iniBuilds’ announcement of Paris Charles de Gaulle has not taken long to ripple through the rest of the CDG field. Within a day of the reveal, the two other developers still working on the airport had responded, and in opposite directions. azrsim cancelled its own LFPG outright. Pilot Experience Sim, better known as PESIM, said it is carrying on, but not before making clear it was not pleased to see iniBuilds arrive.
azrsim cancels and backs iniBuilds
azrsim, which had put LFPG on its 2026 roadmap after releases like Baku and Riyadh, was first to move. In a message on its Discord, the developer said it has cancelled its Charles de Gaulle and is giving its full support to iniBuilds, which it expects to produce the definitive version. azrsim added that it will now shift to a different project it has wanted to make since its early days in MSFS, without saying what that is.
PESIM is staying, and it has thoughts
PESIM’s response was the more pointed of the two. In a bilingual statement shared on their social media, the French studio confirmed that development of its own Paris-CDG continues without any let-up. It also aired open frustration at the situation.
iniBuilds is not just any competitor to PESIM. It is also a storefront that resells PESIM’s sceneries, alongside the work of many other third-party developers, through the iniBuilds Store and iniManager. That is the relationship PESIM was pointing to when it said it regrets that “a direct partner chooses to compete head-on” on a project of this scale. The studio said it accepts this as the reality of the market even as it regrets it.
From there, PESIM restated why it believes its version can hold its own. It points to its French team’s local presence and direct access to the site, to hundreds of gigabytes of on-site reference material, and to a commitment to keep the scenery updated as the real airport changes, which at CDG is more or less constant. PESIM also noted that its CDG targets both MSFS 2020 and 2024, where iniBuilds has announced its version for MSFS 2024 only.
Two very different bets
With Aerosoft’s project suspended since June and azrsim now out, the CDG race comes down to iniBuilds and PESIM, and the two could hardly be more different. PESIM presents itself as the local specialist and the longest-running of the projects, and its bet is French site access plus support for both MSFS 2020 and 2024. iniBuilds is the high-volume newcomer, and its bet is scale plus a fresh push to crowdsource references from people who know the airport. Both now say theirs will be the definitive CDG. Only finished sceneries will settle that.
