3 hours ago, Paul K said:

Standing back for a moment, I remember when Aces Studio was disbanded, people were confidently predicting the demise of civilian flight simming.

In fairness it kind of did die out. Xplane was never able to get the buy-in that MS gave up. There were still people running FSX in 2019 because they didn't want to switch. And P3d required some uh... Liberal interpretations of licensure to buy which some never bothered with.

Plus, P3d was essentially MSFS (still is, but with many more improvements).  Before MSFS'20 came out, finding a decent controller on a budget was pretty much impossible. Finding a good addon airplane that wasn't expensive was almost as difficult.

It's come roaring back with a vengeance now that MSFS is on the scene, but I still think M$ screwed up firing the ACES gang and exiting the market. That's 10 years of development they missed out on, and they had to turn to a studio that had never developed so much as an addon for a flight sim before. That's working out well, but there were definitely growing pains that were an entirely unforced error on Microsoft's part.

I absolutely think MS will abandon flight sims again in the future. But that doesn't mean I won't enjoy it while it's here. Every business abandons everything eventually, sometimes inexplicably such as when EVGA decided they weren't going to make video cards any more. I'll keep flying as long as the sim works.

 

It is an amazing time to be a simmer.

I have really good aircraft that don’t get enough flying time from me, that says a lot about the quantity of quality addons available.

6 minutes ago, eslader said:

Finding a good addon airplane that wasn't expensive was almost as difficult

I actually found the price of good add-on aircraft amazing value - $70 for a 'study level' aircraft seemed very good value. Today's prices are insanely cheap!

33 minutes ago, regis9 said:

It is an amazing time to be a simmer.

 

https://sofly.io/dinosaurs-for-msfs/

 

All from the legacy of FSX products.

Its not just the fact that MS came back to the genre but they came back and really shook things up by turning conventions on their head. I realized things weren't going to be business as usual when the Japan World Update dropped. It came as quite a surprise that they would be giving all of that for free and it was just the beginning. Since then they've released an avalanche of free content on us and have been doing so much to make the base sim as comprehensive as it can be. Their efforts to make the sim as marketable as it can be while maintaining a high level of authenticity has also led to a thriving third party market where devs can sell products at reasonable prices while making more money than they ever did before.  

Yup, MSFS is the best thing that has happened to flight simming, no doubt about it.

I concur with the general sentiment in this thread, it is a nice era of flight simming happening right now. MSFS has some things that I wish the developers would take time to fix, but overall it is an awesome sim that performs marvelously on my hardware setup. And as others have said, there is a plethora of good aircraft, scenery and utility addons, both payware and freeware. I just bought the ENGM Oslo scenery, which is amazing, the new Active Sky for MSFS which I am enjoying, and I am going to purchase the OV-10 Bronco at some point today as well. And, as soon at the BS Dukes drop, I'll be scooping them up too! So many good airplanes and airports. word not allowed, it feels good to be a flight simmer 😁

Forgot to mention I also bought the Rara Avis Horten. More expense, but the texturing and flight model are lovely. Never had a flightsim hangar like this one. 😉 

8 hours ago, Paul K said:

I've never known a time like this in our hobby. In recent weeks, I've bought JF's Vulcan and BAe 146, Burning Blue's Farnborough and Old Warden ( now with free airshow add-on ), Flying Iron's Me-109G and yesterday AzurPoly's Bronco. All this on top of perennial payware favourites, plus all the freeware aircraft, airports, repaints and utilities.

Standing back for a moment, I remember when Aces Studio was disbanded, people were confidently predicting the demise of civilian flight simming. Look where we are now, and with MSFS2024 coming soon. Asobo and Microsoft come in for some stick at times, but compared to just 5 years ago, we are in a different universe.

What's the point of this thread ? Just to express my astonishment at what we've gained in such a short space of time.

And now we have FBW's A-380 coming, along with Flying Iron's Fortress and a full set of B-52s from Sim Works Studios. Where does it end ? I hope it never does.

MSFS is definitely gaining critical mass. I think it will be the definitive civilian flight sim for the next decade. The 3rd party devs are definitely coalescing around MSFS. It's a good time if you are a MSFS user.

