The A2A Simulations Community

Well, Let me just say I began flying MS simulators since 3.0 and have used MS ever since. I have owned 3.0 4.0 5.0 98 02 century of flight and now fsx , Anyway I never bought anything third party until century of flight and when FSX came out I decided to never purchase another payware product for my sim since I lost most of it when I switched to fsx. WELL THAT IDEA FAILED! I bought fsx because of rumors I had read that it would be the last one out, so I decided to build myself a good rig and began purchasing aircraft. I dont have a bunch of money and since I lost most of my 04 aircraft, I slowly began building my hangar again.
I now have about 38 payware aircraft. I know to many this isn't a large collection but like I said before I don't have a bunch of money to blow on this.

ANYWAY my question is. NOW that Flight is out What is your perspective about FSX´s Future. Will it be here for another 6 years or so? Will Flight be modded to make room for the new Simmers? or will we all migrate to Xplane? The Reason I ask is because I am unsure about purchasing more aircraft if fsx will suddenly disappear. I know fs9 is still out there but I am wondering about the Sim trend. What do you guys think. Do you think my investment will last a bit or should I hold off on purchases?

I don't think FSX is going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, if I had to wager on it, I'd say that FSX will outlive Flight. Additionally, I really think Prepar3D, will really take off. And AFAIK, most of the FSX adding work with Prepar3d.

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Setting aside any and all opinion on FLIGHT, and having been closely associated with FSX and it's development from the beginning, I can say this;
Fortunately, ACES built into FSX what was needed by the community to feed FSX with new and innovative material. There's no end in sight for what can be done with FSX both with scenery, utilities, and aircraft.
What you are seeing now from A2A with it's Accusim development is the tip of this iceberg.
Hardware development has caught up finally to where ACES envisioned it needed to run FSX properly and the future in that department looks even better.
Eventually, FSX will become a base program that supplies the sim pilot with a useful world and atmosphere in which developers like A2A will provide software that simply uses this FSX world as we use our real world when we get in our real world aircraft and operate them there.
FSX will remain a hefty and viable program for the foreseeable future and only get better as hardware and add on development allow it to grow.
By becoming a family member here at A2A, you are positioning yourself right where you should be to enjoy FSX as we move forward.
Dudley Henriques

Well, I don't see myself migrating to X-Plane anytime soon. And while I'm vaguely interested by the screenshots of Flight's new Alaska pack, I don't see Flight as ever being a serious contender to FSX--at least not until coverage of all or at least most of the planet is available.

As for FSX, Microsoft's departure from the Flight Simulator series has arguably been an unintended blessing for consumers and third-party developers. The base product has remained stable for several years now and there isn't a 'latest and greatest' MSFS immediately on the horizon promising to make your addon collection obsolete. The most talented developers like A2A have been able to fully invest themselves in FSX; I think the quality of addons that have been delivered by the industry in the last 2-3 years have shown that FSX's potential is only now starting to be understood and exploited. (For example, would we have AccuSim if Microsoft had continued its cycle of a new version of MSFS every two years?)

Personally, I think FSX will keep me entertained for several years to come. I'm really looking forward to the AccuSim P-51D which will sort of bring me full circle to when I discovered how to add the CFS Mustang to Flight Simulator 98, my first version of MSFS. I still haven't purchased the P-40 because I was spending all my sim time flying the Spitfire, and I feel guilty that my B-17 and P-47 are gathering dust. REX Essentials is due to be released very soon and that looks like it will be Amazing! And little by little I can start adding the ORBX FTX regions to keep FSX fresh.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Thank you all for the interesting replies. It does seem that fsx will be here for a bit I guess.

I was reading up on Prepar3d and I dont know it just doesnt look like a commercially Viable User solution. 9 bucks a month or 400 bucks for the licence?

Have any of you read up on Prepar3d? seems like some developers and simmers are migrating to the 9 bucks a month sim. What is A2A's position on this? does anyone know?

I am also looking forward to the New P-51, The First time I ever saw A2A I saw their p-51 but Never purchased it(well I did but it wasn't the accusim I was thinking so A2A was chivalrous enough to let me purchase the 47 with accusim and dump the 51 in my trash bin.) . Now Ive bought the p47 and am Anxiously waiting on the 51.
I know A2A is all about the warplanes but I do wish A2A made some more GA, Like the straight tail 182s or the old stinson 105s. I Like A2A for their realism something No one else has done in fsx if you ask me. anyhoot thanks again for giving me some direction.

As Scott pointed out on another thread, FSX is now available from MS as a download product. It appears that even their management seem to have realised that Flight is not going to be what they advertised it as being.

The last news I am aware of from Lockheed-Martin (dated just before Flight's release) is that they still intend Prepar3D to be exactly what they have always said - it is licensed as a commercial (i.e. training, dedicated simulator) tool and not a public mass-market product regardless of rumour and discussion about potential changes to their license agreement with Microsoft when they purchased the ESP code.

Given that most FSX products work without issue in P3D - including all the Accu-Sim products I tried apart a couple of minor bugs that seemed platform problems, not Accu-Sim problems - then yes, people will get P3D for "entertainment" use regardless of the license and intended market. Partially this is L-M's own fault for giving away free trials with mass-market media such as Computer Pilot and PCPilot, but people were already getting it before then.

