Hello to all. Life has been quite busy for me the past few months. I must apologize to my readers as in typical fashion, my busy schedule has had an impact on my blogging. It’s been several months since I posted an article to my blog and for that I must apologize. I had the best intentions of writing more and of course writing about flight simulation. After all, it was flight sim which caused me to create this blog site over 10 years ago.
As I write this, I’m sitting in my hotel room in Orlando, Florida where I’m on my third business trip in the past five weeks. I just got back from dinner (I’m stuffed), turned on the TV (boring) and decided to check my email. One of my long time readers messaged me asking if I had spent any time with the newly released QualityWings 787 Dreamliner and what my impressions were. Well…unfortunately, I had to answer his question with a short answer of no, followed by some additional comments I’m going to share here.
I believe the last time I wrote about the QualityWings 787 was back in June of this year. At that time I had read a Facebook message stating the aircraft was expected to be released in the Summer of 2017. Unfortunately, QualityWings missed their mark slightly. The season of summer came to an end on Friday, September 22nd and the QW Dreamliner was released in early October. Now I realize I’m being a bit cheeky with pointing this out….but details matter right? OK….perhaps not. The good news is the much anticipated QualityWings 787 Dreamliner is available, but the bad news…it’s only available for FSX!
Of course, we knew this would be the case and I even touched on that in my previously mentioned June blog post. QW explains this decision is due to the fact the 787 has been in development longer than Prepar3D v4 (or even v3 or v2) had been in existence. While I understand this fact, I must also mention that I’m of the opinion that QualityWings really have never fully embraced the Prepar3d P3D platform. While it is true they did FINALLY update their Boeing 757 for P3D v2.5…but their treatment of P3D could be likened to that of a “red headed step-child”.
While I fully realize many flight sim enthusiasts still fly FSX and FSX Steam Edition, surprisingly there appears to still be a large number of FS9 users….but I’m of the opinion that FSX (in all forms) is just simply dead. But I must again say that I don’t blame or fault QualityWings for releasing the Dreamliner for FSX. But I’m curious how long it will take them to bring this wonderful aircraft to P3D v4?
I know some might say, “but the QW development team is small” and “these things take time”. I get all that. But I will remind everyone that PMDG was able to update their older Boeing 737 NGX which was released in the 2011 timeframe (if I’m not mistaken). So in theory, the same can be said of PMDG that they began development on an aircraft prior to Prepar3D, but was still able to update/release the NGX for P3D v4 within a few weeks of release.
So….to answer my readers question. Unfortunately, when Prepar3D v4 was released earlier this year I made the decision to embrace it as my flight sim platform and I’ve not looked back to earlier P3D versions or FSX since and I don’t plan to.
But having said that. Just as soon as this beautiful aircraft is released for P3D v4.x, I will purchase it and I’m sure I’ll have more than a few things to say about it here.
I’m exhausted after a long day and ready to turn in. I’ll post this sometime on Wednesday or Thursday. So until next time….Happy Simming!
JT