I've been reading the threads both on Avsim and elsewhere relating to MS terminating development of Flight. I've seen some people gleefully dancing on Flight's grave, and others saying it's the end of the era and the hobby is dying.

 

On reflection over the last day or so I think nothing could be further from the truth. I think flight simulation is alive and kicking and the future holds some really interesting and exciting possibilities.

 

Consider the following if you will...

 

i) FSX as we all know is still going strong. Yes it's a little long in the tooth now but it's a mature platform with a multitude of developers making new stuff for it, including some extremely innovative and forward thinking people who are constantly pushing the boundaries of FSX. Who would have thought back in 2006 that we would have aircraft like the Real Air Lancair, the PMDG NGX, the A2A Accu-Sim products or Orbx quality scenery?

 

ii) The release of X-Plane 10 has coincided with an upsurge in development for XP and some of the new high quality aircraft available for XP10 are rivalling the best that FSX has to offer. X-Plane has hitherto lived in the shadow of MSFS and the latter has enjoyed the lion's share of 3rd party development. That balance is now starting to shift and the possibilities are very interesting.

 

iii) Prepar3d looks like it may hold a great deal of potential and promise if Lockheed continue to develop it.

 

iv) The release of DCS World has given us yet another open-ended simulation platform now opened up to 3rd party developers. Those of us who own the current DCS titles know just how capable the DCS engine is in terms of flight and systems modelling. It's entirely feasible that DCS can be developed into a platform that can support both combat and civilian flight simulation to extremely high levels of fidelity - the foundations are there for those who wish to build on them.

 

Look at it this way - there was little in the way of really ground breaking new features or innovation in FSX on release in 2006. So many requested features or improvements were never implemented and many opportunities were lost. It was left to the 3rd party developers to really make it fly, and even then those who have really pushed the boundaries of FSX have done so outside of the SDK. Even now we are left with a rather old engine that isn't at all optimised for contemporary hardware and still comes up short in many significant areas.

 

Perhaps the time was right for MSFS to step aside and let fresh blood rejuvinate the genre?

 

I know for sure that FSX will be on my HDD for a long time yet, but I'm also intrigued and excited by the possibilities and opportunities that now lay before us.

Whistling past the graveyard?

I have to go to work soon so I will keep this short for now. I don't see Flight Sim in Terminal Decline, I see it in Transition.

 

Microsoft has changed because its market for Windows has changed. MSFS Franchise is no longer a priority. Others will pick up where MS has left off. P3D is a great segway for now. Plenty of talented developers still working very hard and coming up with amazing things for FLight Sim. I look forward to more.

 

Perhaps the time was right for MSFS to step aside and let fresh blood rejuvinate the genre?

 

I know for sure that FSX will be on my HDD for a long time yet, but I'm also intrigued and excited by the possibilities and opportunities that now lay before us.

 

I agree and same goes for me.

Flight Simulation is actually in its heyday in my opinion! WIth X-plane, DCS, and FSX still strong. PMDG is rolling out new planes faster than they've ever had, other high fidelity releases on the horizon (FSL A320, MJC DHC-400) A sequel to PS1 coming up and my hometown being done by FlyTampa. In 15+ years as a flight simmer Ive never seen so much movement! It is not declining, its growing!

 

Alex

Hi!

 

No way flightsim is in terminal decline! For me FsX is the way forward. Sure out of the box everything looks like a desert but just look at what people can do with it! Orbx is stunning and I have some great photoreal scenery too. There is also lots of great freeware still available for Fs9 and FsX. Even if someone took away my Fs9 and FsX I would play my old Fs98 (for which there are still people making freeware sometimes!).

 

Many thanks.

 

P.

No way in decline. On my rig, FSX with tons of addons runs great....almost flawlessly. I'm lucky. Yes, it' s little choppy over NYC and some other areas, but still quite excellent. IMAGINE how FSX will run on the NEXT generation of computers. Developers should continue to "pile it on" with wonderful new planes, exceptional scenery, and other great immersion vehicles. Because regardless of what we add, it's only going to get better and more fluid. It is moving toward as real as it gets!

 

Stan

If it was in decline there would be less traffic on networks like vatsim and ivao, but instead traffic has been growing lately.

 

Sent from my LG-P500h using Tapatalk 2

As a commercial member, I've seen nothing but growth over the years.

 

So FSX is still going strong at least from my vantage point, which is amazing given how old FSX is.

