It’s the last day of FSExpo 2023 and it’s been quite the ride! Reporting on the expo virtually but hearing about all of the wonderful experiences happening in person have made me hopeful that my 2024 schedule will work out and I’ll be able to attend this expo again next year. In the meantime, its time to round-up some of the sessions and the various announcements and social media posts coming out throughout the day.
The sessions
Today had a series of sessions and although there were fewer than yesterday they were still quite interesting depending on the area of simulation that you wanted to be in.
Andy Borka and Jason Fayre’s presentation on helping disabled simmers fly was very interesting and its worth noting that we have people who face various challenges accessing their sim setup and I’m glad that people are looking at solutions. His Talking Flight Monitor (TFM) supports some older sim setups, P3D and FSX, but its worth looking at if you need assistive tools with your simming. Maybe he can bring that forward to newer sims soon?
Robert Prather from the 777 Simulator project gave a presentation on using generative AI to write Arduino code for home cockpit setups. This is a new field that really has just emerged but I’m fascinated to see folks making use of these new tools to write code and make things work.
Finally, I wanted to mention a very interesting presentation by Ed Valdez, President/CEO
ProPilot Aviation, who talked us through how to learn and fly as a real airline pilot. That included methodologies for remembering checklists and working your way through the learning process in a new plane. I love that kind of effort to help not just with a specific type but to go through the methodology of learning in general. It helps us all!
There were many more sessions but I wanted to highlight those. For FSExpo attendees both virtual and in person, these sessions are still up on the FSExpo website and are viewable on demand.
The round-up
I start the round-up with FlyByWire’s presentation doing a live Vatsim Flight and a Developer Discussion. There’s live commentary about the flight plan, the route, the terminology and communications on VATSIM, and more. If you love airliner operations this is well worth the watch!
Next up, Hype Performance Group is offering a sale through their website with the HPG H145 Base Pack (down to $34.99 USD), and their Hot Air Balloon for $9.99 USD.
A shout out to VIRPIL Controls whom I’ve had the chance to review many of their products over the years including the VPC WarBRD and VPC MongoosT CM3 throttle. They were at FSExpo with a fantastic looking setup showcasing their hardware. Nice!
HeliSimmer sat down with the Microsoft team and conducted an interview on site with Jorg and Seb! One key takeaway that seems to have been a bit of a concern (verging on conspiracy theory) is VR support which is confirmed for the new sim.
That wasn’t the only scoop that Sergio managed to collect at the expo with the news that Thrustmaster is developing their first product with helicopters in mind.
Thrustmaster themselves hosted a number of streamers at their site including BluGames and Captain Canada.
The Yawman Flight team, a new hardware startup, are showing off their Yawman Arrow product which is intended to be a console style controller but with flight optimized features.
The folks at Tobii Gaming with their Eye Tracker 5 hardware were at the expo talking about their products. I had the chance to review the Eye Tracker 5 recently so do read that if you’re interested. Stormbirds is an affiliate so if you do decide that you want to buy a Tobii Eye Tracker 5 you can do that through this link.
The X-Plane team were previewing the FlightFactor 777v2 on X-Plane 12 at their booth.
The folks at Parallel42 were at FSExpo as well with a great little setup.
iniBuilds have already announced a lot of things at the expo including their new A300-600 product which appears to be well underway. Meanwhile they also announced, on the show floor, their next major scenery product with EGSS London Stansted Airport in the UK.
If anything else pops up over the next few hours I’ll be sure to pop it in here.
Congratulations and thanks
I do want to send my congratulations and thanks to Evan Reiter, Phil Coyle and all of the other organizers of Flight Sim Expo. This year was a return to form after the disruptions of the last couple of years and as I said at the start I was jealous of the in person experience but no less satisfied to be able to still attend virtually.
This is a good show and I hope it continues to do well and expand where it needs to over the next few years!
Stormbirds 
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