Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
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  1. #1

    Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement

    Not the right forum but whenever a sim closes it is newsworthy to all simmers.

    Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement
    APRIL 23 - DTG CRYSS
    It is with great sadness that we announce the future closure of Flight Sim World.

    As you know, we always had a strong ambition to bring a new experience into the
    established world of flight simulation, one that deliberately overhauled both the flying
    experience and the graphical fidelity, offering new ways to fly.

    Unfortunately, after many detailed discussions, we regrettably don’t see a clear
    direction that will allow us to keep to the development time we’d want, alongside
    the player numbers we need.

    So, slightly before a year since we first launched into Early Access, we have
    made the intensely difficult decision to fully scale back all future development
    on Flight Sim World and remove it from sale on 24th May.

  2. #2
    Well that’s a surprise! I had thought dovetail was being too ambitious but did not think they would give up.

    they should have been more incremental but then they would still be in the shadow of P3d
    Joe Cusick
    San Francisco Bay Area, California.

    I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley.

  3. #3
    WOW!! A bit sudden to hear tho. Never good news to hear about another resource for FS going away.

    BB686
    "El gato que camina como hombre" -- The cat that walks like a man

  4. #4
    Honestly, this is no surprise to me whatsoever. It's precisely what I said would happen about a year ago. Always sad and unfortunate because these are peoples lives and livelihood, and I hate to see people out of work. But on the sim side, I just never understood how they would compete with P3D.
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  5. #5
    I thought the had a chance, if the had built a sim that was 64 bit, as stable as FSX and compatible with it (as comparable as p3d is) and maybe upgraded the scenery and ATC I think they could have had a success, with steam to distribute and LM handicapped by the fiction that there software was not for entertainment purposes the had an opening. But the tried to do too much
    Joe Cusick
    San Francisco Bay Area, California.

    I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley.

  6. #6
    SOH Staff txnetcop's Avatar
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    I had high hopes they would make it. Competition is good for everyone...as it makes everyone else try harder and keeps prices reasonable.
    Ted
    Vivat Christus Rex! Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

  7. #7
    It's sad. However, I think that the dwindling user numbers, the delay in releasing the SDK and the lack of any significant update since the introduction of trueSKY last year meant that the writing was definitely on the wall for them - trueSKY had so much potential!

  8. #8
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    I think, it was purely a business decision (same as MS closing down ACES). At the end of the day, there is only so much money that can be thrown at a non performing project. Shareholders come first, not us.

    Anyhow, let the postmortems continue..

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by zswobbie1 View Post
    I think, it was purely a business decision (same as MS closing down ACES). At the end of the day, there is only so much money that can be thrown at a non performing project. Shareholders come first, not us.

    Anyhow, let the postmortems continue..
    https://www.facebook.com/pmdgsimulat...11627135543729
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  10. #10
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    Ignore what "Mister" Randazzo says. His sour grapes come from the fact that he was denied special preferential treatment compared to other developers and the fact that he knows full well that what he's saying is untrue, but he keeps repeating it, makes his words utterly irrelevant. The fanboys will still hang on his every syllable, unfortunately.

    For the record, there are a number of products available for FSW which have nothing to do with Steam either to install them or support them whatsoever. The evidence is in plain public sight that PMDG is posting the same tripe that they were before. DTG could never have given PMDG what they wanted anyway, given the way that the sim was being developed.

    That said, in my opinion it is entirely DTG's management's fault that this line has reached such an abrupt end. All the way through from the time they announced it, a huge amount of the community (both developers and end users) were saying that if you release an incomplete product into this marketplace and claim that the rest is coming 'at some point', you'll just attract laughter and abuse from the people you need to buy your product. By releasing a GA-only, partially functional sim, they put themselves at a massive disadvantage from day one and apparently this has been borne out by less than anticipated financial return.

    It's Flight all over again. Marketing demands/expectation and development/retail reality have a massive gap between them.

    Ian P.

  11. #11
    I'm sad. Never spent much time in the sim because they didn't include VR and they came out right when everyone else started supporting VR, but I want to see a strong, competitive sim market. That's best for all of us.

    Still, their business model seemed to be the same one that didn't work for Microsoft Flight (payware-based vs the mix of payware/freeware/donationware that the other sims get), so I'm not shocked.

    If this means the FSX code license will be up for sale again, the ideal thing would be for a consumer company to work with LM to sell a version of P3D to the consumer/enthusiast market.

  12. #12
    Really Saddened by this was really looking forward to the full product was even considering it my FSX replacement. Shame as well some companies had even developed aircraft for it.

