Sim Ambiance FX is a SimHub plugin that drives light bars from live screen capture. This page says exactly what leaves your PC, what this website stores, and how to have any of it deleted, in enough detail that you can check the claims against what the plugin does.
The short version
- No cookies, no advertising, no tracking across other sites. This site counts page visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and does not identify you. The one exception is the YouTube video on the home page, and only once you press play. The plugin has no analytics at all.
- Nothing you see on screen ever leaves your PC. No screenshots, no video, no game telemetry.
- The plugin sends a one-way hash that identifies your PC and a count of minutes, so that the free trial and the two-machine licence limit can be enforced. It never sends your PC's name.
- Your email address is held only if you gave it to us, and there is a one-click link in every email that removes it.
1. Who is responsible
Sim Ambiance FX is a product of Not Another, LLC ("we"). Not Another, LLC decides how the personal data on this page is used (in privacy-law terms, it is the controller). For everything on this page the contact is hello@simambiancefx.com. Our postal address is printed at the foot of every email we send, and we will give it to anyone who asks.
Purchases are not made from us directly. Paddle.com Market Ltd is the merchant and seller of record for Sim Ambiance FX. Paddle handles the checkout, the payment, the tax and the buyer's payment data. We never see or store your card details. Paddle's own privacy notice governs that part of the transaction.
2. This website
If you submit your email address to the signup form, we store:
- The email address you typed.
- The date and time you submitted it.
- A random unsubscribe token, so the link in the email works without you having to identify yourself.
- What you signed up for, which depends on when you signed up (below).
It is used for one purpose: to email you about Sim Ambiance FX. What that covers depends on the wording of the form when you used it:
- Signed up before 28 September 2026, when the form said "one email when the checkout opens": you get that one email and nothing else.
- Signed up since: you get the launch email, if it has not happened yet, and after that only big updates, such as a new version or a new feature.
It is never sold, never shared, and never passed to an advertiser. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link, which removes you immediately and permanently. Emails are plain, with no tracking pixels and no tracked links: we cannot see whether you opened one.
The site sets no cookies. To know how many people visit and which pages work, it uses Cloudflare Web Analytics: a small script from Cloudflare that reports the page loaded, how quickly it loaded, the site that linked to it, and the browser type. It uses no cookies and no fingerprinting, and does not follow you across sites or identify you. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel and no session recording.
Other third-party requests: every page loads its typeface from Google Fonts, and the checkout script loads from Paddle only when you press a Buy button. The overview video on the home page is hosted on YouTube: until you press play it is a picture served by this site, and nothing is loaded from YouTube. Pressing play loads YouTube's privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com), and from then on YouTube (Google) handles what that player collects under its own privacy policy.
The site is hosted on Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes the IP address of every request in order to deliver the page and to block abuse. We have request logging turned off: we do not store IP addresses and cannot look up who visited.
Do Not Track. Nothing on this site tracks you across other sites, and no third party does so through it unless you press play on the YouTube video, so the site behaves the same whether or not your browser sends a Do Not Track signal.
3. The plugin
Sim Ambiance FX includes a free trial measured in minutes of use, and a paid licence that may be active on two machines at a time. Enforcing both requires the plugin to talk to our server. This section is the complete list of what it sends.
WHAT IS SENT
- A machine identifier. A SHA-256 hash of a Windows-generated installation identifier combined with a fixed value. It is one-way: it cannot be turned back into your hardware or your Windows licence. Because it stays the same, privacy law treats it as personal data (a pseudonymous identifier), and so do we. It exists so a reinstall does not reset the trial, and so a licence can be limited to two machines.
- Hardware fingerprints, when the trial starts. One-way hashes of up to three hardware serial numbers: the system ID, the motherboard serial and the main disk serial. They are made on your PC, and we never receive the numbers themselves. They exist so that reinstalling Windows does not restart the free trial, and they are only ever compared with other trial records.
- A count of minutes. During a trial only, the number of minutes the lights have been running while a game was live, sent as a running total.
- Your licence key, when you activate, re-check, or release a machine.
- The IP address of the request, which our host processes to deliver the response and block abuse. We do not store it.
