45 minutes ago, STK said:

So the takeaway thus far due to a lack of follow-up is that a popular flightsim vendor can impact the sales of a developer due to the appearance of input by a half-dozen users at the very most, also noting that there was debate on at least one video review over whether the extent of negativity was deserved due to apparent procedural ignorance surrounding DC-9 systems and flight operations by the reviewer. (Unrelated to this aircraft, there are more youtubers than not who "review" aircraft by just blindly trying them out without making an effort at reviewing manuals or gaining any sort of fore-knowledge, attributing user error to product issues).

 

You assume a lot ! LOL A user could be former DC-9 pilot! We don't know anything about users! There are also a lot  "well informed users" who are type rated pilot but do know a lot about aircraft systems!  So overwhelming feedback from that kind of users may effect JF decision.

By the way JF is vendor and vendor can have a choice how product is  to be sold. Read fine print when you sign contract! LOL

 

10 minutes ago, Georgleboui said:

That was a later addition. The original listing didn't have that.

My point isn't necessarily about that either, it's specifically about the discrepancy between Simmarket and JustFlight.

That was the listing from day one.
I was indeed tempted to buy this, from Simmarket, which was the original link in this topic.
There is no difference between the SimMarket offer and the Just Flight offer, excpt that at Just Flight, you only needed to make one purchase.
At SimMarket, you needed to make two, but the second one takes no money from you.
The result is exactly the same, you pay once and get a model for each simulator.

My own hope is that all this negative press and negative vendor actions are the precursor to a re-released and improved model,
though the few reviews do not appear to be panning it, just pointing out that there is room for improvement.
As I have mentioned before, I have had hours of entertainment, it is a game after all, from the Coolsky DC9 and the DC9
is one of my favourite pretend aircraft to "fly".
I would prefer to see this one succeed.

 

Edited January 23, 20251 yr by Reader

Duplicate, apologies.

Edited January 23, 20251 yr by Reader

3 minutes ago, Reader said:

There is no difference between the SimMarket offer and the Just Flight offer, excpt that at Just Flight, you only needed to make one purchase.

 

Respectfully that's not true.

It's $52 from Simmarket for both variants, albeit you have to "purchase" the other option.
It was $72 from JustFlight for both variants in one purchase. 

Pretty big difference I'd say.

And your point around this notice being there since day one - I definitely did not recall that notice and I was also hovering over the buy button at release. If it was there, it just wasn't that visible.

Anyway, it's by the by now. 

I really want this to be a good plane, I fly the Maddog a lot and having an older variant as well as a freighter would be amazing. But the quality of their MD-11 and its lack of updates just kills it for me. I'm really hoping this will be a different story.

8 minutes ago, Georgleboui said:

Respectfully that's not true.

It's $52 from Simmarket for both variants, albeit you have to "purchase" the other option.
It was $72 from JustFlight for both variants in one purchase. 

Pretty big difference I'd say.

And your point around this notice being there since day one - I definitely did not recall that notice and I was also hovering over the buy button at release. If it was there, it just wasn't that visible.

Anyway, it's by the by now. 

I really want this to be a good plane, I fly the Maddog a lot and having an older variant as well as a freighter would be amazing. But the quality of their MD-11 and its lack of updates just kills it for me. I'm really hoping this will be a different story.

Is it not $61.40 on SimMarket?

Anyway, on the pricing, and just for info, when we sell third party products (ones we sell and have no part in the publishing/marketing etc and no JF branding included) on our website we request the Sterling/Euros/Dollar price from the developer of the add-on in question.  It's completely their call.  In this case the developer simply supplied the Euro price so we're then left to calculate the other currency prices for ourselves.  At no point are we told what prices the other vendors are selling at and are never encouraged or asked to follow suit. As part of the bigger picture with this add-on it does seem like the dollar price was set a little too high (regardless of quality) although it was pretty much in line with the price that Aerosoft set too.  Now, if/when the DC-9 ends up being reinstated (no guarantee) on our website we'll review the pricing taking all things into consideration, rest assured.

 

19 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

You assume a lot ! LOL A user could be former DC-9 pilot! We don't know anything about users! There are also a lot  "well informed users" who are type rated pilot but do know a lot about aircraft systems!  So overwhelming feedback from that kind of users may effect JF decision.

