17 hours ago, Abriael said:

You folks really like hating. 

Personally, this isn't my cup of tea, but I don't go out of my way to actively hate products just because they don't sit in the category I like. 

After working on this for three years and receiving a considerable amount of German government funding for this project specifically, THIS is the result?  You must be joking.  They deserve every bit of criticism there is.   It's a corporate embarrassment.  Freeware releases have been better in less time with considerably less funding

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by ErichB

I think it might help to reiterate something that seems to get lost with criticisim on the internet:

We are critical, yes, and we are harsh when expectations are not met at all, but we are also adults who have enough experience in the work life to know that a sub-par release is never the fault of subpar programmers or untalented modelers. The problem always sits higher, behind a desk, often with only little real knowledge or care about what goes on at ground level. They see sales figures and projections and they make strategic decisions. And sometimes these decisions are wrong and they should have listened to the people who do the actual work on the projects. We have often been victim of people like that ourselves.

And when a project like the A330 is released in such a state it is them we direct our displeasure at.

Not the talented folks who have been at this for years.

They cant be that talented if this is the result 

Looking at Aerosoft's history with aircraft development over the years, this really was not that surprising. Their Airbus series back in the FSX days was passable but never reached anything other than mid-tier. Everything since then - the CRJ and the Twin Otter in all its forms did not cover themselves in glory. 

We're a matter of weeks away from an A330 that will almost certainly be up to or exceed the standard of the current ini A320Neo, which being honest would be more than acceptable were it not for it being overshadowed by the Fenix. 

Clearly this project has been a difficult one with a poor outcome. However, holding fire and allowing MS2024 to release and then seeing where their A3300 could slot in above the level of the default one would have been a way better option. When all the streamers say privately 'don't release this' and you just barrel onwards, then you really deserve what's coming to you. 

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by bennyboy75

Don’t really care about the quality of this aircraft as a 330 and long hauls are not really my thing but I think we can see that developers are rushing to capitalize on the market for MSFS 2020.  I sense there are factors beyond just the money grab.  The pessimist in me is doubtful that converting all these aircraft to 2024 is going to be as easy or quick as Asobo has led on and for these developers, I’m sure they look at that as added costs.  While these aircraft are likely compatible with 2024( meaning they will open up in the game and be flyable) I don’t believe they will actually just automatically convert to whatever updated flight models 2024 has.  So what I assume will happen is these aircraft will technically work in 2024 the developers will have a lot of work to bring them up to the flight dynamic improvements for 2024.  It remains to be seen how many of these developers will actually take that task on.

1 hour ago, ErichB said:

They deserve every bit of criticism there is.

May be useful to remember that it’s not just this site, this product is getting absolutely panned on every platform.

3 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

So I was watching Chewwy's live stream yesterday, and Chewwy presented some information that I did not know of, about Aerosoft and this A330 project.  First and foremost, Aerosoft gave the A330 to a lot of content providers like Chewwy.  In Aersoft's private Discord channel, the overwhelming number of these content providers told Aerosoft not to release the A330 in the state that it was in.  The people running Aerosoft's Discord channel heard them clearly (I'm not sure if upper Aerosoft management heard them though), but Aerosoft decided to release the A330 anyways:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2269998978?t=00h11m51s

According to Chewwy, Rafi, who works as one Aerosoft's Community Mangers, also publicly said the A330 shouldn't have been released in its current state, which puts Rafi on the spot since he is publicly contradicting his employer:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2269998978?t=00h42m55s

Now I don't know where Rafi did this. If somebody has a source where Rafi said the A330 probably shouldn't have been released, according to Chewwy, that would be great to see the original source.

But it's interesting because I think Chewwy shed more light on Aerosoft's decision making. Looks like at least one of the community managers at Aerosoft (ie. Rafi) were against the  A330 releasing in the state that it was in but upper management decided to release it anyways.

It was probably said in the discord that is now closed. In Rafi words people were being racist, sexual etc he said this is not due to the feedback. Not sure what to believe. A video on Reddit showed quite a few in the call before server closer and showed his post. Can’t remember if they were laughing because they don’t remember seeing anything of the such.

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by carlanthony24

2 hours ago, jspilot said:

 I sense there are factors beyond just the money grab.

LVFR just released an A330, and one is being included in the sim most of us are going to buy in a month, and Aerosoft does not have the resources to make their version anywhere close to PMDG-quality which it would have to do in order to compete with the one that's coming with 2024 -- because it doesn't just have to be as good as the iniBuilds one, it has to be *much* better in order to overcome the hurdle of free vs not-free.

