NZFF

Hi All

i was looking at get ting the fs-labs A320 when i saw the price at $239 NZD.
Pmdg 737 $139NZD
pmdg 747 $213.48NZD

I do think these are starting to get out of the range for the every day flight simmer. If i was trying to get people into full flight sim i think these prices are a bit over the top.
i told a friend of mine about what i pay for all the addons and he was shocked i don't think i talked him into getting flight sim any time soon!!!
I do like the idea like what Aerosoft does and gives you money off a new aircraft if you had the old one for fsx makes me keep going back. I do know that there A320 is not the same level as Fslabs but i do like it.
just wonted to know what everyone else thinks??

Cheers
Todd

The reason they give is it’s a niche in a niche (within a niche?).
Teams of people, years to develop the add on.
Licensing fees, server costs etc.

I think it’s expensive, but I justify it by how much it costs per hour. So I’m careful with what I purchase.

When the PMDG 777 first came out I bought it, only few it a dozen times. When they charged again for P3D I didn’t buy it.

Wait until Black Friday sales!! You will be surprised to see Captain Sim planes on sale for lousy 9 bucks each

I guess it's a matter of perspective. I only ever bought one PMDG product way back in the FS2004 days I think it was and I thought they were expensive back then... but you are paying for quality. Would I buy something from them now? Doubtful... but they don't make anything that I want. Maybe if they brought their DC6 over to XP11. Developers have to cover the huge development costs of complex aircraft like Boings and Airbusts so I don't think that charging what they do is too outrageous. It becomes outrageous when they want you to fork out for something that is of poor quality but there aren't too many of those out there. NZ255 is right, it's a niche within a niche and they are never going to sell a huge number of units so in order to recoup the cost of development, the per unit price has to be relatively high. As Aharon says, just wait for the sales on Simmarket, Aerosoft etc and you'll pick up some good deals.... at the end of the day though, it's still cheaper than cocaine and prostitutes...

chopper_nut wrote:.... at the end of the day though, it's still cheaper than cocaine and prostitutes...

...or as I call them, 'my other hobbies'. This is a good point, really I guess we all have hobbies which end up costing us a lot of money, which we are happy to pay. I don't buy expensive aircraft, and I am always careful with my money, but I can't imagine how much money I've spent on photography over the years. I can recall paying more to stock a darkroom back in another century than I could ever hope to spend on flightsim. (I almost said ' I remember buying an enlarger' but these days I'm not sure that people would even know what that was, except for those emails which use to be all the rage.)
But...
From a development point of view, I can understand the spread of prices across our hobby. It is a small market, and although there are some amazing success stories, which may or may not be fact, it is tough to make it pay. Some time ago I did the exercise of working out what I needed to live on, and how many customers I could expect, and arrived at the subscription price of $100. That is, almost every customer would need to pay me $100 a year to keep me from going broke. Of course this didn't work out, as that's not how the flightsim market works, but that sum hasn't changed. Of course I don't produce enough to get this sort of income, so I continue to do it mainly as an obsession.
I did once win a PMDG aircraft, I think in the NZFF screenshot comp, but that was for P3D2, I think, and the license didn't survive long. Plus I never got the hang of getting it in the air.
For aircraft, though, there's a good spread of prices unless you want the best and biggest. Same with scenery, although the price range is not as huge -- my NZCH is at the higher end of the scale not because I'm a greedy sod who takes advantage of the local market, but because I need to pay my rent.

chopper_nut wrote:... at the end of the day though, it's still cheaper than prostitutes...

you saw prostitutes hiding behind hangars in FSX airport sceneries??????????????????????

Regards,

Aharon

Hi all

Thanks for the input i guess i never looked at that from the other side of things . may be one day i will get the pmdg 747 when our dollar is 3 to one

and as for prostitutes hiding behind hangars i will have to go check this out

Cheers
Todd

Must I have all these extreme aircraft?

No.

My fleet are from Qualitywings (QW 757, 787, RJ/BAE 146) and iFly /Boeing 737NG and Boeing 747) All of them reached the level I "need" and the cost I can calculate. And I have stopped buying aircraft and scenerys from developers that think I need for every new Version of a Simulation (like P3DV-1,2 V3 V4 always a "new Version" and others give me an update, sometomes for free. I must not buy everything twice and triply for the full price and without update.

hasegawa wrote:Must I have all these extreme aircraft?

No you do not need to fall into mass hysteria by other flightsimmers who think PMDG or Carendo or Majestic is God

Smiling

Regards,

Aharon

Back in the FS2004 days I bought the Flight 1 ATR, not sure why but did probably because it was interesting at the time.

Fast forward about 10 years and I still had it and even used it for interview prep and then a couple of years later used it for type rating practice when I started flying it.

One day if I was to move fleet to the 777, 787 or the 320 I would spend the money for a sim level product so that I could get some practice in.

Again very small segment but it’s the price of wanting the best result.

PS there was an interesting discussion about the cost of things on the Mil Viz FB page or even their forum as they were looking at porting their ATR over to X Plane but because there wasn’t enough interest or that community didn’t want to spend x amount they chose not to.

I’m the same as lindstrim, I used the f1 atr for practice and more recently used the pmdg 777 for my type rating. They make really good tools for familiarisation and in the case of the triple the systems are very accurate.

They are pricey but with their weight in gold for this.

I don't see enough evolution in a range of "new" current aircraft. It's also a question of why one is asked to pay the full price again for a simple update to a new version of P3D. At the moment you can see it in a particularly outrageous way in the Embraer 170/190 from Feelthere Wilco. To pay 63 Euro full price for the adaptation to the P3DV4 instead of an update for existing customers is a cheeky rip-off. The same applies to Captain Sim.

I see improvements in some "modernized" aircraft say from FSX to P3Dand turther to Prepar3d V.4.5. Typical for this is in my eyes the DASH 8Q-400 by Majestic. and here I say okay...

Yeah mate, that's been a bug of mine for a while. It's pretty rude to charge people for more or less the same addon again. Some developers have been quite good though only charging a very small upgrade amount but there are some major players that really are just taking the urine when it comes to this.

hasegawa wrote: The same applies to Captain Sim.

I'm with ya, sucks aye, but to be fair to CS I believe this time the v4 to v5 update is free?

They did charge for the 32bit v3 to 64bit v4 update tho which is justified, it's just a matter of how much to charge, and a full-price update is a ripoff if you are a previous owner.

I have "flown" a lot of them in FS 2004, FSX, P3DV2 and P3DV4. Allways a new price. P3DV5 does not interest me. Since I intend to skip that and switch to FS 2020 at the end of the year and turn my back on Lockheed-Martin. But everybody's doing it to themselves. For me it is not worth it for 6. . . 7 months (?) especially since I don't see enough evolution in V5 to have an insane update orgy and barely fly.