IMO Microsoft including a weapons system to FLIGHT would be one of the best choices they could make if they wanted to broaden their market. Even if they don't have a default weapons system in the vanilla version, allowing 3PD's to incorporate one easily would be a great step in expanding the genre.

IMO Microsoft including a weapons system to FLIGHT would be one of the best choices they could make if they wanted to broaden their market.

No it wouldn't ... IMHO and quite frankly I'm worried that this sort of audience is on here at Avsim ... I always thought this place was the last bastion of true GA flight sims.Dude, do you really think MS are going to waste time on damage models to all the scenery on the planet when they struggle to get flight models working right on each new release?Think about it..There are some stunningly good Combat flight sims out there right now, this series has never been about that ... please stay on track.

No it wouldn't ... IMHO and quite frankly I'm worried that this sort of audince is on here at Avsim ... I always thought this place was the last bastion of true GA flight sims.Dude, do you really think MS are going to waste time on damage models to all the scenery on the planet when they struggle to get flight models working right on each new release?Think about it..There are some stunningly good Combat flight sims out there right now, this series has never been about that ... please stay on track.

I don't understand why you jump at me with such defense, I consider myself a true GA flight sim enthusiast, hell less than 10% of my flight time is spent even in commercial jets let alone military. Nobody said anything about damage models for trees and buildings, but on that note damage modeling for aircraft (regardless of how the damage is created) would be a fantastic addition to FS. Even without any damage modeling a simple shoot and hit detection would be great, there are already several models that incorporate missiles and guns. I don't see it as the end of FS but rather the expansion of the genre.I realize there are combat simulators out there already, but why not bring the two worlds together? In Microsofts view, why develop two separate sims with twice the work to target two markets when they could shoot two birds with one stone.The only reason I can imagine such a knee jerk reaction against it is people imagining the online carnage that would ensue when adolescence come blazing in with guns firing, as if this doesn't happen already on the open servers. In my opinion it would just increase the audience that would be attracted to the sim experience, freedom of choice would dictate whether you partake in civilian or combat and the multiplayer games could simply be split into categories of combat and non-combat.

No you are absolutely wrong ... the basic facts you fail to grasp are that a lot of us have FSX looking far batter than these potentially cherry picked MS screen shots ... why would we buy a new sim that looked the same or worse with our back history of exquisite add ons for an existing platform?

You are missing the point! I'm comparing DEFAULT FSX TO DEFAULT FLIGHT. There was a time when we didn't have any add-ons for FSX. The same will be for Flight when it's released. But it actually looks better than you can get with FSX even with add-ons. There's things that we've seen that FSX simply can't, and never will do.Bottom line, there's no reason to compare FSX to Flight with a bunch of add-ons, because my FSX doesn't have a lot of add-ons. (payware add-ons, anyway) I'm showing what you get out of the box with both sims, NOT with add-ons. And I'm not trying to show enthusiasm...I'm thinking logically. I'm not trying to be positive, and by doing that, expecting that it will be good. No, I don't do that. (it may seem that way, but I don't)

We need to compare RTM to RTM, to show the actual improvement from MS. If we try to compare add-ons, we'll just argue which one should be compared and with what settings. It's also pointless, because despite what some people think, not everyone has every add-on made for FSX.We know that add-on developers will be able to go beyond what MS gives us. We want to know what their starting point is going to be - for $60 or so.

I see the word "enthusiast" quite a bit in this thread and as a flight sim enthusiast since 1981 I just wonder:If simmers don't buy Flight or sit on the fence and wait and it is a commercial disaster and MS decides flight sims are not worth producing ever again will this be a good thing for enthusiasts?I buy every version of xplane for this very reason though I up to this point I have always ended up shelving it after a couple weeks. I want it to continue, improve, compete, and perhaps be my sim of choice in the future.I frankly don't care if Flight meets my expectations or not-lots of versions of FS did not. I didn't particularly care for FlyII even though I beta tested it. I loved Flight Unlimited III but they went out of business rapidly because simmers turned all the sliders to the right (the first sim to have sliders) and then complained/boycotted. Pro Pilot, though my sim of choice in the 90's struggled for many of the same reasons and went under in 1999. I bought them all, and wish we could return to the era of the 90's when there were many, many choices for flight simming.I still buy everything that says "flight simulator" because I want them all to be a success, compete, and get better. No competition-a bad thing. No flight sims at all-an even worse scenerio in my book. As a rw pilot, flying really is about risk management. Which is a higher risk-purchasing a new flight sim for the price of 1 high quality add in that may or may not meet our expectations, or not having a flight sim at all for the future? We all have our personal risk levels-I know what mine is here.

I see the word "enthusiast" quite a bit in this thread and as a flight sim enthusiast since 1981 I just wonder:If simmers don't buy Flight or sit on the fence and wait and it is a commercial disaster and MS decides flight sims are not worth producing ever again  will this be a good thing for enthusiasts?I buy every version of xplane for this very reason though I up to this point I have always ended up shelving it after a couple weeks. I want it to continue, improve, compete, and perhaps be my sim of choice in the future.I frankly don't care if Flight meets my expectations or not-lots of versions of FS did not. I didn't particularly care for FlyII even though I beta tested it. I loved Flight Unlimited III but they went out of business rapidly because simmers turned all the sliders to the right (the first sim to have sliders) and then complained/boycotted. Pro Pilot, though my sim of choice in the 90's struggled for many of the same reasons and went under in 1999. I bought them all, and wish we could return to the era of the 90's when there were many, many choices for flight simming.I still buy everything that says "flight simulator" because I want them all to be a success, compete, and get better. No competition-a bad thing. No flight sims at all-an even worse scenerio in my book. As a rw pilot, flying really is about risk management. Which is a higher risk-purchasing a new flight sim for the price of 1 high quality add in that may or may not meet our expectations, or not having a flight sim at all for the future? We all have our personal risk levels-I know what mine is here.

