FSDT is certainly putting out their own high quality airports. None of them have docking gates, unless you purchase AES credits.
ALL our airports have active gates, in FSX of course. And, on the last 2 scenery we released, JFK and Geneva, we have a very advanced parking system as well, which will be greatly expanded in the future, to cover all possible parking assistance methods, and much more.
Making active gates in FS9 was cumbersome and required to use a lot of legacy code, backdating even to FS2002. And, since in FS9 there's AES, we find easier to do that, but *just* because people asked for it, and we don't intend to waste any more time than what is strictly needed to have the scenery running in FS9.
We always said to be doing this: want an FS9 version of our scenery ? sure, as long as there's a market for it, but new developements, new ideas, new technologies, special features, etc, that would be on FSX only.
Even more so, in the light of the recent unfortunate events related to ACES: considering it might be several years before we'll see another flight sim release, it makes more sense to use our time and resources developing new technologies for FSX.
I really don't agree how you might draw such a conclusion that, since FS11 it's not coming for several years, this might be seen like some kind of benefit for FS9!
That's exactly the opposite: what's just happened with the closure of ACES, is that there's ONE sim that everybody thought that it would have been replaced the next year, has now some years of life ahead instead, and that's obviously FSX.
Your parallel with FS2000 doesn't really apply: it's easy to dismiss FS2000 now, because after only 2 years FS2002 came, which was extremely stable and well performing. But, if flight sim was cancelled after FS2000 was released, everybody be still using FS2000 TODAY!
Provided, of course, something better from a different source wouldn't have appeared in the meantime which, if what's happened to Falcon4 (no combat sim can still outmatch its *features*, 10 years after release) can tells us something, is not so easy. And FSX is today in a MUCH stronger position than Falcon4 ever been, because of the huge 3rd party support.