Flight Sim lives on

By now I'm sure you've heard the news that Microsoft has laid-off the ACES development team behind the hugely popular Flight Simulator series.

Flight Simulator was Microsoft's oldest product still in continued development - it pre-dates Windows by years - and many former ACES members have been posting online that this is a black day for the flight sim hobby.

However there's light at the end of the tunnel. We put in a call to Microsoft earlier and received the equivalent of a "no comment", however I've just received another email from a Microsoft PR spokesperson who had this to say:

"We can say that you should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great LIVE experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time."

The last version of the simulator, Flight Simulator X was released in October 2006. Flight Sim 11 has yet to be officially announced.

Given this reply from Microsoft what do we expect to happen? Well with ACES laid-off we expect that Microsoft is pausing Flight Sim development for now rather than stopping completely. It sounds like there will be a Flight Sim 11 albeit with a larger gap between versions than we've come to expect.

So with your installation of Flight Sim X having to stay on your PC for longer than you expected, why not take a look at our guide to enhancing the environment within simulator.