I thought people might be interested in some information on my transition to Flightsim.com from a Content Creator’s point of view.
Contact
- I initially contacted Flightsim.com to ask about their policies before deciding to use them. The biggest difference here is the emails I received were not written like a legal document. Making any contact much easier to understand.
- Flightsim.com was also very approachable and overall very positive in their outlook.
Uploads
- First and foremost I was really surprised how well done the upload process was at Flighsim.com. It is easily as polished and as easy to use.
- Flightsim.com doesn’t throttle your upload speeds.
- You also have the ability to do updates and record update changelogs for your uploads.
- The transition to Flightsim.com did require some effort but because I wanted to transition my screenshots to the fit the square thumbnails used at Flightsim.com but otherwise there was little extra effort required. I also took the time to update some of my older content.
- You have the right to delete, lock or hide your content right from your upload screen and there appears to be no restriction. You don’t have to get the site owners to delete it for you and they won’t prevent you from blocking or deleting certain content.
- While Flightsim.com doesn’t have a dedicated Donate option, they are happy for you to include your own donate link. This is as easy as setting up what Paypal call a button (in effect a web link) which you can then add to your upload page.
- Flightsim.com doesn’t place any benefits behind an “Exclusive content” checkbox.
- Because of the cross platform content hosted on Flightsim.com you have to select a category when creating your upload. The only negative is that once you have created an upload for any particular category, there doesn’t appear to be any way to change it.
Downloads
- Download speeds are definitely faster.
- There is no annoying timer before your download starts.
- There is no annoying popup to click before for your download starts.
- Download numbers. Its early days but download numbers are much less. Having said that I had found recently that download numbers were generally lower than had been in the past, most likely because of the increased content available. But as Flightsim.com gains more content they will also gain more users, so I expect the download numbers to improve over time.
- You need to be logged in to download or upload, but creating a user ID is free.
Features
- The main difference here is that Flightsim.com supports FSX/2004, Prepar3d as well as MSFS. So finding MSFS content may not be as clear cut as it is elsewhere. Flightsim.com landing page also groups all recent uploads together from the 3 platforms in one place. So it is a good idea for Content Creators to add MSFS to the start of their upload name.
- You just need to look a little further to find the recent MSFS content which is grouped together on this page. Recent MSFS Files - FlightSim.Com.
- You can also browse all MSFS content on the page linked below, although you have to expand the various MSFS categories on the right to see the content. Downloads - FlightSim.Com
- Flightsim.com also has a forum section for the various platforms it supports.
- Flightsim.com also has a direct message option to allow your supporters to directly contact you.
Who is storing their content at Flightsim.com?
- Global AI Ship Traffic
- PuffinFlight - We love VFR
- Me
Should you boycott Flightsim.to?
Definitely not. Competition always benefits the end user. And a lot of good content is only hosted at To. I just think you need to know that the alternatives have already done some serious catching up. There is nothing to stop you hosting your content on both platforms, although Flightsim.to has blocked me from uploading.