I would say it is anything but dead. Check out the hardware forums. I think AVSIM members are going to bring back the economy on FS rigs alone.

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Don't laugh. I bought my rig with FS in mind (and maybe another game, but it is still some time before it is released).

The FS Market is still going strong.What it will be like in 3 years, who knows.

FS9 and FSX are limited only in an individual's interest in flying coupled with new addon's (scenery and aircraft mostly) being developed for folks new 'ways' to explore the FS world.

Mostly true. Addon developers are doing amazing things within the "box" of the FSX framework. However at some point, progress will stagnate if the underlying engine is not updated.For example, imagine if FS would have been ditched after FS98. For many years, addon developers would have found new tricks and methods to add things into the sim, but even so, the sim would gradually begin to look very dated compared to contemporary games and sims. For example, how would you get a high resolution elevation mesh with dynamic LOD to be displayed in FS98? What about autogen? The same thing will happen with FSX and some new must-have feature, at some point.This doesn't only apply to graphics. While it's possible to shoehorn new features into the sim via external applications, hooks or modifying the simulator files themselves there are again limitations. Eventually you'd have a nearly complete sim running besides the FSX program, managing everything from sounds to new AI behavior to flight modeling, while FS itself would be degraded to only managing the final rendering of the graphics. The complexity and inefficiency of this setup (not to mention possible conflicts and bugs) would mean it would be easier to just write a new sim from scratch.

It certainly seems like FS9 is dying a slow death, I wouldn't know what to say about FSX though.Just the other day I went into my local games store asking if they had VFR Real Scenery for FS9, and the woman there told me they don't sell FS9 expansions anymore, if they're not partnered with an FSX expansion.Sure made me feel like I was falling behind...

It certainly seems like FS9 is dying a slow death, I wouldn't know what to say about FSX though.Just the other day I went into my local games store asking if they had VFR Real Scenery for FS9, and the woman there told me they don't sell FS9 expansions anymore, if they're not partnered with an FSX expansion.Sure made me feel like I was falling behind...

FSX "Rocks"! I've flown it since the day it was released, and deleted FS9 the same day. I never looked back. On my old rig, sure it was slower, but I comprimised on settings. It still showed me many more technological improvements over FS9. Now, with my new system, all sliders are to the right, and my frames are fantastic. What a joy it is to fire up FSX every day. I'm going to update my new Vista system to Windows 7 (it's in the mail), and I only expect it to be better. FSX is incredible.Stan