And MS has never changed its mind or lied to the computer industry before?

Microsoft should just drop pc gaming, they have no god damn clue anymore what makes a good game. Plz just stay with xbox and make kiddie games. Honestly i see only disaster in the future for Microsoft, they had their time, it all going down for them now like the rest of the US.

Yet another topic full of inconclusive theories and speculation...

You did read the bit about my company owning a license, didn't you?

As I recall, the intent was the development of a networked combined arms training simulation so that all aspects of air-land-sea warfare could be excercised and trained. DJ

Yes, that too...

As I said in another thread, any decisions about going forward with Flight will be made by accountants.Corporate accounts have no connections to reality other than next week's black ink!

And of course making sure there's money in the bank to pay the staff at the end of the month, etc etc...

You can in fact see LM's intent writ large in the default vehicles P3D comes with. That and the fact that the starting airport is what it is, both being geared toward more than mere flight simulation. The IWEB mini sub that is included, and the fact that you start off at an airport where the terrain and nearby ocean floor have been modeled in considerable detail, with options for bathymetry and water clarity on the graphics settings, ought to make it apparent that there is more to LM's P3D than mere flight simulation. It was in fact one of the reasons why I was keen to check it out, since I'm also interested in the submarine possibilities it offers, which might even be of interest to aircraft enthusiasts anyway in the wider sense, since you often find such mini submarines are used when locating flight data recorders if an aircraft is unfortunate enough to come down unintentionally, and does so in the ocean. This is an interesting possibility for me in particular given that interest in subs, since many of you will be aware that the entertainment version of Ship Simulator does in fact have a professional counterpart (Nautis), and that professional version models oceanic currents (it is expensive, far more costly than the entertainment version of ship sim, and much more than the full-on licence for P3D, since it is intended for training supertanker skippers and that sort of thing), so you can probably guess what I'm hoping LM are going to do with P3D. A potentially interesting side-benefit of that for flight simmers would be that seaplane operations would be far more realistic than they currently are in any other flight sim. Al

Have a look at MS quarterly financial reports... I've posted many here over the past month.

Yes Microsoft financial reports... The problem is Microsoft have created the demise in PC sales in their little corner of reality, not PC gaming as a whole. Steam (which ironically was initially presented to and rejected by Microsoft) is growing, whereas MS pitiful attempt in the form of Games for Windows LIVE is all but done, being morphed into their console division. You have to spend money to make money and MS are giving scraps to their PC division, yet they hold a trump card in PC gaming with their OS. If attention was paid to it they could easily dominate both consoles and PC gaming by bringing the two together into a unified community, maybe they have plans to do this idk.

You did read the bit about my company owning a license, didn't you? Yes, that too...

Sure Tom & Joe, I suppose what I should have said was that the Topic in question might not portray inconclusive theories and speculation but certainly many or the replies do

Sure Tom & Joe, I suppose what I should have said was that the Topic in question might not portray inconclusive theories and speculation but certainly many or the replies do

HelloMost topics posted in this forum are full of inconclusive theories and speculation mainly because of the way in which Microsoft are handling this development.Flight Sims are a hard enough sell anyway without MS being so guarded and secretive about Flight!. Contrast Microsofts stance on Flight! with the openness of the Prepar3D developers who seem to be pushing the codebase further/faster and are not shy on revealing what they are working on.

Until portable devices can be even remotely powerful when compared to desktop PCs I would hardly call them legacy.

Maybe it's not really needed having a "powerful PC" in your home, cloud gaming might be an answer: http://www.onlive.com/ 99$ "console", or a free PC-Mac-iPad client, which will never become obsolete, since the game is not running there, it's running on their servers, which are always updated to the latest tech, with the software always patched. Flight Sim could work as a cloud gaming product: imagine a state of the art server professionally installed and maintained with many 3rd party addons (maybe with different prices, like "plain FSX", "FSX+most popular addons", "FSX totally stuffed..." all properly configured to run together, with no hardware/software/drivers installation issues, but it would still be the real FSX, since the servers ARE PC so, no dumbed down console versions of the programs. Wasn't for services like Steam or OnLive, I would say the PC gaming market has no future.

