Is Prepar3D Fuse a competitor to our current slate of flight simulation products?

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A splashy trailer and some released screenshots have come out from U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin in the last couple of days showing off a new version of Prepar3D. The new sim, titled Prepar3D Fuse, has attracted lots of interest in flight sim circles but it is for public consumption or for professional users only? That’s what I wanted to know!

What is Fuse?

Flight sim fans are pretty keen right now to make sure we have enough competition in the space. Enter the announcement by Lockheed Martin about Prepar3D’s new entry.

Fuse is an Unreal Engine 5-based sim featuring detailed airports and cityscapes and powered by Blackshark.AI (whom were once partnered with Microsoft and Asobo for Microsoft Flight Simulator). The sim is an offline based with the global terrain reportedly available “on-premises” and stored on a large hard drive or connected network storage.

As the FAQ continues to expand on, Fuse is a “commercial imaging generation product” with simulator capabilities. It’s basically the digital world that they are offering with other products developed during Fuse’s development (frequently named Milverse) being part of the package.

Some of the official promo images released on the Fuse website.

The trailer shows off almost entirely defense oriented operations with an F-35, Predator-drone, F-16, military standard icons, an F-16 and missile interceptions. So is this a DCS competitor? It seems to be more of a MCS competitor instead.

Much of the language, particularly in the FAQ, appears oriented towards professional users with training and operations needs supported by a simulation platform.

At this time, Lockheed Martin is selling Prepar3D Fuse as part of Lockheed Martin integrated simulators, modeling applications and simulation applications along with select strategic partners. If you are interested in your project being considered, or wish to be added to a wait list for a future public release, please contact us here.

That point is further driven home in the cost section. No price is given because pricing is based on customer needs, licensing volume, and features including (XR capabilities). They also have available annual maintenance plan for product upgrades.

There’s some debate on if “future public release” means simply to established customers or if there will be a consumer release aimed at the general public. If I were to make a guess, reading between the lines, it seems unlikely that this will be aimed at us on the consumer end of things. If it did, it may end up being the world visualization without many of the combat and space focused assets intended for training that have caught people’s attention.

Meanwhile, the FAQ also mentions that the current release of Prepar3D continues to be supported so if you happen to be out there using Prepar3D it sounds like you can continue on safe knowing its still being supported in some capacity.

You can read more about Prepar3D: Fuse through the company website here.

7 responses to “Is Prepar3D Fuse a competitor to our current slate of flight simulation products?”

  1. theoligopolist Avatar
    theoligopolist

    Isn’t Prepar3D the sim that had a EULA that said you aren’t allowed to have fun while using it?

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    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      The licensing they had with Microsoft had Prepar3D aimed at educational and training purposes. So there was parts of the EULA stating it could only be used for such purposes. Nothing explicitly (that I know of) that said “no fun.” Though I’m sure lots of folks did have fun 😊

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  2. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    I see this as squarely targeted towards the military and professional trainers more so than consumers. This really the same with P3D for the most part. I’d think it’s more of a competitor to the DCS’s military product than DCS itself. Still it’d be an interesting addition for the community if they sell to individuals.

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    1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      My reading of it was the same. And if they do sell to the general public, I wonder if any of the assets on display would even be part of it.

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  3. CanadaOne Avatar
    CanadaOne

    It would be cool if this was a public release and Falcon 5 comes out and IL2 Korea comes out. Get that flightsim ball a’ rolling. Might make DCS move a little faster. 😉

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  4. Urgent Siesta Avatar
    Urgent Siesta

    This is a surprisingly cool solution, albeit only for mil/gov/com at the moment.

    I did go to their “request updates” form and sign up expressing interest in a consumer flight sim release version, a la Prepar3D Personal license.

    It’s definitely not aimed at civilian flight sim, and at present it only has 1000 airports (and based on the video, they all look like military installations of one type or another, e.g., Vandenburg SFB and Barking Sands in HI).

    The good news is that they say the process of converting existing Prepar3D addons is straightforward (there’s a lot of P3D code in there still). But I think it’s going to be more work than a home “hacker” can manage…?

    From the consumer sim aspect, it could certainly work for milsim afficionados, but probably not (as yet) for civ simmers.

    AFAIK, Lockheed Martin has never included weapons/combat capability into the consumer versions of P3D (which is disappointing but understandable), though combat and weps are openly included in the higher priced, very expensive versions (like $2500 license).

    P3D consumers had to make do with the VR Simulations TacPack for weapons on any aircraft (VRS sublicensed it to devs at no cost), and it was pretty much the only way to get a DCS World-ish experience. Includes carriers, and all the things…!

    VRS also makes what is reportedly the most accurate F/A-18E Super Hornet available to the public, including sensors and weapons. I think it even surpasses the DCS Hornet in terms of general fidelity(!).

    In terms of the included addons, Prepar3D consumer has included Lockheed Martin addons for many, many years. They bought the rights from the original developers like MilViz, India Foxt Echo, Virtavia, et al. These Default addons aren’t really High Fidelity, and the ones included in Fuze look to have received at least a graphical update(?). But i’m sure the true military grade versions also won’t be included in a consumer release of Fuse.

    In sum, I’m certainly interested enough to consider a consumer version, even if that is “limited” to a few mil addons.

    BUT, i would DEFINITELY get it if VRS converts their Super Hornet to run there 🙂

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  5. CAP Avatar
    CAP

    You neither want, nor would you be able to obtain a copy of it. It’s designed primarily for milapp and features a modern combined arms simulation at the theater level (that’s expanding) with integrated C3, UAS assets, SIGINT, ELINT, you name. It’s the same with VBS3/4, of which I have professional copies of.

    Like VBS, it looks cool and flashy on the surface and all but there is no game there, so to speak.

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