In short, they figured out they have a four-week window to make any money at all back on this product.

Combine that with typical corporate management that prioritizes this quarter's profits over long-term sustainability and you get half-baked releases. If they make $1,000 now that's better than not making $1,000 and the reputation hit is in the future. This business approach has brought companies to their knees, ranging from mom and pop bakeries all the way up to Boeing, and yet the lesson never seems to be learned.

Personally I think they'd have been better off dumping the project and writing it off as a loss in order to avoid the reputational damage.

On the other hand, reputational damage doesn't seem to mean much either. When the infamous Pinto Memo got leaked, just about everyone who read it thought it would be the end of Ford. I mean, there it was in black and white -- Ford chose to kill its customers rather than apply a cheap fix to stop the deaths because it calculated that fixing the problem on all the Pintos would be more expensive than the payouts for the customers the problem killed. How could anyone possibly ever buy a vehicle from them again, knowing they were rolling the dice on whether Ford judged their lives expensive enough to let them live?  And yet, nothing much changed. They got yelled at by Congress, but they kept making cars and they're a 42 billion dollar company to this day.

We see it in the flight sim world too, with much less severe consequences. It baffles me that certain devs who pump out lazy trash that looks bad, flies bad and sometimes uses default gauges from a plane with a different number of engines are still around, and yet there they are, apparently making enough money to keep doing it.

 

3 hours ago, bennyboy75 said:

Their Airbus series back in the FSX days was passable but never reached anything other than mid-tier.

But that is exactly what they aimed for. They clearly communicated that this was their goal. And in that range as a non-study level aircraft that still worked well in the parts they did chose to model, they were the best mid-tier aircraft available.

And it made it also financially successful. Because according to them that is were the majority of the sales were to be made in the market. 

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by Farlis

8 minutes ago, Farlis said:

But that is exactly what they aimed for. They clearly communicated that this was their goal. And in that range as a non-study level aircraft that still worked well in the parts they did chose to model, they were the best mid-tier aircraft available.

And it made it also financially successful. Because according to them that is were the majority of the sales were to be made in the market. 

Agreed, the P3d version has its quirks but it’s not a bad plane and is exactly what they said it would be.

Seems like the msfs version falls well short of the expectations that aerosoft laid out. 

4 hours ago, jspilot said:

as a 330 and long hauls are not really my thing

the A330 is used on short flights as well.

After all this time, and this comes out... Oh boy.

I am in the process of watching A330Drivers video about it. It's painful to watch.

He said that the project management  fell to FlightSimStudios after Mathijs Kok left Aerosoft.

Now I'm not so surprised anymore about the state of the thing...  Their project manager loves to drop aircraft in completely unfinished states of development.

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by Farlis

4 minutes ago, Farlis said:

I am in the process of watching A330Drivers video about it. It's painful to watch.

He said that the project management  fell to FlightSimStudios after Mathijs Kok left Aerosoft.

Now I'm not so surprised anymore about the state of the thing...  Their project manager loves to drop aircraft in completely unfinished states of development.

So if that is the true, a NO BUY FOR ME, sorry..

cheers 😉

1 hour ago, Farlis said:

But that is exactly what they aimed for. They clearly communicated that this was their goal. And in that range as a non-study level aircraft that still worked well in the parts they did chose to model, they were the best mid-tier aircraft available.

And it made it also financially successful. Because according to them that is were the majority of the sales were to be made in the market. 

This Aerosoft A330 is apart because even for an mid-level product, it lacks some functionalities.

Anyways, the mid-level market is really difficult because people cannot understand that this is a different market than what we call "study level". 

If a product is not designed to be a "study level" product, most of the serious or hardcore simmers will call it s****, spread the hate on the forums or social network, complain because it's not study level or ask for changes to turn it into a "study level" products.

On the contrary, most of the people marketed by those products are mostly not on these forums or social medias.  They buy their products on the marketplace and I can understand that they can enjoy them. Not everybody is looking for the complexity of Fenix or PMDG. Most of them would not even use 50% of their capabilities and anyway, most of us serious simmers, don't even use 100% of those capabilities.

There is a market for those mid-level or entry-level products, sold at a lower price and I would not be surprised by the fact that this market is even larger.

I belong to the serious or hardcore simmer category and it also pain me when an aircraft I would like to buy appears in the mid-level category but I do not expect it to reach my expectations. No, I'm not interrested for exemple by Latin VFR products but it doesn't mean there are bad products. They are just not marketed to the category of simmers I belong to.

 

Edited October 8, 20241 yr by sdirand