2.1 An impression
With respect to flight simulator specific issues the scope of FScockpit.com is the
Microsoft Flight Simulator. (A more general perspective on the Microsoft Flight Simulator
and its development is given on Flight Simulator History.) Other flight simulators
that "know" active groups of flight simulator cockpit builders are Falcon, X- plane
and FlightGear.
The Microsoft Flight Simulator has been there since the very beginning of the PC
era. It is one of the oldest products of Microsoft, introduced shortly after MS-DOS
and BASIC. It all began around 1975 with Bruce Artwick, a student engineer at the
University of Illinois with a high interested in aviation. He wrote a paper with
the title "Visual Flight Displays for Aircraft Simulations Using Minicomputers" and
proved that on a system 6800 one could run a three dimensional flight simulation.
In 1977 Bruce Artwick founded SubLogic and began the development of graphics software.
In 1981 SubLogic introduced the Flight Simulator on the Apple II. In the same year
Microsoft and SubLogic agreed to develop the flight simulator for MS-DOS. At that
time "gaming" on it self was not the only objective. This type of software was considered
very advanced and high-tech with respect to graphic capacity and calculation. It
would be a "show-off" of the possibilities of the PC & MS-DOS.
Version 1.0 of the Microsoft Flight Simulator was launched in November 1982. It was
one of the first games for PC and one of the most demanding applications for PC at
that time. The Flight Simulator quickly became a reference, it was used as a test
for IBM PC compatibility. An interesting side step is that in 1983, Bruce Artwick
helped Compaq to develop the first clone of the IBM PC. The Microsoft Flight Simulator
was used to eliminate the errors from development of the BIOS. Resulting in what
is said a first Compaq that was actually more reliable than an IBM PC.
In 1984 Version 2.0 was introduced and could be used with both a mouse and joystick.
During this period also a special version for Cessna was developed, used as a teaser
for sales. In this version the plane would not crash in order not to frighten potential
buyers.
Starting from version 3.0 (launched in 1988) it became a solid Microsoft PC-based
game.
Subsequent versions where:
Version 4.0 / 1989: This version made a major leap with respect to scenery (roads,
bridges and buildings).
Version 5.0 / 1993: From this version it is public that it required more than 30,000
hours of development. It was the first version to have a scenery data base covering
the whole world and to simulate seasons and time of day.
Version 5.1 / 1995: Included more enhancements including weather effects as storms,
clouds and fog.
Version 6 / 1996: (Windows 95) Two new planes where introduced, the Boeing 737 and
the Extra 300. Also more support for first time users was introduced.
Version 6.1 / 1997: (Flight Simulator 98) The 15 year milestone. Support for higher
resolution and the first true helicopter simulation (Bell JetRanger)
Version 7.0 / 1999: (Flight Simulator 2000) Improvements on terrain and textures.
Included all world airports and a navaids database. New aircrafts where Boeing 747,
Mooney, King Air and Concorde.
Version 7.1 / 2000: Update for Flight Simulator 2000.
Version 8.0 / 2001: (Flight simulator 2002) Automatic generated buildings and trees.
Introduction of the virtual cockpit with working instruments. Advanced air traffic
at airports and in the air and "live" ATC.
Version 9.0 / 2003: (Flight Simulator Century of Flight) More improvements on weather,
and scenery. Introduction of more aircraft types.
Version 9.1 / 2004: Update for Flight Simulator Century of Flight.
Version 10.0 / 2006: (Flight Simulator X) More improvements on scenery. The addition
of a “game” element by means of missions. SimConnect as an open interface for add-
on developers. More new aircrafts.
In 1989 Bruce Artwick left SubLogic and started the company BAO from which he continued
to develop the Flight Simulator for Microsoft. In 1995 he sold BAO (and the rights
for the Flight Simulator) to Microsoft.
Starting from version 3 (1988) commercial add-on developers produced additional software
for the Microsoft Flight Simulator. At around the same time devoted and highly technical
hobbyists started to develop “freeware” add-ons and flight simulator cockpits. In
1989 a development tool Aircraft & Scenery designer became available, in 1996 the
Scenery Enhancement Editor. By 1997 there is a large community of both active users
and developers. A considerable set of Microsoft flight Simulator development tools
(commercial & freeware) is available. More advanced users start to use joysticks,
yokes and pedals. The community of flight simulator cockpit builders starts to grow.
At this moment there is a huge group of owners of the Microsoft Flight Simulator,
it is one of the if not the best- selling PC games of all times. In 1997 over an
accumulated number of 4.5 million copies of the Microsoft Flight Simulator where
sold world wide. This increased to over 21 million copies in 1999 according to Guinness
World Records: "MS Flight Simulator was released by Microsoft in April 1982 and had
sold a total of 21 million units by June 1999. Aircraft available for simulation
in Flight Simulator 2000 include Concorde, the Boeing 737-400 and 777- 300, the Learjet
45, the Bell 206B JetRanger helicopter and the Stopwith Camel.". No official records
of sales after 1999 could be found, but they must be good considering the top 10
ratings of new releases of the Microsoft Flight Simulator on sites like gamespot.