  13. #13
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    They had no problem at all with freeware - both Aimee and Cryss regularly stated that the sim would support freeware and 3rd party installers. With an incomplete SDK and no external tool support (e.g. Arno's packages) there was never the opportunity to get a big uptake on that, though. It wasn't the "3DS Max only" limitation that stopped me putting my sceneries into FSW except as a copy and paste port - it was the fact that the SDK wouldn't allow you to create new airports, only alter existing ones. No idea why that was.

    What angers me is the oft-repeated vitriol that DTG are just money grabbing and payware DLC driven. PMDG's stupid stance comes from the word "official" - that "Official DLC" could only be distributed via DTG/Steam. How many PMDG products did Microsoft publish and sell? Zero. There was one single "Official" DLC for FSX and that was Acceleration (which was almost entirely produced by 3rd parties, but was packaged and sold by Microsoft - hence it being "official" DLC). Everything else that we use is - and always was - "unofficial" DLC.

    That's the reality. There is currently zero "official" DLC for X-Plane, zero "official" DLC for P3D, but you don't see people getting hung up on the wording there, do you? The only difference is that DTG produce internally developed and publish externally developed content, through their storefronts. MS tried to do that and we, the community, trashed Flight for it (again, not entirely without good reason!)

    I, personally, disagree with the DTG stance of only promoting official content and generally ignoring (in public, at least) the great swathes of freeware and 3rd party content out there for Train Sim. FSW never got the chance for people to develop for it, so we have no idea how they would have handled that, but I doubt it would have been any different. I understand why they do it, but I disagree, because it fosters exactly the kind of incorrectly targetted hostility they receive as a result.

    Ian P.

  14. #14
    You've got me curious, who created Acceleration? To me at least, it's pretty obvious why the SDK wouldn't allow you to create new content. But that's all irrelevant now.
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  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by 000rick000 View Post
    You've got me curious, who created Acceleration? To me at least, it's pretty obvious why the SDK wouldn't allow you to create new content. But that's all irrelevant now.
    The SDK just wasn't finished. They weren't blocking people from creating new airports, just hadn't got to it yet.

    A whole bunch of people were involved in Accel. The scenery was by the people who made the moon for FS9 (and whose name I've forgotten, whoops!) the F/A-18 and I think a couple of other models were made by Captain Sim, the VC for the F/A-18 was made by Virtuali... I can't remember on the rest, sorry.

    Ian P.

  16. #16
    Sad news indeed.
    DTG wanted to make the simulator attractive to gamers before making it usable. They should have focused on core engine performance, features and SDK before making any kind of addons.

    The general marketing direction they chose was not that bad. They just didn't do the things in the right order.
    The late versions of FSW were pretty much unsuable on my computer due to crappy performance, and the lack of addons (or troubles to install them) made the sim look terrible (not to mention the silly old limitations inherited from FSX, like very small autogen radius etc...). Despite this, the had the best sky rendition out there, thanks to finally getting the sky color and sunlight colors right, and the excellent TrueSKY system giving superb clouds. They should have focused on improving that part of the sim to attract the flightsim community, instead of creating missions to try to attract people who are already too busy playing Fortnite...

    Sad to see the very same errors made in Microsoft Flight repeated once again.
    If somebody buys the source code from DTG, I hope they will make a bit smarter choices...

  17. #17
    Unfortunately, for developers interested in FSW as a platform, one of the major issues was with the licensing rules. Unless a license was held for a particular brand, an add-on of that subject could not be supported. That made the whole thing too limiting and just too hard.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by bazzar View Post
    Unfortunately, for developers interested in FSW as a platform, one of the major issues was with the licensing rules. Unless a license was held for a particular brand, an add-on of that subject could not be supported. That made the whole thing too limiting and just too hard.
    On that alone, many predicted today's revelation. A number of us knew the rumors about P3D going 64bit were not just rumors despite the all the nay-sayers claims it's development didn't exist. The nail was in the coffin before FSW even saw the light of day with P3D development remaining virtually unchanged from previous versions. The sim road map was pretty clear last year and now today even more so.

    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

  19. #19
    Not a surprise. But still sad to hear.

    I think that no one should buy the source code. Why inherit FSX limitations.

    I think LM made the most out of the source code, and I can only see a possible successful sim out of that if LM makes their version available for the entertainment sector.

