As we near our 5th year of development work on the 737, even we have to ask ourselves, when will this get done? why is it taking so long? is it even worth it?

Clearly we do not know the answer to the first question. We do have "signs" though about how far along we are and I think the team agree we are 'pretty close'. As to why it has taken so long, if we knew it would take this long beforehand, we might not have even begun working on it; however, seeing where we are today though and where the state of airliner simulation is for x-plane and even flight simulation in general, we are very glad that we are still at it and are taking the path that we are taking.

Because our small team have been flight simulation enthusiasts for a good while, we are obviously 'up to speed' with the state of airliner simulation features. Even today, we are seeing folks asking for features that are not implemented in current products, products that have been out for many years. If you add the 'time on market' plus the development time, some products are more than 7 years old and still do not simulate features to the level we feel our product has today.

We, like other developer teams, face the conundrum of balancing development time vs. cash flow. If we have no cash flow to support the development time, then we have limited options. One is to 'short sale' the product in an incomplete state to generate cash flow, but such a tactic has a few consequences. One consequence is that you can rush the architectural phase and develop something that you cannot update easily, and once the cash starts flowing, then the incentive to improve a particular product goes away. It is very common to see developers develop products with a rapid turn-around to keep the cash flow going from the 'newness' of a product, much like a drug habit (or so we hear!). Also, a 'de-featured' product tends to grow old quickly with the user base and doesn't provide the long-term satisfaction we are wanting.

The other option is to do the work in our 'free time', thereby allowing us to generate cash flow from other endeavors, which for the IXEG team, means our normal jobs. All of our team members are mature members of their industries and are very good at what they do, getting promotions and more responsibilities along the way. They bring that same professionalism and patience to this project but they cannot forgo such attention to detail to their normal jobs or their families either and so the time frame 'is what it is'. We are fortunate that our team members are very stable and will be here to see the project through. So what do we get for our patience?...and the final question, is it worth it?

It is time to confess that we have a beta-team in place already and though they really only have an 'alpha' version, we are very close to getting them something much further along and closer to a beta version. We have witnessed first-hand the human nature of being left 'wanting' after the honeymoon. What we mean by this is we have had people say, "go ahead and give us what you have" and for a few days, it is great. After that short period though, they quickly come back and say, 'what about feature A, when are you putting that in?', and we realize that cutting features before they're complete simply leaves us all waiting longer, and in some cases, for the 'next product', which could take an even longer time.

So the task set before us is simple. If we want to have the 'next generation' of simulation quality, accuracy and features, then we simply have to keep at it and this is one thing we do well. Those who have followed the project have seen the progress, from no 3D to 3D, from no lnav to lnav, from no exterior to 3D exterior and from no custom sounds to a custom sound engine, etc.

We believe this year will be our year, but we do not know exactly when, we work on it regularly as time permits. The FMS is a long way along, but a few critical things remain. We have all been around the block long enough to know the dangers and dejection of early releases and feature incomplete products. All of us have probably had that feeling of "we wish they would have taken just a bit longer to get it right". That's what IXEG chooses to do given our circumstances. We hope you will agree when you finally experience it.

A quick word regarding the 'teaser videos'. The goal of the videos is not one of marketing, though it clearly has an effect to that end and that is a bit of a side benefit. We are simply tired of finding out how deep a product simulation was AFTER we bought it. It has always been our goal to put our money where our mouth is and a video speaks volumes about what a product is actually like to use for the end user. We do not release videos at any particular milestone, there is no schedule, we simply do them whenever we want to show some aspect of the simulation, whether it is a systems feature or a usability feature or just to show we are making progress. More videos may or may not be forthcoming in the future, certainly the latest ones show a lot of features that do not need to be shown repeatedly.

So we will continue on as we have time, finish up and polish what needs to be polished and then we will package and release it, and we believe it will be worth the patience!

IXEG Team