True it works quite well for GTN750 mod from PMS50. If you go for their premium product you can get a subscription for €25 per year or you can buy the product for €75 one-off. They also have a hybrid where you can upgrade your subscription to lifetime for €50. It’s a pretty expensive add-on, most aircraft seem to be about half the price of this (for one off).
Personally, I don’t understand why people buy so many aircraft. How can they achieve any mastery of any particular aircraft? Since the Sim came, I’ve purchased 3. The last, a year and a half ago. I am now to the point where I can get it to the ground without breaking it most of the time.
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I can’t see myself buying 200 aircraft either.
But for example a few Piper GA piston twins are really not that hard to master, for example so getting to know them well enough to switch back and forth between them. Then you can also fly a Beechcraft Baron relative easily.
I personally have flown a lot of GA airplanes IRL, some many times, some only once. That was the best part of flying sometimes.
And in the sim you get to fly even more aircraft, some that aren’t even around anymore or that you simply would never get a chance because of ratings or simply money in your wallet.
That’s true if you’re a real aviator and I agree the GA birds like Piper and Cessna are relatively easy to master ( the 172 was fun and easy). The multi-engine commercial jets are something else. I’m thinking of a simmer with no real flight training\experience or decades of flight sim. I’m not a real aviator and can’t see having a hanger full of aircraft that I might run out and tinker with every few months. That’s expensive. As I said I have three and have been ‘flying’ one for the last 2 years or so and still learning.
You have a point, but also variety is the spice of life. I’d much rather have a selection of birds that I can adequately fly for all sorts of different occasions. I love old warbirds for example, and they are super fun to fly (the good 3rd party ones anyway) but that can’t scratch the itch for a night time IFR flight or a slow scenic flight. Just like a Cessna 152 can’t scratch the itch for some fast aerobatics.
That said, I don’t have heaps of planes. Some people will just buy every half decent plane that releases. I assume those people have cash to burn though.
The last thing I need in my life is yet another subscription service that bleeds me monthly.
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We basically agree on everything. I do not fly high fidelity airliners, because frankly that type of flying does not interest me all that much.
I do have the PMDG 737 because I had that for a previous sim and I occasionally feel like flying a corporate jet of the special kind.
Mostly I stick with piston engined aircraft, the complexity is mostly in engine handling and fuel distribution.
I do not want to push buttons, so to speak on some FMS or whatever.
Having both could work but as others here have said the purpose of a subscription is to extract more money from you. Lots of subscriptions tie you in for a period so subscribing for a single month may not be an option and therefore it becomes no better and even worse than buying the addon outright.
I think the responses on this thread clearly indicate the general feeling on subscriptions. I don’t think I read a single one that agreed with the OP’s suggestion. It’s a big NO from me too.
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This is my ‘take’ too.
I think it would be a very brave dev who decided to price addons in this way.
Maybe sometime in the future when 3rd party aircraft become much more complex and even higher fidelity but I don’t think we are anywhere near that yet.
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That’s a very fair point and perspective, but there are a couple pretty straightforward explanations I can think of in my case: 1) Not everyone is interested in achieving true mastery of any particular aircraft and just wants to experience a lot of different types of aircraft. 2) Not everyone needs the same amount of time to achieve mastery of (or at least competency with) any particular aircraft. Most aircraft do the same things, so within a class of aircraft such as single engine piston, landing one isn’t remarkably different from landing any other, but those tiny nuances are exciting to me (I think about programming languages… it took me a long time to learn my first one, but learning additional languages is extremely fast because it’s just about learning the nuances). All that just means that it doesn’t take me long to be very confident flying an addon, thus when a new addon comes out that offers something interesting, there’s a decent chance (less these days since my addon list is pretty long) that I’ll buy it to experience those nuances rather than keep grinding my mastery of the other addons.
