With Microsoft Flight now on the radar screen I've been thinking about my investment in FSX. Having recently made the switch from FS9 ro FSX exclusively I have already invested a kings ransom in re-purchasing many of the products that I already had in FS9 (thank G-d for companies like FS Dream Team that give you both products for the same price). Now that Microsoft Flight has been announced I think that I am officially going to turn off the money faucet until I know more about Flight and the estimated release date. I assume that I have about $1,000 US left to spend to bring FSX up to snuff with FS9 over the next year but I'm going to sit on that money until I know for sure that 1) Microsoft is actually going to release this thing 2) What compatibility or lack there of will be in the sim. But who knows...Flight my well turn out like FSX and not kill off the previous sim or may be so resource intensive that it takes another 4 years to start using it like FSX.Of course, major purchases will not be put off: PMDG 737NG and LDS 757 as well as a REAL A320 will be 'for sure' purchases along with major city airports. However, those little here and there purchases will be put on hold for now. In stead of having a budget of about $1k, I am only looking about around $200 bucks unless something changes.

Sounds like a pretty smart idea. If Flight! turns out to be a stellar release FSX is dead for me (I'll skip right over it as I'm currently an FS9 user). I was gearing up to switch to FSX in the next year or so but that is on hold now... :(

There’s no indication when it’s coming out – except that it won’t be this year.If there's a betting pool I'll take next May or June :)Reveres compatibility is a big unknown that might affect my choices.Optimistically it will be a two years before we see ‘native’ Flight add-ons.At least ones that take real advantage of the new platform. It will be 3-4 years before we see a genuine marketplace with a broad choice of native aircraft and scenery. Obviously Flight will be more PC intensive than FSX.Likely, we’ll use Left-side sliders for a moderate market priced PC at release. And another four years before a moderate market priced PC will run Right-side sliders...that's more less the lifetime of the product.That doesn’t include the significant performance hit of using 3rd party add-ons.We'll need deep hardware pockets to beat the performance curve.Also, dare I mention new complex products often have kinks to work out.Early adopters must accept that risk.Are those more or less the reasons you used FS9 for so long?For me I would say FSX is in its prime now.

You can already find postings at dev sites, that while purposely vague considering any NDAs, implying that products made for FSX should still have life further down the road. Even if Flight! were to break compatibility, which my opinion is that it won't with FSX made items, there is still the intrinsic value of enjoying an add on now, compared to somewhere down the road.I make most of what I fly over, but I do treat myself to FSDT's Hawai'i work. Hilo and Lihue will be sitting on my HD once released, even if they weren't to work in Flight! By the FSDT forum gives some guidance there.

The worst thing the community can do now is to stop investing into FSX (and FS9). This will kill the add on industry!Wolfgang

With Microsoft Flight now on the radar screen I've been thinking about my investment in FSX. Having recently made the switch from FS9 ro FSX exclusively I have already invested a kings ransom in re-purchasing many of the products that I already had in FS9 (thank G-d for companies like FS Dream Team that give you both products for the same price). Now that Microsoft Flight has been announced I think that I am officially going to turn off the money faucet until I know more about Flight and the estimated release date. I assume that I have about $1,000 US left to spend to bring FSX up to snuff with FS9 over the next year but I'm going to sit on that money until I know for sure that 1) Microsoft is actually going to release this thing 2) What compatibility or lack there of will be in the sim. But who knows...Flight my well turn out like FSX and not kill off the previous sim or may be so resource intensive that it takes another 4 years to start using it like FSX.Of course, major purchases will not be put off: PMDG 737NG and LDS 757 as well as a REAL A320 will be 'for sure' purchases along with major city airports. However, those little here and there purchases will be put on hold for now. In stead of having a budget of about $1k, I am only looking about around $200 bucks unless something changes.

Mike I know how you feel and was thinking the same thing.I just went thru my signature and counted about 48 addons that I have bought in the last 2 years, some sceneries and a few a/c. If I figure that I probably spend an average of $25 to $30 on each one, then I have spent around $1200 to $1440 total, not including the computer, etc.Am I prepared to spend aound that same amount again? Maybe, if the new sim is void of any serious issues, looks better, and of course runs like a champ.Although I figure that even if I do switch and the new sim runs DX10 or DX11 that means that I am going to have to change my OS from XP to Win7, which also means that I will most likely go 64bit and require at least 6gb of RAM, 4 gigs more that I currently have. This leads me to buying a new mobo and while I am at it might as well buy a new i7 while I am at it to catch up to the newest.Then there is also the fact that it will probably be a while before we see any new addons from the 3PD's unless its easy for them to patch/port FSX addons to work in Flight.All in all, I could be looking at $3000 or so to get on the new sim with computer upgrades, new OS, and replacement of current addons.Will be interesting to see if its worth it.

Sounds like a pretty smart idea. If Flight! turns out to be a stellar release FSX is dead for me (I'll skip right over it as I'm currently an FS9 user). I was gearing up to switch to FSX in the next year or so but that is on hold now... :(

Dillon I though FSX was already dead for you, lol. Hopefully the new sim is a viable option for you since you have been hemming and hawing over FSX for as long as I remember and making comparisons of each sim to yourself regarding what you liked better from each one.What ever happens it would be nice if we have ONE sim that the majority of the community likes and will put an end to all the FS9 vs FSX debates, although they are entertaining to read. I'm sure that there will still be some who will be flying FS9 for another 10 years from now, lol.

