DTG Martin

Absolutely Jim. This is why we want to make such things a distant memory with our new sim. Less time fiddling, more time flying is our goal. - Martin

There is no big secret behind the delay. We just wanted to spend more time working on the new sim. - Martin

Our head are down and we are still working hard on it. We are happy with how things are progressing and look forward to sharing it with you all in the near the future. - Martin

Just to clear things up the plan has not changed. We still developing using the FSX engine as the core. There are no plans to switch to UE4 or any other engine, - Martin

We do indeed Raj and we are looking very closely at VR. It seems an ideal match for simulation. At the moment the VR hardware market is very unsettled. Our plan is to wait a while until the situation evens out before committing to VR support. - Martin

There is not much I can say at this point Sam. Our heads our down and we are working hard on the new sim. I can confirm that we have started to roll out early preview builds of the sim to a few selective partners and members of the flight sim community in order to collect initial feedback. We are currently exploring methods for possibly expanding this practice to a wider group over the coming months. - Martin

I'm still here! However, I am sadly leaving the Dovetail Games flight team to go work on our new project Dovetail Live. I will be about for a while until we find someone new to replace me.. That leaves an opening for a new community manager though. So we figured where better to look for a new flight sim community manager than the flight community? If you live in the UK, you are a keen flight simmer, and want to be part of the Dovetail Games flight team please get in touch. - Martin

Want to work in the video games industry? Want to be part of the Dovetail Games Flight Simulation team? We are looking for a new Community Manager to join our team. http://www.dovetailgames.com/vacancies/2017/jan/30/community-manager-flight - Martin

We put together a great value bundle of our latest and greatest Train Simulator content in TS 2017 Pioneers Edition, 5 great routes for £29.99 / $44.99 that also comes with a feature called complete my collection that means you only pay for content you don't already own. As an added bonus if you own all five of these routes included in the Pioneers Edition you will be granted access to the beta for Train Sim World when it starts on Dec 8th. The beta programme will run until Dec 19th. - Martin

For a limited time only save up to 65% off on FSX: Steam Edition and a range of add-on content. Whether you are looking for new aircraft, airports, scenery, tools or missions there is something in the sale for you. Find out more - http://store.steampowered.com/app/314160

Earlier this year, we announced the development of our new flight simulator, which generated an incredible amount of excitement in the community. We would like to thank you all for the tremendous amount of interest and support we have received so far. Based on your feedback, we have been focusing on three key areas: visuals, performance and experience, all of which are instrumental to the hobby. In order to further enhance these areas, we have made the decision to postpone the release of this project. In the meantime, we expect to have a detailed development update for you in the New Year. As a team, we are incredibly excited to share what we have been up to! Until then, we hope you have a fantastic holiday season and look forward to making 2017 a great year for flight simulation. Dovetail Games Flight Sim Team

Earlier this year, we announced the development of our new flight simulator, which generated an incredible amount of excitement in the community. We would like to thank you all for the tremendous amount of interest and support we have received so far. Based on your feedback, we have been focusing on three key areas: visuals, performance and experience, all of which are instrumental to the hobby. In order to further enhance these areas, we have made the decision to postpone the release of this project. In the meantime, we expect to have a detailed development update for you in the New Year. As a team, we are incredibly excited to share what we have been up to! Until then, we hope you have a fantastic holiday season and look forward to making 2017 a great year for flight simulation. Dovetail Games Flight Sim Team

You can never please everyone ErichB, so it is hard to say. We have always said that this is long term project for us. Development is not going to stop once we release it. - Martin

Yes, although "prettier" is subjective. What I can say is that a number graphical improvements have been implemented in the sim since Flight School. - Martin I can't comment on the fine details of our partnerships with developers for a number of obvious reason. What I can say is that we are working with a select group of well known developers at this time. This is not because we want to exclude any developers, but rather we already had existing relationships with them, so it made sense to start with them. Over time we expect that range of developers to expand. - Martin No idea. P3D are off doing their thing and we are doing ours. Our focus is on developing the best flight simulator we can. We don't worry about what other developers are doing, instead we are concentrate on what simmers tell us they want. - Martin I can't comment on what developers we are working with at this time. - Martin Outerra looks very nice, but the world is made up of far more than grass and trees. - Martin

Hi Jhan, From the top. - Yes the new sim will be 64 bit - We are not really using one particular graphics engine. The base engine is same as FSX, but we have heavily modified it, and we are using other plugins and software too. It is really a mixture of systems. - There are currently no plans for backwards compatibility. - Improvements have been made to the ATC. It depends what you consider to be better. We have long term plans for further development of the ATC beyond this too. - The new sim will be open to third party developers. It is completely up to them what sort of content they want to make for it. We will just be providing them with the tools to do so. - Martin

The problem is one of scale. Making a city look fantastic, like in GTA V, is possible with a modern PC. Scale that up to the whole world, and things become much more difficult. Unless you want constant loading, which we don't think is the way to go. - Martin

Not straight away, but also not a long time from now. Something in between. Like....soon. Joking aside, within the next month or so I would say is a safe bet. - Martin

Unfortunately what you saw was a bug in the app. The release it is talking about is FSX: SE. It is an old message from a couple of years ago, and nothing to do with the new sim. You can see the message here - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1E9nd7CRqTHV1prNERYbnJVVkE/view - Martin

