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I want an SDK because I want to create content for the new DTG Flight Sim... I use the FSX SDK to create content for FSX, specifically aircraft models. If they're good enough I'd like to release these models to the FS community freeware libraries. My workflow looks like a lot of jumping around from plans, photos, books and magazine articles until I've got a proper idea of what I'm trying to build, then a lot of work modelling, mapping, animating a particular model with a great deal of trial exports to see what the thing looks like in FS in collaboration with a painter. Coding will come later. Things that annoy me about the FSX SDK are although it's the best SDK produced for any version of FS, it's targeted squarely at people who already know what they're doing; although quite comprehensive, it's rather haphazardly organised and there are whole areas like flight modelling which are simply not documented. Someone reading the FSX SDK is met with a raft of what really cool things Simconnect now includes and talk of EventIDs and Simulation variables. The beginning modeller could do with a plain guide to starting out instead of burying New Aircraft Procedures away in Environment Kit/Modelling SDK or making airport placement as clear as mud. Nobody's pretending this can be made primary-school simple, but some thought to direct the new developer towards a useful workflow would be a plus. The FSX flight modelling is still not documented except by third parties: that cannot be acceptable for any future flight sim. This isn't rocket science, but it runs pretty close and to leave us to guesswork, random trials or resorting to voodoo is in nobody's interests. BTW, a properly developed turboprop section of the flight modelling would be a big plus. A scripting tool or editor which checked coding syntax and typecasting in animations or systems would be a real help compared to FSX and avoid long frustrations from a missing or surplus space/parenthesis or catch us trying to divide a boolean by 7 and couldn't get it to work? I used to use Gmax for modelling and now use 3ds Max: it's an old version but as a hobbyist it doesn't cost me anything more to keep on using it. If a DTG SDK toolset only supports the latest version of 3ds Max (now 2017) you will kill off the hobbyist potential immediately: it costs £186 per user per month. Gmax is no longer an option, so you have to support a lower-cost or freeware modelling tool to bring in the learners and small-time freeware developers who will produce the future PMDGs and Aerosofts of the FS world. For graphics I use Photoshop CS4 – 'nuff said. None of these are easy to learn, but we're trying to simulate aviation, not join-the-dots drawing. Simple tools just can't produce the standard of work the simmers are looking for. You'll get many pleas to make your SDK as simple and easy as possible – please instead try to make it as comprehensive as possible, updated as thoroughly as possible when new features are introduced and consider date-stamping the entries so we know what's been changed and when. A really good SDK makes third-party add-ons much easier. Better third-party add-ons attract more customers. More customers buy more copies of the sim. That's business. And thank you for asking! (plus there are lots of actual developers at FSDeveloper.com – these are the people you should be asking)

Thanks for this opportunity Martin, it's good to hear from the horse's mouth. :smile: A great strength of FS over the past 15 years or more was being open to third-party developers at little cost. Many of today's top-flight developers started this way and if DTG FS is to be here for the long term you'll need more people learning the craft. Groups like PMDG or A2A don't appear from nowhere fully-formed, nor do people spend thousands on software for a passing hobby. Please ask the team to provide a plugin/toolset/viable SDK for a low-cost or freeware 3D modelling package: there are several possible candidates. I know it isn't going to be Gmax, that road closed years ago.

Thanks for this thread Martin, it's good to get something from the horse's mouth. :smile: One of the big reasons FS has lasted so long is that it was made open to 3rd party developers. FSX started badly in this department by only supporting 3ds Max – really expensive – but saved themselves by adding Gmax support to the SDK. MS Flight then went a step worse by using Granny3D – hideously expensive! I hope DTG will support a low-cost or freeware 3d modelling tool. Many of today's developers started that way and if you want DTG FS to be for the long term you'll need new developers learning the craft: they need an inexpensive way in, regardless of what DTG's preferred modelling tool might be. We know a Gmax gamepack is not going to happen – Autodesk nailed that door shut a long time ago, and with very big nails – but I hope you have good news for us there in time. Regarding realistic crash damage, iirc that was removed from FSX due to sensitivities after 9/11.

Seen today on my W7 machine, lol :–

Dream on. However FSX has become harder to find for sale lately, so this makes it accessible again. I do hope it will include Acceleration and the SDK for would-be developers.

...which makes it an interesting airport to keep an eye on with a good mix of interesting types passing through as well as training flights. It's the only place I've seen the one and only An-225, Concorde doing touch&goes (back in the day), vintage and many military visitors. And it is a long main runway for heavily laden big iron should you enjoy flying freight.

I like warbirds, not civilians, so the CH Fw190s do it for me and the Ta152H especially. The modelling and texturing is outstanding and the systems aren't too complex to make a pleasure flight a drudge. But I did run out of fuel at 40,000ft with two full tanks, duh. RTM, Unteroffizier..

This is a fact: I just spent a chunk of my summer holiday reading this thread and I don't know why I bothered. Enjoy the good weather if you have it, y'all: I can waste my life on better things. Adios.