Dear all,

As most of you are aware, the development of Flaming Cliffs 2 has taken much longer than expected. What was originally planned as a two month development cycle has turned into a nine month development cycle. This was primarily due to including much more new content than we had originally planned and an extended beta test period to clean up the product. We wanted to address as many community concerns about Flaming Cliffs as possible.

Unfortunately, time is money and the cost of development has far exceeded what was budgeted. As such, in order for us to at least break even on Flaming Cliffs 2 we have had to increase the sales price to $29.99 USD. This software will both upgrade Lock On to Flaming Cliffs 2 and Upgrade Flaming Cliffs to Flaming Cliffs 2.

We understand that some of you will be upset given the earlier sales price announcement and we apologize for having to make this alteration of our original plan. We do believe though that Flaming Cliffs 2 will be a great product and well worth the cost of admission.

Thanks,
Matt

I will stil be buying it on release !

Simbo Sim123

Beat me to it, it seems the product is now Lock On to FC2, rather than FC to FC2.

Nate

It will upgrade either to FC2, both LO and FC1.

I'll buy it because there is nothing much better out there otherwise no money to their wallets.
We all are gonna pay for a PATCH nothing else. No new airplanes no new map, no nothing, nadita de nada.

It isn't a patch. There is plenty of new capability in the software, far more than a patch would confer.

Sorry but it looks a patch to me. Most of them are fixes and improvements the higher maps resolution is an upgrade of the poorly optimized lockon engine.

Many pieces of this software are completely new to FC; as such that is no longer a patch. Patches fix bugs. This is an upgrade - it adds a significant amount of functionality.

And even things that one might consider to be on 'patch' level such as the FM adjustments - I know from personal involvement that many, many hours went into tuning those, including alterations to the flight model required to make things work correctly, as well as testing.

The amount of work and type of enhancement precludes this from being a mere patch.

I don't recall where this 'unoptimized engine' bs myth keeps coming from, but that's exactly what it is: a bs myth.

And EVEN just the textures and additional area took someone's time to do - significant time.

Would you like your work to be undervalued?
The price is what it is due to time and effort spent on the product; it is not based upon your (incorrect) impression of what it is.

This is a Patch

Where are the REAL new maps, airplanes, air to ground radar, real optimized multiplayer, a truly next gen engine?.
For a 5 year old product this is a patch.
Please, Don't offend my logic.

For a five year old product paying for those fixes 30 euros is a ... I am gonna save what I really think.



The good news is that, Hey!!, I'll buy it!!.

That sounds like a new Full Sim to me, not an addon to a current sim.

Nate

I passed it!

My incorrect impression is the impression of many of us.

And yes the simulator is poorly optimized given that in order to run it properly it has passed nearly 5 years before you can have a decent performance on cities.

Listen to who is gonna buy your product.

So many of you like working for pittance? ...



... many of you who have created 3D gaming engines and are qualified to make such statements ... right?

It doesn't matter whether you are buying the product or not - when there's a lot of objects and a large FoV as well as a large view distance, performance will suffer. You don't get to optimize yourself out of that.

Trust me I know how hard develop code is, in fact you would be surprised that someone behind this keyboard has a knowledge of what it takes to create something from nothing with a few guys. But don't even tell me this is worth 30 euros because if you keep telling me this and keep offending my logic and intelligence then I am not gonna buy this ever.

Create software is hard, improve it can be a headache, debug it double headache, but don't sell my the idea that 30 bucks is the fair price because that's not true.


By the way


Really!?. Thats a good way to improve sales!

> What was originally planned as a two month development cycle has turned into a nine month development cycle.

Hope that doesn't mean the A-10 is behind by 7 months.

That's funny 'cuz I've been ready to spend $30 since the original announcement. I honestly didn't know, or just forgot that the estimated price was gonna be less than $30...

