Happy New Year!
2017 was an incredible year for FSElite. We went from being the new kids on the block to becoming the leader in dedicated flight sim news, reviews and more. It really has been down to the gracious community, support from the fantastic developers and the kind words we receive every day.
We thought we would have a quick look back at 2017. In January, we started our 2016 User Awards, which was a great way for the community to give back to the developers – voting for their favorite product from the past year. Also, during the same month, Orbx cancelled their “Project X” work, which turned out to be X-Plane scenery. Funny how a year makes a difference! Finally, January closed with an impressive release, the PMDG 747 Queen of the Skies II finally graced the virtual skies.
February was just as busy. I uncovered a piracy plot by a studio called Cloud Surf Team. They did try it again a few months later, but we’ll come back to that. Also this month, P3Dv4 leaks and rumours were started. Mathijs from Aerosoft also probably regretted sharing his desktop too. Whoops. With all these rumours going on, Orbx did at least confirm they weren’t going to charge for their upgrades for P3DV4.
We kicked off March with Developer Month!* Probably the most ambitious project seen by any flight sim media source. We spent the whole month talking to a host of developers, sharing our stories and much more. We spoke to the likes of Matt Davies (projectFLY), Misha (Orbx), TOGA Projects, Airline2Sim and TFDi Designs. And before we forget, X-Plane 11 was also released in March.
*Some of the images are broken since we upgraded the site – sorry!
During April Fools day, we presented Snafu, our Facebook Messenger got. We had over 60 emails and 100s of messages asking us for more details. Sorry to trick you! The Level-D 767 was made available in P3DV3, Digital Designs released Leipzig and we provided you with a first look at Ultimate Traffic Live.
If you remember, May was one of the most exciting times of 2017. It saw the release of 2 new sims! Flight Sim World by Dovetail Games went into Early Access and Lockheed Martin released the 64-bit Prepar3D V4. With P3DV4 now out in the open, many developers came forward with their plans. Finally, QualityWings Simulations said their 787 would be out in the Summer of the same year.
Half way through the year and it doesn’t let up! We started the month of June with a review from a non-Airbus product from BlackBox Simulations (turned out to be good) and the PMDG 777 was released for P3DV4. Obviously June was probably best known for Flight Sim Con 2017. I think my favourite piece of news from Flight Sim Con 2017 was the first previews of the Level-D 757…which hasn’t been shown off since.
July provided more exciting news for us. We partnered with SimMarket to provide you guys with LOADS of opportunity to win a bunch of prizes. We feel this has certainly been delivered since July and hope you’re enjoying this amazing support. PMDG released their DC-6 for FSX/P3D, FlyTampa announced Atlanta and Dovetail Games integrated trueSKY with Flight Sim World.
Aerosoft’s CRJ finally released in August 2017. The long awaited aircraft was finally out for people to use! Other news in August was that Orbx had a sale, REX released some PTA presets and we really enjoyed FlightBeam’s KMSP.
Summer was now over, but the QualityWings Simulations 787 still wasn’t in the hands of simmers, but the preview trailer by Jordan King made up for it. Also during September, Lockheed Martin held a AMA on Reddit, and Turbulent Design’s Terra Flora was released. This was also a huge month for FSElite as we launched Version 2.0 (and 2.1) of the website. We also introduced our fantastic Featured YouTube Community.
Jordan and Patrick flew to the UK in October for the Flight Sim Show. The show in Cosford was a huge success for us and we met many of you amazing people. When we got home, FSLabs released their A320 for P3DV4.1, FlightBeam was releasing new version of their past scenery and Majestic allowed people to fly the Dash 8 in the 64-bit sim.
The penultimate month of the year, November, was just as busy. The team behind the FlythemaddogX MD80 previewed the aircraft using TFDi Design’s newly announced tech True Glass, CaptainSim announced the 757 Captain III in development and Just Sim released the VC10.
Without a doubt, December turned into one of the busiest months of the year. 2 flight sim shows (Flight Sim Con / Flight Sim Expo) are now fully public, iBlueYonder released X-Plane scenery and LatinVFR bring us a V4 version of Miami that none of knew we needed. I think the biggest success of December was the Elite Christmas Raffle. I cannot express how grateful I am to the fantastic developers and publishers who provided us with the products that they did. It was a huge amount of work, but work that was hopefully worth it.
We fully intend to be just as busy in 2018 – with plenty more to come from us, the developers and beyond. We hope you keep FSElite in your Bookmarks for the future.
Thank you again for your continued support and we’ll see you next year!
