The one variant policy: Why it is illogical (for reworks)

[AvioesEJogos]

Get your popcorn because I’m sure the replies will be some interesting ones

The one variant policy: Personally I think it’s somewhat fine for new additions, but definitely a step in the wrong direction for reworks.

Imagine we’re in 2024 and we see this:

Imagine a new player seeing this in 2024. How would they possibly be willing to spend $10 a month or $80 a year if they see the developers can’t even rework a full family, even more so when they see something like the 777s:

This new player might think: “So they CAN rework a whole family, however the developers are now plain lazy, not gonna spend my money on this garbage with lazy devs”. Congrats, you just lost a potential subscriber! And I myself, and many other already playing the sim, already have similar feelings. Why would someone keep paying to have incomplete reworks (with that I mean not having the full families reworked), especially when it’s pretty much adding or removing parts of the fuselage?

Another point I’d like to make here is the recent addition of the A330neo. Perhaps it was a very bad decision by IF’s part of adding the -900 instead of reworking the -200F (which apparently won’t be reworked anytime soon) and adding the -200, which has A LOT more liveries (and people supposedly want more diversity). While, yes, shrinking or stretching a fuselage should take quite a bit of work, so should making a completely new engine and wingtip models.

At the end of the day, the developers will need to rework every aircraft, so why not do a whole family now instead of leaving it untouched for many more years, to then have to rework the not reworked variants years later with a development of years ago? “Oh let’s do it with the latest tech!” In that case, the devs probably would rework the already reworked variants to keep consistency, which then makes the previous rework a total waste.

While another option would be leave it as is to rework every variant years later, the community simply won’t allow that, as proof, some rework threads have well over 1000 votes, showing that specific rework is in very high demand. And the people who voted for these expect a complete rework, with every variant in-game being reworked, not just 1. At the end of the day, “the costumer is always right”. Otherwise, why would the costumer keep paying instead of moving on to a competitor that really values that policy, or even save for a PC and fly MFS2020 or XP11, never to be seen in mobile again?

[Zhopkins]

I agree with the old title that it’s Stupid for only 1 variant.

[AvioesEJogos]

I kinda think illogical is more appropriate (and also kinda equivalent)

[Zhopkins]

It is stupid though. Keep illogical though.

[KTJ_Mitchell]

Very true, honestly it is an awful decision to just do part of an aircraft family, feels very incomplete, I would happily wait a little bit to have a full family reworked instead of partially

[Zhopkins]

Facts right here. Wish the developers would listen to us.

[AviationChampion]

Greetings @AvioesEJogos,

You do have to realise that Infinite Flight is a mobile game, and if you look at XPlane mobile, they don’t have full families either. Infinite Flight is very worth paying for because of the community that the staff team has raised over time since they first created the game. You do have the right to an opinion, but all I’m saying is that you can’t really be mad that we don’t have full liveries on all the aircraft. No game is perfect, and developers are always adding new liveries to the game so we should be there eventually. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks!

[Ethan_Brown]

There are 3 things that can happen The plane is reworked The plane is removed or the plane is kept how it is

[Colderco]

I agree 100%. Seems weird to only do it variant but variant instead of the entire family. I understand there’s only a team of 2-4 artists but still.

Note: I am not complaining nor do I have the intentions of being cocky/disrespectful, just giving my two cents…

[AvioesEJogos]

@AviationChampion

they don’t have full families either.

You do need to consider, however, that all variants of a certain family (which they only have one most of times), they all are in the same standard (because it’s mostly 1 variant per family), unlike IF which most times has multiple variants per family. Cheers!

[MishaCamp]

Hi! Thanks for the thoughts.

Aircraft creation and rework strategy is simply one of those things that our team will make internally. A reminder that we are community driven and welcome ideas, however the decisions fall down to staff. This is for many reasons, largely because there are a huge number of factors that we have to consider that are not public knowledge.

Some people want whole families, others want as many different types as possible; everyone wants something.

[philippe]

I’ll reopen this to expand on it a little.

First of all this is something we have addressed many times in the past. We always welcome constructive criticism but calling our team “lazy” is not fair nor constructive.