The Air Combat Sim industry is a lot less profitable than other gaming areas, therefore I'm very glad that Eagle Dynamics is investing resources and developing quality Air Combat Simulators. 30 bucks is completely fair and I hope that Eagle Dynamics get the revenues that they expect; and hopefully they will keep developing interesting and good quality sims in the future.

As for the developing time of FC 2.0, good sims take more time. I prefer to wait for a good polished product rather than having a buggy and missfunctional simulator right away.

I will be there on day 1, Eagle Dynamics has kept to their ideals and stuck with flight simulation instead of taking the easy path and making games for the Nintendo DS. That alone ensures I will support this product. These are some great things being ADDED in 2.0.

+1. And it'll be the same thing for me when DCS: A-10 comes out.

I already have 3 copies of FC, whats another $29.99. Bring it!

So long as the 7 extra months in development do not mean 7 more months until it is released...
I'd buy it next week for $30 in a heartbeat (at $1.5 to the pound), in November maybe not.
Cheers,
keith

Nate

I'm not going to get into the discussion as to whether it's worth the increased price, but I will say that it seems awfully late in the game to come to that realization. I found the info that said it would be available for download in January 2010, so I know I'm not just imagining that, which makes me wonder where it was in the development cycle at the time of that announcement.

$30 is reasonable. I will buy it as long as it runs stable in Windows 7 x64. I am tearing my hair out trying to get FC to play nice in this OS. The game locks up randomly after a few minutes or so.

ED certainly appreciates the support.

FYI, several beta testers run Win 7 x64.

I shall be buying it also, and looking forward to it ! Looking forward to the new sound... as IMO Black Shark could also do with a tweek there as I think Vista and Windows 7 caught a few people on the hop with that..

to quote myself at the Lockonfiles forums



now all we need is a bit of good PR and info about what are the plans and all in the community will be happy with this

well, some will buy, some will not, it would have been like that regardless of price, its irrelevant if price change at this stage is right or wrong, could not give a #%&*$# about that.

But this still does not answer my/our question, WHEN ?
Give me a pre-order link i will do it right now, i just want to have it, or at least have an vague idea when will we have it.

I think we will have to wait for it for a good while to come.
The only thing i would really not like to see happening this price increase being scapegoat for another lengthy wait with explanation well, we had to inform through our PR engine all users about the change. Don`t even try telling me it will be out when its ready, or you would not want buggy product etc, etc......... I just want it and i want it now



Cheers

I think it would be a great idea for them to take pre-prders, but I doubt they can due to the fact that they are linked with UBISOFT on this release.

I want it all
I want it all
I want it all
And I want it now!

Queen rules as much as FC 2.0 will! Since they're dropping a price increase on us we'll probably see something soon (purely speculative)!

[quote=Vekiq
But this still does not answer my/our question, WHEN ?
Give me a pre-order link i will do it right now, i just want to have it, or at least have an vague idea when will we have it.
[/quote]

Hear, hear!
That's the question I would really like to see answered, because I'm gagging for my FC fix here! I've recently upgraded my PC and now I have two optical drives/burners in my system, something that FC original Starforce is not very found of. So I've held of installing FC to avoid messing my system, waitng for FC2 to come out and install with a new SF version. But it's taking too darn long.

I'm ok with this new price too and I'll be buying 2 copies, one for me and one for a friend.

Patch or up-grade,call it what ever you want. Lockon has been on my HD since it came out.

This Sim truly has been a bargain, returning many hundreds of hours of flying time for less than $40 and is still technologically and graphically viable today.

Now its going to DX 9 and other improvements, it can only get better( It is only now with my I5-750 and GTX275 that I can finally run it with everything maxed out ).

Though I did not buy Black Shark (just don't understand rotor heads ), I will be getting the patch/upgrade to support ED/DCS and definitely the A-10 also when it arrives.

I'm sure I will sound like an ass, but here goes.

What happened to the 2 month development cycle? I just find it incredible that a 2 month project turned in to a 9 month project. I assume there is a project manager overseeing things. Somewhere along the chain someone gave totally misleading projections or features were added that pushed the dates out.

