Saw this on Steam forums and thought it was interesting. A lot of chat on avsim from people asking if they should buy the London Orbx scenery pack in case msfs later updated the missing major London landmarks themselves and made the paid add on redundant. This article is actually quite revealing I think. Make your own minds up. 

One quote:

"We didn't fully realise that we need to tread very carefully, because if we make too much stuff, we're hurting them. And we don't want to hurt them. We want to have a thriving ecosystem, and they can be as creative as they want to be for years to come. We actually took out a bunch of airports and stopped development on a bunch of airports because it was too much."

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-18-microsoft-flight-simulators-underwhelming-take-on-london-is-transformed-with-the-orbx-expansion

 

I dont buy paid scenery but its a shame if what I am SPECULATING below is the case. Will ms not add or fix something that add on producers are going to sell on the market place?

Not talking about airplanes - thats understandable - talking scenery. Key landmarks in major cities should be a default - was London left in its current state since Orbx were going to provide paid add ons?  I totally understand more obscure places not having landmarks but key major cities? It even made the newspapers here in the UK about how bad some very major landmarks looked.

I guess its in Microsofts interest not to add anything a 3rd party scenery developer may add (like Orbx's back catalogue from other sims) since they profit from sales in the marketplace and get nothing if they add it themselves.

Coming from x-plane - there was a big freeware community. The gateway provided free airport updates for the whole world hand crafted by the community. As a result the airports (overall) are far more detailed and accurate in x-plane than msfs today in my view.

I just worry that if there is something wrong scenery wise in the sim (inaccurate or missing airports for example) I have to hope its not in Orbx back catalogue otherwise its not going to be fixed in default.

In the past the paid addon community provided stuff missing in the sim. That may be now reversed. Now microsoft may only provide what the paid addon community cannot or will not.

For sure lots of unanswered questions regarding this subject of DLC and how everything was agreed upon, restricted or set.

And about how much work everyone has to do.

Regards

bs