Yesterday we brought you news of the announcement that Skyline Simulations (formerly Icarus Simulations) have teamed up with Orbx to assist in bringing their famous FSX/P3D/AFS2 sceneries to the X-Plane platform. Following this, there was an outpouring of joy from eager X-Plane simmers everywhere – it was clear that this was something that the X-Plane community had been holding onto hope for quite some time now.

Today, we’re pleased to be able to reveal some more details on what X-Plane users can expect from the Orbx/Skyline Sim teams in the early days of this collaboration.

In an e-mail interview between FSElite and Ed from Orbx, I asked the questions that were on everyone’s lips as a result of the announcement, firstly by asking if it was intended that their entire scenery product catalog would be ported over, he responded;

It would be nice to, but not at the moment. The plan is to convert our most popular airports at first and ones where we feel will work in the XP11 environment.

This makes a great deal of sense when looking at it from a business standpoint, so I went on to ask if the library-style products such as FTX Australia, OpenLC, etc would be considered as part of the most popular products. Ed continued, saying that sadly, it’ll be “Airports only at the moment” however, he did add;

..a Region/Global styled product in XP11 could be well received based on what we have achieved so far in the ESP platform.

Looking to the more immediate future though, I asked him what was currently in the works to be released in the first batch of products for X-Plane, to which he said that KCGX is being finished off at the moment, with another airport soon to reach RTM stages, and another three airports in early stages of development, but he couldn’t go further into it.

Read into it what you will, but I would suggest that we may even see the release of KCGX in a matter of weeks.

The question that you’re no doubt asking now, is “how much?”. I asked Ed if the collaboration with Skyline Sim meant a higher cost involved, and therefore increased pricing to X-Plane users. He responded;

We will have the cross-platform discount for existing customers. That is, if you own KCGX for FSX/P3D/AFS2 then purchasing it for XP11 will entitle you to a 40% discount. If anything, the XP11 price for an airport will either match or be less than the FSX/P3D equivalent.

Cue your wallet breathing a sigh of relief.

Finally, looking further into the future, when asked if the community could look forward to new products being released simultaneously across platforms, we were assured “that’s the end goal, but way too to early make a commitment”.

FSElite would like to extend our thanks to Ed from Orbx for taking our questions.