There's a lot of optimism around it right now. I'm just kind of hanging back.

They claim to be upgrading a lot of stuff but in the Q&A thread at AVSIM, they are very non-commital. If this is a sim that's being released in 2016 (which they claim the new full sim is late 2016, "Flight School" is April), then shouldn't the feature list be pretty set? What could make it better then P3D is if they are able to upgrade the landclass, navaids, buildings, textures, etc. They claim to be working on it, but will they pull it off? I don't know.

Right now their upcoming Flight School looks to be a worse off, stripped down 64bit FSX (there won't be addons so the 64 bit is meaningless right now) with crazy blue lighting. But they claim that their new sim later in the year is where the major changes will come. We'll see.

The "hoopla" is that someone is still trying to develop a flight simulator for personal use. That in itself is worthy of discussion and excitement.

If have had years of experience with Dovetail via the evolution of Train Simulator. Expect lots of marketing hype, lots of expensive DLC, but little improvement in the actual code. They did finally implement TrackIR in Train Simulator, but it still doesn't support basic DirectX joysticks/HOTAS, only Xbox game controllers.

So, forgive me for being skeptical that Dovetail games might actually be capable of releasing a flight simulator better than FSX in any useful way, much less competitive to Prepar3d. Competition is good, but to compete, you actually have to deliver what your marketing hype promises AND that had to be better and/or more cost-effective than the competition. My money is on Prepar3d remaining the defacto replacement for FSX: it is already available, is already superior to FSX, and it is still being improved.

My problem right now is when or if to commit to Prepar3d to enjoy the Simworks F-4B Phantom. TacPack only supports Prepar3d V2 (though it promises a free upgrade to V3 whenever they get around to supporting that version). Simworks F-4B doesn't officially support Prepar3d at all right now, and if it did, it would have to be V2 to use TacPack.

Dovetail Games' Flight Simulator doesn't even register on my horizon unless it natively supports air combat and has a fully modeled F-4 Phantom. Of course, if it ends up being largely compatible with FSX addons, but is somehow better than P3D, I would expect a mass migration of developers to support Dovetail, including VRS TacPack... all meaningless speculation until Dovetail releases the full sim.

There's also the licensing issues with Prepar3D. It's still somewhat a grey area if it's actually allowed for "consumer" use.

It is quite clear: it is not allowed for entertainment. If you fly for fun, buy FSX. If you are studying flight, buy P3D. I have studied flight all of my life, that fact that I find that entertaining should not stop me from continuing my studies with Lockheed's product. But if I am going to buy P3D, I have to be sure of a two things: 1) I have to be happy with the Simworks Studios F-4B, 2) The Simworks Studios F-4B and TacPack are fully supported in the latest version of P3D.

The F-4B is a rough beta. I am impressed with what they have so far, but I still would like to see the final product before committing more time and money.

I'm skeptical, we'll see. I hope we don't end up with more duct tape on old engines whose main effect is to delay further the emergence of a true new generation of flight sim. Maybe we'll need mainstream VR to really make it happen, but truely mainstream VR won't be around for a few more years (even though I'm a Oculus DK2 owner and future Vive owner, I reckon these are going to be way too much of a niche within a niche and won't really have much impact on the sim market, not yet). My guess so far is that I'll keep sticking with FlyInside + FSX and Prepar3D for a while.

They actually broadened it even further with the release of P3D 2.0. There's now a category for "simulation" in their licensing.

The only people who still make a big deal about it are the trolls on AVSIM who can't get over it.

New screenshot on the DTG Sim facebook page this morning.

I have P3D since 1.4, it cannot be advertised as a game, that is all.

You buy it under an Academic license, it is up to you what you do with it, I make skins for P3D to entertain myself not as a learning tool and I like to fly for fun, does that void my license ? no.

This is good news

Dovetail Games announces partnership with Orbx Simulation Systems
16 MARCH - DTG_MARTIN
Following the completion of long term discussions, Dovetail Games is pleased to announce we will be partnering with Orbx Simulation Systems in order to bring key aspects of their technology to Flight School and Flight Simulator, both scheduled for release this year.

Orbx Simulation Systems has dominated the flight simulation scenery space since CEO John Venema founded the company in 2006.

"We are thrilled to partner with Dovetail Games as they usher in a new era of 64-bit simulators built on robust technology that we have a decade of experience in developing for", says John Venema, CEO of Orbx Simulation Systems. "We've developed a solid working relationship with the Dovetail team and we're confident that our terrain will look absolutely stunning in their enhanced 3D engine and provide a level of immersion unlike anything experienced before. We look forward to a long a productive partnership."

“We are incredibly excited about working with Orbx on Flight School and Dovetail Games Flight Simulator”, says Stephen Hood, Creative Director at Dovetail games. “Orbx represents the pinnacle of what can be achieved in terms of in-game scenery, so collaborating with them on these projects was the obvious choice for us. We are deeply committed to partnering with both new and existing developers and content creators moving forwards to create the best possible combination of technologies to power our simulators – this is only the beginning”

Want to find out more about Dovetail Games Flight School? Find us online here:

Website: www.dtgflightschool.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dtgflightschool
Twitter: @dtgflightschool

Want to talk about Dovetail Games Flight Simulator? Check out the new dedicated DFS sub forum here on Steam:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/314160/discussions/16/

New (3/19) interview with DTG'S Stephen Hood and screenshots here:

Preorders are up - 15 euros. There's also a trailer (sadly no in-game footage).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/441920/

There's a link in the Steam discussions to an in-game video.

Essentially it looks like the built in FSX tutorials. Obviously it may differ / be improved but that's what it looks like.

likely FSX Re-Compiled w/ Modern GFX Engine's etc.

I haven't seen anything explaining what if any link there is between Flight School and the full sim coming later. Will there be 2 completely separate installs or will they share some of the install?

The info on Flight School is interesting, 40 GB space needed and the description says that it has a 'free flight' mode where you can fly anywhere in the world.

£11.99 sounds like it could be a good deal.

Terrain video up. Looks fairly nice, but even the video seems to stutter.

How do you know that.

would that be such a bad thing though? FSX is still around after a decade of service, but rapidly showing it's age as folks keep stuffing it full of more and more mods.

Frankly saying that video didn't impress me much. Stock P3D looks better IMHO.

The video looks like stock FSX with bluer atmospherics. I don't say that to be smart or bash them.

I just think it really actually looks like stock FSX with bluer atmospherics. In the city shots you can tell it's FTX Global (which we already knew), but autopen popup is still there and everything else is stock FSX.