I have been bitten by Early Access and also rewarded with some great products (both Flight Sim and general gaming.) 

The 414AW from Flysimware comes to mind as a positive. 
 

This is a funding model, plain and simple and depends if the consumer buys into the promises and ambitions of the dev. It is clear that with the popularity of MSFS, we will see more talented developers enter the market that don’t have deep pockets to sustain a long development cycle and this is an attractive way of getting products to shelf. 
 

Personally, I will hold off for a month or 3 to see if the ambitions and roadmap is showing the right trajectory. 

Wait - did everyone miss the CruiseLevel stream, where there was this gem?

on VNAV: “simply wait for the final version if you’re too lazy to think about all these kind of things.”

on pricing and EA: "In terms of pricing, the FlightSim Studio’s eJets E175 will start from around €33.00. However, the price will increase as the aircraft gets new features. There’s no upper price disclosed at this point, nor when the pricing will change."\

on delusion if you actually watched the stream: "Most of the systems are already implemented at an extensive detail level. However, other important features are still missing, so we continue to release updates on a regular basis."

1 hour ago, bendead said:

This case looks a lot like Airsimmer.

-

which was another pay to beta mess

as is/was captainsim  (who started pay to beta years ago in fsx)

as well as blackbox 

as well as ultimate traffic 1 and 2 

as well as global traffic 

as well as flight factor 

as well as xp12 

see where is this going ?????

 

Kinda disappointed, but...

1. There is no alternative.  Ouroboros?  Crickets.

2. I spent 33 euro on lunch yesterday.

3. The project looks promising enough. The modeling looks good.  The systems are custom. The airplane is flying and following the FMS.  Taking off with no issues, no wacky handling bugs, landing nice.

I will be an early adopter.  

 

2 minutes ago, mspencer said:

Wait - did everyone miss the CruiseLevel stream, where there was this gem?

on VNAV: “simply wait for the final version if you’re too lazy to think about all these kind of things.”

on pricing and EA: "In terms of pricing, the FlightSim Studio’s eJets E175 will start from around €33.00. However, the price will increase as the aircraft gets new features. There’s no upper price disclosed at this point, nor when the pricing will change."\

on delusion if you actually watched the stream: "Most of the systems are already implemented at an extensive detail level. However, other important features are still missing, so we continue to release updates on a regular basis."

I can respect the level of work required to get even a rudimentary VNAV working .. Hell, look at FBW  which is still missing "Final App" and still occasionally miss constraints ... But one thing i dont expect any dev to do is put down its potential userbase and their expectations. Lazy ?

oh ok ... no prob. Ill keep my lazy money

I see early access as devs’ desperation for quick cash. Same thing TFDi did with the MD-11 pre-order. What they did screamed ‘We ran out of money’. The main problem is abusing people’s trust that one day it will get better, where there are zero guarantees of this. And if they don’t improve, it doesn’t matter to the devs, because they already have the money and won’t have to refund.

In the MSFS forum, I warned people about encouraging pre-sales/early access. Soon or later, a criminal will appear promising a study-level aircraft, release edited screenshots to convince of the quality, open a pre-sale or release an ‘early access’ saying the full version will come later. Then he disappears with money from the suckers who bought the addon. It’s only a matter of time before it appears.

I checked the FSS website to see the roadmap. I ended up finding that it's not a roadmap. Roadmap is a clear forecast of when which feature will be released. What they have instead is a wishlist, where people can vote on which feature they want implemented. Despite this voting system, there is no guarantee that FSS will prioritize the most voted.

The number and the features on that wishlist is scary. Keep in mind that these are all missing features, with zero guarantees that they will ever be implemented. With so many missing features, I asked: So what features does this addon have anyway?

Even for an early access, this aircraft is at a very early stage. I wouldn't even call it a beta. Looks more like an alpha. We'll see the commitment of FSS devs to improve this aircraft, but it's not a good start one of the devs to belittle features like VNAV, with the justification that 'nobody uses it in real life'. VNAV is currently the most voted feature on the wishlist, so I'm curious to know what they're going to do about it. They will only have my money when they have a functional aircraft for my standards.

 

 

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, edu2703 said:

I see early access as devs’ desperation for quick cash. Same thing TFDi did with the MD-11 pre-order. What they did screamed ‘We ran out of money’.

The situation is very different.

This is early access, giving you an incomplete product for a price, but it doesn't do anything to actually compel the customer to buy immediately or before they're fully satisfied by the state of the project. You can buy it on the 10th or 10 seconds before release and you're getting exactly the same thing at the same price. 

TFDi's is a pre-purchase in which you pay and get absolutely nothing for a while. On top of that, they added exclusive parts of the product that you can't get in any other way to take advantage of the FOMO (fear of missing out) effect and compel people to purchase immediately. That's a pretty clear cut shady marketing practice. 

Like it or not, early access is a thing and it isn't going anywhere. It exploded years ago in the larger gaming industry and it has already been used successfully in the flight sim industry as well. You may want, for your own sanity, to accept it. Because it's gonna keep going, get bigger, and most probably produce s*it and good products in equal measure. It's on us to make informed decisions on which products to buy and which ones to ignore so that we enjoy the good ones and dodge the s*it.

