Marten Krull of Stairport has introduced the public to his company's plans to support Microsoft Flight Simulator in a new press release, with St. Tropez to become the first Stairport scenery to make the jump to the new sim.

"Right from the start, we have focused on the X-Plane platform," he says. "Compared to the alternatives at the time, it offered the greatest possible variety for creating high quality sceneries and is also characterized by an incredibly passionate community. In the last 5 years we have realized over 30 projects which was definitely a challenge. But with today's 4 developers, who focus exclusively on X-Plane, we can now be much more relaxed."

"In addition, we now have two full time software developers who are responsible for the further development of our animation tool SAM. Soon we will see great new enhancements that will make X-Plane a bit more realistic again."

Krull carefully discusses the SDK in the next section, in which he says that the kit is missing some functionality whilst also having a number of functions which have been missing from other platforms for years.

Stairport maintain that for Microsoft Flight Simulator to succeed long-term, they expect full support from Asobo Studio to help developers by adding these bread-and-butter tools. It seems as though they will be matching this commitment as a third-party developer.

In a section titled "Best of Breed", the developer discusses the group's new workflow which has been overhauled to be a 'real multi-platform' chain.

St. Tropez will be the first scenery from Stairport in the new simulator, which will be distributed through Aerosoft and also available on Steam and the Microsoft Market.

As a parting note, Krull says that X-Plane is still Stairport's primary focus going forward. With four full time employees, Laminar's sim currently dwarfs the FS2020 section of their company, though this will be evened up in order to 'serve both platforms with the same priority.'