alainneedle1 :) not BIG Time money...let's keep it real :)

Never used it, but I don't follow your reasoning.Bryan.

Cool, and guess what, it taxed the very best hardware at the time, as did every other release of FS to this very day. We have always needed to play hardware catch up.And you are wrong about the reason for the second run of keys. It is not because of add-ons. The average Joe or Jane doesn't even know add-ons exist.

alainneedle1 :) not BIG Time money...let's keep it real :)

:( You'll buy it, I'll buy it and the addons who come with it = $$Also money will not be lost (not as much, maybe not at all) because of addons piracy = $$$

Cool, and guess what, it taxed the very best hardware at the time, as did every other release of FS to this very day. We have always needed to play hardware catch up.And you are wrong about the reason for the second run of keys. It is not because of add-ons. The average Joe or Jane doesn't even know add-ons exist.

Ever heard of Google?As for your point about hardware catch up MS have finally, I hope, realised that as a philosophy of flight sim development it will no longer fly...excuse the pun.For me FSX was the 'straw that broke the camels back' and MS have realised that this excuse of waiting for future hardware before you can have good visuals and good performance will no longer be acceptable. Of course there will be a certain amount of scaling (that is just natural) but waiting six years plus for hardware to catch up is a nonsense.Another point about longevity, FSX despite it's improved visuals really is just a typical game that you occasionally boot up and then close down again, especially for your avergage gamer.But with the addition of for example PMDG RealAir FTX GEX and others this keeps the sim fresh and exciting. People talk about FSX sales as an example, I went out and bought the Acceleration pack because I realised that a number of products that I already owned would work better than just base FSX which I already had installed.To sum up FSX on it's own does not have any inherent longevity, add the above into the mix however and it's something else altogether.Bryan.

Ever heard of Google?As for your point about hardware catch up MS have finally, I hope, realised that as a philosophy of flight sim development it will no longer fly...excuse the pun.For me FSX was the 'straw that broke the camels back' and MS have realised that this excuse of waiting for future hardware before you can have good visuals and good performance will no longer be acceptable. Of course there will be a certain amount of scaling (that is just natural) but waiting six years plus for hardware to catch up is a nonsense.Another point about longevity, FSX despite it's improved visuals really is just a typical game that you occasionally boot up and then close down again, especially for your avergage gamer.But with the addition of for example PMDG RealAir FTX GEX and others this keeps the sim fresh and exciting. People talk about FSX sales as an example, I went out and bought the Acceleration pack because I realised that a number of products that I already owned would work better than just base FSX which I already had installed.To sum up FSX on it's own does not have any inherent longevity, add the above into the mix however and it's something else altogether.Bryan.

You're confused. Except for the casual simmer, evrybody realises FSX is to flight simming what your Windows operating system is to your PC hardware: Even with fancy Windows 7 64-bit, without any apps you're limited to browsing the web, writing on Notepad or Wordpad and doodling on MS Paint. FSX is no different: Without good meshes, ground-textures/photo-scenery, airports and complex aircraft, flying under FSX gets pretty boring PDQ (BTDT!) Guess what: Flight will be no different, except you will have great Oahu scenery so you can taste what getting good scenery can do for the areas you like to fly in. Of course they will also include the usual set of so-so aircraft improved slightly for Flight, but perhaps some great add-on aircraft will be included in demo mode (locked to flying in the Oahu area).Cheers,- jahman.

You're confused. Except for the casual simmer, evrybody realises FSX is to flight simming what your Windows operating system is to your PC hardware: Even with fancy Windows 7 64-bit, without any apps you're limited to browsing the web, writing on Notepad or Wordpad and doodling on MS Paint. FSX is no different: Without good meshes, ground-textures/photo-scenery, airports and complex aircraft, flying under FSX gets pretty boring PDQ (BTDT!) Guess what: Flight will be no different, except you will have great Oahu scenery so you can taste what getting good scenery can do for the areas you like to fly in. Of course they will also include the usual set of so-so aircraft improved slightly for Flight, but perhaps some great add-on aircraft will be included in demo mode (locked to flying in the Oahu area).Cheers,- jahman.

