Skip to content

Position and Hold

Realism through Simulation – A Flight Simulation Blog – Est. 2010

Menu
  • Flight
    • Flight Sim Articles
    • MSFS Addons
    • Scenery MSFS2020
    • MSFS Settings
    • Flight Sim Tutorials
    • Hardware
    • 2021 Around the World Adventure
    • Prepar3D Settings (v4.5)
    • Prepar3D Settings (v5.x)
    • Aircraft
    • Scenery P3Dv5
    • Older Flight Sim Articles
  • Information
    • About Jerry
    • Ask Me A Question
    • My Hardware
    • Add-on and Mods Directory
  • GBS Media & Social
    • GBS Discord
    • GBS Facebook
    • GBS Instagram
    • GBS Twitch
    • GBS Twitter
    • GBS YouTube
  • Other Sims
    • Train
    • Trucking
    • Farming
Menu

And then there were two…

Posted on April 23, 2018 by admin

Earlier today, Dovetail Games announced “with great sadness” the closure of Flight Sim World (FSW).  It’s been slightly less than one year since I first discussed FSW on my blog site and in late May of last year I wrote about my first impressions after having spent a little bit of time exploring the simulator.   I recorded a few YouTube videos which you can find on my channel.  During the initial few weeks after release of FSW I did manage to spend several hours flying and I must admit I enjoyed my time and felt like FSW had some promise.  After all, Dovetail Games was finally fulfilling their commitment to bring their flight sim to market albeit a few years late.

While I must admit I haven’t followed the progress of FSW in the past 6+ months, I’m actually surprised it took Dovetail Games this long to realize this was never going to get off the ground and compete with Prepar3d and XPlane.  Especially knowing how Dovetail planned to limit 3rd party developers.  As with many of the simulation based games I enjoy playing, 3rd party developers, modders etc. are the lifeblood of these types of games.  When you begin to restrict what they can do and how they do it, you’re going to suffer and I guess they finally realized the writing was on the wall.

While I have many additional thoughts/opinions regarding this news, I’m going to keep those to myself for now.  It appears Steam will continue to sell Flight Sim World through May 24th.  After May 24th the game and all DLC will be removed from Steam, but will still be available in the player/owner’s Steam Library.

Future of Flight Simulation

The future of flight simulation is extremely strong.  Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D (P3D) version 4.x and Laminar Research’s X-Plane will continue to serve as the flagship titles to support this wonderful hobby.  Both titles have a strong following and both enjoy excellent support from the best 3rd party add-on developers.  After all, we know the saying….two is company and three’s a crowd.

Until next time…

Jerry

Category: Flight Sim

2 thoughts on “And then there were two…”

  1. Peter Massingham says:
    April 24, 2018 at 1:56 am

    Hi Jerry. I’m new to flight simulators so I bought FSX a few months ago. I am still using it as it is a great stepping stone – low cost, undemanding on the hardware and easy to learn and configure. I then bought FSW from Steam, played for 90 mins and returned it for a refund as there were issues with the graphics. I’m not likely to buy either of the other contenders given the costs and the required hardware specs. I have a high spec gaming laptop, but it is 3 years old and the Nvidia card is now an ol’ timer when it comes to the lastest ‘games’. For now FSX is playable and immersive, so I guess your title should be “And then there were three”? Or is FSX too dated for modern sim pilots?
    Best wishes, Peter (existing subscriber)

    Reply
    1. GrizzlyBearSims says:
      April 24, 2018 at 11:12 am

      Hi Peter,

      Thank you for the comment. FSX (and even FS9) still have a really strong following. However, the boxed version of FSX is one year away from being a teenager and of course no longer in development. When Dovetail Games released FSX Steam Edition in 2014 some enhancements were made to the baseline code which allowed FSX:SE to perform much better than its original boxed version. To the best of my knowledge, Dovetail Games has no further plans to enhance FSX:SE beyond its current state. According to discussions I read on Steam, FSX:SE will remain on Steam even after Flight Sim World is removed next month. My concern for FSX:SE users (as well as FSX boxed and FS9) is that you could be one Microsoft update away from rendering these older applications from functioning. I believe this actually happened late last fall with the Windows 10 Creators Update. Microsoft did release a patch which I believe resolved the issue. But there really are no guarantees this will always be the case.

      If I weren’t so heavily invested in old add-ons that either still work for P3D or the devs honored the license for their P3D v4 versions, I would honestly spend much more time in X-Plane. X-Plane has a solid following and it reminds me of the early days of flight simulation. Where there was an equal amount of freeware development being done. Unfortunately, freeware is a word that disappeared sometime between FS9 and FSX and that’s sad.

      So I suppose in closing, the point I was attempting to make in the blog articles title has more to do with the two major players who are actively developing their respective platforms AND who both have a active 3rd party development following as well. I think these are important.