 

Long-term, though, most serious Flight Simmers tend to be older. Demographics could be a factor in the future. Hard to say how that will play out.

 

But we need to bring more young people into the hobby in order to ensure its future.

 

But a lot of young people don't seem as interested in aviation anymore since jet travel lost a lot of the mystique it once had years ago, not to mention that pilot training has become prohibitively expensive for most and that aviation has a bad reputation for being a pretty risky career choice.

Personally, I have never considered the hobby "dead", or "dying", though MS Flight literally never reached the point where I would have considered buying it. I eagerly await numerous addons and hardware upgrades to my sim set up. I was exposed to this hobby during my teen years, and have even found FS X helpful in my job. I have learned many Atlanta roads through Ultimate Terrain and FS Earth Link. I drive on the sim to practice "what ifs" I went to Zoo Atlanta last month with my boss, his family, and his girlfriend. When his cousin asked "Where do I get off to go to the Zoo?", I remembered that I had gone down Freedom Parkway to Boulevard. FS X is the engine but it was Flight 1 that provided the roads. If a friend needs help in learning Atlanta roads, FS X is a great tool to teach.

 

I want realism, whether it's a Jeppessen paper chart, or the ability to see the Jefferson County Courthouse on FS X. With Google Earth and the like, more addons will enhance the scenery. So what if pilot training costs a lot. I can get r/w lessons and NEVER get to do what I do in the sim. I eagerly await new addons like PFPX, an improved ImagineSim ATL, and more aircraft like the PMDG 777. Keep going developers!

Sales of FSX Gold shot through the roof recently. Lots of great stuff planned for future releases by all major devs as far as I know. Addons continue to improve in quality and the amount of man hours involved. FLIGHT was cancelled, not Flight Simulator 11.

I think Tom Allensworth will back me up here.

 

But the FS community has endured many FS controversies over the almost 2 decades and were still here. I've been simming since the TRS-80 days and Flight Sim 1.

 

This was perhaps years before some of y'all were even born.

 

Then I jumped into it hard with SubLogics Flight Assignment ATP and the dawn of the internet in the mid 1990's.

 

In the end, since the dawn of this community in 95 or 96 we have seen many turbulent times and we've all weathered them...

I agree with steveW FSX sales have skyrockited and that mainly because of flight. Tho flight was cancelled it brought many new and old simmers(That had left the community) back. FSX still has a few years or more left in it. I believe there is a lot we still don't know about fsx and its engine despite it being 6 years old... This shows in how far the quality of add ons has advanced in the last few years.(Take the PMDG NGX for example and theres no telling what the triple seven will bring to the table..) No one thought fs9 would last past 2006 and even today there is a pretty large userbase still using it. Who knows what could be on the horizon within the next few years. X-Plane and P3D both have great potential to become the leading platform, and within thos next few years a new flight simulator could pop up, only time will tell.

I think flight simulation is alive and kicking and the future holds some really interesting and exciting possibilities.

 

[...]

 

ii) The release of X-Plane 10 has coincided with an upsurge in development for XP and some of the new high quality aircraft available for XP10 are rivalling the best that FSX has to offer. X-Plane has hitherto lived in the shadow of MSFS and the latter has enjoyed the lion's share of 3rd party development. That balance is now starting to shift and the possibilities are very interesting.

 

+1

 

3rd party development is more and more alive everywhere, X-Plane, FSX, Prepar3D, FS2004 (Carenado is back)... nothing is in "Terminal Decline" except the development of the closed and SDKless MS Flight.

 

I think you forgot a flight simulator that will be more and more important in the future: FlightGear

http://www.flightgear.org/

 

The license is a lot more sustainable than in any other flight simulator. It will always be possible to improve and modify FlightGear, the source code is available, and it's allowed to contribute.

 

 

 

 

Since i started flight simming ( again ) the visual quality of products that have been released by some developers is epic, sadly some developers are still stuck on producing addons with the quality you would expect to see in fs2000 or 2002 and it really time for them to wake up and join the show as we have the pc's and the and the software for some decent simming :)

 

The survival of flight simming for years to come i think would be more based on the visual quality of addons regardless of the platform we choose to fly with.

 

Long live the pixel pilots :)

I feel from the lack of production it will go into a steady decline. Desktops and even laptops are on the decline, along with them will be the software that goes with them. As tablet computing gets more powerful it will go that way and it will be to difficult to fly a real sim on a tablet.