I agree with Jim. We have no way of knowing what LM will do in the future with the P3D project. They are adapting to market changes and branching out more and more into private and commercial markets simply because of the uncertainty of their bread and butter with the military. They currently have an underwater autonomous vehicle that has already gone through some initial on site testing for the gas and oil industry. Whether or not P3D will be used to train perspective clients is not known. It would be nice to see that LM using it's own P3D in the near future for this and other projects. Knowing that should promise some future development with P3D, but only time will tell. I personally do not see enough added value at this time for me to invest. I did try the 1 month developer license, but nothing really jumped out at me to say "Bob this is awesome". Sure there have been some improvement here and there, but I just cannot see myself investing and waiting for the 3rd party market to jump on board, at least in the near future. Just my opinion.Bob

I know many will disagree with me, but I the only successors of FSX that I personally can imagine at the moment are either X-Plane or FlightGear. FSX can be kept alive forever provided you keep adequate hard- and software (OS, drivers,...). But that's a dead end in the long run, something really new is required. MS Flight simply joins the bandwagon of tightly controlled, online centric apps markets. I for my part don't want to depend on the Internet, nor do I want to be restricted by a monopolized online market or to features that MS dictates. That's why I see Flight as a not so good option. X-Planeon the other hand would certainly have the potential to replace FSX as sim basis for enthusiasts. MS Flight for the masses and game kiddies, X-Plane for the "pro's" ;-)

Prepar3D is not the future for us home amateur flight simmers. It's just another expensive addon version of FSX and not really any upgrade for any of us. It's used for flight training at flight schools and for commercial use. Anyone who buys a license is simply throwing away hard earned money. You need to do more research and fully understand what this Prepar3D is all about. Google is your friend. Save your hard earned money for future spectacular addons to FSX and forget about all this hype about something Lockheed Martin is developing for major users like the commercial airline industry. It's also against the EULA for home use too but some are already trying to work around that by joining a developer's network. Kind of gives you a clue as to what Prepar3D is targeting. I'm sticking with FSX as I see no future in Flight or Prepar3D for home enthusiasts like me. I strongly advise others to follow...Jim

Um, I HAVE been following P3D's development, and am not totally ignorant (as you seem to suggest) about what it's potential may or may not be. As I stated, I'll certainly be using FSX for quite some time yet, as 3rd party developers continue (hopefully for a LONG time) creating superb add-on products (PMDG, A2A, VRS, REX, etc.). I also still use FS9 a LOT, as I have a TON of add-ons for it, and it kicks butt on one of my my current systems performance-wise. FSX also runs very well on both of my dedicated flight sim systems (one for civilian and one for military).If X-Plane and 3rd party developers could match the quality of addons in FSX across the board, I'd jump to that quickly, as it runs on both MAC and Linux, and I'd be totally free of MS's crap for good! MS sucks, plain and simple (I've been dealing with their products for many years, both from the technical aspects as well as an end user). FS9 & FSX are the only reason I still use windoze (7-64)....and, their trashing of the flight simulator franchise with the upcoming flight?!-->I rest my case.

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Edited January 5, 201214 yr by McDaniel

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Edited January 6, 201214 yr by jahman