Since the original announcement was in Nov 09, release is scheduled for July~Aug 2010?

I think I remember reading somewhere that after blackshark the add-ons were supposed to be released every 9 months is that still the case?

I have to say I'm not a big fan of the series but I will continue purchasing the releases in the hope it will help fund the development of the A-10 and F-18 sim.

plans changed, originally it was 2 months, now it is 9 - better than being canceled

I am sure the 9 month cycle is what they intend to do, but in this case they had the opportunity to release an FC 2.0, and they grabbed it - it is not like ED started to make a 'Zelda, Queen of Kong' FPS and gave up on flight sims

I think this is a great move - the earlier plan was a dull move, this promises to be a great one, I am willing to give ED the benefit of the doubt, and support this decision.

As I understand it -

Without FC2, the DCS series would evolve slowly and take several years to accumulate a viable/acceptable variety of flyable aircraft.

With FC2, the DCS aircraft arrive in a setting already populated with 'lite' flyable aircraft.

Assuming ED can keep DCS compatible with FC2 over the years.


Correct?

One thought crossed my mind.

Wonderful things are happening in flying sim world at the moment, look at all this new hardware popping out G940, Saitek X65, TM Warthog will be here soon.

SOW is showing positive signs of life and progress, it will be enriched with Korean addon at some point, Rise of flight has been with us for a while now, FC2 will be here, and A10, well, we will see when this will see light of the day.

Its true Renaissance in flight sim world.

Then you have what i would call feeder series into flight simming, Wings of prey has been released on most formats. This is capturing new, younger crowd that will want more comprehensive flight sims after they have realised they want better things to fly.

There is window of opportunity for developers here to jump on money train and make some money on proper sims, and give us some good things to fly.

But, there is always but. Iron is being cast while it is hot. Timing here is crucial. To jump on that new fresh money train and capture new crowds something good needs to see light of the day soon. You and me will wait as long as it takes, but will new croud that has not been fully infected yet? I doubt it, trends are changing very quickly.

I want DCS to grab big chunk of cash, to do that they need to release their stuff very, very soon to not miss this tidal wave of flight sim popularity.

Also, current hardware is so much more capable, processing power, eye candy that it can produce and there are people who will want both, as it is possible, we have hardware to give them that. Will they be put off from buying sim that has perfect mechanics, systems, hardcore sim factor but it does not look as shiny as some other stuff around?

Remember, to attract someone into something and make them realise where it is at there must be that one point which will attract them and make them want it. They will love hardcore part of it, but they must be attracted with things they already know they like to be able to see true point of it.

None of this really matters to you and me, but it does matter to new talent since they don`t know any better, and i think it should mean a lot to developers, only proper bait brings the fish.

Put me down for a copy, $29.99 is still a bargain in my book!

$29.99 is the price of a nice steak at Longhorn Steakhouse... don't see what the big deal is. Compared to the steak, you're getting hours more enjoyment

There is an announcement on the Russian ED forums that their shop will be offline today and the website offline on the 17th, new version of the website available after the 17th.

they always priced their products right, if only they patched more often ...

While Lock On FC had areas to improve, name one piece of gaming software that was patched to complete customer satisfaction. That's right none yet.......

Regardless of LOMAC's patching process it's still a great title. For what LOMAC is it works great, perfect, no but it would never be then either.

What will be the DRM? They will stay with StarForce???

Best regards, Kodiak.

Same one as Black Shark: SF Online Activation

I would have paid $29.99 just for the new Frogfoot. lol

The price is not a big issue here. I've spent so much time flying this simulation that I'd be a total hypocrite to complain.

ED has to be compensated for keeping this moving forward and the inter-operation with Black Shark has to be commended.

So I can uninstall FC 1.1 and install FC 2.0 and be rid of the dreaded SF drivers version?

pfunk

Yep.

Nate

Suh-weet.

pfunk