General Hiatus Announcement

Hey y’all,

I’ll be taking a bit of a hiatus from development. I’m not sure for how long. My current plan is to still finish updates that are in the pipeline as I find the time/willpower, but I am extremely burnt out. This has been compounding over the last several years as I have made MSFS development my primary focus and income. My passion for aviation, the sim, and the backcountry community has kept me going all this time, even when I’m making smart life decisions like (currently) going 9 months with barely any income. Not that these long gaps in income have been a stranger to me in the last 5 years…

However, this year I have found myself constantly stressed – pushing myself to do more, and still not feeling like enough was accomplished at the end of the day. Even if I worked almost nonstop, late into the night. I have felt my passion slipping away. I rarely enjoy flying for fun any more. And overall, I have just found myself more often than not in a pretty sour mood, which has been rubbing off on friends and family, and I really hate that.

While I can’t blame it all on 2024, the circumstances surrounding it have been a big part of this, filtering down to community developers. I’m not the only one in this position. A lot of developers are, even if they wont publicly admit it.

Though, at the end of the day, I realize that the current path I am on is just not healthy or sustainable. I have actually known this in the back of my mind for quite a while – I just ignored it. So I will be taking time to focus my resources on projects that get life back on track, and hopefully put me in a better financial position where I’m not worrying as much about how high my bills are going to be this month.

I want to be absolutely clear that I’m not writing this looking for a pity party, but if I didn’t write it, I would have a hard time actually letting go and focusing. I also don’t like the idea of just walking away from my long time supporters (many of you have been with me since the FSX and P3D days) without saying anything. Even if it’s expected to be temporary.

When I am ready and able to come back, I would love to. But I need to find that passion again, and I honestly believe the only way at this point is to think about and be immersed in flightsim and development as little as possible.

I am hopeful that in the time it takes me to gain some passion back, life, the sim, and everything around it will have improved. But until then, don’t worry, I’ll still be checking my emails and hanging around on Discord (though maybe a bit less).

Thank you all, and see you soon™!

RN44