To me, its always been expensive....... I kind of even want to thank Nvidia for bringing my once almost yearly graphics card upgrades to a screeching halt with their prices from heck.....

 

Edited April 7Apr 7 by HiFlyer

Great video.
Great content.
You are correct on all points mentioned in the video.

“Flight Simulation Is Becoming Too Expensive ?”
Yes.

My two PC’s (5 and 6 years old and $3000 USD each) are OK for:
FSX, P3D 4,5,6, XP11, Xp12, MSFS2020 all currently used for my training flights.

My next PC because the current ones are old enough for the bin would be right at $5000 USD.

So then when I get a new PC $5000 PC I can then Add $$$? for MSFS2024 + new aircraft, airports and add-on software for it. 

Currently in a holding pattern on a new PC and MSFS2024.

Note: I seldom fly any of the included default MSFS2020 aircraft.

 

Edited April 7Apr 7 by vonmar

This post takes me down memory lane. I started my IT career in 1980 at 23 years old, fresh out of college, selling Apple IIs with 48KB of RAM, a green screen, two 143KB floppies, and an Epson MX-80 printer for $3,500.00 a pop…and we couldn’t get them fast enough to keep up with demand.

How far we’ve come at a fraction of the cost.

Jaxsimmer

IMHO, it's never been more affordable. MSFS v2024 performs better in a low end system than P3D or XP ever performed. Not only that add-on are much cheaper and there are better freeware. Even yokes, pedals, or throttle quadrants are more affordable. There's never been a better time to try flight simulator, thanks to v2024.

FSX, P3D, and Xplane were a rip off, but it makes me appreciate what I have so much more now because of the experience I had with those other sims.

BTW, I did not watch the video.

My first thought is that it has never been so inexpensive. Gone are the days of needing a $4,000 to 5,000 PC to load up P3D and begin adjusting the affinity mask and spending a few days adjusting settings to see if you could get with sufficient frames for a rough impression of a smooth flight. I bought a middle of the road PC for 2,800 dollars and it runs MSFS very well for me. And really you can buy an x-box for far less money and be on your way!

Gone are the days of spending US$200.00 on each version of P3D!

Gone are the days of airports costing $35 to $50 dollars, many are now 25 to 35 for good quality pay ware.  I am sure I was paying well over $100 for many of the PMDG and FSLabs planes that I purchased back in those days.

Gone are the days of purchasing Global, Vector, HD Trees, HD Buildings, Landcass Regions, to try to get the world to look believable.

Be thoughtful and disciplined-think through the addons you will really use and choose carefully and MSFS has made it the least expensive platform I have used. I am getting more enjoyment for less investment than ever.

I don't agree with the video. You don't HAVE to have all the extras, which is what the majority of all the higher expense is about.

You can still take a beginner (as we all were once), buy the sim for $70 and a joystick w/throttle and rudder on it for around $80 and have plenty of hours of fun learning about how to fly, navigate and all about aviation weather.

It gets alot more expensive only if/when you get more advanced into the hobby and start buying addon planes left & right, more expensive hardware, software addons, etc. But that's always been the case...it's always been affordable, for those who want to make it that way, or an over-the-top expensive gaming hobby. It's what you want to make of it, the way it's always been...you don't actually need all that stuff you're buying. You buy it because you're likely bored and hope it'll make things fresh by improving the experience for you.

Remember what fun we all had that first year playing with a sim?...and the next one after that?...we weren't spending much...and still don't have to in order to get an even better experience today, generally speaking.

But from what I see...the only real difference today is that we have alot more hardware and software choices available to spend our money on than ever before, both lower end and higher end, which is a really good thing...and the higher end stuff has become a bit more affordable these days as compared to 20 years ago I think. So because there's so much more available, it has become alot easier to get sucked into spending alot more than you actually need to.
 

Edited April 7Apr 7 by hangar

Ahhh.  "Expensive" is a relative term depending on how in depth you want to go.  Any hobby can be expensive...look at the cost of Legos!  If you just want to take a Cessna and buzz your house and do some crazy flying, then you don't need much money to do that.  If you want a full immersive experience, then yes, you will spend extra money.  No different from a visit to the zoo vs. a safari.   

Dirt cheap compared to the old days and I'm luv'n it on my 6 year old 5900x system.

Planning on the new XBOX but not in a rush for it.

dd

Edited April 7Apr 7 by Sky_Pilot071

It's cheaper than real flying.

Another YouTuber to add to my ignore list.

 

1 hour ago, St Mawgan said:

It's cheaper than real flying.

Another YouTuber to add to my ignore list.

 

Indeed! Just a couple of good days out flying IRL I could almost buy my whole setup for the same cost. 2 hours could get me most of the WinCTRL range.

I don't agree with him, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Like any hobby, it's as expensive as you want to make it. Being 'expensive' is purely subjective. 

Never been cheaper imho. So many amazing freeware gems, and an incredibly dense roster of “default” aircraft that should please most folks. 
 

Yes, there are many more ways to spend money now, but that’s just a reflection of a broader base of users, being catered for by more developers (hardware and software). In the end, everyone wins. 
 

Only major pain point is the pricing of current graphics cards and the temp blob in RAM pricing. 
 

just my 2 cents…

And, apparently the RAM costs are already getting down, faster than expected !

Mixed feelings about this. The green screen sublogic days were expensive that's for sure but the cheap hardware days a couple of years ago are also gone. 

I bought almost top of the line GPU, processor, and ddr4 in 2019 for about 1300 euros. I'm afraid comparable stuff would be more than 3000 today.

Msfs has been running fine on my system for 5 years so I'm not complaining too much either.