more dummies - it will get insane.

5 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

With these tons of contents, not sure why you think there will be longer support tail.

I work in IT support much of the time.  This Dutch video is pretty much exactly what working in IT support is like.

 

10 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

The aircraft about to be released (Just Flight BAe 146, the Maddog, PMDG 737)  will all need to be 'studied' before the first flight, otherwise those simulated aircraft are going nowhere.  Why does the term 'study level' annoy you?  To me it is just a term picked up in the flight sim world to mean a high fidelity simulated aircraft.  If I see an aircraft referred to as 'study level', I know I'm getting a comprehensive product with a nice thick manual 🙂

Myself and probably many others have yet study anything to play a game or sim.

It's a completely ridiculous term for a an aircraft in a game. A Level D simulator might be called study level.

I just consider the PMDG no different than all the rest. The hype train has one believing if you can fly it on a PC you can fly it in real life. This is not even close to accurate.

Many, many features, and systems of real aircraft are not replicated on these so called "study level" aircraft.

My belief plays into why many of these products are over priced,

Simply one's opinion, Your entitled to yours. 

10 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

. . . with a nice thick manual

Chance would be a fine thing. Showing my age here no doubt, and I fully understand why it's not done anymore (although knowing the reasons doesn't justify it for me), but I miss the whole real paper manual thing. And not just for things like sim aircraft. (cue rambling monologue about the good old days etc)

15 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

A gamer who will potentially be a simmer. Let’s get this classes out of Avsim 

I agree.  Every simmer started somewhere.  I started with FS5.0 - it wasn't till FS98 that I knew what a VOR even was.

19 minutes ago, tpete61 said:

Myself and probably many others have yet study anything to play a game or sim.

It's a completely ridiculous term for a an aircraft in a game. A Level D simulator might be called study level.

I just consider the PMDG no different than all the rest. The hype train has one believing if you can fly it on a PC you can fly it in real life. This is not even close to accurate.

Many, many features, and systems of real aircraft are not replicated on these so called "study level" aircraft.

My belief plays into why many of these products are over priced,

Simply one's opinion, Your entitled to yours. 

I don't consider 'study level' to mean I could fly the real aircraft, just an indication the developers have made an attempt to model more systems than the average aircraft release.  

I find it hard to believe you don't have to study included manuals in a complex addon to operate it correctly.  What term would you prefer to use for such an aircraft?

1 hour ago, tpete61 said:

Many, many features, and systems of real aircraft are not replicated on these so called "study level" aircraft.

This sounds like a statement of fact, not opinion, so could you please be more specific by providing examples?

Thanks.

15 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I judge the use I'm going to get out of a product to judge its value.  I'll be buying the Just Flight 146 and was more than willing to pay the $79.  If I use it 50 times I'll be paying $1.58 per flight - bargain for several hours of entertainment. If the documentation that comes with it is also comprehensive and the company offers fixes/updates, then that makes $79 very good value imho.

Of course there will be buyers of the Just Flight at $79.  You are one.  But then there would be a lot of people that won't buy it as well.  That's a lot of lost revenue for Just Flight.

In addition, look at Sunshine13's comment.  Sunshine13 spent 3500 dollars on their computer.  But even though Sunshine13 spent that much money on the computer, he/she is still on a budget and he/she would prefer prices of high fidelity planes to go no more than $59.99.  The Just Flight BAe 146 is close enough to that range, but the TDFi MD11 is not within that range.  So Just Flight may get Sunshine13's business, but TDFi may miss out on Sunshine13's business.

This doesn't mean all 3rd party developers of high fidelity planes should lower their price just to get more sales. But if all the other high fidelity planes are going for roughly $60 to $70, and TDFi prices theirs at $90, many customers will take notice and probably skip the TDFi MD11.

Edited April 14, 20224 yr by abrams_tank

5 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

I work in IT support much of the time.  This Dutch video is pretty much exactly what working in IT support is like.

 

It's not a Dutch video  but were just as funny.

15 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I judge the use I'm going to get out of a product to judge its value.  I'll be buying the Just Flight 146 and was more than willing to pay the $79.  If I use it 50 times I'll be paying $1.58 per flight - bargain for several hours of entertainment. If the documentation that comes with it is also comprehensive and the company offers fixes/updates, then that makes $79 very good value imho.

I tend to agree with this, I paid somewhere around US$140.00 for the PMDG 747 in PMDG, but I spent hundreds of hours learning, reading about, and flying that plane on simulated mission after simulated mission. It motivated me to learn about its history, the airlines that flew and continue to fly it, the work involved in converting to a BCF. The value I feel I got out of that plane was far more than the price I paid, and if PMDG charges US$130.00 dollars for the 737, I would also likely pay it, because I again know I will have a well built piece of software, that receives basically good support and from which I will get hundreds of hours of use over the coming years. I also appreciate that developing software is not an easy thing to do, it is time consuming, the support is time consuming, and developers do need to be compensated for the work.

I also agree, however, that not everyone is me with my interests, etc., who will view the value they get from the plane in this way. Not everyone uses the simulator in the same way. So, the question is not really the size of the total market, it is the number of people who see value in a particular piece of software -- in this case an aircraft with many systems modelled -- by a particular developer with a certain reputation. I do not know how many people are like me, but I suspect a developer like PMDG has a better sense of that.

This said, I certainly think add-on prices should and will fall in MSFS. I also think TFDI is priced high, but not in an absolute way but because TFDI to me has yet to prove itself. They are not PMDG or Leonardo. They have one such release and that 717, which did not have many failures modeled sat for months and months in my hanger because it would crash almost every time I changed views and it took them forever to sort the problem. I hardly used it in the end and so even today do not feel I got value from that plane equal to what I spent. I also have less interest in an MD-11 compared to a 737 or 747 so it also is not as attractive to me at a higher price, but again this is me. Many others have been wafting years for a MD-11 and will likely pay much higher than I would be willing to do. 

5 hours ago, jrw4 said:

This sounds like a statement of fact, not opinion, so could you please be more specific by providing examples?

Thanks.

Seriously????

Circuit Breaker Panels inoperative, Hydraulics Systems not replicated only basic simulation. I could make a lengthy list.

It is absolutely a statement of FACT!

14 minutes ago, tpete61 said:

Seriously????

Circuit Breaker Panels inoperative, Hydraulics Systems not replicated only basic simulation. I could make a lengthy list.

It is absolutely a statement of FACT!

Seriously? Circuit breakers? Surely we can do better than that. While some add-ons don't simulate full electrical and subsystems, others do. Here's one example taken from X-Plane:

Quote

Fully custom electrical system. Simulation of all buses, switching behaviors and reconfigurations. Full circuit breaker system, integrated with the X-Plane failure system, so a failed or failing system can pop a breaker.

No one would argue that these desktop sim add-ons are fully fledged engineering models, but they're perfectly adequate for amateurs and many professionals to use for learning purposes.

Edited April 14, 20224 yr by jrw4
Added last phrase

47 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

No one would argue that these desktop sim add-ons are fully fledged engineering models, but they're perfectly adequate for amateurs and many professionals to use for learning purposes.

...and that learning process requires study.  As you say, nobody is suggesting 'study level' means the systems are modelled to 100% realism, but the term does suggest the addon simulates more systems than the average aircraft model - say the name PMDG and the customer already has an idea the addon will simulate a lot of systems.  Mention Carenado and customers will know the aircraft will not deeply simulate systems, but will be a fantastic looking aircraft.

'Study Level' is a relevant term for us simmers to gauge what the product is going to contain.