Personally, I agree with those saying that FSX has a long enough shelf life and scope for expansion to last until something truly comparable comes along. Before the XP10 fans start shouting "pick me! pick me!", it still doesn't do half of what FS2002 did, let alone FSX, so no, it's still not comparable yet.

Ian P.

Interesting.

Yes from what I have read seems like P3D is the new craze or something to that effect. I personally wouldnt pay 9 dollars a month for a sim. just doesnt seem worth it.

thanks again for the info this has helped me make some decisions on my purchasing.

Jerry D. Witt III

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Real Life: Airman First Class (E-3) 140th AMXS; Buckley AFB, CO

HAHAHA it tooke me a while to figure out what the pictures were talking about but when I got it I laughed so much HAHAHA! great post!

I couldn't agree more. I wouldn't be surprised if FSX is around for another decade, because, like Dudley stated, it is a platform that ACES opened up to developers (as if they knew in advance that MS was going to shut them down?). And if it is around 10 years from now it won't look like it does today.
I think MS is trying to get in on the "addon bandwagon". They sold FSX for about $50 bucks, and then Accelleration, but folks like us are spending much more money for other addons. FLIGHT is a new platform, but it is also new footing for MS to cash in on the future market of addons - something they should have done a better job of with FSX - but they shut down ACES so they pretty much tied their shoes together on that front. Oops.

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i7 2600, 8GB, Nvidia 420, 1.5TB, W7, TrackIR-5

I respect your theory, but I'd argue that Microsoft had been progressively relying on the open nature of Flight Simulator as its primary market appeal. Look back to FS98, where MS was advertising the ability to port over Combat Flight Simulator planes into FS98; the same was true for FS2000/2002 and CFS2. CFS3 broke that model and undercut one of the most attractive features of the CFS series, the ability to easily add community-created mods and use them online. I think MS knew it had a good thing going with the addon community, though, and by FS2004 MS could honestly advertise that its product was endlessly customizable.


The new business model certainly supports that assumption. I think everybody was surprised when Microsoft put Flight Simulator on ice; possibly MS just knew there wasn't much more they could do with 20 year code. And a lot of the Acceleration pack's material was outsourced I believe.

I'm more inclined to believe that while MS is motivated to act in the best interests of its corporate bottom line, it isn't necessarily evil and greedy. I wouldn't be surprised if MS's new generation of 'air travel simulating software' might have a future on the upcoming XBox 720, perhaps as a showcase product that can be marketed towards holdout PC gamers. I also think that FSX will remain available for years to come as an important product in the Microsoft catalogue.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Caught this:

http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/to ... -everyone/

What you guys think?

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Depends how you want to read the license conditions... From what I've read, they're so wooly that almost anyone could claim the "academic" use simply to be learning about how things fly at home.

It certainly doesn't tally in with what L-M were saying in responses to press questions the end of last year, but since when have tech guys and marketing guys at large companies ever actually communicated in the same language?

BTW Skycat: Other way around. CFS and CFS2 were based on the respective versions of Flight Simulator, not the MSFS products being based on the CFS products. You could move aircraft between the two, but CFS SDK aircraft didn't always work in MSFS, where MSFS aircraft always worked in CFS unless they were coded "outside the box" (which yes, people were doing back in FS5, let alone later!)

It was certainly FS9 that showed exactly how extensible the MSFS series was. FSX expanded on that in some directions, but at the expense of more complexity that many developers didn't want to deal with - hence we now have this silly three way split between "FS9 is best!", "FSX is best!" and "Abandon M$(*)! Come to X-Plane as if we're somehow a panacea for all!" fanatics.

(* - insert childish nickname for Microsoft here... I couldn't be bothered to list all the ones I've heard!)

Ian P.

Ian, I agree that CFS and CFS2 were based on the Flight Simulator series, not the other way around. As for crossing over the aircraft, I remember that it was very easy to move the CFS aircraft into FS98, they just wouldn't have any weapons. I also remember that FS2002 came with an unarmed F4U Corsair, which I assume was a CFS2 model. My point only was that Microsoft has encouraged a certain amount of "do-it-yourself" modding since at least 1998, even going so far as to have tutorials on the official FS/CFS websites, and that until recently it apparently felt that a large addon community benefitted the franchise and increased the marketability of the core products.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Good points indeed. I'm in a quandary about the inside story on MS in the mid-2000s. (I'm guessing some at MS are wondering the same thing). But you are right, they certainly did invite 2nd party addons and really put their hand out to their customer base. That's a rare thing for such a large corporation to do, and do it so well and genuinely. They do have true aviation enthusiasts under their roof. And I believe they still do now. Change is difficult to deal with.
I was certainly "ticked-off" when I bought CF3 and found the different format. I'd always loved swapping aircraft between the civvie and military versions. Well, the future is a big place, and MS seems to be looking way beyond the horizon with FLIGHT. I'm enthusiastic about the future of it, but I won't sink my teeth into it until way into that future. I still envision MS SPACE as being an eventual addon package to FLIGHT. Makes me giddy

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i7 2600, 8GB, Nvidia 420, 1.5TB, W7, TrackIR-5