Question: AC3D is a 3D design program which has been available since which year, the software is used by designers for modeling 3D graphics for games and simulations - most notably it is used by the scenery creators at Laminar Research on X-Plane flight simulator produced by Laminar Research, and also ships with other software to build and customize aircraft and scenery?

Context articles: FS Design Studio
AC3D
Graphsim Entertainment
Laminar Research
Stu Moment
Jetfighter (series)
Train simulator
Bruce Artwick
X-Plane (simulator)
Microsoft Flight Simulator

FS Design Studio (FSDS, short for Flight Simulator Design Studio) is a computer design program intended solely for the design, creation, and animation of aircraft and scenery objects for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
 It is published by Abacus.
AC3D is a 3D design program which has been available since 1994.
 The software is used by designers for modeling 3D graphics for games and simulations - most notably it is used by the scenery creators at Laminar Research on the X-Plane (simulator).
 The .
ac format has also been used in FlightGear for scenery objects and aircraft models.
Graphsim Entertainment was founded in 1992 as Graphic Simulations Corp. to develop and publish simulation games.
 Graphsim's first product was "Hellcats Over the Pacific" for the Macintosh.
 It was released in 1991 and developed by Parsoft Interactive.
 The game's graphics engine was novel in that it rendered flat-shaded polygons over the entire screen area of a color Mac at native resolution.
 In 1993 Graphsim released the internally developed "F/A-18 Hornet" for Macintosh.
 Based on the eponymous McDonnell-Douglas fighter / attack aircraft it was set in a fictitious Persian Gulf theater of war and featured a detailed cockpit display.
 "F/A-18 Hornet" was one of the first simulation games to allow multiple players (four players) to fly together and compete over a local-area network (AppleTalk).
 It would become the first of a series of F/A-18 games.
 In 1995 "F/A-18 Hornet 2.0" was released for Macintosh, which elevated the level of graphics complexity and simulation detail over its predecessor.
 In early 1997 Graphsim released F/A-18 Hornet 3.0 for both Macintosh and Windows PC, followed by "F/A-18 Korea" in late 1997.
 F/A-18 Korea was set in a fictious future Korea war theater and featured support for 3DFx graphics cards.
 It garnered a score of 8.7 as reviewd by editors at GameSpot.com.
 In addition to internal development of the F/A-18 Hornet series, Graphsim published for Macinotsh a few notable game titles including BioWare's "Baldur's Gate" and "Tales of the Sword Coast", Volition's "Red Faction" and "Summoner", as well as Interplay's "Descent 3".
 Graphsim also puplished Atari's "Falcon 4.0: Allied Force" for both Windows and Macintosh, as well as Laminar Research's "X-Plane 8", "X-Plane 9", and "X-Plane 10 Regional".
 In 2015 Graphsim Entertainment released FA-18 Hornet for iOS, which remains it's only title currently in development.
Laminar Research is a small software company based out of Columbia, South Carolina, and is dedicated to providing software that accurately reflects the laws of physics.
 Laminar's flagship product is the flight simulator "X-Plane".
 X-Plane works with Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.
 They also have mobile versions for iPhone and iPad.
Stu Moment is a software developer and pilot.
 Along with Bruce Artwick, he created the subLOGIC Corporation while he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
 SubLOGIC then created its highly successful flight simulator, which was licensed by Microsoft as "Microsoft Flight Simulator".
 SubLOGIC developed the virtual Air Traffic Control module with Performance Monitoring for the product, Flight Assignment ATP.
 SubLOGIC left the consumer product industry and currently produces contracted software.
 SubLOGIC's current emphasis is the creation of custom visual and non-visual interactive simulations used to assess task performance.
Jetfighter is a series of 3D combat flight simulator computer games that was developed by started in 1988 by Velocity Development.
 The player would fly a combat jet aircraft in the skies against enemy forces.
 The game boasted 3D graphics that were cutting-edge at the time of the game's release, and used real-world terrain.
 The games seldom sold well because they occupied an uncomfortable middle ground of game design - too much flight simulator for action game fans, as they realistically emulated actual combat aircraft, but too simplistic for the hardcore sim fans, who always preferred games more along the lines of the Falcon series.
 The series ended after the commercial failure of "Jetfighter 2015," which was a fully arcade-style jet shooter without even lip service to realism.
 The later games had support for 3dfx Voodoo cards to run natively in DOS.
A train simulator (also railroad simulator or railway simulator) is a computer based simulation of rail transport operations.
 They are generally large complicated software packages modeling a 3D virtual reality world implemented both as commercial trainers, and consumer computer game software with 'play modes' which lets the user interact by stepping inside the virtual world.
 Because of the near view modeling, often at speed, train simulator software is generally far more complicated and difficult software to write and implement than flight simulator programs.
Bruce Artwick is the creator of the first consumer flight simulator software.
 He founded subLOGIC after graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1977, and released the first version of "Flight Simulator" for the Apple II the following year.
 The name subLOGIC came from logic circuits he built for the PDP-11 in the University of Illinois' Digital Computer Laboratory (DCL).
 His original Apple II software was purchased by Microsoft in 1982 and became "Microsoft Flight Simulator".
X-Plane is a flight simulator produced by Laminar Research.
 A desktop version is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, while a mobile version is available for Android, iOS, and webOS.
 "X-Plane" is packaged with several commercial, military, and other aircraft, as well as basic global scenery which covers most of the Earth.
 "X-Plane" also ships with other software to build and customize aircraft and scenery.
 "X-Plane" also has a plugin architecture that allows users to create their own modules, extending the functionality of the software by letting users create their own worlds or replicas of places on Earth.
 This is further enhanced by the Scenery Gateway which allows user to share airports with other users and eventually the airports are included by default in the base product.
Microsoft Flight Simulator (often abbreviated as MSFS or FS) is a series of flight simulator programs, marketed as video games, for the Microsoft Windows, and earlier the MS-DOS, operating systems.
 It is one of the longest-running, best-known and most comprehensive home flight simulator programs on the market.
 It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented.
 At 25 years it is the longest-running software product line for Microsoft, predating Windows by three years.
 Microsoft Flight Simulator may be the longest-running PC game series of all time, and has been credited with instigating the emergence of aviation-oriented joysticks as the predominant control method for PCs.