Orbx’s John Venema has today announced that Orbx will NOT be continuing development of Project X. Despite the detailed road-map posted just a few weeks ago, the team have determined through various criteria that X-Plane won’t be a platform Orbx will develop on for the foreseeable future.
John said that “it’s important for a company to share its vision with customers and generate excitement around future plans” before detailing this is exactly why Orbx, and probably many developers, refrain from showing off pre-alpha screenshots. It’s understandable in this competitive market, but a decision that will surely disappoint many users.
To rub salt into the wound, it appears that the screenshot shown off from Project X was a “98% complete” KCGX Meigs Field which was contracted out to Orbx to be ported. Other than animated characters, the scenery was a real product and ready for both X-Plane 10 and 11.
With so many projects on-going and different experiments happening, the team had to make a decision. Unfortunately, internal measurements, SDKs and community markets all had a part to play in that choice being one X-Plane users probably won’t like.
He went on to confirm what we knew anyway, that Project A is Aerofly FS2, that there will be major announcements in June at Flight Sim Con and that they will continue to develop for FSX/P3D and install the P3D 4.x SDK to see what it’s like. And of course, the Dovetail SDK whenever that comes out.
Disappointing news to many I’m sure, but in a business world, this seems to be the right decision for them.
