On October 7th 2017, Just Flight and PC Pilot co-hosted their fifth annual Flight Sim Show at RAF Cosford Royal Air Force Museum in Staffordshire. This year was set to be the largest one yet with over 35 exhibitors and 1,800 attendees, meaning a lot was going on this year from Remex Software showcasing their soon to release Deadstick Bush Simulator, to TFDi Design showing off their Boeing 717 and latest lighting tweaks to Prepar3D v4.

During the event, I was able to interview 13 of the developers and compiled this into a video showcasing the events of the day. In this article, I will be providing a summary of each of these exhibitors, talking about their latest releases, as well as discussing the future of each based on what was said during the event!

Laminar Research

Laminar Research went in big this year, with this being the second major event they've been to since the release of X-Plane 11, and with their major 11.10 update just around the corner they were very keen to show us that!

Speaking to Marty Arant, I was told how X-Plane started back in the early 1990s, not as a commercial product but instead as a simulator designed by Austin Meyer, as he was unhappy with the current simulators of the time. He also explained to me more about how X-Plane differs from that of other simulators, using a technique called 'Blade Element Theory' which defines an aircraft's characteristic through the exterior model and how airflow works around it rather than using the 'table look up' method, which uses pre-defined characteristics to determine how an aircraft flies.

  

The 11.10 update will include many new tweaks to the worldwide environment, including new landmarks located around many of the world's major cities. New modified default airports such as Las Vegas will also be included, bringing the simulator even more to life with a new range of autogen buildings and road layouts.

Virtual Reality was also another massive talking point, with Philipp Muenzel making this a major part of their seminar talking about how Laminar expect to introduce a full interactive environment and hangar for the user to set up their simulator within.

Overall, there are some very high hopes coming from Laminar Research as development on X-Plane is full steam ahead!

Remex Software

Remex is a new developer in the simulation scene, showcasing their latest product Deadstick Bush Flight Simulator to the community. Their seminar was all about the simulator and all of the features it will include. I also got a chance to speak to Chris Cheetham about the company and the simulator.

Remex are a new company celebrating their third year, having previously worked with an F1 team. Deadstick is their first commercial product, combining realistic features and Cheetham's love for flying.

While a rare sight for flight simulators, the Unity engine has been used for this project as the developers behind Deadstick (well, only two guys) both have experience in the engine, making it a perfect match for Remex.

The simulator itself will include realistic physics, a fully explorable fantasy environment full of different rugged terrain for you to hone your skills in, and a high fidelity, albeit unbranded aircraft for you to fly and play with. You will be able to control every part of your aircraft, including a full manual aircraft loader system in which you can manually load and unload cargo. The world environment has full PBR modelling and tessellation, including full foliage meaning this simulator should look fantastic once released!

Dovetail Games

Dovetail Games this year were showcasing their latest simulator, Flight Sim World. Based on the Microsoft ESP engine, it brings the classic flight simulator back to life with a new x64 system as well as improved scenery, flight dynamics and high quality default aircraft.

Their seminar was led by the lead of flight simulators at Dovetail himself, Stephen Hood, a former Codemasters developer who worked on the F1 series. He explained to us at the start that he wanted to be as open as he could during his talk, leaving time for an extended Q&A at the end of the event.

Flight Sim World is STILL IN EARLY ACCESS - they have tried to make this clear to people who expected everything from the start, from Day 1! Unlike Laminar Research, Microsoft or any of the other major companies, they do not have 20+ years experience in making flight simulators. Dovetail itself formed in 2008 and worked on train and fishing simulators from the beginning. The Flight Sim World team still very much needs new people with experience to help push it along and improve in in the future.

  

Another major talking point was the release of DLCs so soon. The only reason Dovetail have done this is so that developers can test out and tweak the SDK in order for it to work with later releases. Just Flight and Bluesky both have the aircraft SDK, while Turbulent Designs are working on the scenery SDK. Once it has all been tweaked and Flight Sim World's development more solid, then we will see it open to the wider markets.

QualityWings

QualityWings are known for their high quality aircraft for FSX and P3D. With the release of their Boeing 787 two weeks ago, they were keen to show it off to us at the event!

