UPDATE: Aimee from Dovetail Games sent us a comment regarding the headline about no firm decision on whether airliners would be in the game. She clarified “there will be airliner content for FSW however we haven’t announced whether they will be add-ons only or implemented in core.”
Youtube and community member Froogle today released his weekly news show and went into depth with the huge announcement from Dovetail Games. Of course, we’re referring to the reveal of Flight Sim World. There are plenty of questions surrounding the new sim and Froogle did a bit of digging to find out more for the community.
Throughout the video, Froogle made some observations from the announcement video as well as asking Dovetail some questions regarding the sim. Be sure to check out the video as it’s full of useful information. Most importantly, we’ve extracted some of it which we feel is vital for the community to know about.
Firstly, there are no plans to ship Flight Sim World with VR. Despite Aerofly FS2 heavily focused on being VR capable, Dovetail have other priorities for their sim. Also mentioned is that FSUIPC will not be supported for the new sim. SimConnect will be, however.
Froogle asked why do Dovetail keep mentioning the fact the sim will run in 64-bit. The simple answer is “because you keep asking for it”. Dovetail did confirm (what we should all know by now anyway) that 64-bit doesn’t improve the performance, but does allow for more detail without the sim running out of memory. This has allowed developers to run more detail “without impacting performance.”
With all this detail, it’s interesting to note that the video shows no aircraft bigger than you GA type. So when asked if they “plan on having airliners too”, Dovetail replied that they haven’t made a “firm decision” yet. This is a little scary considering this is a fully fledged sim, but did say that FSW is “designed to be a simulation platform like FSX and P3D”. The primary reason for not being sure yet is they want to set quality benchmarks for third parties to either meet or surpass.
The Youtube star goes onto say that he’s seen mentions of a “PC version”, which lead him to asking Dovetail if there “will be a console version”. Their response: “we’re not ruling out the possibility”. Dovetail Games did commit by saying that the “16 person team is completely focused on the PC version”.
The final other nugget of information is regarding third party support. As we know, PMDG made their official stance very clear, and we’re awaiting to see what other developers will do. However, there is some confusion over how developers can sell their products for FSW. Dovetail Games have stated that developers will be allowed to sell their own products on their own website, BUT, will also have to sell the same product through their own channels. This is their own store as well as Steam. We won’t get into the detail regarding Steam sales and commissions, but this may pose a problem for some developers. This could cause an issue for simmers and ultimately the platform itself.
But when asked if it will be removed from Steam like Flight School, Dovetail assured fans that “no. We are in this for the long haul”. Of course, those who already had Flight School will get it for free.
We’ve contacted Dovetail Games ourselves to ask some questions. We’ll be sure to share those details soon.
