Well, that's it. This latest update, even though it's a Beta, has made up my mind for me.

X-plane 12 is now officially my main Sim!

It finally dawned on me that, while MSFS 20 and 24 are almost always a frustration of one sort or another, whenever I fly XP it just seems to go smoothly. Then, the Beta came out with the improved clouds and such, and that was the last nail in the MSFS coffin...

I'll probably use MS for some VFR flying, but that's about it, I would think.

I did the same thing with P3D back in the day, until MSFS came out, but I was never completely happy with it.

Time to come home!

6 hours ago, b1bmsgt said:

... and that was the last nail in the MSFS coffin...

Didn't it always used to be 'the other way round'? 😁

Edited April 26, 20251 yr by flying_carpet

54 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

Didn't it always used to be 'the other way round'? 😁

You can pull the nails out of a coffin easy when the woods rotten

I don't want to say the writing's on the wall for MSFS just yet, but if history repeats itself, I can't say I'll be totally surprised.  

The one absolute that everyone can agree on, is that being owned by shareholders is extremely risky.  Even Steve Jobs was fired from his own company. 

Austin Meyer owns X-Plane.  The only person that can shut the doors on X-Plane, is Austin Meyer.  

I have come back to xplane this past 2 weeks, and Im staying here aswell, Ill fly FS2024 vfr for half hour or so but every day for the past 2 weeks I have been flying the challenger all over europe following Netjet routes, everything working flawlessly, every single flight without one single problem...the best sim and the no doubt about it....the best aircraft EVER for a desktop simulator! 

XP12 has improved massively👍👍

Edited April 26, 20251 yr by Captaintull

I've always felt that improving the scenery on a solid simulation platform was better than starting with pretty scenery and trying to shoe-horn a simulation into a scenery platform like MSFS is doing.

 

7 hours ago, Captaintull said:

for the past 2 weeks I have been flying the challenger all over Europe

My new Challenger was just delivered yesterday to my Flight Test Center in Wendover, Utah, USA. (KENV) Have to work this weekend, so the shakedown period will begin Monday morning. Should be nice!!

I fly both XP12 and MSFS2024 split 50/50 , both are good somethings XP12 does better and somethings MSFS2024 does better.

Why limit to one sim when you can enjoy both.

Edited April 27, 20251 yr by jason74

22 hours ago, GoranM said:

I don't want to say the writing's on the wall for MSFS just yet, but if history repeats itself, I can't say I'll be totally surprised.

..and if they do pull the plug and shut down the servers, the sim will no longer work. FSX was able to go on for years afterwards but MFS won't have the same luck. However, even X-Plane is not immune these days. If LR shutdown the activation servers the sim will cease to work as well. The good old days of actually owning the game and having a hard copy that will always work are long gone.

53 minutes ago, tonywob said:

..and if they do pull the plug and shut down the servers, the sim will no longer work. FSX was able to go on for years afterwards but MFS won't have the same luck. However, even X-Plane is not immune these days. If LR shutdown the activation servers the sim will cease to work as well. The good old days of actually owning the game and having a hard copy that will always work are long gone.

I still own one of these... Aerowinx PSX 😁

On 4/27/2025 at 9:54 AM, tonywob said:

..and if they do pull the plug and shut down the servers, the sim will no longer work. FSX was able to go on for years afterwards but MFS won't have the same luck. However, even X-Plane is not immune these days. If LR shutdown the activation servers the sim will cease to work as well. The good old days of actually owning the game and having a hard copy that will always work are long gone.

Can't you still buy the DVD-version with putting a DVD every few weeks into the DVD-drive as activation?

11 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

Can't you still buy the DVD-version with putting a DVD every few weeks into the DVD-drive as activation?

Not sure, I haven't had a laptop/pc with a DVD/CD drive in years however. I think they also have a USB dongle as well that can be used to activate it.

On 4/27/2025 at 9:54 AM, tonywob said:

nd shut down the servers, the sim will no longer work.

Who knows, maybe - as an act of grace - they could release a last patch that disables the DRM check. I mean, knowing the team, even if they ever went out of business, they would probably not want to take X-Plane down with them.

It would be (I imagine) fairly easy to patch the DRM call home out of the code, unlike keeping a simulator running that relies on streaming content from servers on a massive scale.

On 4/26/2025 at 9:54 PM, tonywob said:

..and if they do pull the plug and shut down the servers, the sim will no longer work. FSX was able to go on for years afterwards but MFS won't have the same luck. However, even X-Plane is not immune these days. If LR shutdown the activation servers the sim will cease to work as well. The good old days of actually owning the game and having a hard copy that will always work are long gone.

True.

But also true is that my flight simulators have been far outlasting my toasters and other kitchen appliances 😁