I'm really glad that I never wasted the money on AES since GSX is being produced.
Considering all the airports that can be activated with only 1 or 2 credits, I wouldn't call AES a waste of money. I bought my serial numbers for use with FS9, so when Oliver began supporting FSX, it was free because the FSX versions of my sceneries were already active. Since I've stopped buying sceneries for FS9 and GSX is coming, I won't buy more AES numbers.
When I dumped FS9 and went to FSX, all of my credits were released to be used with FSX products. I made the switch in 2009 and have not needed to buy new credits until this week (I actually have a few extra waiting to be applied to LAX).
In all, I have activated 57 airports in FSX using a total of 132 credits - that averages to about 2.3 credits per airport. When you account for the bonus points you get, it comes about to about $1 per credit. Now, would I be willing to pay $2 more per scenery package to have all of AES's features in each package, standardized so that the commands are the same across the board? You betcha. I would also pay for GSX to have similar features at all the airports not covered by AES. So, in short, I doubt GSX will be the death of AES. Considering that AESNG will be out eventually, it may actually have more features than GSX. Who knows. My hope is that Oliver and Umberto will work together to make sure both products can be used at the same exact time.
Life without AES (or similar) is pretty bleak. I tried to use the default push back at LAX over the weekend to get out of gate B42. It didn't work well at all because the area is too tight. I imagine AES would have pushed the aircraft back, turned it and towed it out to the taxiway. I am not sure how GSX will be able to handle similar situations at non-FSDT airports without making some sort of custom adjustments but I am looking forward to finding out.
