This 12 year old will not leave me alone until I ask you: any idea when it will be available?

He loves the eye candy that will be available.. he is a great pilot already, has already flown C172s a few times (has landed at least three times, with instructor of course!!)

So please let me know so I can get him off my back! and I can fly XP9 alone!!

Thank you.

I suspect your disappointment is in line with several other less outspoken of the X-Plane masses, and I do sympathize with you. I never like seeing developers break their promises, and I certainly don’t like being in the position of having to renege on any statements that we have made in the past. With that in mind, however, believe me when I say that the final product you will be getting will contain features that we hadn’t planned on putting into the plane while we were anticipating it being freeware. The biggest change that will be immediately noticeable is that we will be adding a fully functional 3D cockpit, which on its own is hundreds of hours of work. Couple that with the fact that the 2D panel will be re-done to X-Plane 9 standards, the textures on the exterior will now be double the resolution of earlier internal builds (and a good four-fold increase over our current public release), and you get the results of almost two years of solid development.

I see by your profile link that you’re a professional designer by trade. Surely you see the hesitance on our part of letting two years worth of work on a plane that we initially had no plans to revisit this soon out for a song. Not to mention that this project has effectively moved our much-bemoaned 757 to the back burner, which if I recall you were in favor of us doing!

I understand your position, and I agree that it’s hardly the most scrupulous move on our part. Surely, however, you can understand and appreciate that circumstances change, and sometimes we must revisit past promises as a result.

Once again, thanks for your support over the past months, and our apologies if you feel directly slighted by our decision.

Awesome.

I think you’ll find that very few things are affordable for North Americans anymore :p.

Honestly, we’re not out to rob people with the plane. The major motivation for charging for the work is the simple fact that we feel we’ve accomplished some things that are unparalleled in X-Plane with the visual model. Of course, the visual model is just the start, and we hope to be equally detailed in terms of the flight model and cockpit. Those of you hoping for x737 level systems simulation may be disappointed, as unfortunately none of us at XPJ have the programming knowledge required to pull that off, but I suspect we can get within a reasonable level of fidelity with the systems using only the tools available within X-Plane itself.

As for price, rest assured that the plane will likely cost you less than a tank of gas at current prices, at least for most of the planet !

Thanks and congrats for your effort and good job.

About deadlines…just take a look at the Vista release, and in fact, most other pay-ware releases. Hence, Dhruv’s move not to specify an exact time at this point, but rather give the general idea and later get more specific to avoid more complaints about deadlines. When it’s done though, I expect some great results!

All the best for the future of this bird – outstanding work so far.

~ReubenM