I can hardly believe I'm going to say this but... grits teeth...for once Microsoft got it right - or at least the MSFS team did. My own experience of Microsoft and beta testing is that they invite selected parties to take part, get all their input, then completely ignore it and publish what they have anyhow (DOS 6.0 anyone?) but that's another matter *chuckle*I have no close ties with any of the X-Plane developers or inside personal knowledge but the impression that I get is that in this case, Austin is part of the problem. His personality takes a bit of getting used to - even just in e-mail! - all those caps *laugh* - but there wouldn't have been an X-Plane without him and his personality. From reading posts on other boards (sometimes between the lines) I get the impression that while he's happy to add the odd feature for third parties there are certain areas that he's a little 'precious' about i.e. the flight model. There are limitations to his model where it's impossible with current technology to mathematically model certain effects (turbulence being a perfect example) but he seems to be unwilling to 'fudge' things like this and prefers just to leave them out of the equation. IIRC he's an engineer turned coder which explains this attitude to some extent but doesn't excuse it. A coders attitude would tend to be 'if we can't get it perfect let's get something as close as possible and fake it' - which I - of course - think is the right way of thinking ;) However a combination of his personality and attitudes I know for a fact put off a lot of third parties from getting involved.On the other hand, Ben Supnik who is primarily in charge of the rendering/scenery side of things comes across as a model professional, keeps people more than well informed of what is going on with his blog posts and seems very open to suggestions from third parties and/or users. As for Sandy Barbour who is in charge of the SDK as a 'hobby' - man he goes above and beyond the call of duty there! It's from guys like those, rather than from Austin himself that I feel hope that we'll see some of the same level of third party development for X-Plane.As to the whole 'MSFS is a game, X-Plane is a simulator' thing, yeah it does get very tiresome, from both sides. Both can be either, it very much depends on how you use them and what you use them for. If you simple spend an hour or two with either, yes MSFS does come across as a game with the missions and the unrealistic default flight model and yes X-Plane does come across as more 'serious' - left at an airport in an aircraft with minimal instructions on how to use the controls - but spend a little more time with either and you begin to see that they both have a lot more depth than is visible at first glance. I still prefer X-Plane (I currently have a fairly sophisticated set-up lent to me by a friend who uses MSFS though not for much longer, yet I still end up flying X-Plane 90% of the time I fly) despite a lot of little things that really annoy me about it. I can see plenty of areas where FSX (in my case) has stuff that X-Plane simply does not. However, I don't see anything in FSX that X-Plane isn't capable of through third party development (apart from the user interface perhaps - X-Plane really needs a facelift though this is partly due to its cross platform nature).Anyhow , I'm waffling...again ;)Setanta

As for missions-I think they can be and many are one of the most useful and realistic things one can do with the sim. The ability to program unexpected events make them very extremely useful to real world training. Gamelike is not something I would use to describe them-though they can be made that way.By the way-I wrote one that trains one on proper multi engine training with an unexpected emergency at the end-called Mt. Lassen adventure and here in the avsim library. It is anything but gamelike and duplicates a mountain flying lesson I took 20 years ago.The mantra that missions make fsx gamelike are about as legit as saying it is also gamelike because it has birds and animals.I just took off from Marshall, MI. a few days ago and nearly had a collision with two baby deer (xplane does these well too) and then several birds on the flight back. The deer/birds in xplane are not gamelike-either are the missions in fsx. I happen to know that the missions will be used fairly soon in serious training for professional flight schools.

I can remember on one version of X-Plane I could not get any of my controllers to interface with the software.

however when I'm landing and doing an ILS intercept I find it unnatural to have the plane pitch up to 10 degrees to intercept... yet this is the case for just about every FSX aircraft out there including the PMDG's and LDS...

Well then, I suggest you pay closer attention to your VAPP and VREF speeds. In the case of LDS, I can say unequovally, that it exhibits the correct 2.5 to 3.5 degrees touchdown attitude, depending on landing weight. Just like its RL counterpart.

I said on Intercept not touchdown.. there is a huge difference there.

Actually what you said was -

however when I'm landing and doing an ILS intercept I find it unnatural to have the plane pitch up to 10 degrees to intercept

Ambiguous grammar and open to interpretation I'd say ;)If you have a 10 degree nose up attitude at 180 IAS, Flaps 5, then you either have - badly loaded payload, or more than likely, your aircrafts gross weight is simply too much for that configuration.

Ambiguous grammar...? anyways.... this thread is 2 months old