I recently contacted the dev and they have confirmed this is now becoming Marketplace only for future updates.
It’s still available on flightsim.to at a much higher price (currently on sale on MP) than the marketplace for some reason. The dev should really stop selling it there if it’s essentially defunct.
The dev has stated there reasoning is due to the ease by which products can be pirated. I can understand there point even though I don’t agree with it, it’s the cost of doing business.
If the products are worth buying people will buy it and they do that by providing good customer service (I did get a prompt response) as well as continual updates (not sure when this was updated, 2022 going by flightsim.to as MP does not have a date in the change log). The open source model still exists despite the big software companies for this very reason.
If the product is priced fairly and is updated consistently the dev may find any loss through piracy is made up by more sales. They’ve lost out at the moment on my purchase and I can’t believe I’m the only one.
This decision is very disappointing as via the marketplace not only do we have deal with slow and inconsistent updates but the encryption on Marketplace purchases prevents more tech savvy pilots like myself from modding them to fix issues.
I would not have been able to provide good diagnostic info to another dev and help them fix an issue with their aircraft if I’d purchased it via the marketplace, even the dev tools stop you seeing things and just show a message something like “This file is encrypted”.
The fault is more on Asobo, what is the harm in allowing virtual pilots access to things like the aircraft or system cfg file? I can do this for most of the default MSFS aircraft. Graphical and sound work of course is more effort so understand the need to protect these (At least one other dev was accused of stealing another’s work I believe).
The dev is also being very stubborn about not enabling autopilot on this aircraft. They of course are entitled to their own creative mews but I think some compromise needs to be made given this is an entertainment flight simulator. If I wanted absolute realism I would be using a different sim. Besides it’s a two seater trainer, couldn’t the student/instructor take over for a moment whilst I check the map or need to go and answer the door? Pausing is not an option when on a group flight and even when flying solo the built-in flight assistant is absolute garbage.
I discovered a few mods on flightsim.to that seemed to indicate it could be possible to enable this and other functionality that the dev didn’t want to but upon closer inspection they only work with default aircraft (spirit of st louis as one example). It’s probably only time (read FS2024) that Asobo decides to lock those down too.
Maybe I need to find a way to reverse engineer the encryption but that’s currently above my skills and should not be necessary to adjust a simple config file.
I love military trainers and very much want to add the Tucano to my hanger but I’m not willing to accept these limitations when there are other (less preferable) options (Texan II, PC-21, etc) available which give me more value for money.
I hope the developer seems the rational of these arguments and will reconsider adding less historically accurate features. It’s a few edits in the config file when used with the PMS50 Premium version (which they have included an option for and that’s not historically accurate) or allowing the key binds to work, no additional graphical/sound/flight dynamics work is required.
This developer (and others) are just being stubborn for no rational and then makes it impossible for us to work around this because it only being available in the encrypted version, that to me is not good customer service. Make these features available so that those who want them can have them and can be easily ignored by those who don’t…simples.
I’ve been having a lot of fun lately modifying a number of things in DCS (even with the payware modules), why should MSFS be any different. I believe even the XPlane store doesn’t impose these limits (although I’m not yet ready to give up on MSFS just yet).
Sorry for this much longer comment than originally intended but I think everything is made clear so I can only hope the dev sees reason. I think the aircraft looks very good to fly so is not a critism of their work, I only hope the above compromise (as at least 1 other has also requested on flightsim.to) can be seen as a positive request.
