Canadian Xpress December 2022 Monthly Challenge: 40 Years of Flight Simulator Part III

[Marc Wheeler]

November 2022 marked the 40th year for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Sadly, those 40 years have some dark times. With the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X in November of 2006, we saw Meigs Field, the airport it made famous around the world, disappear from the scenery list for the first time.

In early 2003 claiming safety concerns for the city in the post-911 world, the mayor of Chicago sent bulldozers out to the airport, and had 3 giant Xs dug in to the runway of Meigs Field. Sealing the fate of the airport forever.

In late 2007 BAO now renamed Aces Game Studio, announced the availability of licenses of the Microsoft Enterprise Simulation Platform which is the engine that Microsoft Flight Simulator X is based on. Shortly thereafter, the unexpected closure of the Aces Studio in January 2009 was announced, ending MS Flight Simulator development.

To try and gain name recognition, startup Dovetail Games released Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition on the popular PC Game marketplace Steam. Tweaking the software engine to run better with the new versions of Windows and fixing the overall stability of the program. In 2017 Dovetail announced FS World as the next version of MSFS but less than a year later development of FS World was canceled.

Realizing the demand for home PC flight simulation was still a growing market, in February 2012, Microsoft released a new flight simulator titled Microsoft Flight. All 3rd party support for this new sim was blocked and users were forced into a pay to play system. Not surprisingly with the rising succuss of Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D built on the FSX ESP, on July 26, 2012, less than 6 months after its release Microsoft cancelled further development of Flight and shutdown it’s servers.

Moving in to the 41st year of MSFS, the lasted version of Microsoft Flight Simulator known as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 or MSFS 2020 to most of us, has been on the market just over 2 years and is quickly becoming the popular choice for home PC flight simulation. Thanks to the return of 3rd party support, an open SDK, real satellite texture mapping along with full VR support.

To celebrate the bright future of Microsoft Flight Simulator and to close out our 40th celebration challenge series. We depart the final default airport in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series and head to one of the default handcrafted airports of MSFS in what is called one of the most the most inspiring places to see in North America.

Your mission is to depart from Friday Harbor (KFHR) and fly to Stewart (CZST) with any Canadian Xpress propeller aircraft capable of operating at both airports.

Join Canadian Xpress today in order to participate as there are some great prizes to be won including any Aerosoft download product from https://www.aerosoft.com/

The December 2022 Monthly Challenge is open to all Canadian Xpress pilots from December 1st until December 29th, 2022 so join Canadian Xpress today by visiting  https://canadianxpress.ca. 

*Canadian Xpress accepts 50% of your VATSIM, IVAO or other virtual airline hours with no limits.