striker wrote:Wonder if we'll have to pay for the upgrade if we already bought the 1st version Academic?
I'm sure that you will. This won't be version 1.5. It's a totally new version.
And from what little news gets out, I think that it'll be significantly better. Just look at this plane from their web site. It could be a real plane.
The flip side of that is that it'll be far more demanding, computer wise. This is intended for commercial use, i.e. companies that can easily afford to spend $6,000 to $10,000+ on a purpose-built computer.
We had best expect to hear a lot of complaining from the flight sim community over the need for computer upgrades.
If the cost is too much, remember - FSX is getting better and better thanks to the add-ons that are out right now, and those that are soon to be released.
Anyone who will settle for something that's only a little bit better than FSX, and avoid possible high cost computer upgrades, had best buy Prepar3d V1.4 while it's still available.
From Wikipedia -
Lockheed Martin Prepar3D"In 2009, Lockheed Martin announced that they had negotiated with Microsoft to purchase the intellectual property (including source code) for the Microsoft ESP product."I think that LM bought the rights because they wanted to create a virtual world foundation for military, and other, training.
And buying the rights from Microsoft was probably much cheaper than fighting off copyright infringement suites over the likely similarities between FSX and whatever they might develop.
If flight sim enthusiasts do buy it, fine. The teenager who buys a copy now, may be in a position to influence whoever he works for in the future, to buy it for their training needs.
Although the price will go up over time, I see no problem in buying a new version every few years. If the newer version isn't much better, just keep using the older version.
After all, lets face it - How old is FSX? It was first released
October 17, 2006!If MS had released a new version in 2010 or 2011, a lot of us would be using it now.