Edited January 6, 20233 yr by Abriael

24 minutes ago, aniiran said:

Kinda disappointed, but...

1. There is no alternative.  Ouroboros?  Crickets.

2. I spent 33 euro on lunch yesterday.

3. The project looks promising enough. The modeling looks good.  The systems are custom. The airplane is flying and following the FMS.  Taking off with no issues, no wacky handling bugs, landing nice.

I will be an early adopter.  

 

Did you actually watch the stream? There are hardly ANY custom systems at all! All autoflight and navigations systems - arguably the most important systems for flying - are MSFS default systems, i.e. they are not even close to the WT systems which are becoming the standard on the default planes.
Also - because of this - the plane in the stream did NOT follow the FMS. It messed up the SID, adding 14000 extra track miles in the process (yeah you read that right), and then it messed up the STAR by doubling the approach fix (which could not be deleted, changed, direct-to'd etc. because that's not possible with MSFS default navigation systems) which meant the pilot didn't even know the track miles to the airport... nowhere to be found. And that is with missing VNAV, so descent cannot even be calculated manually without any reliable distance to the airport.

Also on the Fabio stream one engine went off over and over again during the cruise. Oh and it CTD'd on landing. So not even "landing nice", sorry.

4 minutes ago, Abriael said:

The situation is very different.

This is early access, giving you an incomplete product for a price, but it doesn't do anything to actually compel the customer to buy immediately or before they're fully satisfied by the state of the project. You can buy it on the 10th or 10 seconds before release and you're getting exactly the same thing at the same price. 

TFDi's is a pre-purchase in which you pay and get absolutely nothing for a while. On top of that, they added exclusive parts of the product that you can't get in any other way to take advantage of the FOMO (fear of missing out) effect and compel people to purchase immediately. That's a pretty clear cut shady marketing practice. 

Like it or not, early access is a thing and it isn't going anywhere. It exploded years ago in the larger gaming industry and it has already been used successfully in the flight sim industry as well. You may want, for your own sanity, to accept it. Because it's gonna keep going, get bigger, and most probably produce s*it and good products in equal measure. It's on us to make informed decisions on which products to buy and which ones to ignore so that we enjoy the good ones and dodge the s*it.

Not correct, because by FSS's own indication, the price will increase as features are added, without any scale hinted at.

1 minute ago, mspencer said:

Not correct, because by FSS's own indication, the price will increase as features are added, without any scale hinted at.

As far as I've heard, they've said the price will increase only at release. 

3 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

Did you actually watch the stream? There are hardly ANY custom systems at all! All autoflight and navigations systems - arguably the most important systems for flying - are MSFS default systems, i.e. they are not even close to the WT systems which are becoming the standard on the default planes.
Also - because of this - the plane in the stream did NOT follow the FMS. It messed up the SID, adding 14000 extra track miles in the process (yeah you read that right), and then it messed up the STAR by doubling the approach fix (which could not be deleted, changed, direct-to'd etc. because that's not possible with MSFS default navigation systems) which meant the pilot didn't even know the track miles to the airport... nowhere to be found. And that is with missing VNAV, so descent cannot even be calculated manually without any reliable distance to the airport.

Yeah, this is the reason the alarm bells went off for me, seeing them whip in those fixes in the MCDU at 3x speed on the AviationLads video. It was very clearly a reskinned version of the default A320 box. 

This is just like an FSX or P3D addon released with the re-skinned Microsoft GPS from so many years ago.

13 minutes ago, Abriael said:

It's on us to make informed decisions on which products to buy and which ones to ignore so that we enjoy the good ones and dodge the s*it.

Just like I'm dodging this one. 34 dollars to have the same if not worse flying experience than the default aircraft, I prefer to fly them, which at least are free.

Now one thing I think is that few people inform themselves before buying an addon. In the MD-11 pre-sale, buyers had to mark a tickbox confirming they were aware the addon would not be available until mid-2023, and even so, dozens of people appeared on TFDi's discord asking for the download link.

Then it becomes difficult to implement the concept 'Don't like it, don't buy it', when people don't know or don't try to know what they're buying, no matter how much the dev and other people warn about the product. By the time they finally see what the product really is, it's too late and they can't ask for a refund.

4 minutes ago, edu2703 said:

Then it becomes difficult to implement the concept 'Don't like it, don't buy it', when people don't know or don't try to know what they're buying, no matter how much the dev and other people warn about the product. By the time they finally see what the product really is, it's too late and they can't ask for a refund.

That's on the customer. If you don't keep yourself informed in an industry in which add-ons are provided by third-party developers, it's 100% entirely your responsibility. It's not like sources of information aren't all over the place.

1 hour ago, fluffyflops said:

which was another pay to beta mess

...

...

as well as xp12 

see where is this going ?????

 

🤣

5 minutes ago, Abriael said:

That's on the customer. If you don't keep yourself informed in an industry in which add-ons are provided by third-party developers, it's 100% entirely your responsibility. It's not like sources of information aren't all over the place.

I take it you were not around for the Airsimmer?

We were given a very nice, best for its time, beta, told the final version would be coming in time. 

You can still find their website out there, I was shocked it's still up after all these years. Don't worry, full version with all the bells and whistles will be out some time in 2009.

I, for one, would love to know where the people at this studio came from.