Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement

[Andy Parish]

Announcement here - although at the time of writing it was still available for sale at £29.99 on their website. Any takers?

https://steamcommunity.com/games/389280/announcements/detail/3400657079148405506

[Pete A (G-SPCA)]

What a shocker - not. Don't think Dovetail have covered themselves with any sort of glory here as it was at best an unfinished game and without giving the community the ability to mod and enhance it it was never going to attract the likes of us. No cross game multiplayer because of no SDK.......

Shame but not a surprise.

[Guy7]

Just seen this come through on the XPNG FB group.  It is a shame - the more the better I felt and while I'm very settled in the X-Plane world when I do occasionally fly I also enjoyed FSW when I fired it up.

I think they say it's on sale until 24 May.  Not sure I can see them selling much now though.

This means that P3D is the only platform taking the FSX legacy forward?  Any idea what P3D vs X-Plane user base is like?  I guess there's still a market for 32-bit FSX stuff though given the addon releases still keep coming.  I just don't see anyone entering the hobby going the 32-bit route.  I know, I'm rambling, it's been a long day

[Andy Parish]

For me there were a number of issues with the FSW proposition...

Firstly, as Pete mentions, they seemed set on building a closed platform. It's a model that appears to have worked for their Train Sim franchise and I think they were hoping for the same degree of success. Unfortunately, the flight sim community is used to a lot, lot more.

Secondly, they tried to ship an incomplete product. It didn't work for their Flight School, and it didn't work for Microsoft Flight before that. Whilst X-Plane and P3D arguably shipped incomplete (in that they're still being actively developed), they had all of the attributes that simmers are used to these days, and to fail to cater for the significant part of the community that prefers heavies over GA, and by extension IFR over VFR (in their early models at least) was unforgivable.

Thirdly, they were too late to the party. I'm not sure that's entirely their fault - except from the point of view of buying into the "home entertainment" rights for the FSX product when they'd clearly missed the boat. That boat had long sailed with P3D and there being no appetite shown by LM to pursue people who are using the product in violation of the licencing terms - after all why would they? Those who argue that in studying the art of flying they're entitled to buy the Academic edition should read the licence agreement carefully - they're not. How many of these people might, with an appropriate community model and support, have gone to FSW for £30 rather than being forced to pay $200 for a valid P3D licence?

For me however, accepting that I outed myself as an X-Plane pilot a long time ago, FSW lost any credibility of becoming a serious contender in the space when I heard the chap responsible for the FSW product speak at Cosford last year. He didn't project any sort of tangible vision - at least not to me - and gave woolly answers, at best, to quite specific questions. His mantra was that Dovetail was listening to the community to guide product evolution - unfortunately, whilst they might have been listening, they weren't hearing the bits that they didn't want to hear.

[Simmo]

Such a shame that another platform bites the dust. I have a poster on my wall showing the many flight sims of the past. There have been, believe it or not, over 100 different sims in the last 25+ years and now we are down to 5? and one of those is 12 years old. Thank goodness that I can still see a rosy future for our hobby though it might be my glasses.
As a dyed in the wool X-Planer I had no real intention of buying FSW and so I must take my share of the blame but for the flight sim community at large it is beneficial that we have as many platforms as possible because that drives competition and innovation. I guess we have to rely on community and third party developers to push forward on cross platform projects (still not sure about the creeping red weed of OrbX though)
Cheers
Simmo

[Biggles1946]

Hi Guys, MayI avert your attention to the Froogle video  ......https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ujKNoCVvVM
     He discusses over nearly 20 minutes what has led up to this situation and some of the possible ramifications to our hobby. I think it's probably worth your time.

[Biggles1946]

Hi, I find myself a little confused by Andy's assertion that those people who bought the 'academic licence of P3D' ought not to have done because they were not strictly speaking 'students'. By a similar argument how many of us could have purchased the 'professional' product (for 199$) as I suspect we would qualify for that either. Lockheed Martin have made their contract very vague in this respect.

[Pete A (G-SPCA)]

LOL - I'm sure that if you don't qualify for the Professional version you can't use that as an excuse to buy the Academic one.

I think Froogle's be spying on me, I said from day one of Dovetail announcing they had bought the Entertainment License for FSX that they could go after LM over its use in 'Entertainment' space. Does anyone else remember the plethora of YouTube videos that appeared the day after LM introduce the Avatar character in to P3D? People had them skydiving, jumping off ships etc. Not sure I saw one wing walking but I bet someone's done that too

[Andy Parish]

Hi, I find myself a little confused by Andy's assertion that those people who bought the 'academic licence of P3D' ought not to have done because they were not strictly speaking 'students'. By a similar argument how many of us could have purchased the 'professional' product (for 199$) as I suspect we would qualify for that either. Lockheed Martin have made their contract very vague in this respect.

Actually, you're right... nobody is eligible to use the product at all for personal / consumer entertainment purposes, whether "professional" or "academic". Indeed, it's the definition of "personal / consumer entertainment" on which eligibility for the professional version hinges; that for "academic" is totally clear.

I had a conversation along these lines with the chap on the stand of a popular hobbyist magazine at a big flight sim exhibition last year (names omitted to protect the innocent) in the context of the viability of the then relatively new FSW. I suggested to him that a number of organisations present at the show (his own included) were complicit in encouraging abuse of the licence terms of P3D by offering and promoting add-ons that are aimed at a personal / consumer entertainment market, and that as a consequence Dovetail was going to struggle to get any kind of market penetration. His view was, perhaps understandably, a little less critical than mine!

[Andy Parish]

Hi Guys, MayI avert your attention to the Froogle video  ......https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ujKNoCVvVM
     He discusses over nearly 20 minutes what has led up to this situation and some of the possible ramifications to our hobby. I think it's probably worth your time.

Thanks for pointing this out Dave - first Froogle video I've ever watched (should I be ashamed to say that the only other person I've ever watched talking about flightsim is Wycliffe?) and I suspect I'll be watching more.

I agree with just about everything he said - except the bit about not going after LM. At the very least, they're negligent in not working out that they're selling a disproportionately high number of academic licences - worst case they're deliberately targeting a community that their own licence agreement prevents from using their product.

Interesting that he referred to the Dovetail guy as "vacuous" - read my earlier post on my impressions!

[John Jones]

If you have not watched the Froogle video I recommend that you do. It looks like we are in for an interesting few months.  Interesting that some of the developers of planes and scenery who said they would not be have started producing for X plane, did they know what was coming?

[Biggles1946]

Hi, It's interesting,I think, that Dovetail are actively peddling their FSW wares in the issue of PC Pilot (just recently out) when they pulled the plug on FSW when they have pulled the plug a few days later.