A question to the gods

1st Official Post

    Morning to the developer gods.

    As a developer, we need some support on housing future products as I believe this may be putting off developers like myself. As you well know developing an aircraft etc is a very time consuming process and having the further headache of where to house the finished product is a problem we shouldn't have to face. I feel the only way to encourage developers is for more payware products, free is great and the leachers know it, but a hobby soon gets tiresome for no reward.

    So, how about a marketplace. Administered by yourselves with a percentage fee for yourselves to cover costs. Yes I know your policy of not endorsing etc but something is stopping the developer community getting involved with the sim. There is a lot of potential out there and I feel its time you started to tap into it.

    Its just a suggestion and not any form of criticism so please just give me a straight answer.

    Steve

    • Official Post

    Unfortunately we can't just assign one or two people to constantly work on maintaining a marketplace. This is a very time consuming task, validating user created content, pushing the external developers to publish updates and fixes when something breaks, forwarding support tickets to them and then there is the issue of copyright.

    And once you charge money for it, it becomes a whole different story altogether. Then customers have certain expectations and hold us to a certain standard, basically demanding at least same quality from a third party aircraft as for default aircraft otherwise they complain to us. They expect that the purchased content works after each update or they release bad reviews for the app or sim platform (even though it's not our fault necessarily) so the entire work for maintaining the content falls on us all of the sudden. We simply do not have time for this, we're already busy enough to maintain our own aircraft, testing them before an update, managing the thousands of files that need changing so that the impact is as small as possible for the user.

    Unfortunately history also has shown that even freeware high quality add-on aircraft are not being downloaded, e.g. our Q400 for Aerofly FS 2. And sales for payware add-on aircraft only reach a niche of customers so most add-on studios are jumping to the competition simulators where most customers are located, just to break even. That's not necessarily a bad thing for us, it means we can update things a lot faster without accidentally breaking things or slowing down the sim with legacy code support just for a handful of add-ons.

    A marketplace would make sense if there are dozens of add-on studios developing content for your sim and it becomes too tedious for your customers to keep everything up to date. But we're not there yet, so I think our time is better spent on improving the core sim experience.

    This doesn't mean users can't program their own market place, e.g. connect it to Github projects or Google drive downloads and so on.

    Quote from Jet-Pack (IPACS)

    Unfortunately we can't just assign one or two people to constantly work on maintaining a marketplace. This is a very time consuming task, validating user created content, pushing the external developers to publish updates and fixes when something breaks, forwarding support tickets to them and then there is the issue of copyright.

    And once you charge money for it, it becomes a whole different story altogether. Then customers have certain expectations and hold us to a certain standard, basically demanding at least same quality from a third party aircraft as for default aircraft otherwise they complain to us. They expect that the purchased content works after each update or they release bad reviews for the app or sim platform (even though it's not our fault necessarily) so the entire work for maintaining the content falls on us all of the sudden. We simply do not have time for this, we're already busy enough to maintain our own aircraft, testing them before an update, managing the thousands of files that need changing so that the impact is as small as possible for the user.

    Unfortunately history also has shown that even freeware high quality add-on aircraft are not being downloaded, e.g. our Q400 for Aerofly FS 2. And sales for payware add-on aircraft only reach a niche of customers so most add-on studios are jumping to the competition simulators where most customers are located, just to break even. That's not necessarily a bad thing for us, it means we can update things a lot faster without accidentally breaking things or slowing down the sim with legacy code support just for a handful of add-ons.

    A marketplace would make sense if there are dozens of add-on studios developing content for your sim and it becomes too tedious for your customers to keep everything up to date. But we're not there yet, so I think our time is better spent on improving the core sim experience.

    This doesn't mean users can't program their own market place, e.g. connect it to Github projects or Google drive downloads and so on.

    For user content, we actually need a custom mod engine similar to other sims. Keeps the sim alive and community engaged.

    Quote from Jet-Pack (IPACS)

    Unfortunately we can't just assign one or two people to constantly work on maintaining a marketplace. This is a very time consuming task, validating user created content, pushing the external developers to publish updates and fixes when something breaks, forwarding support tickets to them and then there is the issue of copyright.

    And once you charge money for it, it becomes a whole different story altogether. Then customers have certain expectations and hold us to a certain standard, basically demanding at least same quality from a third party aircraft as for default aircraft otherwise they complain to us. They expect that the purchased content works after each update or they release bad reviews for the app or sim platform (even though it's not our fault necessarily) so the entire work for maintaining the content falls on us all of the sudden. We simply do not have time for this, we're already busy enough to maintain our own aircraft, testing them before an update, managing the thousands of files that need changing so that the impact is as small as possible for the user.

