I have been out of the loop for a while, after getting tired of the poor performance and poor visuals in FSX. The graphics engine can no longer cut it in a world dominated by the likes of Cryengine.So what is the latest from MS? The last I remember the team was fired and FS11 was canned. Is this still the case?

Yes. that pretty much is still the case, however several add-on developers appear to be mooting the idea of creating their own flight simulator and of course X-Plane are hoping to take up some of the slack, so that might have prompted more recent developments...You may recall that a slightly bemused MS spokeswoman announced at the time that 'MS remained committed to flying games', as she put it, much to the indignation of simmers who don't like to think of FS as a 'game'. Currently this does seem to be the case, as MS have recently dipped a tentative research toe in the water by putting out a survey to many flight simmers via FS Insider. Much of its content appeared to point toward what many had suspected, which was that FS might end up being a somewhat 'dumbed down' game in the real sense of the word, evidently with an idea of widening its appeal and perhaps making it more console friendly. I should point out that some of that is speculation on my part rather than something MS has come right out and said, but a bit of reading between the lines would seem to make that a fair guess.In the meantime, it is indeed true that MS is committed to flight simulation, although that commitment involves you tearing the first page out of the MS Word manual and making a paper dart from it.Note that this thread really is in the wrong forum, and there is a more appropriate thread for this sort of thing in the 'letters to AVSIM staff' bit of the AVSIM forums.Al

You may recall that a slightly bemused MS spokeswoman announced at the time that 'MS remained committed to flying games', as she put it, much to the indignation of simmers who don't like to think of FS as a 'game'. Currently this does seem to be the case, as MS have recently dipped a tentative research toe in the water by putting out a survey to many flight simmers via FS Insider. Much of its content appeared to point toward what many had suspected, which was that FS might end up being a somewhat 'dumbed down' game in the real sense of the word, evidently with an idea of widening its appeal and perhaps making it more console friendly. I should point out that some of that is speculation on my part rather than something MS has come right out and said, but a bit of reading between the lines would seem to make that a fair guess.Al

Whoa non-disclosure alert. :(Patrick H

Yup, stand by for more revelations later, when I shall be revealing the winners of WW2 and announcing the colour of the sky.Al

I'd really love to know next week's Lottery numbers, Al!!! :(

I have been out of the loop for a while, after getting tired of the poor performance and poor visuals in FSX. The graphics engine can no longer cut it in a world dominated by the likes of Cryengine.

What kind of rig are your running FSX on? For me running FSX on the rig in my sig provides me such good performance and visuals that I can't stand the poor visuals on FS9 any longer, especially the ground textures, and I had Ground Environment for FS9 installed. Granted I still miss a few of my FS9 addons, but aside from that fact, if you can get FSX running well, imho the visuals are much better than those of FS9. I was surprised that after my initial FSX setup I liked it so much that I have never even flown FS9 since, and that is with hundreds of dollars of addon invested into it. To each their own I guess.