Having people ask questions, even if we are unable to answer them at present, is important Andy. Reading what information people want to know helps us to shape what we focus on when we do start talking about it. It lets us know what people want to hear about. - Martin There was a delay in when we decided to start talking publically about the sim. There was not a delay in development. - Martin

We did look into the idea of offering data updates for FSX: SE about a year ago. At the time the idea was not very popular with simmers so it got put back on the shelf. Maybe one day we will revisit it, but there no immediate plans to do so at this time. - Martin

Hi everyone, This was certainly a very interesting read. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts with us in this thread so far. Firstly, if you are after specifics like release dates, aircraft lineup or whether or not feature X,Y or Z will be in the new sim, then I'm sorry but we are not in a position where we are ready to talk about that just yet. Why? Is it because we don't want to talk about it yet? Is it because we are not happy with the sim? Is it because there is some sort of top secret conspiracy going on where we plan to overthrow the flight sim universe? As exciting as that would be, the answer is much more mundane and boring. We are not talking about the sim just yet because we are not ready to do so. Our development team have their heads down and they are working hard on it. Meanwhile, myself and other people like Aimee are finalising the plans for when we do talk about it, along with working on content for that. I am really not spilling any massive industry secrets here. When developers start to talk about their titles they don't just wake up one morning and say to themselves "Right lets jump on that YouTube and tell everyone about it." Oh, how I wish that was how it worked. It takes planning. Lots, and lots, and lots of really detailed planning. Every interview, every screenshot, every magazine cover, every trailer, every community Q&A. They all have to be mapped out and created. Once all of this work is done, then there is date that kicks it all off. D-Day, the countdown to launch. At the moment we haven't hit D-Day. Once we do, our doors will be flung open and there will be a steady stream of fresh information. Why are we not talking about the new flight sim? The simple truth is just like I say, that we are not ready to do so just yet. Next let's talk about names. It is not unusual for a video game to go through several name changes in it's development. Sometimes devs just decide they don't like the name. Sometimes as development proceeds a previous name doesn't fit anymore. Sometimes a legal hurdle pops ups, one which requires that the name is changed. Please be assured that is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. We have a name in mind that we like, but doing all the legal work for that takes time. Again, a really long time. Once that is finished, which it should be soon, we can start calling the sim by it's proper title. Which is......(sorry, not just yet!) We will be at the Cosford show this year and we are looking forward to seeing you all there, but we will not be talking about the new sim. This is just another another example of us not hitting D-day.. Why are we still asking people what they want in the new sim? It is a great question. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is, we want to know what people would like to see in a new sim! This is a question we have been asking for the last two years, and will continue to ask for many years to come. Over time what people want changes. A prime example of this is VR. Three years ago, when we first started doing research within the flight sim community, not many people were talking about or wanted VR. Since then we have seen it gradually rise in popularity. The opposite is true of motion controls. Turn back the clock a few years and everyone was excited by motion controls within games. When MS announced that Kinect was coming to Windows we got lots of questions from simmers asking us if we would be adding Kinect features into our titles. Jump back to today, and no one is asking us that anymore. A few days ago someone asked us on Steam if we would be using the new Vulkan API. That is a technology that only came out in February of this year. No one was asking us about that a year ago, it didn't exist. My point here is that we keep asking because we feel it is important to do so when you work in an industry that changes and develops as quickly as this one does. There are lots of other reasons why we keep asking. New simmers are discovering the genre daily. We have heard from simmers, following the release of DTG Flight School, who stated that it was their first flight simulator. The flight simulation community is constantly developing and changing. It is important to us that we listen to what new and old players want equally. There are people in the community now, who were simply not in it a year ago when we last asked the question. Another reason is that we have always said that the new flight simulator will be an ongoing project. We are not making Call of Duty 35 here (no disrespect to the talented people who do make those titles). With most titles developers work on the main game for several years, release it, work on some DLC for the next six months and then that is it. The title is seen as having a limited lifespan. Once it has had it's moment in the spotlight, it is then time to move on to the sequel. Simulators are different from the norm, or more precisely, our approach to them has always been different compare to the main game industry. We view the release of the new sim as just the conclusion of the first stage of development. FSX has been around for ten years give or take. We were never going to achieve what it has done, within a decade, upon day one of release. We have always been realistic about that. We are completely and very deeply committed to the flight simulation genre for many years to come. Finally, the last popular question. Are you not leaving this all a bit late? We can absolutely see where everyone is coming from with this. All I can say is that when D-Day arrives everything will make much more sense. I guess maybe we should call it FS-Day or something better. Suggestions on a postcard please! I hope that clears a few things up. If you have any questions please fire them at me, but keep in mind that I am limited in what I can talk about at this time. - Martin

Thank you Greg Z. That is very kind of your to say. - Martin What would impress you Silicus? - Martin

Calling all livery artists! We are happy to announce the first FSX: Steam Edition livery design competition contest for the Piper Aztec which will run until 19th September 2016. The winner will have their livery included in the add-on and distributed on Steam. How cool is that? For full details please click here http://fsxinsider.com/aztec-livery-competition/

Hi everyone, We are running a quick poll to find out which you prefer most, Steam Gauges or Glass Cockpits? Cast your vote in the poll and leave us a comment to explain way. Thanks everyone, - Martin

A big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to answer this thread, and tell us about your opinions on this matter.. Your answers have been very helpful and have given us a lot to think about. I can't lock the thread (any kind mods out there please?), but please note that we will not be collecting any further responses on this subject at this time. Please keep an eye out for more discussion threads about other topics coming very soon. - Martin