Does Oliver truly understand the situation (I can barely understand what he is trying to say)?
I don't understand him either.
He seems to be worried that we might took away AES support for products that we already released with AES support, which obviously doesn't make any sense and would be outrageous against those that paid for it, and I find very annoying that he would even *think* or hint we could do something like that.
Using GSX on an AES-supported airport with AES installed, will not create any issues, if someone would prefer to use only AES there instead of GSX, it will be enough *not* to touch the GSX hotkey, plain and simple. Of course, he'll have to use AES there exclusively, but it will HIS choice. This is probably the easiest choice, although most people would probably want to use a combination of both.
And IS possible to use them together, with some caveats:
Some things (passenger stairs, cargo loaders, etc.) in AES move in position as soon the AES hotkey is pressed, so it won't be possible to use the GSX version of them should the user decide to do so, unless he decides not to touch the AES menu at all, but in that case, if it's a 3rd party airport that got moving jetways because of AES, they won't work, and that's only because the AES jetways move in position automatically and together with the other vehicles so, the user is forced to do a choice-
The GSX versions of such vehicles will not move in position automatically just by opening the GSX menu, they move only under user command, when asking for a boarding/deboarding, otherwise they'll stay at the edge of the parking, and some vehicles like the Catering or the Passenger buses do not "pop-up" on the parking immediately, they *drive* all the way from their parking. So, for service vehicles, GSX is not the obstacle here, since it doesn't do anything on its own unless the user commands it.
GSX Pushback works fine with AES, it will be enough to select the "Prepare position for Departure" option in AES, and when asked if you want to use a Pushback, reply No, open the GSX menu and ask for its own Pushback instead. And the opposite works too, you can be serviced entirely by GSX, and then opening the AES menu only to ask for Pushback.
FollowMe is not an issue either, just select either the AES or the GSX menu to select which one to use. However, as soon as you select a parking for the FollowMe, either with GSX or AES, it will be prepared to be serviced and either a Marshaller or a Docking system will appear there so, it would probably best that, if you arrived there with a GSX FollowMe, to continue using GSX at that parking, and the same for AES.
Even if you used a GSX FollowMe, if that parking had an AES docking system, it will still work, however, there will be *also* a GSX Marshaller there, unless it's one of our airports with ParkMe docking system.
So, there's no reason to worry, and from our side, we are not doing anything to limit user's choices, and of course the thing that Oliver tried to hint about we could eventually do something in our already *released* products to cause issues with AES credits that were already payed for, it's plain and simply absurd.
For future products, it's possible we might not be willing to keep supporting AES in FSX, especially if we'll eventually come up with our own jetway animation system, which is something that we always wanted to do and not because of AES, but because the FSX default system is bugged and we believe we could offer a novel approach to the jetway problem.
But as I always said, and also informed Oliver about this a *long* time ago (he might have forgot that), we'll keep supporting AES until we need to do an FS9 version of the scenery, because we don't have anything comparable to offer under FS9.
Just to clear of any possible misunderstanding: "supporting AES" or not for us means: doing NEW products in a way that can be in turn be supported by AES.
It doesn't mean in any way that what has been already been released with AES would eventually stop to work because of something we did or because we'll have GSX. Yes, we'll have GSX and it will be free at all our airports, including those already released BUT, as I've explained above, it won't create any issues if there are purchased AES credits for it, and they can even be used together, up to some extent.