Benjamin sticks up for Ariane, an aircraft add-on developer, as they have taken a lot of heat lately!

Everybody knows this company: Ariane. Most of those that know it have sworn never to buy anything from them. When you ask these people why they feel that way about Ariane, the answer usually amounts to one of the following:

“Everybody complains about them.”
“Their support seems to be crap.”
“Their planes seem to be crap.”

All of these responses have one thing in common: the one uttering them has no clue of the actual worth of Ariane, because he or she doesn’t own an Ariane plane. I think this is sad, to say the least, and people should give Ariane a chance for once. Instead, people say how great the PMDG 737NG series is. Doesn’t matter how great the PMDG series is, Ariane is more precise, has more innovative features, has a better model, better FDE and more precisely modelled systems. And, the FPS hit in FSX is quite low, something you rarely encounter with high fidelity addons.

So, if the Ariane 737 really is that good, what happened that people condemn them to the pile of rubbish before even trying them out? There are several problems that are bound to Ariane, in past and present times. I’ll name each one of them:

1)    The AVSIM/Peter Tishma incident. Once upon time, there was this guy Peter Tishma, who was linked to Ariane. I can’t tell you the exact story, but it amounts to Tishma being crucified for certain legal actions he undertook against AVSIM, without any good grounds or arguments. As a result, he and Ariane were and are hated for, probably, eternity. Fact is, Tishma is no longer at Ariane, and Ariane even posted a note that they are going into new directions, thereby hoping people will come back to them.
2)    Very strict activation rules and problems concerning that. People complain about this in such enormous ways, that it’s getting ridiculous. The activation procedure with Ariane isn’t that difficult or long, but you have to wait max 48 hours, and that’s what most people irritates. Plus, the sending of emails containing activation codes has gone hopelessly wrong for some people. While I understand this is terribly irritating, for as far as I understand, these people got their activation codes and some of them were even compensated with a free product. Anyway, I know that activation was very smooth for me when I did it for my Boeing 737-700, and I know there’s a forum full of Ariane supporters for which all of them the activation worked correctly. So, if this is your reason to scorn Ariane, I think you should buy a product and see how it goes for you. I can assure you that in most cases, it works alright. You can’t expect it to go right always. I;m sure activation with Microsoft Windows has also gone awry for thousands of people, yet the great majority of people still uses Windows. As a sidenote, I agree that activation rules could have been less strict, and Ariane is not very clear about what happens when you change computers. I think it’d do them well if they’d state very clearly what happens when you change computers: do you get new activation codes or not?
3)    Support may be hard to get. The support follows a simple rule: if you are no Ariane customer, you get nothing. You can’t enter the forum without a registered copy that is used to validate your forum account (you need to enter an order ID reference number). Though I didn’t try it myself, people who email Ariane get no email back, or a very short one asking them to read the manual. In most cases, this is probably a valid answer: the manual actually are very good and I have found no problems there. In most cases it is the customer who does something wrong, and although the company should support his wishes and listen to him when there is a problem, you can’t blame them for answering with “read the manual” when the answer actually is written in the manual. As a matter of fact, Ariane clearly states at the beginning of the tutorial:

“We do not answer questions sent by E-mail regarding the operation of something     that is covered in a manual. Please read all of the manuals.”

If you don’t do that, you are to blame. Do note that once you get access to the forum, you can ask all your questions there!

4)    Piracy problems. This is something that has always been a great threat to small developers, and Ariane is one of its victims. The main reason the current activation rules are so very strict, is because mass piracy of their products occurred. It’s because of this that I can safely say: Most of the problems you are complaining about are, indirectly, the customer’s fault. I am not specifically addressing you, the one reading this, for I don’t know if you pirate software or not, but you can’t blame Ariane for making sure its products are not stolen. The only ones you can blame are greedy, selfish thieves, who marred the prime experience people get with the company for us, namely the buying and activation experience.
It’s especially number 4 that makes me very sad: because of the wrong-doing of people in the past, Ariane gets crucified. The things Ariane are doing now, is because of what happened in the past, and is only a response to those events. It’s also because of these events that upgrades for example, will never be offered anymore, since these were massively abused by software pirates.

In the end, after activation, you get the most realistic Boeing 737 experience currently available for FS2004, and it’s a pity this is so unjustfully denied by the great majority of people. I sincerely hope articles like these, and reviews about Ariane products, will do the company good. Their honor should be restored, because they don’t deserve what they are getting.

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