We were able to add many variants in one go at a time where each aircraft took significantly less time to produce. While some variants can seem very similar, there are often small details that require unique modeling, unique set of liveries, unique set of cockpit instruments and custom physics model tweaks.

We would sincerely love to be able to wave a magic wand for all of our older aircraft to be reworked at once; unfortunately we live in the real world where time and resource constraints exist :)

Note that we are preparing a blog post that will clarify further our aircraft production process.

[Zhopkins]

Thank you for reopening and for working on a blog post explaining further. I understand that there are differences in the -300 and the -100 but the changes are minimal enough that it would not take much time right?

[Tsumia]

The concern in that case isn’t difficulty, but rather it’ll be rather pointless due to very low operator count. That’s alot of effort for something minor.

We do not have any plans to add the -100 since operators using this variant are also flying the -300.

[AvioesEJogos]

Hence why I specifically targeted this thread at reworks

[DiscoPanda]

Really the only families this would affect are the e-jets and the 787s. Those are the only families that need a full rework. Would it be possible to make an exception for these two, do all of them, then adopt the one variant rule?

[Zachary]

Hi, Philippe! A few questions for you whenever you have the chance.

@philippe

We were able to add many variants in one go at a time where each aircraft took significantly less time to produce.

Let’s assume you are referring to the 777 series. If this is the case, why was each variant done in a shorter period compared to the A330-300, for example? Both aircraft appear to be of great detail, with the 777 series even having custom sounds. If anything, wouldn’t that have taken longer?

@philippe

We would sincerely love to be able to wave a magic wand for all of our older aircraft to be reworked at once; unfortunately we live in the real world where time and resource constraints exist :)

I respect this; however, what about a “soft” rework, like wing flex and a live cockpit, similar to what was done with the A320 and 737 series. Surely this would take less time while keeping the fleet semi-up-to-date, no?

Any insight is appreciated, and if you can’t answer portions of my questions, I understand.

---

I’d also like to point out that I am not opposed to IFLCC not adding the -100 variant. I, too, see no use for it, and my questions were simply based on general observations.

[Joseph_Spinner]

I think the reason this is being brought up is because of the E Jets and the A330 family. Personally, adding a new aircraft (The BCS3 for example) wouldn’t seem super odd to a new user since it is a single aircraft. There would be no BCS1 to compare it to. However when we start talking about the A333, A339, and A33F, it can certainly look like there was a lack of effort since two of the three are perfect aircraft, and one was left in the dust. The same can be said for the E170, E175, E190, E195 etc. I believe the reasoning for only doing one of the variants was to save development time, which obviously is extremely important. Infinite Flight is a small team and need to use all their availability time in a reasonable manner. But if I were a new user seeing only one of the three or two of the three done, it would definitely seem like some corners were cut. I HATE to use the word lazy, because the developers certainly aren’t, however to a new user who wasn’t familiar with the way things are run it could definitely seem that way.

Just my two cents 🪙

[AvioesEJogos]

@Joseph_Spinner

save development time

I’ll put a big asterisk there:

@AvioesEJogos

At the end of the day, the developers will need to rework every aircraft, so why not do a whole family now instead of leaving it untouched for many more years, to then have to rework the not reworked variants years later with a development of years ago? “Oh let’s do it with the latest tech!” In that case, the devs probably would rework the already reworked variants to keep consistency, which then makes the previous rework a total waste.

[TheGlobalAviator]

@Zachary

respect this; however, what about a “soft” rework, like wing flex and a live cockpit, similar to what was done with the A320 and 737 series. Surely this would take less time while keeping the fleet semi-up-to-date, no?

I agree.
Even if a full rework can’t be achieved on some aircraft variants, a basic soft rework would make a difference and is a much better idea than ignoring it completely and not doing anything to improve it.

@KTJ_Mitchell

Very true, honestly it is an awful decision to just do part of an aircraft family, feels very incomplete, I would happily wait a little bit to have a full family reworked instead of partially

Also a good point. It will make aircraft families seem incomplete even if new variants are added but the existing ones are not improved whatsoever.