WHAT IS NEVER SENT
To be unambiguous, because this is a screen-capture plugin and the question is fair:
- No screenshots, no video, no captured frames, no colours, no part of what is on your screens. Screen capture happens entirely on your PC and the pixels never leave it.
- No game telemetry. Not your lap times, your inputs, your car, your track, your position, or which game you are running.
- No PC name, no Windows user name, no list of installed software, no hardware inventory (only the one-way hashes above), no browsing data. A licence's two PCs are told apart by the date each was activated.
- No usage analytics of any kind. We do not know which features you use.
WHEN IT HAPPENS
- Once when SimHub starts.
- About every six hours while SimHub is running, to re-check the licence.
- About every five minutes while a trial is counting down, to report minutes used.
- When you activate a key or release a machine.
- Shortly after SimHub starts, and then once a day while it runs, the plugin reads a small public file on this site that names the newest version, so it can tell you when an update is out. If that first read fails, it tries once more ten minutes later. Apart from the request itself, it sends nothing: no identifier, no key, not even the version you have.
- When you click Update now in the plugin (from version 1.0.6), it downloads the new version from this site. That download carries nothing about you either. The plugin checks the file is genuine before it installs it.
These checks never block SimHub or the plugin from starting. They run in the background. If the server cannot be reached, a trial, or a licence in its first two weeks, keeps working for up to seven days on its last valid response; after that, a licence keeps working with no limit.
WHAT WE RECEIVE FROM PADDLE
Paddle tells our server about each purchase, refund and chargeback. From those messages we keep the transaction identifier, a customer identifier, the buyer's email address and whether the purchase was refunded, so a licence key can be issued, a lost key can be recovered and a refunded key can be switched off. Paddle's messages also carry details we do not need, such as the buyer's name and the card type and last four digits; our server discards those as they arrive. We never see full card numbers, and we do not keep billing addresses or payment details.
4. Where it is stored, and for how long
All of it is stored in a Cloudflare D1 database in Cloudflare's network. If you signed up for the one launch email only, your address is deleted once that email has been sent to you. Everyone else's is kept until they unsubscribe or ask. Unsubscribing, or asking, deletes it immediately. Licence records are kept for as long as the licence is valid, because they are what makes your key work; a refunded or revoked key is kept, marked as revoked, so it cannot be used again. Trial records are kept so that a trial cannot be restarted by reinstalling.
We are based in the United States. Your data is processed there and in Cloudflare's global network.
Why we are allowed to use it
- The mailing list: your consent, which you withdraw by unsubscribing.
- Licence keys, key emails and lost-key lookups: they are needed to deliver what you bought.
- Trial counting and abuse prevention: our legitimate interest in a free trial that cannot be reset and a service that stays secure.
- Records of refunded purchases: our legitimate interest in handling disputes and keeping refunded keys switched off.
5. Who else is involved
- Cloudflare. Hosting, the database, network delivery, page-visit counting (Web Analytics) and sending our emails.
- Paddle. Merchant of record, checkout and payment processing. Its checkout script loads only when you press Buy, and Paddle's own privacy notice applies to it.
- Google Fonts. Serves the typeface used on this site.
- Our email provider, which holds the emails you send to hello@simambiancefx.com.
That is the complete list. Your email address is not passed to a data broker, an advertising network or a mailing-list vendor.
6. Your choices
- Ask what we hold about you, and we will tell you, or send you a copy in a portable format.
- Ask us to correct it, or to restrict or stop a use of it you object to.
- Ask us to delete it. One caveat worth stating plainly: deleting a licence record means the key stops validating and the plugin stops driving your lights. We will tell you that before doing it.
- Unsubscribe using the link in any email, with no reply needed.
- Decline entirely by not installing the plugin. There is no way to use the trial or a licence without the checks described in section 3, because that is what they enforce.
Write to hello@simambiancefx.com for any of it. If you are in the EU or the UK you can also complain to your data protection authority (in the UK, the ICO).
Sim Ambiance FX is not directed at children under 13 (under 16 in the EU), and we do not knowingly collect their data.
7. Changes
If what the plugin sends ever changes, this page changes first and the date at the top moves. Material changes will also appear in the plugin's release notes.