None of that is to knock anyone that finds that it takes more time to learn an addon, and definitely isn’t meant to knock the idea of mastery. I admit, I would have much more time under my belt in the amazing A2A Comanche if I hadn’t bought anything else since it had released, or hadn’t bought so many addons before it released, and I respect the idea of becoming skilled in a handful of aircraft or even one, if it’s your main interest or if it’s an aircraft you plan to fly IRL and want to get comfortable with.
Little bit of a personal explanation, but I’m also neurodivergent (diagnosed, and not by TikTok) and this has been my hyperfocus for 75% of my life so that also contributes. My diagnosis also kind of spurs me (against my wallet’s will at times) to get NEW SHINY THING.
It’s definitely true though as others have mentioned, 100+, 200+ addons, that’s still a hefty investment. I’ve paid the cost of the sim dozens of times over in addons which sounds ludicrous, but being middle-aged, I’ve got a steady career that affords me some discretionary spending. I’m living my dream as a young kid of getting to simulate tons of aircraft in a believably environment and I kind of can’t get enough of it.
I’m glad though that even if we can’t all see eye to eye on how many addons is “too many addons” we’re all mostly in agreement that subscriptions would really only be affordable to people who buy very, very few addons overall. I don’t think devs want to discourage people from buying addons by using this model.
I do appreciate OP for fostering this discussion, either way!
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So THAT’S what’s wrong with me. 
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Me too, me too!!
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What a life!
Agreed, but no subscriptions for me. I’m still using software that is over 10 years old, I refuse to ‘upgrade’ because they went to subscription.
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If they went to a subscription model I would never touch another third-party aircraft again.
Now, I agree that the current system is flawed. You can buy something that you end up hating right from the start and you’re just stuck with it and out that money. That’s not ok. I’m pretty strict with what I let myself buy and even I’ve gotten a couple aircraft I would have “returned” right away if I could have. My dad also has the sim and I know he has multiple aircraft that he regrets buying and never touches. If he could have returned them or had a trial, I’m sure he still would’ve spent that money in the marketplace but on something better.
I’ve also made this argument before, but if I wasn’t so worried about being burned by a bad product I’d be willing to spend more. So as far as I see it, Microsoft is actually limiting sales by not allowing trials or returns within a short amount of time.
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I believe that this has been discussed endlessy and the general conclusion was that a try before you buy would be the most sensible solution.
So as not to open all this again , yes there are ways of blocking use after the trial period if not purchased.
Subscriptioin models are terribly expensive in the long run. I am sure that MS would love it but we should not.
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Subscription model is a HUGE no for me, for reasons already discussed here.
I also think that with so many third party developers, paying up front is not the best model since some of those add-ons are broken / break the sim. Maybe we could just get ~24 hours to test the add-on and either pay after this period, or pay up front but be able to get our money back within those 24 hours?
Trouble is a lot of people would buy a plane just for use in a single multiplayer group flight and then get their money back.
Realistically speaking there is no solution to this, from both sides of the fence IMO.
What we have now is really the fairest situation. It just comes down to doing your pre-purchase research and watching / reading reviews etc. This forum is good for that but of course there is a small population of players here really.
What I find funny about this discussion is that there are basically two kinds of objections:
- The subscription model would be more expensive => we should not want it
- People would subscribe to an aircraft for a very short period of time just to fly it once then unsubscribe which means it would be too cheap (for the dev)
The truth is probably that over a long run it would cost about the same. What would change is the kind of dev that would get more money. Currently the most profitable business model is to produce lots of aircraft that are not too time intensive to make, then provide only the minimal support that doesn’t anger the customers while making more and more aircraft. In a subsription model the dev that wins is one that produces the aircraft which people want to fly for a long period of time. The one aircraft that I have flown the most is A2A Comanche but I have paid them less than some of the devs whose aircraft I have flown once then thought “meh the flight model isn’t quite right”.
exactly. As we all know, that a few 3rd party Developers - which we are not allowed to name in the forums - have specialised on doing that…
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