By the way JF is vendor and vendor can have a choice how product is  to be sold. Read fine print when you sign contract! LOL

 

Absolutely! I agree with you on vendor choice, and I agree about assuming, because in my line of work, in order to state one's thoughts on a product or service (particularly if those thoughts will then have financial or consumer adoption impact), it's expected that you state your credentials/qualifications to make those observations. Observations from less well-credentialed individuals are of course welcome, but will be weighed with less importance than those who can illustrate direct or closely related familiarity or expertise. If a user of this MSFS DC-9 is type rated in same "IRL", I don't see why they wouldn't contribute that bit of knowledge in the course of their review so I can lend more value to their beliefs. Otherwise, I'll assume the user is Joe-Bob the farmer from Kansas who likes airplanes. In the former's case, I'll listen close to hear their thoughts about all aspects of the product, in the latter's case, a review video will be helpful for me in just getting a better clue on the visuals and sounds, but I'm not going to take their thoughts on systems or procedures seriously (outside of immediately apparent depth of simulation). 

Youtubers and other reviewers, especially the very first adopters, have an outsized impact on product reputation in the Flightsim Community, and I had concern that JF was doing a knee-jerk reaction to what I observed as 3-4 reviews at the most, and deciding that it's so faulty as to be unsellable. Yes, it looks like some of the concern is possibly justified, which is good to know as there are indeed arguably (based on type of user!) significant bugs, but to me the broader community was not given the opportunity to assess, and instead witnessed a respected vendor state that the product is poor after minimal review. I know the dev of the plane wasn't that keen on updates in the FSX-era, but it's been what at least a decade now since their initial foreay into flightsim development? People, processes, and competence in abilities (and ability to follow up on concerns) change, and I hope people can give this dev a chance to make things right (if they are even wrong to begin with to the extent that folks are representing). 

Best wishes, and let's hope to see a wonderful DC-9 come out of this mess. 

The upgrade was not there when I purchased the 2024 version. I even emailed skysim trying to get clarification about the 2 versions and of course got no reply.

3 minutes ago, JustFlightScott said:

Is it not $61.40 on SimMarket?

Anyway, on the pricing, and just for info, when we sell third party products (ones we sell and have no part in the publishing/marketing etc and no JF branding included) on our website we request the Sterling/Euros/Dollar price from the developer of the add-on in question.  It's completely their call.  In this case the developer simply supplied the Euro price so we're then left to calculate the other currency prices for ourselves.  At no point are we told what prices the other vendors are selling at and are never encouraged or asked to follow suit. As part of the bigger picture with this add-on it does seem like the dollar price was set a little too high (regardless of quality) although it was pretty much in line with the price that Aerosoft set too.  Now, if/when the DC-9 ends up being reinstated (no guarantee) on our website we'll review the pricing taking all things into consideration, rest assured.

 

Thanks Scott, appreciate the response on this. 

Was going by this dropdown on Simmarket, it may very well be region based? 

 

Not sure if you can comment on this, but was there any commitment/response made from the developer to rectify issues and try to restore the listing?
 

I was able to claim the upgrade and all is good on my end. I just wish the sounds were better.

3 minutes ago, Georgleboui said:

Thanks Scott, appreciate the response on this. 

Was going by this dropdown on Simmarket, it may very well be region based? 

 

Not sure if you can comment on this, but was there any commitment/response made from the developer to rectify issues and try to restore the listing?
 

Bit odd. Different pricing showing for me. Not sure what's occurring there.

Popping a general reply up shortly for you. Bear with...

44 minutes ago, STK said:

Youtubers and other reviewers, especially the very first adopters, have an outsized impact on product reputation in the Flightsim Community, and I had concern that JF was doing a knee-jerk reaction to what I observed as 3-4 reviews at the most, and deciding that it's so faulty as to be unsellable. Yes, it looks like some of the concern is possibly justified, which is good to know as there are indeed arguably (based on type of user!) significant bugs, but to me the broader community was not given the opportunity to assess, and instead witnessed a respected vendor state that the product is poor after minimal review. I know the dev of the plane wasn't that keen on updates in the FSX-era, but it's been what at least a decade now since their initial foreay into flightsim development? People, processes, and competence in abilities (and ability to follow up on concerns) change, and I hope people can give this dev a chance to make things right (if they are even wrong to begin with to the extent that folks are representing). 