HelloMost topics posted in this forum are full of inconclusive theories and speculation mainly because of the way in which Microsoft are handling this development.Flight Sims are a hard enough sell anyway without MS being so guarded and secretive about Flight!. Contrast Microsofts stance on Flight! with the openness of the Prepar3D developers who seem to be pushing the codebase further/faster and are not shy on revealing what they are working on.

Sure, I suppose on reflection it's impossible not to have speculation. Which I don't find a problem in itself, it's just that more often than not they can end up by generating unnecessary squabbling amongst us all.

Maybe it's not really needed having a "powerful PC" in your home, cloud gaming might be an answer: http://www.onlive.com/ 99$ "console", or a free PC-Mac-iPad client, which will never become obsolete, since the game is not running there, it's running on their servers, which are always updated to the latest tech, with the software always patched. Flight Sim could work as a cloud gaming product: imagine a state of the art server professionally installed and maintained with many 3rd party addons (maybe with different prices, like "plain FSX", "FSX+most popular addons", "FSX totally stuffed..." all properly configured to run together, with no hardware/software/drivers installation issues, but it would still be the real FSX, since the servers ARE PC so, no dumbed down console versions of the programs. Wasn't for services like Steam or OnLive, I would say the PC gaming market has no future.

You've hit the nail on the head there i'd say. I was thinking about this recently myself. Onlive or something similar is the future IMO. Consumable media straight to any device. No worrying about whether your PC will be up to job, just log in and play. I know some people don't like having to be connected to the internet all the time or have unrelaible connections, but they are becoming faster and faster and more reliable all the time.

Sure, I suppose on reflection it's impossible not to have speculation. Which I don't find a problem in itself, it's just that more often than not they can end up by generating unnecessary squabbling amongst us all.

Which is exactly why FSDeveloper eliminated their Flight forum after such a short period of time. It appears that speculation brings out the worst in people.

You've hit the nail on the head there i'd say. I was thinking about this recently myself. Onlive or something similar is the future IMO. Consumable media straight to any device. No worrying about whether your PC will be up to job, just log in and play. I know some people don't like having to be connected to the internet all the time or have unrelaible connections, but they are becoming faster and faster and more reliable all the time.

I sure wish the connections in my area would become faster and more reliable. I wouldn't want to try playing Pong on my internet connection let alone a flight simulator!

Yeah, and what if Skynet takes over the world? What are the chances of playing MS Flight if the entire internet is controlled by advanced AI? With a copy installed on your hard disk, you can enjoy that flight through the mountains in your Turbine Duke whilst the Terminators run amok outside

Playing a flight simulator on a console with a handheld controller just doesn't feel right. Real pilots have a yoke and rudder. There are some games out there that aren't suited for console gaming (eg. FPS), and this is one of them.

Flight Sim could work as a cloud gaming product: imagine a state of the art server professionally installed and maintained with many 3rd party addons (maybe with different prices, like "plain FSX", "FSX+most popular addons", "FSX totally stuffed..." all properly configured to run together

Sounds a bit like ordering a pizza. All you need to do is log on FSX Hut and click the check box for 1 FSX Totally Stuffed with a side of ENB and/or Shade and proceed to the check out. Link guaranteed in 30 minutes or less or your session is free.

Wow. This entire thread of flight simulation speculation and discussion because Steve Ballmer couldn't hold the attention of 20,000 fellow Microsoft employees, primarily because of Microsoft's uninspiring Windows 8 pep talks and such. At this rate, I'm actually quite surprised that some of the speculation junkies out here haven't taken to watching MSFT stock prices, claiming that Flight is a sure thing when stock values go up, and Flight is dead when stock prices go down. (Shaking my head...)-Greg