It's true that there was good freeware for FSX, but I do think there's something to the premise in that the freeware scene was less vibrant in FSX than it is in MSFS today.

But MSFS isn't unique in this regard. I remember that back in the FS9 days, there was an absolutely staggering amount of freeware coming out. I recall regularly checking out the AVSIM library for new uploads, and it felt like there was great new freeware popping up every week. Looking just at the aircraft, the amount and breadth of offerings was amazing (with many of these aircraft still not represented in MSFS today):

• Rick Piper's HS.748, Vickers Viscount, Vickers Vanguard
• David Maltby's BAC 1-11, Comet, Trident, VC10
• Dave Garwood's Hawker Hunter (also available in MSFS -- yay!)
• Linn and Bill Lyons's many classic 30s / 40s aircraft, not to mention Golden Wings
• Historic Jetliners Group (707, Convair, DC-8, and many more)
• Milton Shupe's Dash 7
• Stellan Hilmerby's DC-9
• The "Tin Mouse" 737-200
• Project Fokker 70 / 100
• The amazing Project Tupolev
• And many more, I'm sure, that I'm not thinking of right now

Some of these, but by no means all, were later converted to FSX, but they were originally created for FS9. Once FSX came along, I feel like the pace of new freeware releases slowed noticeably.

What does all of this ancient history have to do with MSFS? Though I'm admittedly using this opportunity to bathe in nostalgia, I also think it's interesting to think about the factors that made the FS9 freeware scene so vibrant back then and how they compare to the factors influencing the MSFS freeware scene today.

For FS9, I think some of the factors were:

• The payware market was not as large and was only just developing. The culture was still very much "if you want it, build it yourself". Once FSX came along, the payware market had become more mature, so the culture shifted towards buying instead of creating.
• The effort required to develop an aircraft addon was lower. Virtual cockpits were only starting to become a thing; many addons only had 2D panels. Again, by the time FSX came along, expectations had risen. Also, some freeware developers may have stayed with FS9 because they found their hardware couldn't handle FSX's requirements. (I remember being shocked the first time I ran FSX because it was a slideshow.)
• I suspect there was also a lot of "cross-pollination" going on -- a virtuous cycle. Every new freeware addon that came on the scene was an inspiration for others to do something similar, and freeware developers were sharing and exchanging techniques and ideas.

For MSFS, there is also a set of factors that have resulted in a vibrant freeware scene, though the factors themselves are quite different:

• MSFS has a large user base -- the largest by far of any civilian flight sim to date. Freeware developers start off as normal users who want to "scratch an itch" by developing something that's not available yet, so the more users there are, the more potential freeware developers there are too.
• The barrier to entry for developing scenery, in particular, is pretty low, as @qqwertz and @Roy Warren point out.
• With flightsim.to, there is, de facto, a single central location where developers can host their freeware and users can easily discover and download it.
• Not least, MSFS was released during the pandemic, when a lot of people had more time available to teach themselves how to develop freeware.

Edited July 21, 20241 yr by martinboehme

In early days. I mentioned to a developer friend that now that a modern technology popular sim was available, talented modders of the type that had formerly made addons in the Steam workshop for things like Cities Skylines and other games would likely become tempted to invest some of their considerable modeling (and other skills) in creating content, especially if there was money to be made.

He disagreed on the likelihood..... But a few short years later Flightsim.to exists, and here we are.

In my opinion and experience FSX had a strong freeware scene.  FS9 was the king of freeware times though.

23 hours ago, cobalt said:

The ability to fly in the real world with satellite-based streamed scenery -- a revolutionary advance. There are other factors as well, but this was the game-changer.

This for me is the one that sets MSFS apart from any other sim. The fact that you can fly literally anywhere in the world and it looks not only good but realistic without having to install any add ons at all.

FSX, even P3D needs things like FTX Global/Vector/True Earth/UTC whatever installed on top amounting to hundreds of extra GB and often at quite a detriment to performance, and it still doesn't look even close to as good as MSFS does at stock.

On 7/21/2024 at 5:46 AM, styckx said:

One thing that lacked in FSX was freeware. Any freeware that existed was extremely low effort. It's the main reason so many converted over to X-Plane. FSX not by design, but the community was extremely wall gardened and protected for the return on investment commercial developers got from it and freeware was almost rebelled against minus a few exceptions (SunSkyJet for example).  X-Plane on the other hand, while it had many commercial addons, it was largely based on the pool of freeware.   

What was it about MSFS (2020) that opened the flood gates to, almost at warp speed bring the community of freeware developers to fast forward so fast to the X-Plane community? I'm happy it happened but my brain is a very introspective one and thoughts like this cross my mind and need input.

