I'd have a hard time jumping the P3D ship I have multiple FTX regional sceneries, airports, PMDG planes & the awesome Majestic Q400, all wrapped into my pilot career in FSCaptain.  I recently found some tiny changes that totally improved performance on my 5y/o machine, so me too no need to upgrade for the foreseeable future.  Sounds like XP is coming along nicely though.  I tried the XP10 demo a couple of years ago and couldn't see going there then with so much knowledge and software invested already in P3D.

For what it's worth, I am still investigating which Sim platform to go with.  Yeah I have FSX:SE, but I don't have much money invested beyond a Steam sale.  But its an archaic architecture and in investigating what add-ons and aircraft I could get for it, I found this site and a few others.  Before then I didn't even KNOW other platforms were out there and all that was available.  My mind was truly blown when I got here.

 

After my weeks of lurking and reading everything (and trying the XP11 demo), I think I have settled on XP11.  I work in IT and I cannot in good conscience spend untold amounts of money on a 32bit architecture knowing that at some point that it would be upgraded to 64bit and having to repurchase everything.  Waste of funds.

 

/CSB (and I apologize because the following is giant pet-peeve of mine.  I know this is only my second post on this site, but I wasn't born yesterday) 

 

Someone mentioned some Customer Support issues above and I have to say, it was extremely noticeable to me.  In a previous life I worked Customer Service, and now working in IT I get to work with Developers on a daily basis.  One thing is perfectly clear, with very few exceptions, Developers should not be allowed anywhere near the customer.  Customer Service takes a unique set of skills, as does Software Development, and they don't mix well.  People are going to complain, especially when they have spent a deal of money on a product and they feel it has an issue and should be resolved.  Likewise, Developers have spent tens of thousands of hours producing a product.  That product is their baby and they take someone criticizing that baby personally.  It makes sense, I get it.  That is why those companies (2 are glaring) should hire some CS people to be the buffer.  The responses I have seen here from the Developers are atrocious and I cannot believe the community lets them get away with it.  Luckily choosing XP means I wont have to deal with those 2 companies.

I don't have much invested in X-Plane at all, in fact I probably spent more on FSX last year than I did on X-Plane, and I use X-Plane 90% of the time :-). Maybe because few payware addons for X-Plane actually impress me enough to buy them, whereas on FSX they actually do impress me. The sad truth for me is that addons on FSX are often much better quality and are more worth the money paid for them.  Of course, the competition is harder on FSX as well. P3D is another story completely and I won't use or pay twice the price for the same addon that I may have already paid for.

 

Yeah I agree, many FSX addons are pretty awesome, however there are many that are terrible. I've made many FSX purchases that I regretted. X-plane has seen some nice ones in the last year and hopefully that continues to grow. But you're right, there is a lot of scrap like Skymaxx which are just clouds for 2/3's the price of the simulator; Just silly.

 

Also agree with P3D. The notion that they need to charge more because P3D changes was just an excuse to price gouge. They don't do that in X-plane which is also changing. $130 for an airplane is ridiculous. I've bought far more complex software for less. And I have to run it on old 32bit software that I have to nurse just to make it run.

Despite the dollar cost for all of my used add ons for P3D I have to say they have very clearly been worth it for me.  I use the thing nearly every day, get a huge amount of enjoyment from it, so per $$ spent, it's still a very good deal for me.  That I'm using a PC I assembled 5y ago that clearly is amply adequate to handle everything and anything P3D throws at it is quite remarkable.   If LM's big announcement is migration to 64 bit, unless they have discovered a way to massively improve performance by letting systems access the full complement of physical system as well as GPU ram, I'll probably hold pat for quite a while as everything truly is as close to ideal as one can get.