This tinker factor is par for the course with the world of flight sims. Due to the technical limitations of the time, having such add-ons started to feel more and more like a necessity the more players engaged with the sim.įor myself, I nostalgically recall spending hours researching what the best add-ons were and looking at other people’s setups to make mine look as impressive. The largest add-ons don’t just plug into the existing sim, they truly add a whole new partition to the experience, particularly scenery/airport upgrades and utilities like texture and sound enhancers. The “base sim” is treated as such: like a building’s foundation. Particularly in the FSX days, add-ons were an essential but sometimes crude way of trying to help the ageing sim with the fast improving times.ĭifferent circumstances exacerbated FSX‘s situation, but it’s still a situation that every other flight sim has faced. Not to mention there’s the always looming threat of potential instability due to add-ons conflicting with one another.
Amassing several different add-on products to upgrade the sim’s visuals, scenery, and aircraft would not only be an overhaul, it would be a huge consumption problem time-wise, money-wise, and resource-wise. With the lack of a true successor for quite some time, the FSX community had to make do with the sim as it was and artificially enhance it as the years grew longer. The sim infamously had some gaping holes left in its coding that were never properly plugged due to Microsoft shuttering its development studio. With FSX‘s obscenely long shelf life of about 15 years, add-on makers had to make something of what was essentially a “mostly” done platform. Particularly with FSX, however, the phrase “growing long in the tooth” fits all too well when describing its situation.
Add-on makers, both professional and hobbyist, were left to continue tinkering away with the remaining titles for as long as it was feasible.
That said, this was primarily a result of Microsoft pulling away from the series after FSX.
With the internet rising sharply in popularity primarily during the FS2004 era, this version of the sim - along with the penultimate FSX - chugged along for an even longer period of time.Įarly versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator were responsible for introducing a sizeable number of its players to the concept of paid expansions. As the series grew with time, each new edition had more and more add-on products to offer. Seeing that the Microsoft Flight Simulator series has always been one of the biggest names in the sim genre, no doubt it’s responsible for introducing thousands, if not millions of folks to the concept of add-ons.Įven going back to early versions of the series, add-on (or expansion) CDs for scenery upgrades and even core sim functionality upgrades were a thing. Sure, most games today receive post-launch content (especially “live service” titles), but simulators were doing this long before it hit the mainstream. Its playbook is just about the best we’ve seen in the industry yet.Īdd-on products for simulators has been a long-standing industry norm. The thing is, while this series of events is par for the course, as is the case with most other major simulators, Microsoft Flight Simulator plays by a unique set of rules compared to its direct competitors and predecessors. The flow of new products has gone from a trickle to a stream, and yet, we’re still in the early stages of what is very likely going to be a very long shelf life for the sim. It has grown substantially not only in terms of player base, but also core features, and, quite fittingly, the amount of additional content. Microsoft Flight Simulator will zoom past its second anniversary later this year, and a lot about the game has changed since its maiden voyage.