No, it really is in many parts a totally new release. You will see that we use many of the new FS2024 technologies in the product.
However, when we tested the option to include passengers, we found it to be rather buggy; it looked a bit comical and was not on par with the rest of the product. The biggest problem, however, was that it increased the memory use (and this affected the framerate). We were not able to keep the 60hz standard we tried to stick to, and on the Xbox S, it was truly problematic. Usability always trumps features for us. Gameplay features are always the first to be dropped. The kind of customers we aim for do not care much about some FS2024 features, such as career mode.
Besides, our strength is really in the systems, that is where we invested our resources and the resources of the system it runs on. You can see that reflected best in the feature list.
I hope this helps you better understand our choices.
Mathijs Kok
PMDG