 + .80 ... my story is almost exactly the same.  However, I buy them all because its my hobby .. i have to try them all to be fully immersed in the hobby.

And now I'm sorry because I've been to hard on you ... I feel your enthusiasm ... I really do.

:( :(

We need to compare RTM to RTM, to show the actual improvement from MS. If we try to compare add-ons, we'll just argue which one should be compared and with what We know that add-on developers will be able to go beyond what MS gives us. We want to know what their starting point is going to be - for $60 or so.

It will be whatever the market will bear.

why would we buy a new sim that looked the same or worse with our back history of exquisite add ons for an existing platform?

Sounds exactly like what people were, and for that matter still are, saying about FSX, yet many of us use it.

I see the word "enthusiast" quite a bit in this thread and as a flight sim enthusiast since 1981 I just wonder:If simmers don't buy Flight or sit on the fence and wait and it is a commercial disaster and MS decides flight sims are not worth producing ever again will this be a good thing for enthusiasts?I buy every version of xplane for this very reason though I up to this point I have always ended up shelving it after a couple weeks. I want it to continue, improve, compete, and perhaps be my sim of choice in the future.I frankly don't care if Flight meets my expectations or not-lots of versions of FS did not. I didn't particularly care for FlyII even though I beta tested it. I loved Flight Unlimited III but they went out of business rapidly because simmers turned all the sliders to the right (the first sim to have sliders) and then complained/boycotted. Pro Pilot, though my sim of choice in the 90's struggled for many of the same reasons and went under in 1999. I bought them all, and wish we could return to the era of the 90's when there were many, many choices for flight simming.I still buy everything that says "flight simulator" because I want them all to be a success, compete, and get better. No competition-a bad thing. No flight sims at all-an even worse scenerio in my book. As a rw pilot, flying really is about risk management. Which is a higher risk-purchasing a new flight sim for the price of 1 high quality add in that may or may not meet our expectations, or not having a flight sim at all for the future? We all have our personal risk levels-I know what mine is here.

+1 :(

I see the word "enthusiast" quite a bit in this thread and as a flight sim enthusiast since 1981 I just wonder:If simmers don't buy Flight or sit on the fence and wait and it is a commercial disaster and MS decides flight sims are not worth producing ever again will this be a good thing for enthusiasts?I buy every version of xplane for this very reason though I up to this point I have always ended up shelving it after a couple weeks. I want it to continue, improve, compete, and perhaps be my sim of choice in the future.----------------I still buy everything that says "flight simulator" because I want them all to be a success, compete, and get better. No competition-a bad thing. No flight sims at all-an even worse scenerio in my book. A

Geofa- Were you, by any chance, the purchaser of an EDSEL? AR

Geofa- Were you, by any chance, the purchaser of an EDSEL? AR

No-but then again I am not a fan of cars and they cost quite a bit more than a meal for two...

I see the word "enthusiast" quite a bit in this thread and as a flight sim enthusiast since 1981 I just wonder:If simmers don't buy Flight or sit on the fence and wait and it is a commercial disaster and MS decides flight sims are not worth producing ever again will this be a good thing for enthusiasts?I buy every version of xplane for this very reason though I up to this point I have always ended up shelving it after a couple weeks. I want it to continue, improve, compete, and perhaps be my sim of choice in the future.I frankly don't care if Flight meets my expectations or not-lots of versions of FS did not. I didn't particularly care for FlyII even though I beta tested it. I loved Flight Unlimited III but they went out of business rapidly because simmers turned all the sliders to the right (the first sim to have sliders) and then complained/boycotted. Pro Pilot, though my sim of choice in the 90's struggled for many of the same reasons and went under in 1999. I bought them all, and wish we could return to the era of the 90's when there were many, many choices for flight simming.I still buy everything that says "flight simulator" because I want them all to be a success, compete, and get better. No competition-a bad thing. No flight sims at all-an even worse scenerio in my book. As a rw pilot, flying really is about risk management. Which is a higher risk-purchasing a new flight sim for the price of 1 high quality add in that may or may not meet our expectations, or not having a flight sim at all for the future? We all have our personal risk levels-I know what mine is here.

""""Your friend, is he aficionado, too?" Montoya smiled at Bill."Yes. He came all the way from New York to see the San Fermines.""Yes?" Montoya politely disbelieved. "But he's not aficionado like you."He put his hand on my shoulder again embarrassedly."Yes," I said. "He's a real aficionado.""But he's not aficionado like you are."Aficion means passion. An aficianado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya's hotel; that is, those with aficion stayed there.We often talked about bulls and bull-fighters. I had stopped at the Montoya for several years. We never talked for very long at a time. It was simply the pleasure of discovering what we each felt.""" :(

If simmers don't buy Flight or sit on the fence and wait and it is a commercial disaster and MS decides flight sims are not worth producing ever again will this be a good thing for enthusiasts?

Not realy, if tnere is money to make somebody else will build a sim. (Xplane-10, Aerosoft....if ever), it's like taking a drug dealer off the street, if there is money to make in drugs another one will take his place.