Does anybody else do it professsionally or do they just do it in their free time after main work improving details for years?
Anyone wants to compare Lil-Ski or LemaX to SIM TRAXX ? They are hobbists doing 2-3 small tracks over 5 years, they have no costs. LEMAX did some 20 km overall, SIM TRAXX almost 1000 including private projects....
In SIM TRAXX people work every day and have no other income. We pay huge taxes in Poland, we pay social insurance, we do private projects for private companies. We cant afford to sit some years and polishing one track that later will be shared for free. Everyone get over it and man up. We are not modders, we are content creators. This is the difference. But thanks to it and peoples support we can improve track creating techniques and soon we will be able to automise alot of processes to be sure we can release tracks fast with highest quality and lower prices. Besides compare the amount of details needed on race tracks and BRASOV for example. This is like comparing an orange to watermelon.
For Fox Sake: Lil-sky and Lemax do what you should actually be doing: deliver top notch
finished tracks. And if one asks for a donation or a small fee, like Sergio Loro, that's really fine. We all know how many hours it takes to finish a high quality track, and it can NEVER ever be profitable. It's impossible to make a living, let alone run a company, with public sim racing tracks. Sim Racing thrives mostly on sharing, and always will. It's a social thing, not about money. If you PRETENT you want to deliver finished tracks to the sim community, you are just plain lying.
Pretending you are a professional company, charging money and never finishing what is payed for, is NOT a legit option.
You state that 5 people are working full time for your 'company'. What the hell are they doing all day?
Sergio Loro, Lil-ski, Lemax, etc.. do everything in they spare time.
So you best stick to the private market, that way you can maybe make a living one day.
And if you occasionally release a FINISHED sim track to the public, maybe for a small fee, but with LOVE for sim racing and it's community, instead of pretending to be a pro. You'd make yourself far more popular than you do now.
You don't need a degree in math to know that it is impossible to run a company on selling sim tracks to the public.
That's why it all feels like a scam.
Private projects = work.
Public sim tracks = hobby.
There is no other way.