I've been looking back over the year that has pretty much come to an end with FSX looking and feeling the best it has EVER been!

What has had the most influence on this? For me, and I'd love to hear other peoples opinions, they have been....

 

1: Opus weather. It has got better and better with every beta.

2: DX10 Fixer. Without it I would not be experiencing FSX as I now know it.

3:REX4. I always felt REX OD clouds and water were the best! AS2012 for runways etc. Not any more. REX4 is a game changer. Clouds are superb, whitecaps have reappeared in DX10, and the rest of their textures are top notch!

4: A2A's C172. I've bought loads of planes in the past year and some of them are absolute keepers. But I would never have imagined that a lowly Skyhawk would be an aircraft I would never tire of. When we fly online and someone suggests a C172 I  never think 'Oh no, boooring!'

5: Orbx Global. I am no longer afraid to head off into defaultland. There is a world outside PNW etc.

 

They are my 'Game Changers', how about yours?

 

 

 

My "game changer" for the year would be ASN. That weather program has totally transformed my sim and given me the best looking weather I have ever seen in a desktop sim. As much as I liked all the prior Active Sky programs, this one just blows them out of the water. Truly awesome is the volumetric fog/cloud layers that obscure your a/c when flying through it. It's pretty neat to go into spot view and see your a/c actually getting enveloped in moisture, sometimes to the point you can barely even see the a/c. Never seen that before in FSX until now.

 

My other top honors for the year would go to the following:

 

1. FlyTampa OMDB

2. Mega Sao Paulo by Paulo Ricardo

3. T2G MMMX

Good topic Ron!

 

It has been an amazing year for sure, and it has never been a better year for simming since I started this hobby 25 years ago. For me this year has been all about two products:

 

1) Lockheed Martin Preapr3D v2

2) ORBX FTX Global

 

Apart from ORBX, I'm out of the payware market. I stick to default aircraft (have ported over my FSX hangar to P3D) and enjoy some of the amazing freeware aircraft and scenery on offer. Thanks to all the freeware developers for their hard work! Honorable mention should be given to Manfred Jahn's C-47 and the folks working on Airports of Norway, Airports of Northern Norway, Norwegian GA Airfields, Norway Mesh X and Norway Scenic X III.

Game Changer for 2013 hands down is:

 

P3D v2...

Game changer this year for me has been X-Plane 10.25, HD Mesh v2, OSM and photoscenery from simheaven and the clouds from Skymaxx Pro. I haven't even looked at P3D v2 after using those products, and haven't looked back at FSX since :-)

Game Changer for 2013 hands down is:

 

P3D v2...

So you finally bought and installed it or are you still waiting to build a new rig?

I'd have to say DX10 Fixer and FTXG.

ASN.......Excellent

 

P3DV2...Disappointment

PMDG 777 and Opus

The number one sim thing that made my year was seeing a repaint of mine for the A2A C172 in a screenshot attached to a review of the C172 on the website RockPaperShotgun, a British gaming site that I've read daily for far more years than I care to admit.  Rather vain perhaps, I know... but it still made me all warm and fuzzy inside... :lol:

 

Apart from that...

 

- A2A C172.  I ended up building a (not fancy or dimensionally correct) simpit especially for this plane.  In a year in which I spend far too much money on aircraft add-ons, I actually managed to log a fair number of hours on this one.

 

- Majestic Q400.  I didn't log enough hours on this one yet, but this is the number one plane I plan on learning properly in the new year.

 

- FTX Global.  I fly a lot in western Canada, but in areas that aren't far enough west to squeak inside FTX NRM.  FTX Global made me a very happy person.

 

- Dino's freeware trio.  I've sunk more hours into his T-45, F-14, and the F-35 (the F-35 admittedly more so since the release of P3Dv2) than most all of my other payware planes.

PMDG777

Things that made my year:

 

- PMDG 777 and Majestic Q400.  Wonderful aircraft.

- DX10 Fixer.  Absolutely love what it has done for FSX ( I like bloom).

- Activesky Next....simply amazing, great to have some turbulence back in FSX.

- Adding the VRInsight MCP II to my sim kit.  Really enjoying what this piece of hardware adds to my sim experience.

 

Personal fight sim thing that made my year - I uploaded a 1 hour and 40 minute video on how to fly the ConcordeX and it was watched 125,000 times.  Crazy.    I have since followed that up with a video tutorial on how to work the Concorde X fuel system and now adding videos on Concorde around the World Tour.

I'll go out on a limb here and say, nothing really.  If pushed i'd say the Majestic Q400

Lots of very good stuff mentioned above, but I have to remind everyone about the Sibwings An-2. This was the biggest surprise of the year for me, and has become my favourite aircraft to fly in FS. It was also a bargain at the price.

 

Also the fact that Orbx now covered all the British Isles, so I can fly pretty much anywhere and everywhere in these Sceptered Isles and have some nice scenery to look at.

Absolute winners this year:

ASN

REX4

FTXGlobal

 

And three with honorable mention:

P3Dv2

DX10 Scenery Fixer

FSGRW