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Thanks a lot, Egbert, looking forward to trying this. From what I learned, this will be a highly appreciated tool. As I said, F1 (of rather the UTL developer) should pay you royalties... Kind regards, Michael

The danger with FSElite is, it's rapidly expanding with new writer names coming up weekly, the new Airport directory being added and has to be maintained, extensive event visits and reports, and such. These are certainly good news for now, however, like with AirdailyX, such volunteer projects tend to become unmanagable at a point when growing too big, and may suddenly fall when the head looses interest and/or is absorbed by other commitments. But for now, I like FSElite. Kind regards, Michael

SPAD.neXt comes with a 14-days trial, so you can try it out to see if it delivers. It nees a bit of learning, but in the beginning there is a wizard guiding you through the installation. There's also a forum with a number of helpful folks around. This doesn't mean I'd advise against LINDA, I just lack experience to judge it Kind regards, Michael

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. Kind regards, Michael

My suggestion would be SPAD.neXt. There are several user-made profiles for PMDG aircraft, and SPAD.neXt has PMDG support. Not all of those profiles are equally good, so you will need to experiment a bit, but you should be able to find something useful which you potentially can modify. Kind regards, Michael

I think most of those around here have had high hopes in AeroflyFS2 and were VERY supportive and heavily invested into it (which does not only include myself - I bought all AF2 addons so far -, but JvE, Rob and several others I know). Those guys are now in doubt this journey will come to an end which - yes - would be a real pity. I understand your point that spreading negative rumors might not be helpful. But on the other hand, it seems necessary to ring alarm bells to wake up IPCAS at this point (which, unfortunately, is impossible on their own forum). Recall FSW? A lot pof people said it would derail. Others suggested we shouldn't talk bad about them as that would make the project fail. It certainly was not forum gossip making them fail but their faulty business concept. Where, btw., the SDK was one club foot as well. While the details and business models are different, I am sure IPACS will have to rethink their strategy. Given, the <5 guys can't do any more workload, this would, among others, mean distributing work on more shoulders, upgrading and debuggings the SDK to make it fit for 3rd parties etc. Kind regards, Michael

Where can I find these Steam-stats for AeroflyFS2? I only know https://steamcharts.com/app/434030 on the number of concurrent players, which are pretty alarming figures as well. Thanks and kind regards, Michael

I can't comment on the aircraft SDK, but the tools part of the SDK is lacking. I approached several developers to develop full support for Saitek gear (Switch Panel, FIPs...) or a networked Moving Map, and I was told by them the SDK would not be up to the task in the present (a year ago) state. They even got in contact with IPACS at that time, but obvisouly nothing changed since. This just has not been a priority by IPACS, as they stated themselves. Being on a hardware panel, I rely on such support. I was quite supportive for AeroflyFS2 for some time and still like its visuals, but find my enhusiasm fading away with their slooooooow progress. In a sense, I can understand ORBX, who actually gave a huge initial credit for such a small sim. On the other hand, it's amazing to see a group of highly talented freeware developers having developed outstanding tools for scenery creation which (IMHO) are even better than those available for XP today. There's just no one to use them. Kind regards, Michael

I hope F1 will pay you (and FLAI) well, you would deserve it.🤣 Kind regards, Michael

Thanks guys for your opinions which double my impression. Kind regards, Michael

I am a layman in this field, but why does everyone expect Prepar3d to switch to Vulcan? Vulcan is the natural successor of OpenGL having been used by X-Plane (as well as Aerofly) so far with the intention of making these potentially multi-platfom usable. Prepar3d, like its predecessor FSX/ESP, has always been bound to the Windows platform. Thus, in my mind, I would rather expect it to switch to DX12, if any. (In fact I expected this already earlier on, but obvisouly market penetration of Windows 10 wasn't high enough yet, to make this feasible). In any case, I would expect development effort for a switch from DX11 to Vulcan to be much higher than to DX12, but experts can correct me. Thanks and kind regards, Michael

I don't have VFR Horizon X but a few VFR France sceneries. On my system, extended textures or even TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 doesn't make photoreal scenery more crisp. Yes, it does improve landclass-based scenery (slightly), but not photo, at least not on my system. As far as I understand (from statements by LM team members on their forum), there is an inherent issue at least with Prepar3d4 displaying photoscenery. Some people (including me) hope this *might* be resolved in one of the forthcoming upgrades. Kind regards, Michael

Hi, A2A has (to my dismay) different licenses and prices for P3D Academic, P3D Professional plus a separate package for P3D commercial usage, e.g. https://a2asimulations.com/product/accu-sim-c182-skylane-p3d/ Kind regards, Michael

I would suggest keeping an eye onto the Aerosoft fall poll. While this is clearly biased, too, you can compare relative percentages over the years, as they did these over several years now. Kind regards, Michael

Me too. I think the Aerosoft model (their "Professional" releases) where they ask for a moderate upgrade fee depending on the amount of reworking/recoding involved is a good compromise, although some people don't like it either. Aerosoft even had this for different MSFS versions with their CD upgrade service many years ago. Kind regards, Michael