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It’s be a while since I have piped up on the list but after seeing the Prepar3D website today and digging a bit in the forums I decided to respond to something RSR said in another post about the marketing of Prepar3D. It is stunning to me how Microsoft has mismanaged its Flight Simulation business. So badly that it is a wonder they are still in business. So now, it would seem, that MS is out of the flight simulation business altogether. One bright spot in their history, though, is ESP. I’m not up on the details, but I would assume that MS developed ESP and then use it to develop FSX or developed both at the same time. Whatever, it is probably the best thing MS ever developed for the FS community. So here we have Lockheed Martin creating a Flight Simulator with ESP. To me, this looks like Flight Simulator 11. It has the fidelity of FSX, the extensibility of FSX (via ESP), the compatibility of FSX and a company behind it unlike Microsoft. Lockheed is all about flying so whoever at Lockheed made the decision to do a sim, and then picked ESP to build it with, we owe them a great big thank you, or at least a $199 thank you, which they would love. I don’t think they care who is buying P3D. I don’t know who they are marketing to, but when I look at their store page, I see 3 purchase levels for P3D. The retail version for $199, the academic version for $49.95 and the developer version for $9.95/month ($120/year). You might think that $199 is a lot for a simulator, but hasn’t it been everyone’s wish for more realism? A more real flight experience? Isn’t P3D what we have all been waiting for? When I bought FSX, I think I paid full retail, which at the time was $79. Would I pay $199 for something better than FSX from a company that has the ability to take the sim to places MS never could and or would? So who is Lockheed marketing to? I say who cares. We are going to buy it and probably make it the number one FS on the market and Lockheed is going to love it. We will talk of the things we want to have in our P3D experience on the forums and the developers on those forums will pick up on that and run with it. Did you know that X-Plane’s Austin Meyers is building commercial flight instruments now? Did you know that you can get a commercial version of X-Plane? Did you know it costs $750? Do I want a commercial flight simulator for $199? Dang right I do. Do you want PMDG and all the others that build perfection to port to P3D? Buy P3D and they will come. Frankly, I think the majority of those that spend much time on these forums would gladly spend $199 on P3D. For those penny pinchers and student flyers, there is a $49 version and the developer option isn’t a bad deal either. This is what we have all been waiting for and just like all the other sims that have come out in the past, it is up to us to make it popular so that the developers can clearly see a path to return on investment and profitability. That’s why they are in business anyway, right? FSX becomes more and more irrelevant with each passing day and I could not be happier that a company like Lockheed is going to continue to build on ESP. So go buy your copy now, after all, it comes with a 60-day money back guarantee. Tim Rotunda Austin, Texas