Good post Marc.

Marc I would say you are probably 100% correct in your Assumption.There are some very talented and intelligent people in these forumswho will work wonders with this new sim...

What surprises me is that before these threads started, most of the opinions I had heard suggested the flight fidelity of FS2004 was a significant improvement over previous versions - particularly in the case of the vintage aircraft. I can't help wondering if bringing up subjects such as these (I don't mean this particular thread btw) might unneccessarily and unjustly lower people's perceptions of the sim. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. In the same way I wouldn't want to watch myself being operated upon in hospital, I'd rather just enjoy the sim and not get concerned about all the number-crunching that goes on behind the scenes.

It was rather amusing to read FSAviator's rant about a grand Microsoft conspiracy to dumb down COF2004. Undoubtedly he had some valid points, but the fact that:(1) he had never posted before on AVSIM - at least not under that name; and (2) he acknowledge he actually didn't own COF2004discounted much of his views in my mind.It tickled me that he would go over to a friend's house, and the first thing he would do is not try out the sim but fire up an FDE editor to examine the inner workings...that strikes me as particularly odd :-)Then I flipped over to the DreamFleet forum and Lou Betti said, in reference to that thread, "We're not losing sleep over it."http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DC...mID3/10333.htmlSo I'm not worried. :-)

>10. IMOP - Although there has been 'some' intelligent>discussion; in this particular forum, most posts>related to this topic have amounted to a bunch of MINDLESS>DRIVEL. I apologize for being critical, but it blows my mind>to see so much mis-information being posted (pro and con) by>folks who don't have a clue as to what they're talking about.God i cant remember what i have typed and hope its in the SEMI MINDLESS DRIVEL catagory (Crosses fingers)Out

>5. FACT - With every new release of Flight Simulator, the FDE>experts complain bitterly about Microsoft's changes... and who>can blame them! Any changes create more work for the experts>because edits or ommisions of one parameter can have a>profound influence on other, "known", parameters. Without any>help from Microsoft, determining these influences takes a lot>of time.That is 100% true. I remember very similar conversations when 2002 came out. I do feel for the fde developers who now have to go in and sort through all of Microsoft's undocumented changes to the flight modeling (again). No one can blame them for their frustrations. The only thing we can do is wait and let the flight model experts do their magic.

For the record, the original post on this thread is great, and I agree with most all of it. SOme very good points and proper perspective.But also for the record, I (Product) am not the same individual as FS Aviator. I merely relayed the discussion from the developer forum to the larger community, and have recieved many thanks and some criticism for having done so. To the extent that I believe an open airing of ideas on this and other forums is a positive thing, I'm glad I did so. But to the extent that many of these discussions seem to have downgraded into accusations of flaming, trolling, Microsoft defensiveness/attack, conspiracy theories and such, I regret having started the thread.Critique and discussion of concerns is not equivalent to whining, and intelligent opinions can and should be offered on all sides of this and other issues. Best,Joel

It seems that with every new version of FS, people say that it's the end of 3rd party development :)There's nothing to worry about, yet. If the flight dynamics experts don't find a workaround or solution in the next 3-4 months, I'll be worried.If they changed this on purpose, there's probably a sensible explanation why they did it. Maybe these variables are replaced with something else, yet unknown?If it was done in error, it's a major error and will most likely be corrected with a patch.I don't think MS is trying to dumb down FS. The default flight dynamics in FS2004 is actually a lot better than in FS2002.But Flight Simulator IS a GAME. If you don't believe me, look at the price tag. Simulators don't cost $60, they cost hundreds of dollars....or the fact that the "game" comes in a DVD-case box, with a 29-page manual :-lol Even Morrowind (a favorite RPG game of mine) comes with a 49-page manual and full-size color map of the game world.

So I'm not the only one who noticed that? Almost thought it was just me who thought they were better :-rotorI posted this over in the PSS forums, which might shed some light on these "experts" claiming Microsoft is crippling the flight dynamics designers:

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The cfg file is a lot larger in FS2004, for one aircraft 15144 bytes in FS2004 against 13922 bytes in FS2002.That's an increase of 1200 bytes. At 50 characters a line that's 240 lines of configuration settings that are either new to FS2004 or were pulled out of the airfile.That is an aircraft I ported from FS2002 though. Here's the data for the default C172 in both sims:FS2002:aircraft.cfg: 19787 bytesairfile: 9001 bytesFS2004:aircraft.cfg: 21028 bytesairfile: 8077 bytesHere the airfile has shrunk by nearly a KB from one sim to the next while the cfg file has increased by 1.5KB.So apparently there have indeed been around 250 entried moved from the airfile to the cfg file where they are now easy to edit by anyone knowing his stuff (though it of course still needs an expert to get it to really fly

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So you see, all those disappearing options aren't gone at all, they're just moved somewhere where AirEd wouldn't pick them up but Notepad would (and FSAviator, a.k.a. ... a.k.a ...) didn't bother to look there because he didn't want to. He found what he wanted: a reason to bash the product, and moved on.Might he be trying to get people to move towards a competing product?

Great post Marc....Can't think of anything to add or improve on what you said...-John

Very very well said Marc.Carlos.

I have the FSD Commander and Cheyenne for FS2004 and I have encountered no problems with the flight model. Of coarse Im not a premier designer of Planes like FSD but Ive not encountered anomolies in the flight model. In fact I can tell absolutly no difference in how they fly in either FS2002 or FS2004 and I fly them alot. Perhaps the boys over at FSD know a little more about it than some might think. And if it flys good enough for Mr. Small It flys good enough for me.Dennis Waggoner

"And if it flys good enough for Mr. Small It flys good enough for me."Ditto on that. Small me be an excellent flight model developer, but he's got the temper of a wingclipped Geebee..it's almost as if he has something personal against the people at MS. Check the readme for the updated Baron flight dynamics, to see what I mean...no offense meant, of course :D

bump test

Well, this is tough. FS Aviator has made some pretty terrific flight models in his time. However, I see no business advantage acruing to Microsoft to putting the third party add-on producers out of business. MS does not make add ons - so there is no monitary gain. And frankly, the add on publishers dramatically increase "playability" increasing the amount of time spent playing the game. If the average video game gets betwen 30 and 60 hours of play, MSFS has the potential to be played far more, enhancing its percieved value to the customer.So, the conspiracy theory does not work for me. If they did dramatically change the way planes fly in MSFS - they didn't do it to screw the third party publishers. MS is a highly disciplined company focused on making money. I can't see them losing any sleep over whether third party airplanes are percieved as superior to theirs unless there is a financial benefit being lost. Which there isn't. Colin