I thought about this as well. Right now I have about 10 scenery add ons sitting on my wish list at Simmarket. I'm just waiting for the night I am drunk and bored enough to buy them all.I don't see them releasing anything next Spring. Don't they usually target big releases for the holidays? I remember FS9 was released in the Summer but the majority of them were been released in the Fall I believe?That being said, it is going to be a while. We probably won't have a full idea of backwards compatibility until a public beta is released. It will take a long time for developers to start releasing add ons if there are major changes. With even minor changes, it can take a while. If they start from scratch, it could take years for the add ons to catch up.Of course, there is one factor that has lead to slow development for FSX that goes beyond the changes they made. Many people have stuck with FS9 or were slow to switch over due to hardware limitations. The result is many developers have not produced FSX add ons when there is a viable alternative for FS9. Many want to capture buyers for both sims, not just FSX users. If MSF is a hit and it runs well on current hardware, we may see a mass migration to MSF. If this happens, I think the add ons will roll out quickly.

I'm just waiting for the night I am drunk and bored enough to buy them all.

LOL, when I started reading that I though you were going to say you where waiting for a night when your wife was out of the house to buy them all.

LOL, when I started reading that I though you were going to say you where waiting for a night when your wife was out of the house to buy them all.

Nah, she's to busy working to worry about how much I spend on FS. She is an attorney. I am a full-time grad student. She's my sugar momma :)(And she would kick my butt and light my computer on fire if she read this)

Guys, we have nothing in regards to Flight right now. No feature list, not really even a true mission statement of what it's intended to do. I understand being cautious about investing too much in FSX, but let's not jump too far ahead of ourselves right now. Flight could be anywhere from an arcade game to a full featured downright beautiful simulator (...FlyTampa, Aerosoft, and FSDT are reportedly all under NDA-for whatever that means).

For me I'm just going with the flow I will continue to buy stuff for fs9 and fsx regardless if msflight comes out next year. When msflight does come out. and it proves to be better then fs9 and fsx then naturally I will move to that sim. even If I have to re-buy my add-ons since we cant really expect developer's to do all free upgrades. depending how much compatibly was lost. but I'm not holding off in buying anything now because of the next simulator.

Obviously Flight will be more PC intensive than FSX.Likely, we’ll use Left-side sliders for a moderate market priced PC at release. And another four years before a moderate market priced PC will run Right-side sliders...that's more less the lifetime of the product.That doesn’t include the significant performance hit of using 3rd party add-ons.We'll need deep hardware pockets to beat the performance curve.

Not necessarily. FSX is so slow because it's inefficient, and written for a kind of CPU that never existed - The 10 - 15 GHz single-core CPU. That is what Intel were expecting us to use in 2010 back when FS9 and FSX were being developed (FSX is very much based on FS9). Then the whole CPU industry took a completely different turn and now we have 3 - 4 GHz multicore CPUs instead. Also, GPUs are taking over more and more work, including some compute work. That was completely unthinkable in 2003-2005. It's not just that you needed a "future" PC to run FSX, you needed a future PC from an alternative reality where CPU makes didn't run into the thermal wall at 3.8 GHz and most graphics related work is still done by the CPU.Also, Microsoft must have learned from their mistakes. The biggest complaint with FS has always been performance. There's no reason the sim should run at 5 FPS on a top of the line system at the time of release. Even Crysis managed 20 - 30 FPS when it was released. It's definitely possible that Flight will run better than FSX on the same system. Not saying it will, but it's definitely possible.

It's definitely possible that Flight will run better than FSX on the same system. Not saying it will, but it's definitely possible.

It's more than possible it's almost an undeniable fact...I hands down believe Flight! will run great on systems of the time versus what we got with FSX when it was released. The OS environment is stable and multi-core isn't going anywhere. Unless Microsoft get's too happy with the 'Game' element I believe this will be a solid release...

It's more than possible it's almost an undeniable fact...I hands down believe Flight! will run great on systems of the time versus what we got with FSX when it was released. The OS environment is stable and multi-core isn't going anywhere. Unless Microsoft get's too happy with the 'Game' element I believe this will be a solid release...

I agree with Dillon, it wouldn't make sense for them not to use the latest technology. and JimmiG makes a good point back then, they were aiming for cpu speed but now we have some better efficient hardware. multiple cores gpu's etc etc. I shouldn't see why it wouldn't preform well they have had to learn from past mistakes they made with fsx.

JimmiG has it nailed here. The computer hardware industry ran into a developmental brick wall with quantum mechanical tunneling at high temperatures on single core processors, so they sidestepped the problem by switching to multiple cores, which they may tout as an advance, but in reality it was a necessity to get around that data loss issue.MS, like everyone else, had assumed that microprocessors would continue to get faster by the traditional method of manufacturers making them smaller so that the electrons had less distance to travel, which (if everything is hunky dory) had always meant faster computing times were a given. When that didn't happen because too much heat and too thin insulation effectively put a limitation on how small things could go, FSX, which was developed on that assumption of progression in single core speeds, was too far up a dead end street to back up and use a different methodology, which is why MS have killed the FS series.Unless someone discovers a dirt cheap new element on the moon which can be shaved thinner than silicon and still maintain insulation integrity at high temperatures, that's the way it is going to stay. Given that is the status quo, MS can take a fresh approach for a flight sim now they know what they will have to work with in terms of hardware, and they don't have to worry about backward compatibility either.Al