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Selling airports through many Flight Sim Stores

jtanabodee

jtanabodee

Resource contributor
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thailand
Hi,

My ZBAA project is about time to go on the market. I talked to the programmer that we are going to make online registration. We are going to put it on the shelf as many flight sim stores as possible. My plan is: when customers purchase the scenery, each flight sim store needs to login and set up serial number for each customer email address. When the customers install the scenery, they have to put their email address together with the SN and installer will contact the server. If both information are correct the installer will install the scenery. We can know how many copied each store can sell. We can control if any store does not transfer the money for us after their sell. It happened before that they got sell and money and we got nothing. After I requested them to put our scenery out, they ignored that and sell the scenery without our permission.

Does it sound possible?
Do we need a Clound Computing or just ordinary server to cope with that?

I am not a computer guy. I have limited knowledge of that. I would like to know about your opinion about the plan.
Thanks for your opinion.
 
This is something I have been looking at myself.

But I don't think I understand this sentence correctly:
jtanabodee said:
My plan is: when customers purchase the scenery, each flight sim store needs to login and set up serial number for each customer email address. When the customers install the scenery, they have to put their email address together with the SN and installer will contact the server
Click to expand...

Is this something that you are asking the distributors of your scenery to do? To log in to your website and enter the serial numbers that they are distributing?
Or did you mean that you want to create your own database of serial numbers that your installer will compare against?

If you meant the former, I can tell you now, that I don't think any distributor is going to facilitate that process for you. Most will want you to create serials and provide it to them. Not the other way around.

jtanabodee said:
Do we need a Clound Computing or just ordinary server to cope with that?
Click to expand...
I do not any experience in this myself, but if you want to compare serials to approve installation, I believe you will need a server (self-maintained or one that is hosted for you) to received the requests from your installer and return the approval message.
 
Thanks for your opinion, Mousy. I meant the former, the distributor provide SN for their customer. Since we can know how many sale are there. I need to find the other way around to do that automatically.
 
The issue is that you need to have a real time system that manages your purchase 'and' serial number system.

I create my own installer (Quick Team, Install Creator) and use the option to create / generate serial numbers. I create batches that are for particular stores.

Some companies use an online system that has a server and it auto-generates a serial number for a sale. If the sale goes through, then you get a serial number allocated and its auto-emailed to the person/customer. ORBX and Carenado I think do this. Very nice, exotic, awesome system. But I think it comes with a very high price tag. I wish it was something you could buy off the shelf as I think its a very exotic custom mountain of code and a team to run it. Thats my humble thoughts.

For me, I hand the installer and files to a store and they take it from there. I can focus on making planes while they sell them.

If you have a bad store that is not giving you your sales, do not give them any more. Hold them off your list. I guess times are bad and a couple of them are not paying on time these days. One has gone out of business. Much of the market has gone to X-Plane 11. :(
 
Here is a for instance of writing serial numbers for each buyer. Lets say you sell 50 airports in 1 day. You have to write or generate a code for each one as they come in. If you do not check your emails in your sleep, the other side of Earth that is awake are upset that they cannot start their new airport in their sim. (Whats going on??? Where is my code???) So you have that to worry about. Warn them if you do, tell them it takes perhaps 24 hours to get a code after they buy it so they do not freak out.

Now... what if your airport sells 1,000 units... or 10,000 units.. and they are all waiting for their codes... and you have to hand-produce EACH CODE... ACKKKKKK!!!! If they get unhappy, they tell everyone in their forums they hang out at, including Facebook. Your business is suddenly hit with bad advertizing and you lose your happy customers as fast as you got them. Happy, unhappy...

So consider that. ;)
 
How about simply generating a batch of guid codes as "serial numbers?" I had to change a lot of passwords at various CC accounts and on-line stores, so I used GUIDs as passwords., neither of these of course! :rotfl:

a70b491f-a0bf-41f7-9691-179be79c54d5
02f5b8e1-c113-4938-aa81-56e2488725b4
 
I got your points. Thanks for the information.
I have tried the database and set up the SN for local people and I agree with you guys that it is imposible to do it by human if there are a huge number of sale.
 
As it looks like simmarket can make installers (good protection tbh) I can recommend them. But if you wanna create your own it’s a bit complicated for starters.


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Itay Dorfman said:
As it looks like simmarket can make installers (good protection tbh) I can recommend them. But if you wanna create your own it’s a bit complicated for starters.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Yes, I do have installer. My programmer do that for me and it can check the database if the SN is correct, the installer will install the scenery.
The problem is: it needs human to do the job to set up the serial number. He said to me this morning that it required only one click to generate the SN. We will try that later after it is done.
I think I will let Simmarket handle this for me. The will do the installer and do all the process for us. They are professional indeed. Other online stores can have the installer from my programmer.
 
No you don’t have to!
You have to create a serial number (randomly) and then verify it with the server and email address or full name.


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Yes, I did that. We have tried that before just for local sale.
The problem is, we need to input each email after one purchase. We still cannot do it automatically.
Could you more specific how to do that, Itay Dorman?
 
You could just attach a serial number to an email after it has generated to one string and then split is with a special character like !
 
I use the InstallCreator by ClickTeam. Love that installer. It generates codes, and several types of codes. But some things it cannot do.

Yep, it would be nice to be able to see all people who activate our planes and scenery, see their serial code, and see how many people they share it with so you know who is stealing/cheating us. But also it would be nice to have a update system so customers could also check their products quickly online for updates. They would sign in with their code and name, it remembers them, it blinks into the server and checks the date flag, and if they do not match, it says 'an update is available' and 'do you want to update now?'

ORBX has this. Love that system. Sooooo impresses me.
 
I have a better idea
make an online installer that downloads the scenery, so you can make an updator at the same time
and you can get informations by making a database and check if a key has been used by many peoples in many IP addresses
 
I personally think that you guys are very talent in computer programming. I can see the opportunity for the business as well. If someone here can set up such a thing. As soon as the customer runs installer, the transaction from credit card, PayPal or other e-money pop up. If the transaction is done installer contact server for automatic SN. That would be great. No online stores, you can sell your product directly. If you install to many copies after checking with the server, transaction begins again. If not valid, installer does not do its work.
 
What you need to think about scenery is how to make it not RIPable. When I mean rip I mean that the files can be copied to fake P3d of fsx install on a VM and then your scenery is technically cracked, which isn’t good!
So you need to find a way to encrypt files when sim closes or do like fsfx so you can’t rip it. Look at the 747 immersion. Ofc on another note I would suggest writing in C++ as c# can be decompiled easily and if you still want to write in c# I recommend some good obfasucator so you can’t identify the code. If you need more help don’t be shy and contact me on discord I8U#5402. And if anyone else wants you welcome too.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Itay Dorfman said:
What you need to think about scenery is how to make it not RIPable. When I mean rip I mean that the files can be copied to fake P3d of fsx install on a VM and then your scenery is technically cracked, which isn’t good!
So you need to find a way to encrypt files when sim closes or do like fsfx so you can’t rip it. Look at the 747 immersion. Ofc on another note I would suggest writing in C++ as c# can be decompiled easily and if you still want to write in c# I recommend some good obfasucator so you can’t identify the code. If you need more help don’t be shy and contact me on discord I8U#5402. And if anyone else wants you welcome too.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
How to make my C# code un-decompilable, please?
 
You can’t make that but you can use an obfasucator so you make the code impossible to read if you want the obfasucator I can pm it for you not in here for security reasons


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It renames things to like U2034 and namespaces so you cant read code that's what is does. You technically can edit it but you cant build it or use it because the names are changed
 
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