My Four Cents

Add-on developers are always creating new aircraft and repaints for FS. It may not always be easy, but there's always something in development.

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding you (or you me) here? Indeed, some add on airplane models do offer this kind of persistency to varying degrees (and with varying success). What I would like to see is the ability for the end user to choose any model, stock or add on, and create an "airplane individual" from it. This "airplane individual" would then support full persistency in the following areas (for example):

• Full model state persistency: All systems are in the state you left them the next time you spawn the same "airplane individual".
• Geographical persistency: The "airplane individual" is located at the exact same spot and direction you left it in (or, possibly, if you have ordered some repair for it, it could be located in or outside a nearby hangar).
• Use (and misuse): The airplane individual tracks engine hours, temperature, RPM etc. Misuse or failure to perform service will increase the probability of failure.

Again, these things are offered by some third party products but then only to a limited extent and most often the experience is outlined with bugs or various technical issues or bugs. I think it should be an natural and integral part of the core simulation. Looking at FSPassenger X or similar add ons that try to deliver an experience where your actions as a pilot has conseqnences beyond the current flight all seem to struggle hard to overcome the limitations of the sim. Having a robust persistency model built in to the sim itself would free up development resources for add on developers and I think we could see very interesting missions, or even story based scenarios, coming from the add on community.Jonas