I’ve had to issue the following statement as owner of my own disability awareness company. It’s sort of an open letter to MS and Asobo:
Regarding MSFS 2024, Eclipse Airways, New Dawn Media Arts. Our stance and next steps
Thank you for your support of New Dawn Media Arts Group, including our partners and subsidiaries. Over the past 18 years, we have been working tirelessly to raise awareness for people with disabilities via various media. In that time, we have grown to 60+ staff from around the world who are passionate about helping people with disabilities. In particular, our project, Eclipse Airways has been very successful. With a total of 12,000 flight hours logged across the various tracking platforms that we use and over 2,000 passengers served, we could not be happier or more proud of what we’ve accomplished in the last two years with our virtual airline. I once again thank you for your continued support of Eclipse Airways. That being said, we were very excited about the announcement and launch of the next generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator, MSFS 2024. However, apart from the launch being a total disaster, we are devastated to learn that the AI Copilot feature was removed from the new sim. We do not have the money, physical space or for most of us, the physical ability to use sim gear to fly our planes in the standard way. We rely on AI Copilot to fly our aircraft once we set up flights. Removal of such a system will confine us and many others in flight simulation community to continue using the 2020 sim until it reaches end of life status in 2028. After which, if AI copilot is not added back, Eclipse Airways operations would immediately cease, I would be forced to end my vtuber activities and New Dawn Media Arts Group would have to close due to loss of funding/income and the accumulation of debt as a result. For now though, we will continue our virtual passenger services for the disabled and the severely ill Twitch streams using the 2020 while we continue to fight for the AI copilot feature to return in the 2024 and future sims
Thank you.
Reia Shiina
Founder, New Dawn Media Arts Group