I’m sorry, but you are contradicting what Tommi posted that was deleted again earlier today.
Maybe Tommi can repost the post that was deleted once again, in full.
It clearly stated that his belief was that it would be a very natural development and a way to bring in funds for continued developments.
Based on that it is highly troublesome that you tell us this is all in our heads only.
It CLEARLY was in Tommi’s head as well and he argued hugely FOR it in a very long post.
But really you can just guarantee us this will never happen to us, current owners, that paid high $ for our devices and this issue can be wiped away.
A guarantee that in case a paid service comes along, that it will not force us to accept that to still get access to all future developed filters and relevant TD settings for our wheel bases.
We really only want the best for you and ourselves.
It seems to me, as others post, you don’t want to listen.
Many of us are not naive or junior developers even. We are seasoned professionals in the software industry and we have seen this all before.
We also understand the pros and cons easily and we see MANY issues, just like yourself.
Additionally we are highly opinionated exactly because we have a lot of experience. Not speaking for All, of course, but no matter how much or little I have agreed with people on this forum, I will say that by far the most people I have interacted with are CLEARLY very clever in these matters and software in general.
as always, the ones complaining are a minority of all customers. usually the ones in favour stay silent, online you just see the negative opinions about anything a lot more than the positive ones.
He did go to great length asking us how else $ could be found for developers to keep working on wheel bases with a very long expected life time in any other way. It did not seem likely there was any misunderstanding to be made from that.
Take your inspiration from the company Sim Expérience and stop taking us for cash cows.
You are taking the wrong path.
I don’t use wireless, don’t use static force reduction and to be honest I don’t see much difference with the vrs DD on iracing.
Maybe ypu need to get down to earth.
I am sincerely thinking of selling my simucube 2 pro…
Yes, I deleted it for the reason Mika also mentioned in above, because such planning has not been done and furthermore, such rumours when taken out of context would devalue the product that is currently sold and being owned by very many and that is something I don’t want. People would not be happy to hear about such rumours. Baseline of my thinking however was that when you know (meaning I know) that a product is well designed, good to go for couple of decades, subscription seems like a pretty good way of dividing sw/fw development costs to the future for hardware that needs software maintenance thruout its lifetime. But this is just my opinion, and it is clear from this forum that the idea does not get much support or that it gets at least loud resistance/opposition or that the idea is strange itself for product that is considered purely as hardware eventhough the features of it are defined by firmware/software. People have feelings and if something feels strange, then they may not agree about this whether it is true/good or not.
Anyhow, I repeat, I deleted the post because such planning has not been done and when taken out of context, the rumours and work related to those rumours to correct those are just a work load to too much to correct which is also non productive work. Should have thought better before writing.
I think the biggest issue came from removing the post, since you could have discussed the ideas in it. Now it just seemed dubious and when Mika posted it was all in our heads only it was just weird and completely untrue.
I think the ideas are natural and many would agree. As a software person myself I understand your angle and agree that software dev is NOT free and that it IS in ours, the owners best interest, to get continued dev.
Only not bc normally a service payment would also mean lower unit initial pricing, which none of the current owners got.
So for future users it def. IS perfectly acceptable, actually is no matter initial price, just for current users we would be tricked in to paying to an unexpected service.
Again, this even is fine, as long as it can be opt in and would not limit users from new filters/functionality.
I have to say I read the deleted post as hypothetical, and presenting an alternative strategy, rather than what the actual strategy is…it was past of a discussion of the pros & cons.
I have concerns with the on-line profiles as I have posted as a potential customer, but if there is to be a meaningful conversation about this then we can’t throw hypothetical conversations back as proof of them planning something which it doesn’t appear that they are…
@gil Please let us all know, as this is an important question for me too.
I am wanting to get a DD.
Fanatec - too unreliable
Accuforce - difficult to get at a decent price in the UK
VRS DFP - looks nice, good price but the reviews suggest is grainy rather than the buttery smooth nature of the SC2
SC2 - looks impressive, more expensive, not sure I want an on-line profile management system?
I am also interested to know that if someone considers us as dishonest company, but to be exact, he said that VRS is an honest company, he did not say that GD is dishonest, (may have indirectly implied that?), or is Granite Devices somehow dishonest @gil ? If we are in your opinion, in what way?
@Tommi, @gil
I may have slightly misread that - you are correct Tommi, but the sub-context is that GD is some how not honest, at least, from the way I have read it. I haven’t read anything from GD to suggest this though!
Seems like the post cannot be returned anymore, but see comment in below
Exactly, and therefore it was best to delete the whole post as such is not being planned, it would just create a lot of non-productive work to cut rumours and correct some wrong understandings (as it immediately did after the post).
Hmmm… you see, if this is the how to say, correct mind-set to think about the matter that anything unexpected, like a service cannot be introduced, then we cannot ever even introduce such an option to Simucube 2 owners. Simucube 2 is a product that is still long in production, but I doubt that to be the case after 3,5-5 years (actual production time then 5-6,5 years), successor should come for sure at some point. (Hopefully the previous does not start new rumors again such that SC2 is soon obsolete as such designwork also is not in pipeline at all, but I am quite sure that at some point we make new model!)
Now how many years after production has ended is reasonable to expect product support? Ofcourse, we define it and customers then vote with their wallet that do they buy new product from us if we missed expectations last time, but I can easily imagine that SC2 hw itself is good for couple of decades, but without sw maintenance, not so much. Current product price of SC2 does not include software support for several new games and windows versions for let’s say 15 years even when the hardware would work and USB connections would be around still.
Okay, and this should be so for perpetuity? Also, I am not sure that did I understand this correctly, but are you suggesting (if there is some payments involved in some service) that other users who opt in should fund development results for the ones who did not opt in?
If it means core filter development is halted for non-service users, then it would not be fair for quite some years from now for any current user, since we were given no warning on purchase that we would soon be left cold.
If it’s a new service, fully opt-in, offering some new onlinefunctionality, NOT limiting access to new filter developments, then by all means put it in place tomorrow and ask a subscription fee. No harm done, it was never expected.
Just don’t force some paid service on to us and leave us cold if we now don’t join, please.
To me it makes sense if you unify it all, although keeping the local cache in place. Unifying the models could be choice on purchase like:
Cheaper base price + pay for subscription monthly.
Expensive base price + free subscription(all current users) for at least some good number of years that would still make it a better deal than not paying high $ up front. So maybe the diff in base price times used for subscription from the time this is going paid. This at a discount of maybe 50%(bc of the higher initial down payment for the base unit).
I only provided examples for clarity. Not for suggesting them in any way.
This discussion is great. I can also offer another type of situation that MAY arise at some point in the future. External factors might come to play as well, and those might affect many.
Suppose that in X years from now, Microsoft decides to remove DirectInput API from Windows due to it being old, unmaintained and deprecated. This would be forced upon by the Windows 10 “Windows as a service” model via automatic update that can’t be cancelled.
X might be 5, 7, or 10 years.
What should we do then? What should others do? This would deprecate pretty much all 3rd-party USB buttonboxes/wheels etc.
