fact.. flight sims are a very small part of the gaming market
fact.. flight sim users demand cutting edge graphics and high fidelity flight models (read realism), which does not come cheap wrt software development
fact.. there is more money to be made and easier money to be made making 'silly' games (read non-flight sim games)
fact.. Oleg's past flight sim spoiled a lot of people into thinking flight sims have to provide free support, updates and addons for 10+ years, when in fact this type of support is the exception not the rule in gaming.
fact.. there is only three ways to get 'additional content'
1) closed system, where you pay the original sim maker for addons and hope for a free one from time to time
2) open system, where you pay for 3rd party addons and hope for a free one from time to time
3) hacked system: where you download a 'free' addons and hope for the best
With that said..
I think the best way is option 1
Where there is only one methodology to the FM and DM, in that the other two methods can result in many different versions of the 'same plane', worse yet in option 3 you can end up with many different versions of the 'same game'. And as noted above, the flight sim community is a small (nitch) one realitive to the gaming community as a whole, thus any splits hurts everyone.
Oh and the other nice thing about option one and even two is it has a filtering effect.. In essence weeding out the kid-os who have to go ask mama for the credit card to buy the addons. With the hope being that mama says no!