QualityWings announced their Boeing 787 in 2010, with full development not starting until late 2013, early 2014. it was then later released in October 2017 after three years of work and testing, partially in open doors to the community.

The future of this aircraft sees a -10 added to the add-on as a free update and NOT as a paid expansion once the new model is in public service (Boeing only finished the first 787-10 production model in the days before the show!).

As for their Boeing 737 Classic, the future for that is quite bleak with numerous issues surrounding the model - including the fact that all of the original developers of it have since left the development team. Chances are, we'll unfortunately never see it reach the light of day!

Aerosoft

Aerosoft attended the Flight Sim Show once again, but as usual were more towards selling their products rather than showcasing anything new. I was however lucky enough to chase down their CEO Winfried Diekmann who talked to me about the future of Aerosoft and where it would be going in the new year!

In 2017, Aerosoft it seems have taken a back-seat in terms of in-house development, with partners Digital Aviation bringing out the only notable release this year (CRJ X). Instead the company has been releasing a lot of their scenery and aircraft, ensuring that it is all P3D v4 compatible (under the 'Professional' name), with the Airbus A320 series expected to arrive early next year.

Next year Aerosoft plan to go back into full development with the A330, which is rather exciting!

ORBX Simulation Software

ORBX were very open with us, with John Venema taking the seat at the forefront of their stand! With the release of Germany South, they had a full simulator available where people could sit down and fly around looking at the new surrounding scenery.

John explained to us that all of their add-ons are now in fact P3D v4 compatible with systems like ObjectFlow completely revamped. Flight Sim World is also very much an option once an SDK has been released for the simulator.

I also got John to open up very slightly about his spat with Austin Meyer which was quite interesting. He was happy to accept that they both have a very "mutual disrespect for each other" based on a couple of disagreements they had a few years ago, but did state that Meyer is a very respectable and entertaining guy, wishing him the best of luck with future projects.

Next year we will be seeing a load of new openLC terrains including Asia and Africa, then the potential for Northern Europe and Russia in the future.

We also heard a little update on the ongoing Paypal issue they have had over the last year in which their account has been frozen with a large amount of money essentially being lost. The company have completely moved away from this system and now use Stripe to handle all purchases, seeing a boost in revenue as opposed to a drop like many were expecting.

Just Flight

Just Flight who were co-hosting the event talked about their future releases, as well as managing and introducing each of the seminars throughout the day.

The biggest thing to come out of Just Flight this year is the release of their Arrow III for Dovetail Games Flight Sim World, and the soon-to-release first in-house X-Plane aircraft! These will give Dovetail Games a strong foothold within the flight simulator market, being the only company with add-ons released across all five major flight simulators: FSX, P3D, FSW, X-Plane & Aerofly.

Being in close ties with Dovetail Games, Just Flight are also working on the SDK for Flight Sim World. This enables them to give Dovetail Games tips and tweaks on how to make it more effective, and getting it prepared for a wider release - first to developers, then to the rest of the community, once the simulator leaves early access.

Next year we hope to see the release of their VC-10 as well as a new Avro Vulcan (currently in the works), the famous Falkland War bomber in the shape of a delta wing.

flightsimlabs

flightsimlabs or FSLabs are a developer who specialise in high-fidelity aircraft released at study-level, meaning that their aircraft and flight dynamics could be used in the real world for training pilots.

With the release of the A320X not so long ago, a P3D v4 version expected over the next coming days and an A319 close to completion, I had a chance to speak to their CEO Lefteris Kalamaras and developer Andrew Wilson about their take on the release.

FSLabs was started by Kalamaras soon after leaving PMDG, as he was ready to develop his own aircraft for FSX. At the Seattle developers conference, he met with SSTSim developer Andrew Wilson and decided to team up to develop the now famous Concorde X for FSX. Once that had released, they started development on the A320X which now sees full development with new releases expected over the next coming months and weeks.

They also told me that we will be seeing an A319 and A321 version of the aircraft, as well as sharklets for all as expansion packs, before working on the neo as a separate add-on. This is due to the fact that it is different to the standard A320.

