DTG Flight School was always intended to be as limited as it was. They intended it to be an introductory sim for those entering the hobby, not for those already well embedded within it. That was possibly a mistake, but I, personally, don't think that closing it down was, as they have transferred all the same content into a better platform, which will allow the expansion that FSc didn't.
Flight, on the other hand, was a commercial decision. Microsoft wanted to get into the "microtransaction" market, whereby people constantly spend a little over a long period of time and, most importantly, they pay it to Microsoft, not to 3rd party stores like FSS or simMarket or even directly to the developers like Aerosoft or Orbx. From what I gather, although this is word of mouth and I have no evidence to support it, MS always planned to expand and expand Flight, by constantly adding little bits to the free platform and you pay for the bits you wanted, so VFR pilots didn't have to pay for FMCs, as an example. The plans were all there, but the massive negative response and blinkered attitude from many in the FS community killed off those plans at a commercial level. This is what many people are currently trying to do with DTG FSW - shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly to show how cool the are. The difference is that MS already wanted to ditch the simulator, because it no longer fitted with their corporate plan (aka "copy Apple, five years too late"!) whereas DTG are putting massive amounts of investment into the platform. It's not going to be Flight, which was absolutely locked down and they were only able to release the absolute bare minimum of DLC before they were shut down.
Again, personally, I think that the choice of DLC released, the 'cockpitless wonders' which were aimed at MS corporate's intended market of XBox gamers, where the significant improvements in the flight models of the RV-7 and Stearman, for example, were aimed at "us"... But we didn't look at that. We looked at a Mustang with no panel and declared the entire project to be the worst thing ever to have happened. When I asked, no-one believed me that you could actually spin the default aircraft in Flight. Properly spin, not a spiral dive. In a default aircraft. Incidentally, FSW aircraft can't be spun yet. We need to badger them about slipping, stalling and spinning during this Early Access phase.
The developers will follow the money, ultimately. Not many can afford to develop for an utterly niche sim. If being on Steam, which is a massive marketplace for PC users, brings in more money then they'll develop for FSW. If we as a community trash FSW to the point where very few people use it, then they'll support P3D or move to X-Plane. They have mouths to feed and mortgages to pay as well, but comparing FSW to Flight and Flight School is extremely disingenuous. For the record, again only my opinion, but I've had hints from within DTG that it's pretty much spot on, that they canned FSc for two reasons: Because it was going to cause confusion within the market and because it was basically a technology demonstrator/learning tool - for them, as well as new people coming into the hobby. They were assembling a new team, some of whom have never worked on sims before and you learn to walk before you learn to run... To me, that's sensible, not trying to "dumb down" the sim market, as many have suggested. It also explains why they're trying to get the basics right with FSW, before expanding it.
Right now, people are installing commercial FSX add-ons into FSW and they are, for the most part, working. As I said over on that forum, product specific applications and add-ons are already being developed, simply by people poking at what works and what doesn't. It's still based on Simconnect, it's still using the same folder structure. What's changed is the addressing - where add-ons have to look for information from the sim - and the way they render 2d graphics. We really need a SDK to get those right, but a surprising amount of add-ons already do work, or can be made to work very easily. Is that the sign of a sim that's going to be locked down and only accessible by an internal store? We already know - from Flight School - that they know how to lock a sim down. They haven't done it... Isn't that worth remembering?
Sorry about the epic post, I'm making a habit of these around here, right now, but the myths and "alternative facts" going round can't be addressed in a five line post!
Ian P.
