I don't have a communication channel with LM or MS as Aerosoft and PMDG do. So I have no idea what the future plans are for MSFS and P3D. I am just a simmer who has been buying addons for decades. I can tell you though that I have no plans for buying any MSFS addons for a long time as this sims needs quite a bit more development and stabilization before I am willing to invest in it. Furthermore, MS has abandoned its flight sim product twice in the past, 3 times if you include Combat Flight Simulator. Saying they are going to be in it for 10 years doesn't hold much water with me. What else could they say with their past history? 10 years could be 2 more CEOs down the road. It's MS management that will cancel MSFS if they decide to, not Asobo. MS is not an aviation company, it is a software company and MSFS is a showcase and experimental product for them to showcase Bing and Azure. My concern is that if it is cancelled, what do I have? MSFS is a streaming simulator so if MS pulls the plug I probably have nothing and my addons are worthless. Yes the scenery and aircraft graphics are fantastic and I will enjoy it for those qualities by VFR flying with the default aircraft for the foreseeable future.

LM on the other hand is an aviation company that uses P3D for training purposes. My largest concern is that LM will decide to stop allowing public access to future versions. But even if they do I expect my current versions will continue to work. The graphics in P3D are not nearly as spectacular as MSFS, even with addons. However with my large 4k monitor and scenery addons it is still much more than I dreamed of 10 years ago and I can fly complex aircraft now. P3Dv5 is just as unstable as MSFS is due to ongoing development and updates that break addons, however, P3Dv4 is rock solid stable. My 2021 addon budget is with P3Dv4 addons that work or will be working with P3Dv5.

Umberto made a comment about how much easier some things are to do when developing for MSFS. This is very powerful and important. In addition to completing the flight side of the sim and the SDK, if MS/Asobo provides tools that allow users to create addons relatively easy this will really ignite the freeware market and help propel the success of MSFS. Hopefully LM willl also consider this for P3D.

Ted

1 hour ago, threegreen said:

I've always found it strange to say the least how some people think they can make a reasonable statement on whether a developer is just lazy and wants to shove the work on Asobo or if there is actually a good reason.

Agree with that. I find all developers having to rewrite most of their stuff in a platform designed backwards compatibility in mind would be highly inefficient. Asobo already promised backwards compatibility, and they are working on it. This does not mean they are lazy. To be fair, PMDG (and others) having to rewrite the entire aircraft from scratch would be a bad thing for everyone, imagine the NG3 being delayed for 4+ years instead of just 1.