Sim Pilot Forum

This thread discusses the Content article: Meet Microsoft ESP: the engine behind Flight Simulator X

There is still a lot of misunderstanding among simmers about ESP.
I have (again) tried to explain a little bit more in one of my posts on our ESP forum (although MS should actually do that ...LOL !):

http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?f=266&t=68466

Francois and Christian,

You will, I hope, recall the discussions I started a year ago on your two sites and on Avism and FlightSim regarding software piracy. What surprised me was that the issue of support turned out to be more important than piracy -- and it is what has held me back from releasing my AirBoss (TM) product. (Never mind what it does.)

Your remarks, Francois, about the impracticality of someone in a remote part of Utah supporting a customer on the Continent may actually be a little short sighted. The reason is that, as I have discovered, if we ignore the matter of time zone differences it would be perfectly feasible for a works-from-home person like me (in greater Denver) to support someone in Australia (like Christian).

The key is to use free computer to computer voice services like Skype or MSN combined with software that allows the developer to troubleshoot customer systems remotely. I have been experimenting with exactly this approach as regards beta testing of AirBoss, which is a power user product.

Remote support has become commonplace in the IT world and it surprises me that none of us has thought to do it in the FS world. Briefly, I am finding that about 50% of potential customers are willing to allow me to operate their systems remotely for purposes of software installation. This is important because the installation of AirBoss is tricky, and unless I've done the installation myself I will not have any confidence in the resulting customer system.

So you may find this wacky, but because I'm retired I can easily afford to give the customer free bundled installation plus a free hour of hands-on product familiarization. Nobody reads manuals, right? So I propose to recognize this and train people myself.

My hope, certainly not proven, is that I will be able to breed nothing but successful users of a very complex product that is of a completely novel character. If I proceed down this path and am succesful, essentially every sale will "stick", and support problems will be easy to deal with on forums because there will be, for me, I hope, no more issues of whether the installation was done correctly, and whether the customer is reporting problem symptoms correctly. I will be able to troubleshoot any problems that may arise without having to try, in the dark, to recreate them at my end.

I hope we will continue this discussion regarding potential new ways for small developers to deliver support for tricky power user products. As with the piracy stuff I'm at least thinking outside the box, as you observed last winter, Francois.

Comments? Thoughts? Suggestions?

P.S. The customer must, as a prerequisite, be willing to let me install the product myself, and to operate his system myself for troubleshooting purposes. If he's not willing to do that I will not take him on as a customer. I would rather lose sales while being proactive on support instead of taking on all comers while being reactive regarding support.

Post edited by: xxmikexx, at: 2008/11/09 00:41