One plausible reason LM still sells to consumers is that it provides them with an army of unpaid testers that report bugs, and thus help improve the product quality for the smaller target market that pays the bills.  It is not unheard of for software companies to take this approach, to the point of sometimes even opening up the source code.

A better reason is possibly selling to gamers/consumers, is to make a bit of money from it, otherwise people would probably download cracked versions.

Maybe to place their brand in the eye of future talent they made P3D available to the public. They will always be looking for talented engineers of every discipline related to aerospace technology and want them looking at and noticing Lockheed. Hence the academic license. But looking at their pricing models they do seem to want some income. Maybe just to make P3D self supporting.

P3D is not sold direct to the public unless you are already a flight simmer you would never know it existed. 

On 12/11/2024 at 8:27 PM, kholt said:

It’s been a while since v6.1 was released and since then, nothing.  It seems that either LM has completely stopped P3D development altogether, or else they are working on a new product that replaces it. Either way, it has been *very* quiet.  I recall a while ago reading about them working with Unreal on a new simulator, but even that rumor trail has gone cold.

Is there any indication of life at LM?  

I can understand LM no longer has any interest in supporting the consumer market.  That is to be expected.  I just wonder if there will ever be another release that is sold externally that add-on vendors like Pro-Sim would be inclined to support.

I have to say, it seems quite unlikely to me, as much as I would like to see it.  There is a place for a simulation platform whose primary focus is not casual gaming.

Does anyone have current, credible information that points to a less bleak future?

They stated that they'll keep supporting and developing Prepar3D as long as their clients need it. And I guess that's going to be many years to come.

However, what their clients need vs what a consumer flight simmer wants are two wildly divergent things. So I wouldn't necessarily expect continual v6.x updates, nor do I expect to see a v7.x at all (I stand to be corrected, tho).

Yes, they have stated the next major version of "P3D" will be another sim engine entirely, and that, sadly, it may not ever be released to the public.

Now, quite a bit of time went by that they never said a word about v6, and BOOM there it was...

So we shouldn't lose hope quite yet 🙂

Edited December 23, 20241 yr by UrgentSiesta

LM like MS never give a heads up until just before release.

Why not accept that P3D is currently the only path for ESP Based Simulation available....