fsfrance closes its doors....

[fabiane]

Oh well, here we have it again....., another great group gone......flightcraft, Mike Stone..... and now fsfrance. Fsfrance stopped all of their projects.

[quote]11/07/2007 09:16 - Un voleur et un menteur (Thief and Lyer)
       

Erich Buchmann a r

[Cessna93]

Damm  :'(

I bet it was the ungratefull scums who made FSFrance close down. I thought there products were top of the range for freewere.

[Iwannabeapilot]

Another great designer gone. Some people just cannot help themselves!  >:(

[Mictheslik]

I can still download concorde here



.mic

[born_2_fly]

Who is Erich Buchmann?  :-?

[microlight]

Don't know who Erich Buchmann is, but there are a large number of his 'FSX update' files available here. The FSFrance situation is very sad (I was involved with one of the upcoming projects), but it seems that the issue was one of piracy with at least two of the FSF models, the C17 (which in the Buchmann modification was attributed to what appears to be a fictitious model designer, and not FSF) and the Airbus A300 Beluga which seems to have been touted as an update of the FS2000 Thomas Ruth version. I understand that the Projet Mach 2 Concorde has also been pirated, although I haven't seen it personally.

If Pete or any of the mods are reading this, it might be worth following this up to check whether this is a case of piracy or not regarding the files available here at the V.

We seem to be at something of a crisis point in the provision of freeware models for the FS community, with many talented designers leaving the modelling field for various reasons. Apart from FlightCraft and Mike Stone, already mentioned, there's also David Maltby who seems to be very disillusioned and is thinking twice about any more model updates to his classic British jetliners. Also, I'd hate to think that our own Moach's embryonic 777 Experience might be jeopardized by the actions of unscrupulous individuals who seems to play fast and loose with other peoples' work, whatever their actual intentions might be.

[Mr.Mugel]

They had a discussion about this over at the Outhouse, too. Seems like to Buchmann guy put up stuff of various freeware designers, updated for FSX as he says. But for example in case of the FSFrance guys he seems to have broken the copyrights.....

Quite sad all this stuff....

[born_2_fly]

Did this guy actually update the files for FSX?  :-?

It's a real shame as they seemed to be the only group working on a good Beluga  :-[

[microlight]

Just thought I'd do a little detective work. Look on the FSX downloads page and you'll see 'The 797 by Rob Ezratti, his rendition of the 797. Includes A380 panel and Sounds by Emil Serafino Jr. Adapted for FSX by Eric Buchmann.' I thought I recognised the plane in the picture but I didn't recognise the name Ezratti, so I went looking, and found Rob Ezratti's real FS9 797 on Avsim - here it is:


The mdl file is named lolmobile.mdl, so it's obviously a wind-up.

The plane in the picture on the FSX downloads page I mentioned above is this one:


which actually looks suspiciously like this one:


This is J R Lucariny's 797 for FS9, to be found in the FS9 downloads, page 91, and I've had it in my hangar for a couple of years. Spot the difference? No, me neither, beyond that the cockpit glareshield is white in the Buchmann model as opposed to black in  the Lucariny. Even the registration is the same, as are all the texture filenames. The Lucariny mdl file is dated January 05 while the Buchmann is June 07, and the file sizes are slightly different.

Reverse engineering? (If so, how?) Accidentally getting the original model designer's name completely wrong - even though both Ezratti and Lucariny both put out '797' models? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

[murjax]

This is just plain sad.  :(

[a1]

What the heck FSFrance gone!!!!  :(

[Katahu]

This is bad. It has become an epidemic of sorts to see old developers call it quits over this. This is why the FS community needs to create its very own watchdog group that can help search for pirates and stop them at there tracks [like an FS version of INTERPOL]. The problem is finding the sort of people who are willing to do that kind of job.

If the pirates continue on unckecked, then we're gonna have problems in the future. Soon, new addons developers will have second thoughts about making new addons if this gets any worse. Again, this community needs to create its own watchdog group.

[murjax]

This is bad. It has become an epidemic of sorts to see old developers call it quits over this. This is why the FS community needs to create its very own watchdog group that can help search for pirates and stop them at there tracks [like an FS version of INTERPOL]. The problem is finding the sort of people who are willing to do that kind of job.

If the pirates continue on unckecked, then we're gonna have problems in the future. Soon, new addons developers will have second thoughts about making new addons if this gets any worse. Again, this community needs to create its own watchdog group.

I would be willing to take part in protecting the FS addons if someone would show me exactly what to do.

[Cessna93]

If this Watch Dog group will definutly save all the freewere makers then count me in!

[JBaymore]

Katahu,

That is a great idea.  The first step however is getting some "teeth" in the watchdog.  The laws are there.... you just need a real LAWYER who is interested in flight sim and is willing to do some pro bono type work on this.  THAT may be the stumbling block.  No teeth..... it won't work.

Get the word out about the project very widely....... actually proscecute a few of these situations....... get the word out on THAT............. and the rest of these jerks will stop their antics pretty quickly.

best,

....................john