I don't understand why anyone would be excited about yet another FSX version. I certainly lost interest in this one.

Because FSX is probably still the most popular flight sim platform. That means big community and lots of great addons. It can be a pretty decent platform if some improvements are made.

 

Also there aren't many alternatives out there in the market. X-plane has far less quality addons than FSX. P3D is not going anywhere with its licensing and prices. There are far less people willing to pay $199.

It's a shame, as I said in the thread to which arsenal82 (really?) referred, that you have to be negative or critical to get any input from Dovetail. Martin talks about legal issues stopping him.....a sim that's due out in three months and those issues aren't sorted? Sorry but I don't believe that for one second.

 

I still can't get my head around the pleasant persona Dovetail exhibit through Martin and the revelations of their tactics to get developers "onside" as discussed at length on here a couple of years back. Or how a company which makes most of its profits from DLC from its own games can be expected to produce anything other than a flight sim which will be reliant on throwing more money at it to bring it up to scratch. There are 125 million Steam account holders throughout the world of whom probably 99% have never even thought of flight simming; I think it stands to reason that they are Dovetail's target and not us. These are the people who will happily pay for a new product and a few items of DLC and then simply never play it again but Dovetail's job is done.

 

Still, we'll see in time.

I actually started playing with FlightGear!! It is actually quite nice, a bit different, & a pleasant surprise, being free. There are some very decent planes for it, including an amazing Shuttle.

Hi everyone,

This was certainly a very interesting read. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts with us in this thread so far.

Firstly, if you are after specifics like release dates, aircraft lineup or whether or not feature X,Y or Z will be in the new sim, then I'm sorry but we are not in a position where we are ready to talk about that just yet. Why? Is it because we don't want to talk about it yet? Is it because we are not happy with the sim? Is it because there is some sort of top secret conspiracy going on where we plan to overthrow the flight sim universe? As exciting as that would be, the answer is much more mundane and boring. We are not talking about the sim just yet because we are not ready to do so. Our development team have their heads down and they are working hard on it. Meanwhile, myself and other people like Aimee are finalising the plans for when we do talk about it, along with working on content for that.

I am really not spilling any massive industry secrets here. When developers start to talk about their titles they don't just wake up one morning and say to themselves "Right lets jump on that YouTube and tell everyone about it." Oh, how I wish that was how it worked. It takes planning. Lots, and lots, and lots of really detailed planning. Every interview, every screenshot, every magazine cover, every trailer, every community Q&A. They all have to be mapped out and created. Once all of this work is done, then there is date that kicks it all off. D-Day, the countdown to launch. At the moment we haven't hit D-Day. Once we do, our doors will be flung open and there will be a steady stream of fresh information. Why are we not talking about the new flight sim? The simple truth is just like I say, that we are not ready to do so just yet.

Next let's talk about names. It is not unusual for a video game to go through several name changes in it's development. Sometimes devs just decide they don't like the name. Sometimes as development proceeds a previous name doesn't fit anymore. Sometimes a legal hurdle pops ups, one which requires that the name is changed. Please be assured that is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. We have a name in mind that we like, but doing all the legal work for that takes time. Again, a really long time. Once that is finished, which it should be soon, we can start calling the sim by it's proper title. Which is......(sorry, not just yet!)

We will be at the Cosford show this year and we are looking forward to seeing you all there, but we will not be talking about the new sim. This is just another another example of us not hitting D-day..

Why are we still asking people what they want in the new sim? It is a great question. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is, we want to know what people would like to see in a new sim! This is a question we have been asking for the last two years, and will continue to ask for many years to come.

Over time what people want changes. A prime example of this is VR. Three years ago, when we first started doing research within the flight sim community, not many people were talking about or wanted VR. Since then we have seen it gradually rise in popularity. The opposite is true of motion controls. Turn back the clock a few years and everyone was excited by motion controls within games. When MS announced that Kinect was coming to Windows we got lots of questions from simmers asking us if we would be adding Kinect features into our titles. Jump back to today, and no one is asking us that anymore. A few days ago someone asked us on Steam if we would be using the new Vulkan API. That is a technology that only came out in February of this year. No one was asking us about that a year ago, it didn't exist. My point here is that we keep asking because we feel it is important to do so when you work in an industry that changes and develops as quickly as this one does.

There are lots of other reasons why we keep asking. New simmers are discovering the genre daily. We have heard from simmers, following the release of DTG Flight School, who stated that it was their first flight simulator. The flight simulation community is constantly developing and changing. It is important to us that we listen to what new and old players want equally. There are people in the community now, who were simply not in it a year ago when we last asked the question.

