I'm happy with the progress of update 2 - even though some things got broken in the process. 3PDs are going to be the real backbone of a solid, realistic simulator. 3PDs, however, could never amass the resources of Microsoft and Asobo and others, but Microsoft and Asobo and others could never amass the hands-on experience of the flying public. It's a team effort.
To wit: I am learning to fly the CJ4 using cwburnett's engine mods (Updated CJ4 Performance - Updated engines.cfg in the forums). After his mods I am able to hand-fly ILS approaches, stop in 3000 ft, and generally never use the AP. I had already disabled the reverse thrust after some reading. They disabled the standard plane reverse thrust in update 2. The distribution setup was flawed for sure, but the zillions of dollars spent on the simulator framework development would have been well out of reach for an individual.
Before I started teaching, I built robots. We defined software as: A set of coded instructions for a computer that is 95% complete at all times!
Hang in there everybody!