Less than 24 hours ago, FSElite provided some news to customers of, the now defunct, RealAir Simulations. The news was that, despite the company having been dead and buried for near-2 years, Sean from RealAir was working on updating the installers to support P3D v4.
Hoping this meant that RealAir may be making a return, we reached out to Sean hoping that this meant something new was on the horizon. In doing so, he also clarified why the recent installer updates were being published.
“When we closed shop in 2015 we promised to make sure our customers wouldn’t be left with products they couldn’t install. With the recent closure of our old site, our existing installers will no longer work, because they need to contact the old RealAir server to activate. The new installers available at www.realairsimulations.net are a service to our previous customers to make sure they can continue to enjoy our aircraft going into the future. The new Turbine Duke and Legacy installers have been available for nearly a year now, but I only recently got around to making the B60 installer available. I’ll be adding installers for the Spitfire, Scout and SF260 in the next few weeks.
Most of our customers have switched from FSX to P3D v4, so I thought it would be worth adding the ability to install our aircraft into P3D v4. Many of our customers were doing this themselves already by hand editing various files. It’s worth noting that when you install the B60 Duke into P3D v4, it is exactly the same version as the original FSX version released many years ago, aside from the ability to install into P3D. Our newer products – the Turbine Duke and Legacy, were updated prior to the closure of RealAir, with improved sounds, support for third party P3D GPS gauges and a number of other improvements to better adapt them to P3D. Unfortunately the B60 Duke doesn’t have these newer features.”
In our news piece yesterday, the comments section began to fill up with speculation that these aircraft were now freeware because the company was no longer trading, and the installers were free to download for anybody who wished to do so. Sean clarified the legalalities and licensing of these.
“…in response to some of the comments on your site, I want to make it clear that they are definitely not “freeware”, I’ve tried to be as clear as possible about this in the wording on the new site as well as in the installer EULAs.”
The biggest question though was whether this meant RealAir would be returning to active development. Sean painted a picture of the history that lead to RealAir winding up:
“Regarding a return to RealAir developing aircraft again – RealAir was a collaboration between Rob Young and myself, with joint ownership of the products between the two of us. Rob and I will not be collaborating on any future projects, and placing the existing RealAir aircraft back on sale is also not possible. So I can say with certainty that there will not be a return of RealAir Simulations.”
There was good news though, with Sean confirming that he is working on something new:
“I can say that I myself have again become involved in developing aircraft for P3D, and I hope to have some news in that regard shortly!”
While he doesn’t go into more detail than that, he did promise in later e-mails that he’ll be sharing more details soon.
So, as they say, this cloud did come with a silver lining.