Another reason is that we have always said that the new flight simulator will be an ongoing project. We are not making Call of Duty 35 here (no disrespect to the talented people who do make those titles). With most titles developers work on the main game for several years, release it, work on some DLC for the next six months and then that is it. The title is seen as having a limited lifespan. Once it has had it's moment in the spotlight, it is then time to move on to the sequel. Simulators are different from the norm, or more precisely, our approach to them has always been different compare to the main game industry. We view the release of the new sim as just the conclusion of the first stage of development. FSX has been around for ten years give or take. We were never going to achieve what it has done, within a decade, upon day one of release. We have always been realistic about that. We are completely and very deeply committed to the flight simulation genre for many years to come.

Finally, the last popular question. Are you not leaving this all a bit late? We can absolutely see where everyone is coming from with this. All I can say is that when D-Day arrives everything will make much more sense. I guess maybe we should call it FS-Day or something better. Suggestions on a postcard please!

I hope that clears a few things up. If you have any questions please fire them at me, but keep in mind that I am limited in what I can talk about at this time.

- Martin

Hi everyone,

 

...I hope that clears a few things up.

 

- Martin

Nope, but that's OK, because if it did we might have to change the subject to find something else to speculate, pontificate and disagree upon.  

As to the VR question...Yes. This is the future of gaming. AF2 implemented VR and it is great. Works very nicely on a 64 bit platform.

There's an interesting video by OVPA linked to on DTG Flight School FB.

 

 

in which Stephen Hood participated talking about the new flight sim. His part is between 33:00 - 71:00 (ish). Between 57:40-61:40 he makes about three references to December so it seems as if that's currently DTG's target date for release.

If that's flickering like FSX on obsolete Windows I'm out.

There's an interesting video by OVPA linked to on DTG Flight School FB.

 

in which Stephen Hood participated talking about the new flight sim. His part is between 33:00 - 71:00 (ish). Between 57:40-61:40 he makes about three references to December so it seems as if that's currently DTG's target date for release.

 

A release around Christmas time makes sense to me.

I'm gonna buy it regardless of what it is. Honestly my expectations are low (seeing how much time LM has spent on P3D and there's still tons to improve - from a personal standpoint), but I support any development of any simulator. Sitting on the fence will surly slow down further development, so I'm going all in from day one (Just as I've done with Prepar3D, Outerra, Aerofly FS and DCS!)

So you missed the best, X-Plane.

I'll try at least the demo, if I can bother myself to boot Windows.

So you missed the best, X-Plane.

I'll try at least the demo, if I can bother myself to boot Windows.

Oh, I have several boxes collecting dust somewhere, but I never got onboard for XP-10, so I forgot to include it.

 

As for XP being the best? That doesn't even qualify as a bad joke. We all have different preferences.

I'm gonna buy it regardless of what it is. Honestly my expectations are low (seeing how much time LM has spent on P3D and there's still tons to improve - from a personal standpoint), but I support any development of any simulator. Sitting on the fence will surly slow down further development, so I'm going all in from day one (Just as I've done with Prepar3D, Outerra, Aerofly FS and DCS!)

 

I'm totally with you on that. DFS might not be that great on launch, but I think it's our best hope for flight simming in the long run.

I like the idea of buying/funding something to show support for what they are doing, but when you do that, sometimes, you reward mediocrity, and where's the incentive for game developers or any other company to push the envelope when people will buy anything just because it's offered?

 

I think this is why we have FSX; FSX-SE; Flight, Xplane, Prepar3d, and now this new-fsx.

 

If you want to a better future flight sim, don't reward the same-ol' same-ol'

 

For me, and me only, I love flight sims, I even spend way too many hours glued to my monitor, but I will not pay my money to give incentives to a company that should earn my money, - otherwise, it's almost extortion, lol, heck, I'll just play fallout, minecraft, etc there's too many revolutionary games out now to worry about getting stuck playing xplane or DCS or prepar3d which are available now and into the very far future whether DTG sells this new one or not.

 

You want "my" money, and more importantly, my time, you need earn it, and offer more than what its now available.

 

 

you need earn it, and offer more than what its now available.

 

For myself, I would say that its more reasonable to offer a credible path to more than whats now available, as there's little likelihood of anything completely new offering all that FSX and its derivatives have gathered in the last ten years.

 

At least not right from the beginning.