Flight Sim World leaves early access but work continues

Dovetail Games have officially cleared Flight Sim World to depart from Early Access International on a red-eye flight to full release, though you might want to hold off if you prefer your planes (games) with all their wings (features). The flight sim, which is built upon the licensed technoguts of Microsoft Flight Simulator X, officially left early access last week but Dovetail say that was only the first phase of development, intended to "cement a stable platform". Moving into Phase 2, the Train Sim have a big list of features still in the pipeline, starting with dynamic weather next week.

"We're switching our focus to some of our longer term goals, meaning there won’t be as many quick updates, but instead more impactful changes and big feature additions," Dovetail's Steve Hood said in Thursday's announcement.

"We've got a lot planned for 2018, including IFR implementation, expanding the core fleet of aircraft, improving the look of the world, live weather and my own personal pet project, improvements to ATC, to name just a few.

I've said that I want to build a platform that will stand the test of time over the next 5 or 10 years. We’re not there yet, but the goal hasn't changed and the journey we're on together is far from over. This next stage of development is a necessary change of gear."

Dynamic weather will arrive in an update on February 1st, which Dovetail say they will later build upon to add Live Weather. They're also adding another two variants of the PA-18 Super Cub, tundra wheels and big floating boat shoes so the plane can land on water.

That post goes into more details about plans and things, if you're curious. Hood also had some words for The Flare Path recently.

Flight Sim World costs £30/€35/$40 on Steam. What's the current state of it? Recent player reviews on Steam are officially 'Mixed', which is seems to be about usual for Dovetail's sims. Or hey, Microsoft Flight Sim X is £5 on sale for another three hours.