Cameron XA

Meanwhile, you were last at X-Pilot today. :) Don't make this further into something it's not, Ralf.

Which is precisely one of the problems with perception vs reality. Good bandwidth actually isn't cheap. :) Laminar and I have had a lot of discussions about this (one again just a few weeks ago, actually. They are constantly monitoring the situation because they too realize that bandwidth is not free. I think it's safe to say that someday, some form of limitation may come about. What that is, who knows. For now it's a wait and see scenario. Laminar is also in a position of knowing they will need a ton of bandwidth (more than any vendor or distributor could purchase) for their updates alone, so what they do is pre-purchase bandwidth on distribution networks at a bulk rate. This equates to MUCH cheaper bandwidth. Go take a look at Amazon S3. Then, do the math on files that are 30-60GB in size. Then, look at the costs associated to distributing those files over Amazon's CloudFront. You'll quickly realize that in some scenarios your margins diminish VERY quick. Bandwidth is not as cheap as it seems. On aircraft and airports? No problem! We can host those local without much issue and offer unlimited downloads of such. RealScenery is a whole other ballgame. A future product we've looked at has a SINGLE transfer cost of $14 to the customer. That's how much WE would pay to get it in YOUR hands after you get it downloaded. Considering we don't try to kill you on our margins, there's not much room for play after that on these particular products.

Mr Shield, I'd appreciate if you'd stop making attempts to spread false information about lack of support. There are a number of individuals here and in the community as a whole who have made claims like this over time. In almost every one of these cases there was much more to the story than was being told, and piracy had a lot to do with many of those cases. I won't elaborate on this further because it's a waste of time, but the evidence is overwhelming on these individuals. When they ultimately get caught (and often times even will admit the offense to us in support channels), they will come here in a rage over the fact they have lost access to said product(s). This usually results in the immature line of "I'm not getting any support." Sadly, this is something we have to deal with when taking overall demographics into consideration for this user base. And, just so we're clear, we never assume someone is stealing or sharing. It's beyond reasonable doubt once we reach that point. Anyways, for those that want information, we can see anywhere between 700-1500 support tickets in a week depending on the situation (how soon after a sale or new product, etc). I know this information doesn't interest you, but I'll post the stats of our last three days here for everyone to look at. Stating we do not provide support is simply not true, and I certainly don't appreciate you trying to assert such (especially not even being a customer of ours with your own experience). Trusting everything you read with regards to negativity and not understanding the full story from someone is akin to you trusting every story you read in the National Enquirer. Junk!

That's your perception, not a reality, Glen. It's been stated in even this thread over and over what traditionally is going on. We can re-vamp all we want, and while we will always strive to better the system for LEGITIMATE purchasers (and we are!), it is not going to ever prevent a person who committed piracy from ever getting ticked off. The support ticket system sees thousands of requests in a week. The typical average response time can be typically a day, and during busier times it reaches the max as three. Customers are sent surveys on the support they received after a ticket comes to a close, and the satisfaction rate often times sits over 90%. There is no dire situation going on here, and for every one complaint there's a thousand others that are happy and flying. This is purely a numbers game. Don't try and make this something it's not.

You have numerous support requests over the years. All of them answered within 48 hours, minus the latest which was answered within 4 days after the Christmas and New Years holiday time (naturally with business being closed). This seems to be the request for which you are complaining over. It has been stated time and time again that posts looking to enquire or expedite a support ticket will be removed. Sorry if you hadn't read that before. Part of this is culling the bad behavior of those who post illegitimate requests, the other half of it is it's plainly unnecessary. No one intervened on anything for you. I helped you out on my own accord.

Because there is a sense of entitlement and thinking they can get away with it. After all, they bought a product, shared it with a friend, and up till this point weren't caught. It's when they finally ask for a license reset because they and their friend(s) chewed through all their license slots they finally get caught and become livid of such. You don't hear of these issues with competitive vendors as often because they don't have the systems in place to catch someone to the level we do. If you don't want issues, don't share your software. It's that simple. I reset license keys from legitimate users all day long, every day no problem. It's easy to tell who is legit and who is not. I don't interpret Tom's post to mean that the one extra person in that 9 of 10 no longer gets to use their product. They may have some explaining or extra looking into, but as I said, when we get around to "accusing" someone it's not because we think...we know. It's not even disputable. We know down to the very name of the person(s) being shared with.

Thank God 99.9% of our customers don't take the tactic you did and try to twist things around. It's hardly proof of anything other than shedding light on your agenda. The idea that sharing the rest of your ticket was for 'completeness' means nothing. It's how you started it and introduced the topic that matters. So long as you want to 'fight' and have a sling fest, you'll get no respect from me.

