12 hours ago, MartinH said:

...for example, populating Oshkosh when that's taking place; so you could fly in and see some AI acrobatics going on - or even community events or competitions.

Your idea sounds a little but like The Skypark by Parallel 42. Adding in events at certain places around the world, that all members will see when they are in the sim in that area. The result will be that people gather together at those places to take part.

I had a chat with co-developer Keven (of ChasePlane) at the recent Flight Sim Show at Cosford. He said that the run-up to such events might see lots of transportation jobs being posted for their community to fly. Players can contribute by bring in supplies to the airfield - each delivery then causes more 'scenery' to appear for all players in that area.

Sounds a bit like AirHauler mixed with an MMO game. Could be interesting to be part of a larger community of events. Time will tell!

Couple of links for those interested who might not have heard of this yet:

https://fselite.net/previews/the-skypark-area-51-raid-previews/

https://orbxdirect.com/theskypark

2 minutes ago, Mustang-242 said:

Adding in events at certain places around the world, that all members will see when they are in the sim in that area. The result will be that people gather together at those places to take part.

This is more what I was hoping to discuss. Given that the software has a strong relationship with being online as the default, and by extention many usesrs may be online together, it could be fun for people to develop events to bring people to fly together (though this would likely need some robust policing against trolls given the scope of the platform).

The Skypark stuff seems like it has potential in the new sim, like an evolution from career modes, although the transportation jobs side of it could be more interesting if there was a reward - for example if someone were to contribute the most recieving some payware, like a competition event.

Which in turn makes me wonder if one day there may be something like Farnbrough airshow in the sim, where devs show off new planes and perhaps come up with giveaways like being included in beta testing of new plane models to participants.

Anways, I worry I'm starting to sound like all I'm thinking about is competitions and freebies, the crux of it is that events such as these are one way to input detailed speciallised scenery from 3rd parties that would be unique enough to compete with the evolving sophistication of the sim. Again, not to say scenery or planes are going to be handled so well by default, just that given the improvements it would be cool to see how creative developers could become in how they work with the platform.

Personally, I'm curious what all the freeware developers will conjoured out of the hat in the future!

I hope they will keep this sim for a long time alive with all kind of time, good ideas and mods like for many other great sims in the past!