To Upgrade or Not ?

[january 19]

Some musings for a lazy summer afternoon. But first, a bit of history courtesy of Wikipedia:FS95 released mid 1996FS98 released mid 1997 - 12 month intervalFs2000 released late 1999 - 28 month intervalFS2002 released Oct 2001 - 23 month intervalFS2004 released July 2003 - 21 month intervalFSX released Oct 2006 - 39 month interval For MS to maintain this long term release cycle averaging 24 months (and only incidentally to provide a cash flow for some high priced salaries!)- FSX should have been released in 2005. Does FSXI in 2007/8 make sense?Now the release of FSX coincides roughly with the intro of Dual Core- two very significant technology upheavals.The old adage-"Stay with the leading edge- avoid the bleeding edge of technology" still seems like good advice. Think I'll continue flying FS9 for this year anyway. Anybody care to speculate on the good things FSXI might offer? And when?Alex Reid

[W2DR 1,859]

I think we may have seen the last of the flight-related enhancements. Is seems MS is working on some sort of integration between flight sim, train sim, boat sim, etc, to form a sort of "world sim". Eye-candy rules the game now. So, if by "good things" you mean more eye-candy I guess there will be some. But, don't look for much in the way of "flight simulator" improvments. FS11 will be released on October 29, 2009.Doug

[january 19]

With the advent these days of some fairly powerful home computers & "economical" large multi monitor or projection display methods, I wonder what the possibility is for a commercial sim manufacturer to produce an appropriately scaled down flightsim for home use? CAE- are you listening? Do you suppose MS would notice?Alex Reid