    But with two or three very strong flight simulators on the market (P3Dv4, X-plane and Aerofly FS2) I think it will be very hard for another contender to find it's place in this highly demanding market.
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  20. #20
    it will be interesting to see what DTG does next, as I see it they have a few options

    1) They could sell the license to someone else like LM or the group of developers that were interested in it before. The developers did not have the cash before and probably still don't, LM passed on before, they could have gotten the whole thing when they got ESP if they were interested.
    2) They could try again with a scaled down project that is more manageable and more incremental, but then they would still be behind P3D and XP instead of the grand leap forward they hoped with FSW.
    3) They could partner with LM and sell a consumer version of P3D on steam, since they have the license they could probably do it but would LM bite.
    4) Bankruptcy, they have spent way to much on this already.
    Joe Cusick
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    I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley.

  21. #21
    They don't own the license I don't think in that sense. DTG can develop ESP for entertainment. But out side of that I don't it's like that. MS owns the licensing. From what I understand. So anyone else would have to go through MS to purchase licensing options.
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  22. #22
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    Maybe they must just stick to their Fishing & train apps.
    In retrospect, in all the time they had the sim franchise, it was a beta version that they wanted their customers to buy.
    Secondly, getting advice from their users, or target market to what they want is now seen to be very problematic... everybody has their individual requirements for what they want out of the sim.
    Yes, they did try....

    I'm sure that LM will not be interested in an entertainment game that parallels their professional & acedemic products. Why should they? Even more licensing issues.

    I always wondered why a simmer would consider FSW, when there are 'complete' & far more supported products out there.
    BTW, FlightGear should also be added into the alternatives.

    Regards,

    Robin

  23. #23
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    No real comment on was it good or was it bad. Unfortunate because I am sure the code and rights did not come cheap from MS and they were basically restricted to the hobby-private market. From a business perspective two things stand out - the First is the you get a license to use but not the product, there is significant customer resistance to this in the consumer market but in the commercial world it is the way they operate, it is just another lease cost. Second, addons had to be a licensed after sale or no support. That killed addon developers interest too hard and DTG would not have had the resources to replicate what is done by thousands of keen amateurs in the spirit of communal collaboration and mutual interest and passion.

    As for LM and P3D speculation, well I am currently doing work for a major international aerospace entity- future pilot training is all simulator orientated because that is what the military and the big end of aviation want and are introducing. LM upgraded P3D to 64 bit because of computer architecture and platforms not for hobby customers, as they say plainly the license is not intended for gaming purposes. What is really happening is that is cheap software development and so called student customers etc are actually helping them do the bug finding and get rid of other wrinkles, it is a win win for them but let us make one thing clear, LM is not in the consumer market it is a high tech heavy end of town aerospace company and that is the way it will stay - work it out - how many P3D licenses would you need to sell compared to say one F35? Sure they will probably turn a blind eye to the obvious interest from 'non' academics but P3D is a bolt on for the real world flight training sector not consumers. They might eventually flog it off to a business with that interest but not at the moment.

    Sad to see the DTG folk lose out like this but the writing was on the wall generally just as it has been for a lot of folk trying to make money out of sim products. My money is on X-Plane for the future but as what I have is just fine I am not doing anything there either, so I am probably typical of the consumer market DTG faced, uncertain, not totally unsatisfied with what they have and not that impressed with what was on offer to go and buy. Why X-Plane, open source architecture, 64 bit and that will attract a lot more amateurs and enthusiasts than a pay as you go product after all most of us are cash stressed or broke these days anyway, I know I am. Have a look around the retail world the evidence is staring you in the face.

  24. #24
    Sad to hear that - probably it was too ambitious for FSW to develop. But there were some thing they did right:

    - The default aicrafts were actually pretty good. True, there were only GA planes - but in terms of quality they were probably the best around.
    - The cloud technology was cool
    - The idea of "reformatting" the XML gauges so that they can run through the GPU was good
    - The adoption of ORBX Global textures and vectors meant that the base scenery was much better than FSX and P3D
    - Some effects (like the rain on the canopy and the vibration of the needles) were well implemented
    - The SDK did a good job in explaining the differences between FSW and FSX

    Then, FSX/P3D developer the fact that P3D and FSW diverged was a burden - it would have been much better if they had a common format (dream world, I know).

  25. #25
    It’s not sour grapes on PMDGs part. There were other developers who wouldn’t go along with it because of the restrictions mentioned. When questions about unofficial payware addons were asked, they were either met with silence or that DTG would take the developer to court. I remember when Stephen and Amy were asked at FlightsimCon about restrictions on developers and they had a very long pause followed by a very careful answer. They wouldn’t restrict developers to sell on steam but they didn’t say whether there were other restrictions either. If there was nothing getting in the way they would have been perfectly straightforward. It is a common practice today unfortunately, to tell the straight truth but with lot of it hidden.
    -JB

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