    Unfortunately history also has shown that even freeware high quality add-on aircraft are not being downloaded, e.g. our Q400 for Aerofly FS 2. And sales for payware add-on aircraft only reach a niche of customers so most add-on studios are jumping to the competition simulators where most customers are located, just to break even. That's not necessarily a bad thing for us, it means we can update things a lot faster without accidentally breaking things or slowing down the sim with legacy code support just for a handful of add-ons.

    A marketplace would make sense if there are dozens of add-on studios developing content for your sim and it becomes too tedious for your customers to keep everything up to date. But we're not there yet, so I think our time is better spent on improving the core sim experience.

    This doesn't mean users can't program their own market place, e.g. connect it to Github projects or Google drive downloads and so on.

    So how do other platforms manage? And yet, they work very well. I sincerely believe that with goodwill, this simulator could make significant progress in the right direction.

    "For better or for worse" ;)

    Win11 / i7-12800HX / RTX 3070 Ti 8 GB / 32 GB RAM / 2 x 2 TB SSD M.2 2280

    PC GAMER : FS 2004 - FSX - MSFS 2020 - 24 - AFS1 - AFS2 - AFS4

    Regards, Pascal

    • Official Post
    Quote from Kipav

    For user content, we actually need a custom mod engine similar to other sims. Keeps the sim alive and community engaged.

    This sounds good at first but eventually this additional work will just slow down the core development process. If the simulator platform stops changing then add-ons usually thrive. But if the sim is constantly changing then add-ons are just going to break over time or lack new features, which is frustrating for everyone involved.

    That being said, Aerofly already has an SDK to create your own aircraft, sound-packs, scenery, and external network connections (reading sim data and sending commands).

    Quote from Jet-Pack (IPACS)

    They hire a team of people to manage this. But this costs a lot of money of course.


    Despite all the suggestions made by forum participants, they always end with negative responses from Tübingen. Yet, at the beginning of FS4, you managed to implement paid expansions on Steam. So why not continue down this path with third-party developers?

    "For better or for worse" ;)

    Win11 / i7-12800HX / RTX 3070 Ti 8 GB / 32 GB RAM / 2 x 2 TB SSD M.2 2280

    PC GAMER : FS 2004 - FSX - MSFS 2020 - 24 - AFS1 - AFS2 - AFS4

    Regards, Pascal

    • Official Post
    Quote from Tomfa

    Despite all the suggestions put forward by participants on this forum, Tübingen ultimately receives negative responses.

    Yet, at the beginning of FS4, you managed to establish paid add-ons on Steam. So why not continue down that path with third-party developers?

    I'm trying to keep expectations realistic here. Reality is that it's just not worth it for the company and would be a huge expense.

    The only paid add-on on Steam for Aerofly FS 4 currently is the aircraft Add-On.

    Look, I'm not here to explain the finances of our company in detail. This is all I'm going to post for now.

    Quote from Jet-Pack (IPACS)

    Unfortunately we can't just assign one or two people to constantly work on maintaining a marketplace. This is a very time consuming task, validating user created content, pushing the external developers to publish updates and fixes when something breaks, forwarding support tickets to them and then there is the issue of copyright.

    And once you charge money for it, it becomes a whole different story altogether. Then customers have certain expectations and hold us to a certain standard, basically demanding at least same quality from a third party aircraft as for default aircraft otherwise they complain to us. They expect that the purchased content works after each update or they release bad reviews for the app or sim platform (even though it's not our fault necessarily) so the entire work for maintaining the content falls on us all of the sudden. We simply do not have time for this, we're already busy enough to maintain our own aircraft, testing them before an update, managing the thousands of files that need changing so that the impact is as small as possible for the user.

    Unfortunately history also has shown that even freeware high quality add-on aircraft are not being downloaded, e.g. our Q400 for Aerofly FS 2. And sales for payware add-on aircraft only reach a niche of customers so most add-on studios are jumping to the competition simulators where most customers are located, just to break even. That's not necessarily a bad thing for us, it means we can update things a lot faster without accidentally breaking things or slowing down the sim with legacy code support just for a handful of add-ons.

    A marketplace would make sense if there are dozens of add-on studios developing content for your sim and it becomes too tedious for your customers to keep everything up to date. But we're not there yet, so I think our time is better spent on improving the core sim experience.

    This doesn't mean users can't program their own market place, e.g. connect it to Github projects or Google drive downloads and so on.

    Hello IPACS, i know this is an irrelevant question but would you “Sue” someone for using a paint kit?

    Mr. A350-1000