Microsoft Flight Simulator Aerosoft Aircraft: CRJ

[Mathijs Kok 36951]

7 minutes ago, Jersey1985 said:

I was expecting £70-80 for the base model.... and would have snapped it up in an instant. Great pricing to hit mass market. I guess its always difficult to balance high price and lower customer base, with low price and higher customer base!

 

It is indeed, certainly on a new platform with 75% new customers. For many people a DLC of 40 euro is something totally new.

[WinterHuntsman 33]

26 minutes ago, Mathijs Kok said:

 

It is indeed, certainly on a new platform with 75% new customers. For many people a DLC of 40 euro is something totally new.

Yep, I’m one of those new customers as this simulator is my first flight simulator. I roughly knew how things would be priced based on what I saw about planes in previous sims. To me, the pricing of 40 euros seems perfect for the quality plane we are getting. 

[Jersey1985 25]

1 minute ago, WinterHuntsman said:

Yep, I’m one of those new customers as this simulator is my first flight simulator. I roughly knew how things would be priced based on what I saw about planes in previous sims. To me, the pricing of 40 euros seems perfect for the quality plane we are getting. 

 

I feel lots of new simmers are going to be shocked at PMDG pricing then!

[Robert Xones 141]

vor 13 Minuten, Jersey1985 sagte:

 

I feel lots of new simmers are going to be shocked at PMDG pricing then!

haha indeed, When I heard they wanted to sell the 737 for 140$ I could only laugh. Im very very happy with the Crjs price, gonna buy both packs

[Abriael 299]

19 minutes ago, Jersey1985 said:

 

I feel lots of new simmers are going to be shocked at PMDG pricing then!

 

That was a given. They have a long time to assess the market, so we'll see if they'll adjust or will remain set on their usual pricing.

[FHSim 1]

And, what about the in-sim performance ? 

[tjburni 0]

will it be released this year? please! XD

[Pickafivestring 33]

So basically $50 USD for the base aircraft.  That's exactly what I was expecting.  Definitely a first day purchase for me, and it will actually be my first ever purchase from Aerosoft.

 

Tim

[Abriael 299]

5 minutes ago, Pickafivestring said:

So basically $50 USD for the base aircraft.  That's exactly what I was expecting.  Definitely a first day purchase for me, and it will actually be my first ever purchase from Aerosoft.

 

I half-expect some first-timer gaming journalist that has never touched a flight simulator publishing a post in shock about a $50 DLC. PC Gamer is first on my list for candidates 😂

[Til1986 9]

I tried the search but didn't find anything, so I will try here. Can you say something about the icing model with the CRJ. I think the model in the sim is a great idea but obviously still has a way to go. Do we have the same icing model on the CRJ? 

[PRO-PILOT 13]

can i use the efb on an ipad with touch screen?

 

[John2 48]

I am looking forward to flying this (Canadian) aircraft. I hope that there will be an Air Canada livery. I was actually an early stage beta tester for the first FSX version of this plane but by the time it was finally released, I had converted to X-Plane so I never actually purchased it. But I will definitely buy this version.

[Abriael 299]

3 minutes ago, John2 said:

I am looking forward to flying this (Canadian) aircraft. I hope that there will be an Air Canada livery. I was actually an early stage beta tester for the first FSX version of this plane but by the time it was finally released, I had converted to X-Plane so I never actually purchased it. But I will definitely buy this version.

 

I hate to be that dude, but actually, it's a Japanese aircraft now. 😂

[Mathijs Kok 36951]

4 hours ago, Robert Xones said:

haha indeed, When I heard they wanted to sell the 737 for 140$ I could only laugh. Im very very happy with the Crjs price, gonna buy both packs

 

Going to defend PMDG here. Robert is a good friend and PMDG and Aerosoft have been working together for a very long time.

 

Although PMDG and Aerosoft aim for different goals in aircraft simulation (they want to simulate the aircraft, we focus on being a airliner captain) we have a very good idea about the costs in development and support.  In the very limited market we have all been working for, what they asked was a solid price.  If there are 30.000 potential customers for your product and a good deal of those are not 'ready' for a complex add-on like the PMDG 737, you are left with a limited group of people and as developer/publisher you have to make hard choices. PMDG decide to go for the top end. The really hardcore simmers for who the price of an aircraft is not a big deal. If you fly 6 hours a week (as many do) and do that for a year you logged close to 350 hours. That is less than half a dollar per hour. Find me any hobby that has costs like that.  I drive 1970 British sports cars as a hobby. And though I spend a lot of time hiding the cost from my wife, I can tell you that per hour driving it is a lot more. 

