Well, FSLabs is developing an A330. A study Level A330, better than the Aerosoft’s one for sure.
Oh I did forget about that one, but as I googled your tip I fear this might take a little longer
(via fselite/fsdelete)
Subst “can’t” with “won’t” because they know they don’t want to interact with the users.
I would not interact with users either. Way to stressful. Only backoffice work with zero customer support prevents heart attacks in the long run hahaha 
so what Aerosoft does is only fully natural self-preservation, shielding themselves from the raging mob…
By the way… they still have no plans adding high-polygon seats?
This must be fully tesselated and round - not angular.
Maybe I´ll head over to their forums and suggest some nice cockpit seat upgrade in this otherwise surely fine plane.
Yeah, good luck with that 
Well I maybe have failed inspire them to remove the bugs I have noticed in the CRJ… because no update for the CRJ has been released since 1912 when travel by aircraft got a boom after finding out that the Titanic is not unsinkable. But I am not going to fail with this Airbus
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But… but… the update of the CRJ is coming! And the A330 will be released once they figure out what is going on.
Aerosoft is in a total state of disarray right now, I think the best for them is to stop making childish posts about the non-state of the plane, regroup and aim for a good release in a year or so.
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This just proves my point: why anyone would buy their aircraft given their track record is beyond me. I have little hope this going to be any different, so save your money, fly the free headwind A330 until a more caring developer takes on this aircraft.
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I agree and don’t really understand the market segment they’re aiming for. It’s supposed to not be “study level”. In that case what’s the difference between that and Headwind which has a very solid foundation. The only thing missing in headwind is two independent FMS’s but I’m sure Fly by Wire will get there eventually.
For me it’s simple. If you’re competing with pretty good freeware you either release something with a Fenix A320 level of systems modeling or it makes no sense.
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The headwind is a Neo so for people that care about the realistic operations of the A330 having the non-Neo version is important. The 330-900 is not (yet?) very popular, the A330-300 is widely used so it opens a lot of options about the airlines you can fly for long-hauls.
Having said that I agree the product is headed towards distaster.
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I would call that more caring about the role-play aspect of flight simulation. I care a lot about realism, but that means systems modeling, following procedures, VATSIM, flight model, reading manuals, repeatedly training things like traffic pattern, different approach types etc. But I don’t really care about things like liveries or the airline I pretend to fly.
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To each its own way. I can’t really fly a 330-900 that irl is a 330-300 instead :). That’s one of the reasons why I really want a good 330-300 and a good 787-900 (hopefully Kuro will aso do that variant).
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And this is exactly why I am glad he has gone!
Yes, this does not seem to be going well for them. Not defending Aerosoft – but, I think many developers are trying to accomplish too much with the 1.0 versions of these complex airliners. The market demands excellent visuals, accurate flight models, realistic systems, EFBs, failures, and even interior cabins now. Short of Fenix, nobody has really been able to achieve this with the1.0 release of a plane. PMDG came close with the excellent 737 but missed with the EFB. The free FBW A320 is very good now BUT they certainly did not initially release that way. It took them years with the plane in the hands of users and many, many, many development cycles to get to the feature state they are today.
Maybe developers should promise less with the initial release and add features and polish over time. This is easier for the freeware teams because their users are more likely to be early adopters and patient with features. They are also more willing to update frequently. I wish the Synaptic Simulations crew took a less ambitious approach with the A220 and released something already. What they are doing seems like a tough lift all at once. At this point, I’ll be surprised if they have a successful launch or meaningfully beat a paid option in the market.
This approach is much harder for those who want to get paid for their aircraft. People won’t pay premium prices UNLESS an aircraft is released with premium features. I know I won’t. But, I’d think people would be willing to pay $20 for something barebones (they have for the LVFR A31X/A32X series) and then pay an extra $5-10 each time meaningful new feature/enhancement packs were incorporated. That way a developer could adopt more of an agile approach to releasing planes – v1, v2, v3, etc., without years going by before these planes got to see the light of day.