Go back and read my post carefully and you will see that you are agreeing with me.Exactly my point, FSX is just a sandbox so why build it for future hardware?People who think flight sims should be built with the future hardware in mind have totally missed the point.There is no confusion at all.Bryan.

MS wants us to use default display settings…and then reduce them as we add more complex add-ons.

MS would have to be rather stupid to think we would want to do that.

MS would have to be rather stupid to think we want to do that.

Agree, what a terribly backward way of doing things.And if thats how MS really thinks no wonder they got performance so wrong with FSX.Bryan.

Future proofing with the slide bar system is not a bad thing as long as you have significantly better visuals with mid settings than the previous sim maxed out. Problem is many are obsesed with sliders and will feel uneasy unless they can crank them all to the right and still get 60+ FPS.FSX failed to catch up on the multicore trend and the backwards compatibility balast made it almost mono core dependant, but that's not the slider system's fault. Had it been properly threaded and GPU bound we would probably be complaining now for having all sliders already maxed and nothing left to improve

Had it been properly threaded and GPU bound we would probably be complaining now for having all sliders already maxed and nothing left to improve

I would be quite happy if I could fly my PDMG 747 into FTX Seattle with autogen at very dense at a steady 30fps, extremely dense is not needed.Bryan.

I would be quite happy if I could fly my PDMG 747 into FTX Seattle with autogen at very dense at a steady 30fps, extremely dense is not needed.Bryan.

Absolutely agree, actually it looks quite stupid in some default areas, but if there was a "ridiculously dense" setting available with trees and buildings on the runways, there would still be someone trying to run that just to max out sliders

Absolutely agree, actually it looks quite stupid in some default areas, but if there was a "ridiculously dense" setting available with trees and buildings on the runways, there would still be someone trying to run that just to max out sliders

Thing is I don't believe the majority of people who complain about performance want to run full sliders, but as you say there will always be one.However if we want to run full sliders after all this time we should be able to.Bryan.

Any particular PC has limited amount of processing "power" which for FS has to be spread between aircraft, scenery, AI, vehicles etc, etc. If a user wants, say more, detailed scenery requiring morepowe, r then the power allocated to something else has to be reduced. (Unless you're running a "super" computer with power tro spare.) Microsoft provided sliders so that users had some (albeit limited) control as to how the power was allocated. if the user wanted more detailed scenery then there was some choice in what to reduce - aircaft, AI, vehicle - to match his personal choice.Microsoft could have made a middle-of-the-road flight simulator with no sliders - then people would have sceamed dumbed-down.

Any particular PC has limited amount of processing "power" which for FS has to be spread between aircraft, scenery, AI, vehicles etc, etc. If a user wants, say more, detailed scenery requiring morepowe, r then the power allocated to something else has to be reduced. (Unless you're running a "super" computer with power tro spare.) Microsoft provided sliders so that users had some (albeit limited) control as to how the power was allocated. if the user wanted more detailed scenery then there was some choice in what to reduce - aircaft, AI, vehicle - to match his personal choice.Microsoft could have made a middle-of-the-road flight simulator with no sliders - then people would have sceamed dumbed-down.

People would not have screamed if FSX had run fluently from the start but it got of to a bad start, and don't even get me started on autogen popping.They better have that under control for Flight or I'm out straight away.Bryan.

The more I think about it, I'm not sure Microsoft's approach to "future proofing" in Flight Simulator is the best idea. How other developers "future proof" their game software is to simply make it look as good as it possibly can and run as well as it possibly can on current top-end hardware and let future benefits come from increased performance rather than increased visual fidelity.In other words, "everything to the right" should be the setting for top of the line hardware, and the only reason you would have to move them to left is if you had lower-end hardware. Let the "future proofing" come from good art design rather than trying to code for hardware that doesn't exist yet.