Payware Add-ons

[Arthur Dent]

I like that so far, no one is charging for addons in Orbiter. It really adds to the joy of Orbiter.

In other communities (for certain best-selling games like FS9/FSX or The Sims franchise), where the communities are much bigger, some third party developers people charge for addons. Some charge for it, because they make a living by producing quality addons.
But some people really try to rip the community off with low quality payware addons that took sometimes less than an hour to make. I remember with the Sims 2, people demand "mandatory donations" of 2-4$ for a single hair object. Others make higher quality objects and sometimes kindly ask for a donations.

I respect that people charge for their work. But I have the free choice to not buy and use their stuff. Maybe I'm missing out by not paying 15 EUR for something that a freeware developer can develop with a reasonably good to very good quality (see the freeware Düsseldorf Airport for FSX).

Everybody likes good addons. Everybody likes free addons. And everybody loooves good free addons for probably the best (free) Sim on the market.

I don't know why I'm saying this, but I just want to give my two cents.

 

[Alexw95]

I believe orbiter addons should have the right to accept donations but not charge a set price. I think i speak for a lot of people when I say addon devs enjoy doing it thats why they do it, but a donation wouldnt hurt once and a while

 

[Keatah]

I'm always leery of paying for software because of the documentation issue and continual updates/fixes. I've been burned numerous times in the past. The company perhaps went out of business. Or the software had gone through too many revisions and was now considered something totally new and that there would be no more support without another payment. On the flipside, there are some projects that remain in some sort of funky perpetual development, never getting past a long series of ever-changing screenshots.

I don't believe in paying for something in development unless a release date is contractually guaranteed. If I do find freeware that is cool, and I enjoy it and envision that I will be using it for some time to come, and it is good overall, then I approach the author with some sort of compensation.

Also, there's the question of what about the folks that built the infrastructure that allowed the add-on to "happen" in the first place. In the case of an orbiter add-on, it would be the author of Orbiter itself, OrbiterSound, and other stuff like the code that makes an add-on behave the way it does.

I would need to figure out some way of compensating the whole gang and not just one author or team member of a project/addon.

 

[FADEC]

Orbiter is as great as it can be, for free. But I would pay 50-100 euro for a highly detailed addon like Apollo or STS, which means not just nice visuals but almost everything else (systems, procedures and missions).

No payware = no complex stuff. That's the sad thing about Orbiter for people like me (accustomed to complex MS FS payware). From that perspective, Orbiter becomes actually a little boring quite fast.

 

[Codz]

I agree that asking for people to pay for your addons really is insulting to every person that made Orbiter or anyone that puts out quality addons.

---------- Post added at 02:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:47 AM ----------

Orbiter is as great as it can be, for free. But I would pay 50-100 euro for a highly detailed addon like Apollo or STS, which means not just nice visuals but almost everything else (systems, procedures and missions).

No payware = no complex stuff. That's the sad thing about Orbiter for people like me (accustomed to complex MS FS payware). From that perspective, Orbiter becomes actually a little boring quite fast.

AMSO,NASSP,SSU,Shuttle Fleet,ISS Fleet...

 

[FADEC]

AMSO,NASSP,SSU,Shuttle Fleet,ISS Fleet...

They are all either incomplete or don't include complex systems simulations and related procedures.

What I am talking about is something like Space Shuttle Mission Simulator, which really puts you into an astronaut's seat instead of "remote" controlled 3D models.

 

[Pablo49]

No payware = no complex stuff. That's the sad thing about Orbiter for people like me (accustomed to complex MS FS payware). From that perspective, Orbiter becomes actually a little boring quite fast.

Well that's a poor generality if I ever saw one.

 

[Keatah]

Orbiter is as great as it can be, for free. But I would pay 50-100 euro for a highly detailed addon like Apollo or STS, which means not just nice visuals but almost everything else (systems, procedures and missions).

No payware = no complex stuff. That's the sad thing about Orbiter for people like me (accustomed to complex MS FS payware). From that perspective, Orbiter becomes actually a little boring quite fast.

I have to agree with this 100%
Flight sims for home systems have evolved quite handsomely in the visual department since the early 1970's. However, systems modeling is really lacking and has not been at forefront of many development efforts. Since it will be the common layperson making the bulk of purchasing, it is wise not to scare them away with an overcomplex "Game". Orbiter's navigation stuff, with MFD's, to me, is right at the sweet spot, but I'm sure I'll outgrow that soon enough.

I can't complain much. This is the first simulator for home systems. A2-FS1. We had so much fun flying off the grid, and exploration missions mostly consisted of looking for graphical anomalies or trying to get back home. What a total blast! This ran on a 1MHz system with 16k bytes of ram. It was loaded from a cassette tape, which took many minutes. Then later on came a 5.25" floppy disk version which featured retractable landing gear. Actually, gear up/down changed the database or detail level. Gear down turned on detail at the airport and put a stripe on the runway. It also cleared away the grid except for one square. This also sped up framerates for landing. Gear up gave you view with some grid-like scenery as seen below. Be aware that the mountains are paper cutouts. Just take a piece of cardboard, draw mountains on it, and stand it up on your desk, and there you have it! And just like today with Orbiter, back then, we'd play this for hours and hours!