 

Now with MFS we are poking around in the dark. Scenery sells very very easy. That is driving the prices of those products down. Market forces at work just as they should. For aircraft this has not happened yet as there are simply no aircraft for sale with the complexity of our CRJ, let alone the depth of a PMDG 737. So we simply do not know how much we will sell.  If it turns out that is much higher then we now think (hope?), there will be others that will start to sell solid products a lower prices and that will drive the price down.  Exactly as it should be. Customer determine where prices are. Everybody doing FS add-ons has been working on razor thin margins for a long time and not having MFS products to sell and P3D add-ons simply not selling  for many teams things are getting grim. That is why I said that they teams that have money on the bank will be in the best position at this moment.

 

If you have 6 people in a team working on new aircraft you are burning through 35.000 a month at least (Euro or Dollar) and that is just cost before you can release. Marketing, installers, testing, PR, add another 30.000 on top of that. After release you most likely have you whole dev team still on the product but now also your support department is starting to eat up money like you never seen before.  Your monthly burn rate after release can peak at 50.000 if you are lucky.  At least you are selling at that time.

 

When I started managing FS add-ons I was handling projects that had a total cost of 15.000 Euro/Dollar. Now there are days in a project when we burn through that. A quarter of a million? I need to ask my CEO to spend that, but he will sigh and sign off. Half a million on a project, he will moan and sign. 

 

And you know... prices of add-ons on average have not gone up much.  The MadDog I sold 20 years back cost the same as the CRJ now. There is 100 times more code and over 500 times more polygons (!) in the model, but the price is the same.  As said margins are razor thin for many years. How many dev teams active then are no longer active now? How many dev teams are now based in low cost countries or in tax heavens to make ends meet?

 

So if PMDG asks $140 for an add-on I am pretty sure they know what they are doing. I (Aerosoft) would not go that way, but that is fine. We do not make the same products and we do not aim for the same customers. But I have full respect for their 737 just as I know they have it for what we do. The problem I have and Robert does not, is that people compare products without taking price into account,  lol. But that has been happening for over a decade and we learned to deal with it. 
 

If you say the FSL airbus is better than ours, I say that first of all we make a very different product (look, pilots have to know how to open the cockpit door to get coffee, aircraft run on coffee and petrol, and they have to manage many bits of paper on every flight, do crew management etc.  All things we simulate) and that if you compare a product to another product that is twice as expensive you better have some damned good arguments.  

 

And buying PMDG products helps keeping a DC3 in the air!  Robert flown his DC3 to our office and took some staff for a ride. How cool is that?

I apologize for any of our staff in shorts. It was a very hot day. No excuse, I know.

[John2 48]

9 minutes ago, Abriael said:

actually, it's a Japanese aircraft now. 😂

It will always be a Canadian aircraft for me.

[JAMNICK 2]

will all the crj variants release at the same time or only the 550 and 700 for now?

 

[Mathijs Kok 36951]

550/700 first. 

 

After that Stefan needs a few weeks off because he has been working 14/7 for weeks.  I push people hard but if they threaten to kill me I back off.

[JAMNICK 2]

nice!

 

[tjburni 0]

vor 4 Minuten, Mathijs Kok sagte:

550/700 first. 

 

After that Stefan needs a few weeks off because he has been working 14/7 for weeks.  I push people hard but if they threaten to kill me I back off.

will the 550/700 variants be released this year?

 

[Mathijs Kok 36951]

13 minutes ago, Abriael said:

 

I can offer the insight of a gaming journalist who has served "normal players" for 20 years now. 

 

While I personally think having a modeled copilot is a nice idea, and I certainly wouldn't be against it (but I would not consider it a priority) I can tell you with zero doubts that the number of "normal players" outside of core simmers who would even notice that the copilot is not modeled is likely absolutely negligible. I would be surprised to hear that many outside of aviation enthusiasts even actively think about the fact that aircraft are flown by two people. 

 

That being said, I'd at least make the modeled copilot optional, so that people who don't care can remove him and get some more performance out of the sim. I know a lot of people who have tweaked their settings very finely to get around 30 fps, and a detailed human model in the cockpit might upset that.

 

PS: Guenter looks pretty nice

 

Abriael, Anne posted this in the wrong chat because I send her the wrong link. Would you be so kind as to comment again here: 

>

[Abriael 299]

1 minute ago, Mathijs Kok said:

 

Abriael, Anne posted this in the wrong chat because I send her the wrong link. Would you be so kind as to comment again here: 

>

 

Was just going to

[John2 48]

Moved to Twin Otter thread.

[amahran 415]

3 minutes ago, Mathijs Kok said:

 

Abriael, Anne posted this in the wrong chat because I send her the wrong link. 

Aw man I was looking forward to a virtual copilot

[Mathijs Kok 36951]

1 minute ago, amahran said:

Aw man I was looking forward to a virtual copilot

 

Not in the CRJ at this moment. What Anne is doing is really 2021 stuff. Things are moving very fast right now.

[WinterHuntsman 33]

I’m just really excited for the CRJ. All my flights so far have been short flights between regional airports, which is perfect for the CRJ it seems. While big planes are neat, I don’t have the time weekly to fly long distances. I foresee this CRJ becoming the aircraft I fly the most.