I bought both games on release. FSX ran slowly but, IIRC, everything worked pretty much as you would expect and everything was present and correct. I enjoyed it from the day I installed it. It's a pity MS didn't develop it further, but it was always serviceable.
However, although CLOD runs (at least for me) at reasonable FPS after the first patch, the problem with it is that so much of it was/is missing. The devs clearly recognise this and have an ever-expanding list of things they are going to put into the sim at some unspecified point in the future. To me, the main failings of CLOD are i) unrealistic terrain, ii) poor AI, iii) no FSAA, iv) poor sounds, v) no weather, vi) no historical dimension beyond the useless campaigns, vii) poor QMB, viii) poor FMs, ix) undocumented FMB, x) endless minor yet irritating bugs. Because of this I don't enjoy playing with CLOD and I haven't started it up in weeks.
To me it looks like CLOD could still go one of two ways. It might be that it actually follows the RoF example and builds up over the next year or so to something really worthwhile. I'm not very confident of this because the damage to the brand has been quite severe and the devs seem hell bent on antagonising their customers by refusing to talk to them (compare the way 777's Jason interacts on the forums with his customers to the way Luthier behaves).
Alternatively, it might be that it follows the path of Silent Hunter 5, where the publishers decide that it's beyond salvage and walk away after a couple of basic patches.
To date, I think there is a better parallel with Silent Hunter 5 than with FSX.
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