Military Visualizations has abandoned development of the ATR 72-600 for X-Plane 11, after their Kickstarter campaign failed to reach its goal of CAD $27,000.

Rewind sixty days ago, when Military Visualizations announced their decision to raise funds for the ATR in X-Plane. Through a Kickstarter campaign, the developer requested CAD $27,000 in an all-or-nothing campaign. In the accompanying Facebook post, Milviz wrote:

"Here's your chance to ensure Milviz develops an ATR 72-600 for X-Plane 11"

The clarity of the campaign came into focus several hours after its initial announcement. Those that donated CAD $135 or more would receive the ATR without paying anything more, whilst people that donated less than this amount would receive a discount equivalent to that pledged off the final price after release, should they have proceeded to purchase the aircraft.

The developer cites on the Kickstarter page that "the costs of, among others, systems translation from P3D, Max to Blender conversions, creation of custom datarefs, ACF's, and all the other elements of XP development" will have made development of the ATR possible.

In the 410 comments in the initial campaign Facebook post, Colin of Milviz gave 10 reasons why the Kickstarter was initiated:

1. "Yes. the project was originally for XP. However, after much discussion it was decided to sideline that for the time being and concentrate on what we know well. The original dev, who has now been hired full time, had no experience in EITHER sim."
2. "Once the models were built, we paid Javier Rollon to get the 72 into XP. This took a huge amount of time and cost a lot of money as well."
3. "Once he was done, he told us that we needed an ACF and ... datarefs."
4. "ACF... sure. No problem. Alan Shafto had agreed to do it."
5. "Dataref... well... we're STILL not sure what and or how to deal with those and this, my friends is where things get difficult (and expensive) for us."
6. "As we know nothing about XP, we're left with two (bad) choices. The first, hire someone to do that for us. the second, learn to do it ourselves. Neither is good."
7. "So we decided to hold off on doing the XP version whilst R & D was ongoing. However, some people just won't stop bugging us. endlessly. I was getting emails every single day about this and some of them were quite nasty and had to be sent off to the cops."
8. "As we don't have the money to pay for this type of foray into a new sim... too many unknowns... we (I) decided to do a Kickstarter."
9. "Instead of what I thought would happen, it seems I've kicked a hornets nest."
10. "At this point, honestly, the XP fans are much MUCH worse than the DCS ones. And I'm not sure we wish to even consider what would happen if we did do an ATR for XP... And that, folks, is where we are today."

In total:

• 8 backers pledged CAD $10.00-49.99
• 2 backers pledged CAD $50.00-134.99
• 11 backers pledged CAD $135.00-194.99
• 12 backers pledged CAD $195.00 or more

Since the Facebook post of the campaign, Colin has spoken out about the ATR's development (for Prepar3D and X-Plane) on the FlightLevel podcast. You can find it here.

However, after sixty days since the campaign went live, it ended today having met 15.2% of its final target of CAD $27,000. The final figure after the campaign stood at CAD $4,111.29 (approx. GBP £2,417, US $3,057, €2,742). We reached out to Milviz, who confirmed to us that development of the ATR for X-Plane has been terminated following the unsuccessful pledge.

Leading up to the release of the Kickstarter campaign, there were times when the Milviz team were asked about the ATR for X-Plane, and the responses seemed to see-saw between a confident 'yes' and a begrudging 'no'. You can see more of this in an article published prior to the Kickstarter's opening.

Milviz has not said development for X-Plane 11 would cease however, with more X-Plane aircraft reportedly in the pipeline according to Colin's appearance on the FlightLevel podcast.

‍It was also confirmed that backers would receive their money back.

Development of the ATR continues for Prepar3D.