You decided to use Avsim as an engine for provocation. In fact, in your last support ticket you stated: "We had our little row about this on your forum and as you may have noticed there were quite some people feeling sympathetic with me on Avsim as well." We didn't have any "row", nor argument. You were simply attempting to aggravate a situation, push your ticket ahead others, and use the forums as an engine to drive that. I will have none of that (in addition to any piracy). As has been said and even corrected by John, we actually do not make the IP part of any consideration in the catching of people sharing. I would go so far as to say we do not even "suspect" piracy. We KNOW. There is absolutely 100% indisputable evidence of it once we find it. The fact that having an agenda and using forums to stir up controversy is NOT going to work in your favor. Period. Carlos, please accept my sincere apologies. I have just found two e-mails from you left in a spam box and have just solved your requests. In the future, please contact me directly here should you find this type of issue again. Bill, I'd like to look into your case, but in our system typing in "Bill" yields a ton of 'solved' tickets. There is not enough info to go by in your profile here at Avsim to determine your account information at X-Aviation. If you'd like to PM me directly I'd be happy to assist. -------------- The truth of the situation is really quite simple (even as hard as it is for some of you to believe). Most every single case we see of public outcry is the result of an individual who was just caught stealing (piracy). We go over this with the individual, often times they will admit to it, and the immediate response after the fact is to lash out in the forums claiming no help, which consequently drums up support from others who have been caught in the past. There was a post on the org in the last week where not ONE single person in that topic had a truthful reply. It's absolutely shocking the amount of attempted sharing in this community, especially from some fairly 'high profile' individuals in this community. While I can't legally sit here and divulge names, it's definitely a sad reality and a problem. And again, majority of these people fess up to it. Our system is not guesswork. We truly know down the the 'T' who is sharing, and exactly with who.

Food for thought...the lead developer of SMP is a certified meteorologist. Good to see others take it seriously too. Weather is tough stuff!

Thanks, Allen! Enjoy xEnviro!

Any announcements will be made at the proper time. This thread won't be it!

We're not done adding features to v4. So, in the event you like something that comes about after the initial upgrade window is up, you will ultimately have spent more. There's some pretty cool things planned on the roadmap, but if that doesn't bother you and you're happy with what you have...great!

The truth is I don't really visit this forum. The only times I will is immediately after a release because people have a tendency to seek support in various forums they should not be. Additionally, I have no business responding to xEnviro threads, or even trying to "compete" with them. I don't think we made any mistakes at all. SkyMaxx Pro v4 broke release day sales records for any product we've ever sold. Additionally, it continues to outpace daily sales and projections of any previous versions of SkyMaxx Pro. I don't buy into the whole "XP 11" increases our sales figures thing. A bunch of rubbish in my opinion, and had zero bearing as to our release timing or decisions. Again, as I stated above. It's also been Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years in the span of release time. I greatly value time with my family during this time of year. Precisely! All this said, xEnviro is what it is, and some people will like it, some people won't. The same goes for SkyMaxx Pro. Our product is used in the major corporate scene by the "big boys" of aviation, including NASA, Boeing, Air Force, etc, and they have very strict standards for training requirements. The flight simulation hobby market tends to have so many people wanting polar opposites of things that none of the reactions here surprise me. It also won't surprise me when people flip flop between xEnviro and SkyMaxx. xEnviro is the new kid on the block, and people always are seeking something new. The forums are not a good indicator to the market. These places are traditionally filled with negativity towards a product or service, but the vast majority of happy customers do not take part in forums or social media. Go with whatever makes you happiest while you fly. I am here to put an end to this theory that xEnviro has somehow been a doom and gloom for us though. It couldn't possibly be farther from the truth.

Ya, and unfortunately the reasoning would be XP 11 and the haze. What it's doing is cutting off the visibility line so you can't see beyond that what SMP 4 is wanting to draw. Laminar (from my conversations with Supnik) plans to adjust quite a number of things for v11, so while it's fun to use it, I would recommend using 10 if you want full moments of visibility fun. To be clear, this is not a code issue on our end to fix. SkyMaxx Pro v4 is already ready to work with it whenever Laminar adjusts.

Nvidia GTX 680 4GB

I would love nothing more than to get into specifics. At the moment I'm not in a position to do so, and won't be till we have screenshots or video to go along with it and we have a firm schedule in mind. I certainly don't expect anyone to take those words and run to the cash drawer. Just wish it had made it in time for day one, but we'll have to settle in the meantime. All I can say is it'll be part of the v4 run.

I'll figure it out and ask for you. I have only seen a couple who haven't got it. Usually it winds up being in their Gmail promotional tab inbox or spam. You may want to look there if you use Gmail. If not, send an e-mail to support@x-aviation.com to get squared away. I thought you said you were no longer interested in that thing? I would say the next few days is a fair estimate.

It was intended for a single person asking about capability. I felt the screenshots showed our side. One post, we'll all live, I'm quite sure!

Still there! Broken or Solid stratiform selection should do it.

There's more to be implemented new in the v4 run (and is already in development). Unfortunately it didn't make it in for good reason (personal matters with someone involved and needing to take a leave), but I think there's some wow factors ahead for 4, and those updates will of course come free. X-Plane 11 has a way to go yet before SMP is probably going to shine best. Laminar needs to iron out random draw glitches and visibility. I know it's on their list, and after such we'll probably all be some happy people. The good news is v4 is XP 11 ready and has the code to distinguish between being installed in 10 or 11. Thanks for purchasing! Hang in there. While we haven't let everything out of the bag yet for v4, it will ultimately come!

I can ask if you're genuinely interested (or maybe he has it posted somewhere). My understanding is he feels his system is not so beefy these days, so I wouldn't expect him to respond back with a glorious video card. Are you flying rockets?

http://www.avsim.com/topic/499839-skymaxx-pro-v4-coming-tomorrow/?p=3530379

Yet another one I like from a customer! Love seeing all the different weather patterns some people are finding on the web with SkyMaxx Pro v4..