The rise of internet gave a large contribution to the international Flight Simulator
community. Initially by facilitating forums like "Gamers" on CompuServe. In the period
around 1995 dedicated sites like AVSIM or Microwings started to appear. From then
on the online presence of the Flight Simulator community is growing year by year.
Country specific portals appear, virtual (international) teams are hosting sites
and publish add- ons, and an increasing number of private individuals create there
own sites and publish their own add-ons.
But perhaps evenly important is the increasing professional use of the Microsoft
Flight Simulator. On more and more flight schools a Microsoft Flight Simulator based
trainer can be found. A highlighted example is the US Navy that issues a customized
version of the Microsoft Flight Simulator to all student pilots enrolled in Naval
Training Courses. An extensive study on the training value of PC based flight simulators
found that students who use it during early flight training tend to have higher scores
(NAVAL Education). A different example is MIT where the Department of Aeronautical
and Astronautical Engineering initiated a major curriculum transformation to support
active learning and simulation. The Microsoft Flight Simulator is integrated into
nearly every course in the department. The faculty created modeling and analysis
tools closely coupled to the Microsoft Flight Simulator so that students can simulate
flying aircraft of their own design. The objective is to engage students in rich
experiential learning and improve their real-world knowledge.
In total (also in the perspective of its open architecture) one can state that the
Microsoft Flight Simulator facilitates more than an average game, it facilitates
besides plain fun for a lot of users a serious hobby and for a considerable group
even serious business.
As can be seen on regular online surveys on various sites the vast majority of users
are male and over 20 years old. Estimations (2005) are that between 2 and 3 million
people fly the Microsoft Flight Simulator on a regular basis. Well over 130.000 fly
regular online by means of VATSIM, IVAO or local variants. There is an impressive
amount of activity on the web. On a monthly basis there are in total millions of
downloads activated from add-ons from portals like AVSIM, Flightsim and Simviation,
special sites like Project Opensky, PMDG, Premaircraft and Project Fokker and the
many variants around. It is hard to get figures about the commercial market for add-on
suppliers like Aerosoft, Flight1 or ABACUS and all the other mostly web-based suppliers.
Based on publications over the years and since they almost all have growing offerings,
it is save to say that there are tens-of-thousand of copies of flight simulator add-ons
sold world wide per year.
The development of add-ons by users themselves is directly influenced by the open
SDK (Software Development Kit) policy around the Microsoft Flight Simulator. There
is some interesting research based on a relative large online survey (Henkel & Thies).
It shows that (1) this policy allows fulfilling specific customer needs at lower
cost and a higher degree of satisfaction, (2) the toolkit itself can be considered
as an attractive product feature and (3) the resulting user innovations can be a
valuable source of new product concepts for the manufacturer and/or other users.
The Microsoft Flight Simulator seems to provide the right environment: all that is
required is a PC and the SDK (and for several SDK's an additional programming environment),
the add-ons are relatively loosely coupled and require compared to an average open
source software environment less high level expertise. This gives a setting where
resulting user developments / innovations –being software (or program definitions)–
can be passed on easily between, facilitated by the large amount of Microsoft Flight
Simulator dedicated sites and portals. The survey shows that 70% of the developers
is older than 25. One of interesting results of this study is that 25% of the add-
on developers share their work with others. Looking at the number of downloads
available on the various sites, this implies a huge community of users that create
extensions to the Microsoft Flight Simulator. The developers in general present as
a primary drive: joy, expression of creativity, create an own "world" and improvement
of development skills. Basically these drives may be translated as "the limit is
your own imagination". Finally the survey shows that the potential regarding add-on
development is much greater, because there is a large group that would like to get
involved, but are hold back by the steep learning curve of technology and documentation.
When one has the ability to make add-on development more transparent and understandable,
then this is undeniable an area with high potential for book writers and toolkit
developers. To be able to be submerged into a computer game with your own products
of creativity is a temptation that at the end most game players can not / will not
withstand.
So how large is the sub-community of flight simulator cockpit builders? Project Magenta
claimed in an interview at Berrygelderblom (2005) that they have several thousand
customers all over the world. In general it is difficult to get a clear picture.
Over-all the supplier side shows over 100 (and growing) suppliers of cockpit parts.
Although not all of these ventures give the impression that selling parts provides
a 100% source of income, there is a growing number that does and also introduces
new products on a regular basis. This is only possible if they sell a reasonable
amount of products. Additionally one can see competition, resulting in the need to
explore new technologies in order to survive and/or distinguish from competitors.
As a customer we benefit by lowering prices and increasing functionality. From a
more overall perspective one can see that the market is shifting from high price
to moderate price for ready build Microsoft Flight Simulator based cockpits. This
brings these type of devices in reach of a large potential market consisting of every
serious airfield / flight club / flight school around the world and in reach of the
high end of the private market. For home build (parts based) flight simulator cockpit
development the market is shifting from high expertise/price to average/low expertise/price
with suppliers around that try to compete on the "plug-and-play" level of the products
they sell. Everyone who is able to connect some cables and do some basic configuration
is in reach of some sort of setup of a flight simulator cockpit.
