- MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE UPDATE
- MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE SOFTWARE
- MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE SERIES
- MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE SIMULATOR
Sales of X-Plane on Steam jumped after Microsoft's announcement, Meyer said. And it appeared to him as if the new version would not have a way to design and use a custom airplane, a feature that X-Plane offers. "All the things that are necessary to build a truly dynamic, ever-changing, living, breathing city are literally engineered out of the system, is what it looked like," Meyer said. The buildings, cars, trees and shadows didn't look perfectly realistic to him.
MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE SIMULATOR
He watched the trailer of the forthcoming Flight Simulator release, and said he was amazed.īut as he looked more carefully at what Microsoft showed, he felt more at ease. In the hours after the announcement, friends, family members and customers bombarded Meyer with text messages, emails and voicemails, some suggesting that it was over for his X-Plane. "It's sort of like Ferrari not announcing the next Ferrari at a car show, but instead telling Uber about it," Meyer said. Rather than making its announcement there, Microsoft chose gaming industry show E3 in Los Angeles as its venue. Like Ferrari announcing its next car by telling UberĪs Microsoft was unveiling the 2020 version of Flight Simulator, Laminar founder Austin Meyer was in Orlando, Florida, at an industry conference called FlightSimExpo. "We are aware of the concerns in the current eco-system and are working to address them," Microsoft said on the site. A company representative declined to comment on whether Microsoft told people in the simulator community about the release ahead of time. Microsoft, which hasn't yet revealed a price for the updated product, said on the Flight Simulator website that it does want contributions from outside developers. But other than that, Microsoft effectively exited the market. Two years later the simulator came to Valve's Steam video-game store.
MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE SERIES
In 2007 Microsoft did issue an expansion pack, and in 2012 it released a spin-off to the series called Microsoft Flight. "There were rumors but those rumors have been seen from time to time in the last years."
MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE SOFTWARE
"I was as much surprised as all others," said Winfried Diekmann, CEO of Aerosoft, a German manufacturer of simulation software and content for Microsoft Flight Simulator, in an email. Because Microsoft kept quiet about the latest update, third-party developers like Stough say they weren't given the opportunity to play a role in building cool new features. Stough, who as a kid went flying with his uncle, makes money by selling enhancements to simulator software - even Microsoft's technology from over a decade ago. A simulator called X-Plane is developed by Laminar Research, and Lockheed Martin makes a program called Prepar3D (pronounced prepared). There are also rival products on the market. "You've got so much competition in the general gaming area that it's hard for a simulator of flying a plane from point A to point B, without much of a purpose or drive behind it, to keep that momentum going," Stough said in an interview. A single flight on Flight Simulator can span several hours. That's because consumers have moved onto smartphones and attention spans have been shortened from the quick hits of social media. Still, Microsoft may struggle to generate much excitement in a business that it helped popularize.
MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X PLANE UPDATE
But the update could showcase some of the cutting-edge technology coming out of Microsoft, including mapping imagery from the Azure public cloud, and it plays into CEO Satya Nadella's push toward subscription products and away from traditional packaged software. On its own, Flight Simulator is a niche product that isn't likely to move the needle for a company that generates over $30 billion in quarterly revenue. "They might hint that they did, but honestly, I don't believe it."
"I don't think anybody in our industry had a clue this was going on," said Reed Stough, managing partner of Rex Game Studios, which develops detailed clouds and weather patterns for flight simulator programs.