AirDailyX is reporting that ORBX won’t charge users to upgrade their scenery to the new (and one presumes soon-to-be-forthcoming) Prepar3D v4. Quoting ORBX head John Venema:
There’s been a bunch of speculation about our pricing policy for the next version of P3D, likely based on my previous posts back in December.
Let me clarify: we will NOT be charging anything for our products for the next version of P3D. They will be 100% free to use on the new platform. Better still, through the magic of FTXCv3 you won’t even need to re-download them.
File that under “Good News.”
I guess many are jumping to X-Plane as it was potentially going to be far cheaper. Using it already and just looking at the pricing scale for so much scenery, X-Plane is far cheaper and very much good qualuty freeware based. P3D 64bit and Steam’s 64bit was in deep trouble if it was going to survive.
Also with everyone knowing 64bit is coming, I have no doubt spending in the FlightSim industry has dropped off massively as why invest in current 32bit with 64bit around the corner. I for one have stopped spending, except in X-Plane 11 compatibility add-ons..
So obviously realising the market is on hold, the FlightSim industry has done what was needed and developed technology and changes in the 64bit coding that allows very little change for 32bit software to operate under 64bit. This may just save P3D, and the P3D industry from dying off. Probably the same reason Orbx pulled out of X-Plane knowing the coding issue was resolved.
A good and logical move