Let's start with a brief history lesson. What eventually became Microsoft Flight Simulator started development in 1977. In 1982 Microsoft licensed it to show off the new 16-bit technology and branded it Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00. Development continued through the 2006 release of FSX and until early 2009 when Microsoft announced the closure of Aces Studios, the brains behind the franchise. Months after the demise of Aces Studios, Lockheed Martin announced it had negotiated the purchase of Microsoft Enterprise Simulation Platform (ESP) intellectual property which is the commercial use version of FSX. About a year later Lockheed Martin released Prepar3d for commercial use. Switching over to X-Plane, it was first released in 1993 as a simulator on the Mac platform and focused on the Piper Archer. The brain child behind it was software engineer and pilot Austin Meyer. Austin created a company (a very small one) called Laminar Research to handle the development of X-Plane. By the time X-Plane was just coming out, Microsoft already had a mature product and considerably larger team working on future versions. As we all know every product has its strengths and its weaknesses. Austin wanted to address all the weaknesses in Microsoft Flight Simulator by focussing on those areas when developing X-Plane. Austin put his emphasis on the realism of the simulation where MSFS used a table to estimate what an aircraft would do in certain conditions. Microsoft really wanted to blend the pretty visuals of a game with the accuracy of a simulation product and certain concessions were made because of that focus. For X-Plane, it was all about how real does the aircraft fly and not about how pretty it looks. Laminar Research put all their effort into a flight model that calculates the physics happening on the airfoil and aircraft in real time. Over the years of development of both platforms without a doubt Microsoft was lightyears ahead in market share. Their team was larger, the graphics were incredible and the 3rd party quality add-on market was growing at a rapid pace. Unless you were strictly wanting the ultra realism of the X-Plane flight modeling, the Microsoft solution was hands down the winner. While X-Plane only had a small market share, Laminar Research did a few things that later down the road would be a critical key component in its growth. They gave everyone the tools to create their own aircraft, airfoils, scenery and plugins... They also made it easy for individuals to develop their own add-ons. For most of X-Plane's history the community created add-ons has been incredibly strong. Once the demise of Aces came along, X-Plane as a platform and development tools were now matured. For a while it was really the only flight simulator that was undergoing any active development leaving the developers of Microsoft Flight Simulator add-ons wondering what to do since future development of FSX was over. This set the stage for the X-Plane's explosion. Established FSX developers like Carenado joined the solid X-Plane only developers like Flight Factor and FlyJSim in making incredible 3rd party add-ons for the first time in X-Plane's life time. Even PMDG has announced upcoming X-Plane projects and I am sure more developers will come.
This is a topic that you don't see brought up very much in those heated debates we all hate to see as we scroll through our social media feeds. During the time before Aces was shut down, you had the big corporate behemoth Microsoft and a home business with a couple of contractors at Laminar Research creating their products. Big corporations have a ton of resources to throw at development and can certainly do things that smaller companies cannot but large companies are just like large boats... They take a long time to change directions and get moving. A small company like Laminar Research has the strength of being extremely agile. If they felt they needed to switch gears and focus on something else it could be done nearly instantly. They were able to put out updates to their software every 2 and a half to 3 months, a cycle that still goes on today whereas updates for MSFS were measured in years. Once FSX was ultimately done and Lockheed Martin was working on Prepar3d there was a new business model in the game. To get to the point, Lockheed's focus for Prepar3d is strictly for commercial use. Later they would add on educational licenses but development was still intended for their software to be used in commercial platforms like the Redbird Simulators wether it be in a flight school, university or airline company's training facility. Though Laminar Research has a few more employees now it is still a very small company. They have expanded into the mobile arena with the popularity of smart phones and tablets. Yes X-Plane is available for commercial use like Prepar3d but it is being developed far more for the home enthusiast market.
This simply breaks down to what is the right tool for the job. I look at the flight simulation in two markets just like the developers do. There is a home entertainment/enthusiast market and there is a commercial market. The home market can even be broken down into two more sub groups, the real world pilot/aspiring pilot and the patient aviation lover with no intentions of becoming a pilot. Starting in the commercial realm, even though X-Plane has a commercial version available I personally believe Prepar3d has a better tool set for putting the sim into commercial products like Redbird simulators than X-Plane. I won't get into what those advantages are since 99% of my followers are one of the variety of home users I mentioned above. As a home user, I put myself in the category of aspiring pilot (I have a handful of training hours logged and taken the FAA Written Exam). From that perspective X-Plane is my choice because I am far more interested in the realism of physics in the aircraft model as well as constant updates and development geared towards the home user. Yes, I want my sim to look pretty, but not at the expense of the flight model. If I was the aviation lover I would probably choose Prepar3d (have to use a Windows boot partition on my Mac) since it was based on FSX and has the prettier graphic set but I would make that choice cautiously. Home users of P3D purchase the Academic version which technically is against the EULA (that is another hot debate). Now Lockheed Martin is not enforcing the EULA in any way so you are safe from any recourse unless for some reason Microsoft decides to drop the hammer on Lockheed for not enforcing the Academic version EULA. The other cautionary reason would be that Lockheed's business model is strictly developing commercial use software so their development strategy, testing and direction is solely based on the commercial users of their product. If a million home users who bought the Academic version all scream they want a certain feature but it would impede something on the commercial side, that feature will not be considered. That is an extreme circumstance there but it was to make a point. In conclusion you don't need to ask the ridiculous question of which platform is better in a social media bomb, you just need to do about 10 minutes of research and pick the right fit for you. In the end of the day, no matter what you choose, you will be flying. My needs and my situation are unique to me so my choice of using X-Plane at home may not be the right decision for you. I am glad I am surrounded by P3D at work so I can now at least speak about both platforms in an educated manner. I don't really care what platform you choose, I just hope to see you on VATSIM or PilotEdge flying and being happy.
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