Best wishes, and let's hope to see a wonderful DC-9 come out of this mess. 

Developer who sign contract with JF automatically agrees with all terms. You make a lot of assumptions based on one JF post.  You don't know how many user has complained and you don't know what is JF policy on discontinue sales. Some vendors can just discontinue sales without reason given. 

Just to reply briefly to those asking about various elements of this debate.

Sorry but you're not going to get masses of detail from me, that wouldn't be correct business practise and it'd simply be unfair to divulge too much and in all honesty there's nothing that revealing or exciting anyway. 🙂

So with the vast majority of third party products that we simply resell on our website we'll try to ensure steps are taken so that we're happy with the general quality on offer and that the pricing seems fair and proper. We'll not do much other than that as it's not part of any deal or agreement with partners.

In this instance though, with regards the DC-9 it's now clear that not enough due diligence took place by us.  Maybe put it down to a mad busy period and simply too much of our own business and projects taking precedence. Rightly so of course but with hindsight given the nature and type of product we have here more time and more sets of eyes were needed. Some complacency there and we'd wrongly assumed all was fine. Now not long after it went on sale it became apparent something wasn't right with the add-on, this was based on the feedback we received from our customers, media coverage and subsequently and most importantly from some of our in-house QA team (quite the experts in this field).  It was then clear to us the correct decision was to remove it from sale. The reaction wasn't a kneejerk reaction, that's not our style but rest assured from our perspective the correct course of action was taken.

So since then a little more time has been spent evaluating the aircraft and in our opinion there are some serious issues and we're not just talking about criticism of poor texture work, poor sounds and systems generally not fully working properly but deeper things even basics linked to just starting the aircraft.  The feedback will be compiled and sent to the developer but be aware we won't spend an age on this as that's not part of the deal.  The feedback will be sent as a gesture of goodwill and we'll leave it there.  We're not going to dictate what level the aircraft needs to get too and what exactly needs fixing, that's nothing to do with us, we're really just offering some feedback and assistance.  If the aircraft then at some points gets sent back to us for selling from the site we'll certainly ensure a degree of testing is done and that we're happy with the offering before adding it to our shop again.

We're by no means judge and jury here. We can offer our thoughts and observations and then it's up to the developer to decide the next course of action.  We simply owe it to our vast customer database to ensure that what we sell from our website in our eyes is reputable, of a high standard and offers best value for money. 

That's kind of it, it just remains for us to wish Sky Simulations the very best of luck with the DC-9 and hopefully one day we can be proudly stocking and selling her once again.   

Hope that helps.

Edited January 23, 20251 yr by JustFlightScott

There’s just something about a DC9 in early 80’s British midland colours that just looks beautiful to me, so I hope this gets sorted out/improved soon.

In the meantime, I guess from a distance a Fokker 70 looks very similar to a DC9 ….

😉😉 hint @ JF 

Edited January 23, 20251 yr by jon b

55 minutes ago, JustFlightScott said:

Just to reply briefly to those asking about various elements of this debate.

....

The renewed focus on transparency with this explanation is appreciated. While I remain uneasy that a publisher chose at the outset to publicly characterize a developer's product as poor, thus forcing the scrutiny as to the process (remain neutral, or praise in public, correct in private), missteps happen. Here's hoping for a comprehensive DC-9 update that will complement JF's own Fokker F28 (which was a real-world competitor to the DC-9). 

Edit/Update: I just emailed SkySim to ask for a public statement that addresses the commentary about the quality of their product, and outlines for users as to how they plan on resolving current concerns. We'll see if they say anything. 

Update 2: Another user elsewhere emailed them and SkySim's current response is as follows:

We are working on upgrading the product and also on the development of a Flight Techniques Manual. In the next few days we will publish an updated version.

Edited January 24, 20251 yr by STK

39 minutes ago, STK said:

 

Edit/Update: I just emailed SkySim to ask for a public statement that addresses the commentary about the quality of their product, and outlines for users as to how they plan on resolving current concerns. We'll see if they say anything. 

Seems you’re trying hard to create drama. 
 

let it go and let the dev focus on fixing items already identified on the interweb.