I agree, and also the Cirruses SR20 & SR22 which are incredibly in-depth. Worth $75 of anyone’s money.
Hint hint 
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I think your question should be the other way round according to reports so far.
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I agree with you. This is a key point. If you invest in XP 12 now, but the 3rd party developers jump ship from XP to MSFS, this could be the worst time to invest in XP 12.
This is exactly like what happened with the P3D home market 3rd party developers last year. People who invested heavily in P3D in early 2021 probably made the wrong investment because by summer of 2021, most of the notable P3D home market 3rd party developers had abandoned P3D for MSFS (well, they were still supporting their products on P3D but they stopped starting new add-on projects for P3D).
I wouldn’t invest in XP 12 at this point, because you risk the chance that XP 3rd party developers may jump ship to MSFS. And looking at the SteamDB numbers for XP 12, it appears XP 12 was a huge flop and not many people are using it.
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Addons for 11 work in 12 for the most part. So alot of those people wont have to reinvest in new addons to go with the new sim. There are some that seem to not to have made the jump easily, but Im not hearing alot of crying about it.
The trouble with MSFS, we get a new su and all of a sudden everybodys waiting for their fav plane airport etc. to be update.
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I seem to remember that this was also a ‘thing’ with Xplane addons when I used to sim in Xplane 11 after a new beta became final.
In truth, I think that this is to be expected whenever gaming software is regularly improved and updated. A ‘necessary evil’ if you will 
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Yup. The difference is, if the 3rd party add-on developers are still making money on a specific platform, they will likely keep updating their products on that platform.
With P3D, many of the 3rd party add-on devs stopped updating by P3D version 5.3. If there is a P3D version 5.4, many of the add-ons in P3D simply won’t get updated to 5.4.
This will probably happen with XP 12 as well. When 3rd party devs start abandoning XP, they will have a last version of their updated product just to placate their customers but if an updated XP 12 comes along after that, they may not update their product for that version of XP 12.
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Good point
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Apart from the eye candy gap, X-plane progress/updates/releases have always been very very slow.
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This is the other problem for XP 12. I think in about one or two Sim Update, MSFS makes more changes and more progress than XP did from XP 11.5 to XP 12. It took LR what, 2 years to go from XP 11.5 to XP 12?
And MSFS can get the same amount of progress and changes in about one to two Sim Updates. This is an additional reason why the gap between MSFS and XP 12 will only grow further. MSFS is running laps around XP at this point, it’s not even a fair race, IMO.
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Mate LR has got 20 people at their disposal at most. MSFS on the other hand has 250+. Wouldn’t you say progress is pretty much proportional to manpower? So yes it’ll keep evolving but at a much much slower rate than MSFS. The gap is going to get larger and larger until well…I’d rather not finish the sentence.
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Eye candy gap ? WOW… That is a gap that will never be filled, thus, there is no competition.
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Yeah I probably was a lil “drastic” with my last phrase 
although I’ve never been really fond of FF
And I agree with the Hotstart Challenger 650.
What I’m questioning, though, is how sustainable it is to keep investing in that platform now that the vast majority of users are in MSFS.
Personally I believe it makes very little sense, we’ll see
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Ha … No probs.
Totally understand where you are coming from though in your latest post 
So in 2023 when xp12 and 40th anniversary Ed is out 100 new flight simmers comes around. How many will pick MSFS before XP12? I guess at least 95.
In the same time loads of people quits using XP12 because of new life situation, health, boredom or just a new hobby. MSFS also suffers from this of course, but without recruitment there is no future for xp12.
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And look at what Totoritko had to charge for it, to make money off of it, $115 USD! For an extra $8 USD, you can buy the PMDG 737-800, AND the Fenix A320 for MFS.
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Yes, I have read loads of pilots using MSFS’s sat technology to help them with real life scenarios that are about to embark later on. How helpful do you find it compared to the old days when that tool wasn’t there and would you say it’s a very important feature of a flight sim platform?
Fly safe both virtually and IRL.
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I used to use FSX and real weather when I had to deliver (in a truck) across the state just to see what I should expect weather wise for the day. I saw a 70% accurate rating for that pursose +/-.
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I got my first PC in 1987 mostly for college (engineering) and flight simulation.
I’ve been using MSFS since FS95 for flight training. I got my license in '96, took me about 3-4 months I think to get my private and high performance ticket. In FS95, landing was verrry different, but systems were good, and, well, scenery was what it was. So you concentrated on what you could. As FS improved through FS2004 and FSX, the addition of Ultimate Terrain was a HUGE improvement for using landmarks for navigation. And in FS2004 and FSX, I was able to recreate the instrument panel and avionics of the plane I owned which was awesome.
Now with MSFS, the scenery is just so incredible that the immersion is nearly total, especially using VR (I have a 3080TI and HP G2 gen 2). And landing is a lot closer to what it feels like. Granted you don’t have the G-forces and there are some differences, but I find I don’t need to “care” so much about the differences as I used to. Perhaps that’s just experience, but I don’t think so.
But, to answer your question directly, personally, I think it’s very important for practicing my flights, learning the terrain in between and landmarks to look for, and checking out airports I’ve never been too, knowing the terrain around them, and understanding the approaches and departures.
And it’s just been getting better all the time, like the ability to now see airport information more easily (working with the GPS with the mouse is still a major pain, so using it for information is harder than in real life, so the new VFR map info is a big boon), and so many other improvements. I’m super excited for all the improvements in the interaction of the airplane with winds and tire friction that are coming.
In terms of the topic of this thread… I never really glommed onto XP; personally, I felt the flight model in FS was closer to how it feels when I fly, and the scenery was just awful (I never could get the Ortho stuff to work for me, and, with all the scenery options I had in FS, it wouldn’t have competed anyway).
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Yes, it’s far from cheap I agree
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This is the other issue with XP 12. Add-ons in XP are more expensive, possibly because the market is smaller. Look at the price of the Flight Factor A320 in XP 12: A320 Ultimate XP12 Extended-FlightFactor-A320-XP12. It’s $90 USD for the FF A320 in XP 12.
Now, as many people have said already, the Fenix A320 is simply better in quality than the FF A320. But the Fenix A320 is about $60 USD (after you convert the price in pounds to USD). So you are getting a better quality A320 in MSFS, at a lower price.
If XP 12 is your main simulator, that should drive you nuts. You are paying more, for lower quality in XP 12. Going forward, I think this will be the standard in XP 12, probably because of the smaller market.
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