Thoughts on Aerosoft's Flight Simulator Efforts

Somebody recently asked me what I thought about Aerosoft's efforts to do a new flight simulator product. I thought I would take a few moments to comment about it here. Perhaps it might generate some interesting discussion!

Truth be told, I don't know what to think about it yet. Part of the problem at this point is that there seems to be so little information out there about their efforts up to now. It takes tons of manhours to develop a realistic flight simulation like Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) or Flight Simulator X (FSX). Developers, of course, have to eat, so there is cost involved in supporting them. There are also equipment and software costs involved, too. Unless you pursue a Free/Open Source Software development strategy, then you are likely talking about a significant investment in developing a flight simulation as good as Microsoft's. It's not necessarily an insurmountable challenge, but it just takes an outfit with deep pockets and a commitment to the product. Will Aerosoft fit the bill? I hope so, and I certainly wish them luck.

For Aerosoft or any other upstart to be successful, it will have to offer simmers something that they do not already get out of FS9/FSX. Ideally, there needs to be some kind of migration path from FS9/FSX, as people probably aren't going to be as willing to buy into it if their thousands of dollars worth of add-ons will not work with it. While I recognize there may be some legal and intellectual property issues with Microsoft on this, perhaps one solution might be to provide a mechanism to allow the developers to simply recompile or port their add-ons to the new Aerosoft flight sim.

Actually, I would like to expand on something I touched on earlier: when you get right down to it, FS9 and FSX are really just frameworks for flight simulation. They provide you a toolbox for building airplane models, airports, scenery, weather, ATC, and so on. You can choose to use the default toolbox elements provided by Microsoft, or you can buy upgrades for any of those if you want something better. The problem with Microsoft or Aerosoft or any other company owning the toolbox is that you, the simmer, are pretty much subject to their whims. If Microsoft decides they don't want to do Flight Simulator anymore -- as they apparently have -- then you are out of luck. Sure, we will all muddle along on our FS9 and FSX for quite a while -- probably the next several years to come -- but eventually they will get long in the tooth, and it will show.

With this in mind, I would absolutely love to see the base toolbox for flight simulation use an open source model. The flight simulation community as a whole would own Flight Simulator, and anyone could contribute to it. In essence, we already have this with Flight Gear, but I don't know what it would take to get it to a critical mass where it would become fully on par with Flight Simulator. Flight Simulator itself already has a long legacy of add-on products, especially for FS9 and FSX. Imagine how nice Flight Simulator would be if we, the community, could go in ourselves and fix the remaining bugs that Microsoft will never fix? Or add new features that Microsoft will never add? Short of that, I would love for Flight Gear to take off and become on par with Flight Simulator in terms of realism, features, and add-on products. Developers like PMDG would still be free to develop add-ons for Flight Gear and sell their products, even if Flight Gear itself were free. Hybrid open-source/commercial software models already coexist and work very well in many other places.

I haven't completely thought through my wish list for the next great Flight Simulator, but one thing I sure would love to see is an easy way to upgrade navigation/scenery elements of Flight Simulator. Right now, we're stuck with a snapshot of the world from around 2003. The world of aviation has moved on greatly in the last six years: new runways have been added at airports including Seattle/Tacoma, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky, Washington-Dulles, just to name a few; new airports like Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi have since opened; old airports have closed; and so on. Not to mention ILS frequencies have changed (e.g. 17R/35L at Austin-Bergstrom); VOR identifiers or frequencies have changed (e.g. LVS is now FTI); and many more. Sure, you can go buy Airport Facilitator and hack up your FS scenery to your heart's content to keep up with all the changes. But wouldn't it be nice if the developers did it for us? Just download a regular update to Flight Simulator, the same way we do OS updates with Windows or other OS's! Or perhaps provide an easy platform for Navigraph or somebody to do the updates for you. There are so many new airspace fixes or airway route changes in aviation now since FS9/FSX were done, that half the time, you have to enter your own custom waypoints in the flight planner if you want the ATC to guide you on what is now a realistic flight path. I would love for all the built-in airspace fixes and routes in Flight Simulator to be easily upgradable with new data!

Anyway, who knows what the future will bring? In the meantime, I plan to keep on enjoying the ride with FSX for as long as it remains viable.