Just a year and a half ago, I was still FS9. I didn't think I would ever let go of that jewel. I was having so many issues with FSX that I actually had physical signs of major stress; high rate of blood pressure and heart beats would spike when in the sim, things not working right, pink runways, clouds disappearing on and off, etc, etc, etc... I remember the week I decided 'that's it, I quit FSX development. I cant take it. I am now fully FS9 and I am going to try to build a plane for X-Plane 10.' I was arranging everything and was invited to a conference of XP developers (mostly people from FS going to XP) and was considering this. I heard about Prepar3d from a friend at FB and he suggested I try it. I did, the 30 days only plan, and man, I couldn't believe it. My computer ran 1.2 so dang well, I was just completely amazed. I didn't know about all the other things that FSX had had that I had never seen before. With FSX, none of the cool things were active. I needed it to run above 7FPS, so some things were turned off. In P3D 1.2, I was flying along very smoothly, 15 to 30 FPS with high settings. It was a miracle.

Later, I cancelled all future planes that were to have FS9 models. All became P3D (which work also in FSX).

Then LM came out with the new SDK and offered updates to the SDK which included the newest Max 2014. How can this be??? Developers being helped also???? Super amazing.... Totally amazing...

And now.. . Build 2.0, the infamous V2. Super shadows and shading technologies more advanced. The newest DirectX 11 HDR light technology, mimicking human retinae visualization, (brightness and contrast, darkness focus adjustment time, etc).


Back to the focus of this post... I went to test something, finding parts on my planes in FS9, looking for gauge code, and went to fire up FS9.... FS9 refused to boot up. I stared at the screen. It was dead. Gone. My old friend for well over 10 years.

Rest in peace, FS2004. You will be missed... A little. More like remembered. Well remembered. Golden Wings, Silver Wings, all those hundreds and hundreds of freeware planes, learning to make gauges, painting custom paint schemes, changing the UI. That was a lot of simming and learning... Man...