6 hours ago, Sethos said:

Except they didn't. Unlike any other simulator or game on this planet, they actually allowed the base platform to be sold for both professional and entertainment use, which allowed Prepar3D to happen. So playing that old violin shows you don't know how good you had it.

I could Never get P3D tried using Multiple credit cards to purchase over 5 years and they never worked. emailed support emailed support numerous times regarding this and never got a reply.

I know it happened also to others so not everyone had access to P3D

Just now, jason74 said:

I could Never get P3D tried using Multiple credit cards to purchase over 5 years and they never worked , even tried pre - paid credit cards.  emailed support numerous times regarding this and never got a reply.

I know it also happened to others so not everyone had access to P3D

 

13 minutes ago, jason74 said:

I could Never get P3D tried using Multiple credit cards to purchase over 5 years and they never worked. emailed support emailed support numerous times regarding this and never got a reply.

I know it happened also to others so not everyone had access to P3D

And some generic payment issue you had is a weird deflection and has absolutely nothing to do with my point. Prepar3D was the driving force of the flight simulation community for many years, over a decade with hundreds, if not thousands of massive addons and it was literally the foundation for a lot of the community and addons available for MSFS today, the very SDK for MSFS was made so Prepar3D addons could be easily ported over. That was one of their key goals in developing it. Hell, without Prepar3D and its thriving addon community, we probably wouldn't have MSFS today or possibly in a very different form. Microsoft absolutely took note. And that was all possible because Microsoft allowed the ESP platform to be used, instead of just throwing the entire thing to the wayside when they decided to opt out of flight simming. So this 'woe is me' notion that Microsoft flat out abandoned the entire flight simulation community and are the villains, lacks so much nuance and thought it's painful.

Yes I agree I flew the Fenix A320 yesterday and just sat as a passenger in the cabin during cruise and it was very relaxing. The things we can do in the sim are endless.

50 minutes ago, Sethos said:

this 'woe is me' notion that Microsoft flat out abandoned the entire flight simulation community and are the villains, lacks so much nuance and thought it's painful.

Yeah, but in our post-facts societies, what's more important are vibes, feels and narratives...

Anyway, while MSFS has been a whirlwind that's made it extremely difficult for a lot of the incumbent/legacy developers, we have seen Schumpeter's economic concept of creative destruction in effect. Bold new devs, such as Pyreegue, Fenix Sim, FBW, WorkingTitle and FSLTL have led the way to even more realism. A2A, JustFlight, AIG, FSReborn and Jo Erlend Sund have all upped their respective games to make the most of the new tools available to them.

A golden era indeed.

15 hours ago, jason74 said:

Its good at the moment but I'm still very optimistic with Microsoft , they pulled the plug and abandoned us once and I feel they will do it again eventually

Yes indeed things change over time.  So now our task is to remain in the present and enjoy the heck out of this incredible time to be hooked on flight simming.  

I have been at this since 1980 on Apple II GS with FS1 by Sublogic.  What we have now is what I always dreamed was the ultimate goal for desktop FS.  Good Lord that was 44 years ago!  I continue to be awestruck with just how good the sim is even with its well known shortcomings.   I truly still look forward to every flight op.  I'm now looking only for a handful of things for MS/A to truly address and some of those should be coming in 2024.  They're not little things by any stretch, but there aren't too many left now.  For me it's these...

Majors:

1. Organically changing seasons that appreciate geolocation and change automatically with as much depth as the new multithreaded engine can deliver.  
2. Improvements in flight dynamics and turbulence modeling especially relative to clouds and weather.
3. Improved cloud voxel resolution which may be a useful component for distinct cloud morphologies.

Minors:

1. ATC:  I know we have 3rd party options but as a user with less need for ATC I would love to see MS/A address its current ATC shortcomings and improve voice modeling.  They have the AI to perhaps bring voicings to approaching being able to pass a Turing Test.  If you want a clear example of that listen to the captain on FBW 320nx--he is a RW captain, and sounds like one with intonation and inflection, choice of words.  Same same for ATC I would love it to sound like actual ATC.
2. Simple to use Instant Replay, Tower View, and Fly-By.  Good Lord these we all loved in the prior sims!

Happy Flying 🛩️