Simviation Forums

BREAKING NEWS APRIL 23rd 2018 - announcement Bulletin

Dovetail Ceases Flight Sim World Development


LINK : https://www.airdailyx.net/article/dovetail-ceases-flight-sim-world-development/


In a rather shocking announcement on the Steam website, Dovetail Games has announced that they’ll be discontinuing development of their Flight Sim World title and removing it from the Steam store in the near future. It was only around a year ago that the developer released the program in early access, bringing the original Microsoft ESP code to a 64-bit environment and promising active development and new features to the aging program. While Flight Sim World never gained the following that Flight Simulator X, Prepar3D or X-Plane gathered, it was a young program and many people were excited for its continued development, including the further development of the new career mode and the eventual implementation of jet aircraft and more third-party products. Unfortunately, it appears that neither of those will come to fruition.

According to Dovetail’s post, they don’t see a “clear direction that allow [them] to keep to the development timeline [they’d] want,” also citing the player numbers they’d need (and apparently don’t have) as a factor in ending development. For those who have purchased and enjoyed Flight Sim World, the program will not disappear from your library. However, there will be no further updates or development from Dovetail, and at least for the foreseeable future Flight Sim World will remain in it’s current status and version. For those of you who do not currently own the simulator, it will remain on the Steam store until May 24, when it will be removed from the Steam store and unavailable for purchase indefinitely. Third party addons share the same status; if they’re owned, they will remain available to users. If they are not purchased, they will be removed from the Steam store and remain unavailable.

Comments below the article :

Unfortunate, but not a surprise. A perfect example of how NOT to start a franchise. The product had potential but the Dove Tail management destroyed it before it was even born with greed. Although I never used it, I feel its too bad really as some competition is good and drives innovation among competitors. One less now to innovate and compete…

Honestly i am not at all surprised. As long as X-Plane and Prepar3d are out there, I highly doubt any other flight simulator could even begin to try to compete. The only type of flight simulation that could even begin to get my attention in addition to those two would be a REALLY good combat flight simulator that is on par with the true to form physics we get in the aforementioned two titles.

DTG has tried, and "failed", to grasp my attention on any titles besides Train Simulator and CSX heavy Haul. And even then the only reason I dabble with those two is there is no other good railroad simulation titles out there. Now that i would welcome wholeheartedly.

Either way, DTG should never have even tried flight simulation with their current marketing models.


I was really hoping for this title to succeed, not because I wanted Dovetail to succeed but I was really hoping for another big player in this niche genre to create healthy competition for X-Plane and P3D developers.

I honestly thing that people were put off by the kind of "greedy crap they pull" with Train Simulator where they give away the base software and "charge ridiculous amounts" for some nice textures and very little else that can be called “simulation”.

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Comments above are NOT mine, BUT, by others found on that forum kink above !!

They are doing well with FSX:SE.

Not to just bad mouth DTG about FSW they really did improve FSX-Steam and I am most great for that for sure. I only paid $5.00 for and have enjoyed immensely. I did pay the full price for FSW and quickly learned that freeware was not ever going to work. For this FSW to work like its needs to work you need a Navidia 1080 card and mind was only 650. It would work but was very slow and could never really enjoy the game as designed. The graphics where alot better than Steam but mine was very slow to load due to an week Navidia card. But the fact that the freeware wouldn't work was its true failing. Sorry to see that it didn't work out for them. I am proud of what they did for FSX-Steam. Roy

Dovetail did not listen the warnings of the flight simulation community that they were not on the right path.
They have lived in their bubble and has exploded.

I did spend £20 to download the programme, this on the understanding that I could load FSX aircraft to it, there being guides 'out there' on how to do it, with certain limitations.
I very quickly found these 'limitations' effectively made it impossible to fly these loaded aircraft. Cockpits instruments were largely missing, flight dynamics would have shaken these aircraft to pieces before they overflown the up-wind end of the runway!
Although the aircraft available in FSW looked superb, I don't think I ever landed any with any sort of grace, they all seemed to land with a controlled crash. I quickly grew tired of flying the few available aircraft there were and frankly now could quite happily delete from my hard-drive! It would not be a great loss!

Started to get it but at the last minute decided against. Thankful for that! Hate it didn't work for those that got involved though.

I am not surprised at all about this announcement. This is not the first flight sim based game to go down the drain I had been following what looked like a promising program but it never came to life and died in the development stage, which was a big disappointment as it really looked promising. Not exactly sure what happened as everything looked like it was doing great but one day I was checking up on its progress and I could no longer find the link, and was told the company folded.
But easy come easy go.
I wish someone would come up with a decent game that does not cost a arm and a leg.
I just can not justify the cost for prepad3d I think it is over priced.

I just can not justify the cost for prepad3d I think it is over priced.

Pretty well every simmer I see is using the academic version. $59.95 last time I checked.
Thing about flying is that you are learning pretty well all the time so the 'academic' description can apply to anyone who is using it to learn or get an idea of what flying is like in real life - and being a real life pilot - Flight Simulator is pretty realistic in so many ways but most of all basic aircraft handling.

pete wrote:

I just can not justify the cost for prepad3d I think it is over priced.

Pretty well every simmer I see is using the academic version. $59.95 last time I checked.
Thing about flying is that you are learning pretty well all the time so the 'academic' description can apply to anyone who is using it to learn or get an idea of what flying is like in real life - and being a real life pilot - Flight Simulator is pretty realistic in so many ways but most of all basic aircraft handling.

I saw that option but the problem is I would have to buy new licenses for Active Sky 2016 and Active Sky Cloud Art. And that is something I would not want to do at this time. But who knows what the future will bring.