Air Manager Value for Money

[Sling]

Just came across this and thought i'd share.

If ever you doubt or question what it costs to have Air Manager take a look around at the other solutions and you will soon realise what a great deal it truly is.

Gauges for FIP hardware on this site retail for $10 US per gauge.

http://store.fsxtimes.com/index.php?s=all&sid_04=14

[SimPassion]

For me, I went around many solutions on the market and none bring to us the customization level of Air Manager on Instrument design and behavior, while we get also in AM suite many hardware solutions to interface with all sims
we find interesting products but none with the same customizable level for panels and instruments
those bringing customization are outdated when we talk for current sims compatibility

Gilles

[SimPassion]

Just that SI should maintain the AM level and going forward, by performing fixing, while hearing customers requests, before implementing new features (though the feature requests still have to get their answers at an additional stage)
So, still to find a ticketing solution to not send "bottles to the sea" on customers view and email is not the proper solution if we can guess ...

Regards
Gilles

[JackZ]

Thanks for the link Gilles.
And strangely enough, I found troubling similarities on the graphics of some of these gauges on this web site to some AM store gauges, to the point I’m wondering if some of the graphical resources have not been “ borrowed” from use AM gauges to make those payware gauges!

That is something I am starting to be increasingly aware of, and to be franck, I’m wondering if I will ever release some gauges I have in stock, simply because of that. Call me paranoid if you will, but I hate being exploited.
Wished it existed some way to protect some of our resources, that are worth month of hard work...

Jacques

[SimPassion]

I understand, there should be some risk we can't avoid on publishing freely our work ...
Just to mention the link is provided by Tony, the OP

Gilles

[Sling]

Jacques,

This has been one of my concerns all along. That and the fact many like a free ride. If in an ideal world everyone contributed equally that would be great. However we all know that is not the case. I’ve been saying for a while now that there would be more instruments and higher quality instruments available if there was a way for the instrument developers to secure and in some cases monetize their hard work similar to the App Store model.

[Corjan]

Hi,


This will still be a very hard issue to address. There is no one good answer unfortunately.

I can understand it feels like some people take a free ride, and in a way that certainly is the case. We ourselves have had multiple companies that use the home use version and it's community instruments and sell it as a professional product.
But I'm afraid that is just how open source code works, there are pros and cons to it. Note that something like Air Manager would never be possible without other people dedicating there time and share there code with others (have a look at 'Third party libraries in help menu)'.
It is up to yourself if you wish to share your creations. We never push people to share anything, we respect the choice everybody makes. We also try to keep a fair balance, where we willl also add instruments to the community store.

We have looked a bit into following the apple store model. It seems possible for us to automate this process and transfer a cut of the profits though paypal. Note that the receiving end will have a more complicated tax form to fill in
Big downside to this system is that we are a fit afraid that the community pool will become less interesting. Why wouldn't someone try to make some money instead of uploading it for free as a community instrument?

A good middle road might be to accept creators to submit complete panels to us, and get paid for that. It will just be a part of the 'Premium paid panels' pool within Air Manager.
We will make a final choice on this subject when AM 4.0 hits.


Corjan

[Flingwing]

Hi all

It's a tough choice but you are either an Open Source model or a closed shop Apple model IMHO.

If you try to have a foot on each canoe then you're going to get wet balls...

Up Your Knots
Terry

[JackZ]

IMHO most Open Source models rely on the willingness of people to continuously develop and enhance an existing solution, as well as build upon other’s work, in a somewhat balanced “no pain, no gain” agreement with the community.

If another project is started upon some blocks/library/code some respect and credit is due to the original creators, which more than often, will benefit in turn from the new development/fork.
But all in all the process relies on a “return on investment” either felt or received by the community.

As for the monetary issue, most of the time the big companies (I’m thinking for example of Red Hat or Mandrake, from the Linux World) get revenue from additional value such as installation/advice, maintenance, etc...

Problem arises when people start to feel that someone else is making a profit out of their free work, or reusing their work without due credit, which appears to be the case when talking about other developments we might have seen in the Saitek FIP Store.

Or when the delicate balance of trust and agreement between the tool provider and the developers is broken for a reason or another...
If either side tries to make a business out of the model without at least the consent of the other party, it will sooner or later go either wild or more likely go down slowly but surely to a dead end, as customer (as well as devs) tend to turn towards the more active/reliable/attractive solution.
It’s the well known problem of zero-sum games.

Jacques