Something is just off as too many of these airliner projects seem to be going poorly. Not great for users and it must be very hard for smaller developers to work on something for years before getting paid.
But why would you buy such a half baked product, unless it’s just a flying 3D model for 10$ and you’re into such things? If you want to create a 40-60$ addon it must be at an appropriate level. Yes, it’s an enormous undertaking.
My theory is that companies announce such products early, even years from final release, simply to “reserve” a spot. Lower the chance someone else will do the same airplane.
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I get it. I’m glad I don’t “suffer” from that, though. Probably saves me a lot of money 
I’m already pretending to be licensed and capable of flying such airplanes, so it’s easy for me to pretend the aircraft is a different variant.
As you said, to each their own 
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I agree folks announce too early. In part, to freeze out the market as you say but also because they have failed to properly estimate the amount of work it will take to create a complete plane. They usually start by releasing all these beautiful models/textures that they are all excited about. Then, they appear to invest a ton of time in making the plane look nice but then are two years in before the really focus on making the plane work properly–which is likely even harder to do.
I got a LOT of enjoyment out of the early versions of the FBW and even the PMDG without the EFB. I’d think there is a value / feature point that would appeal to a lot of users early on and would shorten the development cycle. In the end, I’d think we’d end up with better quality and fewer surprises because developers would feel less pressure to just release it already. And, users would know that developers had incentive to finish the planes because they have not collected everything they were going to get already.
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The issue I believe is the fact that it’s now acceptable to have half baked airplanes…
The community seems to prefer eye candy rather than fidelity. For example Captain Sim showed this very early on his sales were still successful.
12 million global users of which 3 million are serious simmers apparently it’s moving to more of a “game” model rather than sim.
I find in an interesting suggestion, the post-release development packages, keeping the incentive there to keep delivering. However for me personally, I couldn’t really be bothered to fly an aircraft like that as I’d have the feeling I’m flying only half the product upon launch, which makes it difficult to be hands on enthusiastic about it …and then you’d have to learn again and again as they keep entering features to it.
I think I prefer the wait, get in with the premium product and wait for some brush ups after that. …Which is exactly why I can’t imagine myself buying this A330 that I’d really like in sim, only to wait for ‘added features’ to come later …and, again, especially not with a company who literally states the quality of their product is subpar because the market they’re aiming for wouldn’t care anyway. And especially from a company that promises about updates they don’t deliver. Sells products they then pull from sales and end development of or blatantly lies about how opening doors eats up your frames…
Yes, that person is gone now. But trust comes by foot and runs off by horse. Aerosoft just doesn’t have a quality standard anymore. I sure hope they’d conquer it back, but better start conquering then.
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Agreed on Aerosoft. Their initial release of the FlightSim Studio E-Jets was pretty rough. I waited a good 4-6 months before purchasing that plane and it was still messy despite a half dozen updates. Now, about 3 months from the purchase, it is finally respectable. Not PMDG or Fenix but respectable. The developers have stuck with it.
I certainly get customers wanting to wait on “finished product” but am beginning to wonder if the length of the development cycle is making it hard for all but the larger companies (PMDG and Asobo) to get decent planes to market. Smaller players can’t invest for the 3 years it takes to get quality.
Imagine if a $20 V1 release contained:
Good exterior/cockpit model with a few liveries, proper flight model, basic autopilot (no vnav/rnav appoaches) and autothrottle. Maybe even relying on Asobo avionics and World Map for flight planning
Then a $10 V2 adds:
EFB, Interior cabin, a few more liveries
Another $30 V3 adds:
Complete autopilot with VNAV, RNAV and Vatsim compatibility. Maybe a few other engine options.
Such an approach would shorten the investment period and give the developers lots of feedback from customers to make the plane better. It would also give them lots of incentive to finish the plane.
It would be great if this was not required but right now it feels like folks are struggling to get quality offerings out there in a timely manner.