Flight Sim World: Closure Announcement

[MigBuster 2,884]

 

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.

We’re sure you have lots of questions, we hope we’ve answered a few here.

FAQ

What happens to Flight Sim World if I already own it? It will remain in your Steam library, available to play in its current format.

Will the sim be taken off sale? Yes, and we’re working to the date of 24th May 2018. We want to give anyone who does not yet own a copy of the sim enough time to get a copy and keep it safe in their library for future play.

What will happen to any Add-Ons? Add-Ons will also come off sale, but those you already own will still also be in your Steam library.

We hope you can give the team the respect they deserve for their tireless hard work to date. Please know that all of us here at Dovetail hold flight simulation, the creators of add-on content, and especially you, the community for this sim, in incredibly high regard for both your support and time with Flight Sim World.

- The Flight Sim World Team

 

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/forums/flightsimworld/

 

 

[+streakeagle 871]

I didn't really see that coming. They have been cruising along like everything was going great. But they were far from feature complete and had no plans to support VR. The battle right now is between P3DV4 and XP11. Flight Sim World was too far from matching either one in features. I have them all and P3DV4 with TacPack is the only one I like at all, and I still fly it rarely compared to DCS World. Sad to see another option go out of business, but how many versions of FSX can make it in what already is known to be a niche market?

Edited May 2, 2018 by streakeagle

[+streakeagle 871]

There is one aspect of this that makes me chuckle a bit... VEAO didn't do so well with DCS World, still struggling with the Hawk, yet to release the P-40F, and with an unfinished projects list that rivals the number of flyable aircraft in the entire SF series. So a "new" company appeared, "Blue Sky FS", that delivered a P-40F to Flight Sim World and was nearing delivery of the Spitfire MkXIV. The spokesperson for Blue Sky FS, also the spokesperson for VEAO, made sure to proclaim that these were two entirely different companies... it was just the 3d models developed for VEAO were now being ported to FSW by Blue Sky FS. VEAO had already announced that they were slowing to a crawl if not outright abandoning DCS World as a platform for their products and seeking other avenues, so why hide the fact that they created a new company to limit liability. But in a market dominated by FSX with the rise of P3D as the 64-bit update to FSX and the ever present and improving X-Plane, VEAO/Blue Sky chose Flight Sim World. It looked like a good choice. Unlike FSX (and to a lesser extent X-Plane) there was literally no competition in FSW for warbirds. But what they failed to realize is that there was a reason most of the major third party FSX companies chose to ignore FSW: they were trying to grab to big a slice of the FSX addon pie and give a piece to Steam, too... the same way they have done with their Train Simulator series for years. If FSW had been the only game in town, this strategy might have worked, but quite a big slice of the market is still flying FSX and/or Dovetail Games' FSX:Steam Edition. The rest either migrated to Prepar3d or X-Plane. Most of those potential customers weren't interested in a new sim with less features, limited addon support, and little or no backwards compatibility with old FSX addons. VEAO/Blue Sky bet on the wrong horse... again. Which flight sim will the VEAO/Blue Sky roulette wheel land on next? Have they thought about SF2? It is a stable code base with all the features and bugs being fairly well documented. If you don't count the literally thousands of free addons already available or YAP payware, there is virtually no competition. Unlike FSW, SF2 and even SFP1 is still for sale.

Edited May 3, 2018 by streakeagle

[MigBuster 2,884]

Yes quite a high price to pay for 3rd party devs!..............saw the Froogle video :)

Here's hoping they still bring the Hawk to DCS level.

 

 

[+streakeagle 871]

I hope the Hawk and P-40F are delivered in a decent condition very soon given the long wait. But they aren't full time developers and they have demonstrated DCS World level work is beyond their ability in any reasonable amount of time. The Hawk represented the easiest possible release: a subsonic trainer with no radar and relatively simple systems. RAZBAM started down the same path of developing a trainer... but then they must have realized the real workload is in the flight modeling and decided to start with a Mach 2 fighter with a decent radar and associated missiles. The MiG-21bis is another example of a Mach 2 radar equipped fighter being the first release. Both the Mirage and the MiG are far from perfect, but despite their supersonic capability and much more complex systems, they are still the best simulations of those aircraft available to the public. Whereas the Hawk has been and remains so buggy/low quality that people would probably be better off with an FSX or SF2 version than VEAO's Hawk. In the time that VEAO released the Hawk and still hasn't released the P-40F, Razbam released the Mirage 2000 and AV-8B and is nearing the release of the MiG-19. If ED's F/A-18C is completed in the near future and provides a radar function library that can be shared with the F-15E, you can bet Razbam will be heading down that road as fast as they can. Supposedly, Heatblur is going to follow up their excellent Viggen (my biggest complaint is that its mirrors don't work) with the F-14A/B sometime this year. In the meantime, the best VEAO can hope to do is deliver the completely redone Hawk 2.0 and finally release the P-40F that was "two weeks" from release when I pre-ordered it. Will VEAO even attempt to go any further with the Spitfire MkXIV or Eurofighter Typhoon? If they do, how many years before one or the other can be purchased/downloaded? I wish them the best of luck. I would love to see them complete their original planned series of releases. But past performance indicates we will be lucky if the Hawk 2.0 finally provides the product customers were expecting and even luckier if the P-40F is ever delivered at all no matter how many bugs it has.