In the above screen capture you can see a bevy of indicators! We have AirSpeed, Altimeter, Rudder/Elevator/Throttle Position Indicator. Then we have a Radar/Map Display for tracking enemy aircraft, it also indicates whether they are firing guns at you or not.
Below all this is a Turn Rate, Heading, and Vertical Velocity reading.
And we have a bonafide Low Altimeter or Radar Altimeter. And finally, Oil Pressure, Oil Temp, Gas, and Tachometer & Score readouts. This simulator was way ahead of its time. It had a moving map display and radar altimeter. Features we wouldn't see on a commercial airliner for years to come. The performance of the simulated aircraft is that of a Sopwith Camel or a Piper. It was cool trying to see how high we could go or how fast. Better yet, trying to figure out a loop'da'loop or barrel roll.

And today - Digital Combat Simulator looks nice, though I have yet to play around with it --
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&...gc.r_pw.&fp=3e82efc6cc141df0&biw=1440&bih=692

 

[Cras]

I don't think the Orbiter community is large enough to make payware addons viable.

This is a good point. FSX/9 is barely big enough to make payware viable, that is why for a single plane to be well done, it will cost upwards to 60-80 USD.

For Orbiter, for someone to make something of that level, for it to be worth it would cost over hundreds.

But in fairness, the Orbiter community is truly unique. Those that use it are very hard core, if that makes sense. Passionate may be a better word. And they tend to have certain skills that allows them to create add-ons. In FSX, often that is not the case.

The other point, and it has already been brought up, is with pay comes resonsiblity. The support, the updates, fixing the bugs. The money paid almost is more for that part of it than for the product itself.

FSPassengers is a perfect example of that. Good product, good idea, but the support is utterly non-existant, and has been that way for years, and it turns a lot of people off.

FADECs point is one I agree with a lot on, in that with no payware there is little to no very detailed add-ons. And if you hold it up to the the gold standards of MS Fsx, nothing comes even remotely close. While it would be nice to see something of an NGX level, for space flight it is not as important. For one, it seems the most popular of add-ons are entirely fictional, so the requirement for them to adhere to real world counterparts is gone. Can't say that the XR2 is missing this capability, or that. The XR2 and DGIV have some systems, make sure you have enough gas to breath, enough fuel to use the engines, make sure to depressurize the airlock before egress, and don't burn up in the atmosphere. The important stuff. I am not sure how many people would react to a truly fully simulated Space Shuttle for instance, where the IMUs need to be realigned, the cryos reconfiged, the puring of the fuel cells, the multiple cooling systems, using the toilet, all that stuff.

Might be fun for some to do that everytime one takes a ship into space, and for that particular mindset there are alternatives out there that will let you experience all the configurations and switches that are required to fly a Shuttle, but in Orbiter, the heart of it, is flying the ship, getting to space, getting to other worlds in the solar system, and working up there. And there are a lot of very good add-ons that allow us to do that.

For me, when I want to fly how NASA really flew, I got Space Shuttle Simulator. For the Apollo stuff, AMSO is close enough. My knowledge of the actual workings of the Apollo CM and LM are very very limited and most of my knowledge on Apollo is actually how they got there and what they did when they were there, which Orbiter and AMSO sims perfectly. For what I use Orbiter for, to simulate an alternate future with near tech ships, what is available works fantastic. And the work is not just in spacecraft, but also the MFDs as well. Some of them are fantastic stuff. Is everything I use something I would consider paying for, no certainly not. But there some I would. But if I had to pay for everything, I can tell you my Orbiter hangar and my MFD list would be a heck of a lot smaller that is for sure.

A donate button is a fine way to go. Have a button here to support this forum, wouldn't mind seeing more direct way for developers who really put a lot of time, blood, sweat, and dreams into their addon to make it available to those who enjoy them to give something back. Makes sense to me.

 

[Codz]

They are all either incomplete or don't include complex systems simulations and related procedures.

What I am talking about is something like Space Shuttle Mission Simulator, which really puts you into an astronaut's seat instead of "remote" controlled 3D models.

Well Orbiter is not big enough for things like that. A completely simulated Space Shuttle might be a cool novelty for a while but it would get old doing all the tedious tasks everytime. NASSP is a great Apollo "System Simulator" in my opinion. Oh, and Eridanus and the XR-2 Mk2 sound like they are going to up the ante quite a bit in system simulation.

 

[N_Molson]

Orbiter is as great as it can be, for free. But I would pay 50-100 euro for a highly detailed addon like Apollo or STS, which means not just nice visuals but almost everything else (systems, procedures and missions).

I wouldn't. Far too expensive. I would prefer to try to developp my own stuff.

 

[Rtyh-12]

Charging money for addons isn't just insulting. It's just plain horrendous. The Doctor worked hard on this amazing simulator. He released it for free. Then other talented people made brilliant addons. Many became part of the (free) Orbiter experience. Charging money for this experience would probably cause people either to leave Orbiter, pirate the addon or simply ignore it. Either way, the author certainly wouldn't get a lot of love from the community...

 

[Keatah]

Well Orbiter is not big enough for things like that. A completely simulated Space Shuttle might be a cool novelty for a while but it would get old doing all the tedious tasks everytime. NASSP is a great Apollo "System Simulator" in my opinion. Oh, and Eridanus and the XR-2 Mk2 sound like they are going to up the ante quite a bit in system simulation.

What new systems is the Mk2 gonna have? Is this a known fact that there will be more complex systems?

 

[Codz]

What new systems is the Mk2 gonna have? Is this a known fact that there will be more complex systems?

I'm just speculating based on what I've read.