23 hours ago, micstatic said:

The options that are no longer present have been identified as obsolete

 

Do we know what specifically is gone now?

There were so many things kicking around in the Load Manager that had been implemented back in FS9 and P3D days that I'm sure there was a lot of fat to trim. 

Would imagine stuff like the W&B got moved into the sim, getting rid of that duplication, etc.

It would be nice to move everything into the sim ditch the external app entirely but seemingly not to be.

Maddog has confirmed that the new version is only a graphical upgrade and code refactoring, and users can choose voluntarily whether to purchase it, as the legacy MD-80 will continue to receive support.