FWIW: Not a my sim is better than yours thread. It's as simple as I presented  the question 

So I read this in the PMDG forum when Ephedrin responded about how MSFS freeware compared to the P3D freeware scenery:

Quote

go to flightsim.to and have a look yourself. Check the yellow addons section in the official MSFS forum. The number of people who create freeware has decreased since the early days as these freeware creaters have started to make payware and some simply stopped doing it when others stole their stuff and sold it. But the number is still huge and much better in comparison.

And then RichardMcDonaldWoo responded shortly afterwards:

Quote

I can only speak for airports so far. I have 238 free airport sceneries installed from flightsim.to using the MSFS Addons Linker and they look amazing. Far more airports than I remember when I used to use FSX and P3D. 

But those were responses from almost 2 years ago and I think since 2022, the MSFS freeware scenery has grown further (especially at flightsim.to).  So my question to everyone in this thread is, how does the freeware scenery of MSFS compare to the P3D freeware scenery, and the XP freeware scenery, in 2024?

Edited July 22, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

I have never created anything for our sims ever, but in my opinion, and as stated by others already, the freeware community in MSFS is far greater than anything we had in the past. I would eventually wonder about FS9, ok, the community was quite big at that time already, but was it really big or was it just an impression due to how small our world was at that time ?

The main problem for FSX was that all the freeware creators, which has since then become experts in making sceneries or aircrafts for FS9 or pre-FS9 sims, suddenly had to learn some new techs, and... simply refused to do so. Same happened with P3D later on, by the way. When FSX arrived, FS9 freeware makers continued to produce freewares... in FS9 format, not in FSX format. There were some great names who did the switch though, like Tim Conrad for example, but others simply refused to move over to FSX, or they finally moved but several years later. Aircraft, sceneries, it was the same story.

In addition to all of that, FS9 also had that strong point that addons could be shared with... CFS2, which was still very popular at that time. Addons for FSX... would work with FSX only, so I can understand the lack of motivation of some creators. Also, FSX users wanted 3D virtual cockpits, while a good share of FS9/CFS2 users were still using 2D panels. This was also kind of preventing the migration of creators, at least for a part of them I suppose.

Now with MSFS, for the scenery side, it's undeniable that the creation has never been so simple. For any place you want to model, you already have very nice surroundings and ground photo scenery, so you basically just need to add the objects on top... just like it used to be in the FS9 times, in which photosceneries weren't really a thing yet. For aircraft, I have a harder time to understand how the community could grow so much. I was expecting a severe lack of freeware aircraft creators due to the higher "standards" of the 3D modeling in MSFS, compared to our previous sims. Now, I'm pretty sure the amount of freeware aircraft creators in MSFS is much lower than what is was in FSX or FS9 era, but still I was expecting worse 🙂

 

On 7/21/2024 at 7:58 AM, Reader said:

One thing that this topic lacks is historical accuracy.
The premise is utter nonsense and frankly insulting to the freeware developers
who spent thousands of hours producing superb FSX addons.
Not to mention all those who produced masterpieces for earlier versions too.



 

 

That's true. I was especially amazed at the quantity and quality of FSX freeware Latin American airports during 2012-2014 when toured from airport to airport ( about 1 hr flights where possible) with PMDG 738 through and cross the vast continent.

3 hours ago, petepawn said:

I was especially amazed at the...

Terribly quality of LDDU I bought on the marketplace sale as I'm flying out of there a bit now.  The dev actually took the exact same tree and populated a large section of the airport with that one tree!  Ugg!  Reminded me of FSX only worse!  I wonder if I can get a refund?

I was hoping that the developer of the ORBx version of LDDU Dubrovnik (together with the 3D modelled versions of the city and that nice bridge) would release an MSFS version, but there is no sign of it so far.

On 7/20/2024 at 10:46 PM, styckx said:

One thing that lacked in FSX was freeware. Any freeware that existed was extremely low effort.

 

Any freeware was extremely low effort ?? Did you ever try the scenery of Holger Sandmann or the Airfield Construction Group, amongst many others ?  🙄

3 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I was hoping that the developer of the ORBx version of LDDU Dubrovnik (together with the 3D modelled versions of the city and that nice bridge) would release an MSFS version, but there is no sign of it so far.

Well IniBuilds is releasing a LDDU soon

Yes, I have just seen that!

5 hours ago, Paul K said:

Any freeware was extremely low effort ?? Did you ever try the scenery of Holger Sandmann or the Airfield Construction Group, amongst many others ?  🙄

Holger Sandmann was one of my favorite freeware makers. Thanks to his "North Cascades" freeware scenery, he is the reason I started exploring the area around Seattle back in the FS9 days. When FSX appeared, Holger stopped doing freeware and joined OrbX, if I'm not mistaken. Did he do freeware sceneries for FSX ? I mean in FSX format, not ported FS9 sceneries ?