      Thanks again for reading and happy flying!
      Jerry

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

Flight Sim News

  • FSELITE
  • FSNews
  • Threshold

Flight Sim Blogroll

  • Darren’s Flight Sim Blog
  • Flight Simulation Association
  • iBlueYonder
  • MSFS Addons
  • On The Glideslope
  • PC Flight
  • Stormbirds
  • Twotonemurphy
  • X-Plane at Push-Point.net

Flight Sim Links

  • DCTRY
  • Deadstick Simulator
  • FS History
  • FS-Products
  • FSXLiveries.com
  • GSX Configs by 7X7Pilot
  • Hangar 226 Liveries
  • iniBuilds
  • sim bit world
  • sim-vector
  • SimPilotGroup
  • SimToolKitPro
  • The Flight Simulator Network
  • Tiger Flight Foundation
  • VATSIM
  • VATTASTIC
  • WebATIS

Flight Sim Products I Use

  • A Pilot’s Life
  • A2A Simulations
  • Active Sky 2016
  • Addit Pro
  • Aerosoft
  • AivlaSoft Electronic Flight Bag
  • Captain Sim
  • Carenado Aircraft
  • Drzewiecki Design
  • FeelThere
  • FLAi
  • Flight Replicas
  • Flight Sim Labs
  • Flightbeam Studios
  • FlightSim Commander
  • FlyTampa
  • FRAPS
  • FS2Crew
  • FSBuild
  • FSDreamTeam
  • FSFX Packages
  • FSimStudios
  • FSPassengers
  • FSUIPC
  • GoFlight
  • iFly B737NGX
  • Imaginesim
  • Just Flight
  • JustSim
  • LatinVFR
  • LevelD Simulations
  • Majestic Software
  • Milviz
  • Navigraph
  • ORBX Terrain
  • Plan-G
  • PMDG Simulations
  • Prepar3D
  • Professional Flight Planner X
  • Project OpenSky (POSKY)
  • QualityWings Simulations
  • Real Environment Extreme (REX)
  • Scenery Config Editor
  • ShareX Screen Capture and More
  • SimToolKitPro
  • SteveFX – DX10 Scenery Fixer
  • Super Traffic Board
  • TopCat
  • TripleHead2Go
  • UK2000 Extreme
  • VAT-Spy
  • VRInsight
  • World of AI

Archives

  • June 2025 (9)
  • May 2025 (2)
  • December 2024 (4)
  • November 2024 (4)
  • October 2024 (6)
  • September 2024 (4)
  • August 2024 (5)
  • July 2024 (5)
  • June 2024 (5)
  • May 2024 (8)
  • April 2024 (9)
  • March 2024 (2)
  • December 2023 (6)
  • November 2023 (1)
  • June 2023 (2)
  • May 2023 (1)
  • April 2023 (1)
  • March 2023 (1)
  • February 2023 (3)
  • January 2023 (3)
  • December 2022 (3)
  • November 2022 (4)
  • October 2022 (1)
  • September 2022 (2)
  • August 2022 (5)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • February 2021 (1)
  • January 2021 (8)
  • December 2020 (5)
  • November 2020 (2)
  • September 2020 (12)
  • August 2020 (7)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • May 2020 (10)
  • April 2020 (6)
  • March 2020 (4)
  • February 2020 (1)
  • January 2020 (1)
  • November 2019 (1)
  • October 2019 (3)
  • September 2019 (3)
  • August 2019 (6)
  • July 2019 (7)
  • June 2019 (10)
  • May 2019 (9)
  • April 2019 (7)
  • December 2018 (1)
  • October 2018 (3)
  • September 2018 (17)
  • August 2018 (14)
  • July 2018 (13)
  • June 2018 (14)
  • May 2018 (8)
  • April 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (3)
  • January 2018 (2)
  • December 2017 (1)
  • November 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (10)
  • May 2017 (7)
  • April 2017 (1)
  • March 2017 (5)
  • February 2017 (1)
  • January 2017 (1)
  • November 2016 (3)
  • October 2016 (25)
  • September 2016 (14)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (2)
  • May 2016 (10)
  • April 2016 (22)
  • March 2016 (31)
  • February 2016 (19)
  • July 2015 (2)
  • June 2015 (12)
  • May 2015 (11)
  • March 2014 (2)
  • February 2014 (2)
  • December 2012 (7)
  • November 2012 (7)
  • January 2012 (1)
  • November 2011 (1)
  • September 2011 (2)
  • July 2011 (4)
  • June 2011 (10)
  • May 2011 (3)
  • April 2011 (1)
  • March 2011 (2)
  • January 2011 (2)
  • December 2010 (5)
  • November 2010 (5)
  • October 2010 (8)
  • September 2010 (9)
© 2025 Position and Hold | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme