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Keeping the aircraft up to date

What’s the best method to ensure pilots have the latest version of the aircraft?
What channels of communication does the AirSim3d team use to communicate when versions updates are available for pilots to update to the latest version of the aircraft???

We recommend the following:
1) Follow our Support page on .org here. It is the most active place to get version update information and the latest version post is always a pinned and highlighted topic.
2) Follow our Face Book page here.

Now you may be thinking — “But wait a minute!! why not use the Skunk Craft updater?!! Its so much easier!!!”

We looked at this option, and decided not to use it for 2 reasons:
A. Our install/update process readme.doc ask pilots to make some choices about retaining any existing accumulated time in certain files, like the APU and AIRFRAME HOBBS meter accumulated time…so pilots can carry those forward.  Unless we subject customers to an added manual-tweaking layer of the update process (which seems to defeat the “fully automated” updater expectation, the Skunk Craft updater would resets all those time-stamps back to 0 time (because that reset is shipped with each new update so new customers can start at 0 time).  So in our assessment, Skunk Craft is good at automating the process, but does not meet the fine-tuning install exceptions needs for a C-560XL update.

But let’s for the sake of an argument ignore everything in A above and accept that some manual steps will still be required. (as we have today without it anyway)
In doing so, we then run into an even bigger concern we have for our customer experience in point B below — and this is the main reason why we have opted to not use it at this time….

B. While we get the idea of what the Skunk Craft team is trying to solve, when it works.
But what happens when it does not work? 
Is it then the updater that’s causing a problem?
Or is it an aircrafts problem?
Who then does a customer turn to for installation support?
AirSim3D certainly can’t troubleshoot the implementation, design and use of a 3rd party tool.
And Skunk Craft folks will certainly (and rightly) not want to troubleshoot an aircraft that is not owned by them.

So the customer stands in the middle holding “the problem”.

But wait, it gets even worse!
Having had the updater “fail” (for some unknow-at-the-time-reason) the customer will most likely continue to “try” to reinstall the “not working aircraft update”, not knowing what’s causing the update breakdown, and in doing so, will all the while be using their limited, non-refundable license keys!

So:
Instead of adding unnecessary complexity and risk to the update process, instead, we recommend the 2 options we listed above … we always post update notices and release notes in both those places. 
Please use those resources to know when the aircraft has updated versions available.

Tldr: There are better ways to get update communication accomplished without adding that layer of Skunk Craft complexity and area or responsibility gaps, which if done, has real-world customer support experience and licensing implications. Please one of the 2 options we list above to help you keep up to date.

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