In terms of future aircraft, they were more secretive, but did reveal on their forums certain hints to which aircraft they will be developing next!

TFDi Design

TFDi Design is famous for their utilities that they provide for flight simulator pilots, the most notable being their smartCARS virtual airline client. This year they were showing off their fairly new Boeing 717 with a 20% off offer attached to it! I had a chance to speak to Collin Biedenkapp about this.

The story behind the 717 and where it came about was actually quite a funny one. In the office one day an artist came up to him and joked "Hey, you know what we need? A 717, nobody has done one of those". After a little research, it turned out that there was in fact a gap in the market where there were no (good) Boeing 717s available for any flight simulator! That's when development started, almost six years ago.

We also learnt a little about Biedenkapp's past as a freeware developer and how his love for developing flight simulator content came from. With a couple of friends they realised that they could do a lot more by forming a company and selling their products, which is where TFDi came from!

IVAO

It has been a very big year for IVAO, with a whole new web site and IVAC 2 launcher released to the public less than a month ago! I spoke to Danny Richmond about his views on IVAO and how they plan to expand in the future!

The first major talking point was the web site itself, a new navigation bar and a vastly improved tutorial system with the aim of introducing new pilots and air traffic controllers to the network.

The IVAC 2 launcher is also massively improved over its predecessor, as it includes new features like data link between pilots and controllers and a new tagging system making communication between each controller much easier than before.

IVAO pride themselves on their software, and how realistic it looks compared to real systems used by air traffic controllers. Also of great importance is how clear voice communications are between the tower and pilot. They also boast a very friendly community on both their own forums and Teamspeak 3 channels, with people generally helping each other whenever it is required.

VATSIM

VATSIM this year were here to talk very loosely about their new voice codec and voice UNICOM that we are expecting to see in the near future.

Speaking to Gunnar Lindahl, he explained to me that this new system was revealed back in July with both of these set to make voice UNICOM a reality, something that people have wanted for a long while now. He couldn't however give any dates on this but keep an eye out on their web site for more information soon.

We also learned about the unique selling point (USP) of VATSIM: the most realistic system out there for simulator pilots and ATC. The clients are quick and easy to set up, logging into VATSIM is fast and once you are in, you're immersed into the nature of the simulator.

PC Pilot

PC Pilot were the second hosts of the event, holding two stands on the day - One to sell magazines and a second to speak to their editor Derek Davis.

Speaking to Derek, he spoke about the history of PC Pilot and where it originated from, in this case being bought by Key Publishing in 2003 from Just Flight and himself taking over the publication two years later.

The magazine is excited by the latest releases and updates of Flight Sim World and X-Plane 11, with Aerofly FS and Deadstick adding variety to the mix (after a very long period of silence).

We also learned a little more about the decision to stop releasing the CDs with the magazine, as the size limit severely limited what could be included. By having everything online, it vastly improves what kind of add-ons readers can download.

Conclusion

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the show and meeting up with many of the attending developers. With the majority of the day being packed out, it was good to see the Flight Simulator community out in force. This shows that despite it being such a niche market, there are still plenty of people who are willing to go out and meet with the people that produce their simulators and add-ons in person!

For those that pre-booked their tickets, they all received a free copy of PC Pilot July/August 2017, a Just Flight pen and a free download for Just Flight's DHC-1 Chipmunk or F4U-1 Corsair! One other freebie that was given out but not mentioned above which I also liked, was the ProSim-AR airplane plush. PC Pilot also had their May/June 2017 magazine to give away on the day from their stand, Dovetail Games were happy enough to give away their T-Shirts and hats they had on the day and IVAO also gave out lanyards (which I missed out on). I also bought the Just Flight DC-8-10 to 40, an aircraft I've been wanting to get my hands on for a little while now.

While nothing is concrete at this point, the show seems set to return next year, and looking at how the last weekend went it should be even bigger than before! Once it has all been announced and the show dates are confirmed, do definitely consider it, as I'm sure you'll have a blast...

You might even get a chance to meet me!

Michael Hayward