FSX? How are we doing?

[flyerkg 62]

I have always marveled at the amount of money and time that goes into some of the home-built sims. Several times I have considered building one and using a projection system. The only problem is deciding on something that I would always want to fly every time. But what? T-37B Tweet, TH-57B, Cessna 172, Piper Archer or twin prop, or passenger jet?

[EngineRoom 205]

I think the golden age of MSFS was around 2005-2006 and ever since then I can see the enthusiasm on the various forums has waned (as has my own). In recent years we have hit something of a bumpy road and things have not gone smoothly:i) FSX - whichever way you cut it FSX did not live up to the expectations of many users. It didn't live up to the pre-release hype and a great many users were left sorely disappointed by the lack of performance and failure to take full advantage of contemporary hardware. FSX was also not compatible with many of the most popular FS9 addons.ii) The RTM/SP1/SP2 issues meant developers had to deal with a moving target, delaying the introduction of new products to the market and obsoleting existing ones.iii) More than a few developers engaged in the rather cynical practice of porting existing FS9 models into FSX and then charging full price for them, with all the inherent issues of using FS9 models in FSX.iv) All of this combined to make the uptake of FSX by the user base especially slow. The community and market was split, and that split endures right up to this day, almost THREE years after the release of FSX.v) The closure of Aces and uncertainty over the future of the MSFS series.vi) The rampant commercialisation of the hobby, with multitudes of developers and publishers all pushing their wares, many of them with unsatisfactory support and customer service combined with ever increasing prices and elaborate anti-piracy measures has created an adversarial relationship between the developer and customer.vii) The glaring lack of freeware for FSX compared to earlier versions.viii) There are too many payware addons chasing too few customers. It seems everyone and their dog is now selling something for MSFS. The market is unsustainable.Look at it this way - if you were a newbie to the hobby of flight simulation you would be faced with having to spend a considerable sum of money on high end hardware, then spending a considerable amount of time setting it all up, researching the black art of tweaking Windows and FSX to achieve the best results. You would then be faced with a bewildering array of increasingly expensive products to choose from, having to work out what is and isn't compatible with your setup, jump through hoops to get the addons activated on your computer... and finally if you have any problems you have to deal with often very unfriendly and unhelpful developers.Is it any wonder the hobby is in decline?Nowadays it's all about commercial developers releasing whizz bang addons with all the latest bells and whistles, trying to keep up with the latest hardware and constantly tweaking trying to get your setup to work properly. I find that I simply don't enjoy FS as much as I used to, and I think that holds true for a lot of others too. The friendly side of flight simming has all but disappeared. I think this change has occured over the last five or six years when developers stopped to be enthusiasts and hobbyists and became businessmen. It just seems everywhere I look there is somebody ready to try and make money out of my enjoyment of this hobby.What I find interesting is the military flight simulation community. Back in the late 1990s the market was saturated with combat flight simulations. The publishers were producing expensive to develop titles with long development cycles that appealed only to a niche of the market. The big developers pulled the plug and it seemed like it was the end for military flight simulators. Most of the big names slipped into history, some of them moved to other publishers or developers and the whole hobby of military flight sims seemed to be on life support for quite some time with only a trickle of new titles.Today the big developers from the UK/US who were the staple of military flight sims have gone. The Russians have taken over development of most of the military flight sims, with outfits like Maddox Software and Eagle Dynamics giving us the IL-2 series and Flanker/Lock On/DCS series. Recently released from Neoqb (another Russian developer) is the all-new Rise of Flight. On the horizon is "Storm of War" and an A-10 expansion for DCS (with more aircraft planned for the future). The critically acclaimed Over Flanders Fields series has recently seen its first commercial release "Between Heaven and Hell" which has been received extremely well by the community, having done truly amazing things with the old CFS3 platform. The leaking of the Falcon 4 source code some years ago spawned a huge outburst of community development for that simulator, culminating in the latest release of Free Falcon 5. Likewise someone managed to hack the data files for IL-2 and that has resulted in the community adding new aircraft, cockpits and maps to the sim. A WW1 addon for IL-2 called Canvas Knights is also in development.Ten years ago the military flight sim was where we are now - market saturation, falling sales, rising costs. It then went through a painful period of realignment and is now alive and well with the right balance between commercial interests and enthusiast interests. That is the direction our hobby needs to move in.

[Staffan 12]

Looks level for 2008 and 2009 to me. If you type 2004 in place of X you get a gragh that shows level intrest for FS9 since 2008 also. Hard to chime a death knell for either sim. How many games are selling as much as they were 3 years ago?Bob

And if you serch on Flight Simulator 9, you get this result:http://www.google.com/trends?q=flight+simu...=all&sort=0Add those numbers with the search on Flight Simulator 2004, and you will get the drift..... :( The numbers clearly speaks for themself. Quite a big difference compared with the FSX search,.... wouldn

[Mike... 7]

Only 15% are under 30 (perhaps the under 30s don't reply to surveys- they don't seem to vote at election time!)One would expect that the 65% of older simmers would also be the most affluent- yet FSX penetration is much lower at only 47%. So there are reasons other than financial, for the failure of FSX to obtain majority market share.

I am under 30, reply to surveys and vote. My reasons for sticking with FS9 are not financial.There are several feature improvements that I wanted, expected and looked forward to. Those improvements were not in FSX and that is the real issue. I don't mind the old upgrade performance drop like with previous sims, I don't mind getting some addons anew or losing some old ones, but then there would have to be something in my new sim as compensation, unfortunately, FSX just didn't deliver in that respect.

[Dillon 2,197]

And if you serch on Flight Simulator 9, you get this result:http://www.google.com/trends?q=flight+simu...=all&sort=0Add those numbers with the search on Flight Simulator 2004, and you will get the drift..... :( The numbers clearly speaks for themself. Quite a big difference compared with the FSX search,.... wouldn

[virtuali 4,421]

The more interesting results are not just the trends, but also the absolute numbers, which can be searched by typing a comma and compare two items so:"FS2004" vs "FSX"http://www.google.com/trends?q=fs2004%2C+f...=all&sort=0"Flight Simulator 2004" vs "Flight Simulator X"http://www.google.com/trends?q=flight+simu...=all&sort=1"Flight simulator 9" vs "Flight simulator x"http://www.google.com/trends?q=Flight+simu...=all&sort=1"FS9" vs "FSX"http://www.google.com/trends?q=fs9%2Cfsx&a...=all&sort=0Yes, the numbers DO speak for themselves, and it's comforting to know that, at least, there's no much declining in FSX. FS9 is clearly less used now (or, at least, less *searched* ) than FSX.But what I find most interesting, is that on the first graph of "FS2004 vs FSX", the FSX level of searches is not THAT different that what it used to be FS2004 5 years ago. Slightly less, but not that much. Which is a comforting data, because it means the "end of the world" is not coming yet.

[Charlie Chew 0]

I can't accept Google Trends as a reliable indicator of the popularity or health of a flight simulator. Is the person googling "FSX" searching for information on a flight simulator ... or the Sun Race FSX mountain bike ... or the FSX (Financial Services Exchange) investors' conference? That said, I think FSX and FS9 are both wonderful simulators. There's a lot of life in both of them yet.

[Dillon 2,197]

I can't accept Google Trends as a reliable indicator of the popularity or health of a flight simulator. Is the person googling "FSX" searching for information on a flight simulator ... or the Sun Race FSX mountain bike ... or the FSX (Financial Services Exchange) investors' conference?

Yet another interesting point...

[n4gix 4,947]

I can't accept Google Trends as a reliable indicator of the popularity or health of a flight simulator. Is the person googling "FSX" searching for information on a flight simulator ... or the Sun Race FSX mountain bike ... or the FSX (Financial Services Exchange) investors' conference?

That's why using search terms such as "flight simulator 2004, flight simulator x" and/or "FS9, flight simulator x" are likely more accurate and reflective of reality...

[Mike... 7]

Apparently "Britney Spears" was one of the most searched for um... things in 2008. That about sums it up for Google Trends.:(

[airboatr 0]

the google search results do not show the percentage of the worlds population that use any of the big three on a wholefs9 fsx and X plane... what percentage of the worlds population Sim???I know some RW pilots that think it's nuts, ..."cartoons are for saturday morning" gruff gruff gruffmy view of it is it shows a search percentage between fs9 and fsx and the number of hits google and google only has tallied.whats the percentage from the other search engines show? and what does it all mean anyway? the sim community is divided?I read in some post the user of a particular sim version hate the other versions and will never use them.I'm not sure what or more importantly who are the answers are good for ? the community? or the develpoers to figure out what is the most viable resourse to develope for. as for me I have the addons I want, and I'll probably not be buying anything to addon as far as software is concerned.perhaps ( maybe) a FSX V Tail that I did buy already buy BUT development was stopped at SP1 so it's got no panel in VC uh heckhemm! yes you guysbut like I said maybe,,,, I can fly it in FS9 and in the real world when a buddy of mine takes me up with :)anywaysI'll be adding something for free in the way of scenery , my local airport.... It'll be uploaded herebut give me some time huh?.. I just DL ADE ;)yes yes FS9 & FSX

[flyerkg 62]

I commend the new flight sim enthusiasts who are coming up to speed with all the issues. I would not know where to start and then to figure out which version of addons work well and which do not. Even though I have been with Flight Simulator since 1994 I have only recently started reading the forums. There is always a lot of great knowledge here.

[WhiteKnight77 0]

Want a better test of how popular a game is? While not foolproof by any means, Xfire tracks how many gamers play a game for how many minutes a day it is played. Flight Simulator X is played by an average of

[peppy197 165]

If you leave, where would you go?

"elsewhere"al

[dmaher 0]

I