Your analogy between a house burning down and MS Flight really strikes me as off, sorry to say... Surely a house burning down, leaving you without a roof and your entire household ruined must be worse than MS releasing Flight without listening to its customer base? You can be passionate all you want, but surely some things are more important than others, right?

Yes, let’s end the passion, the commitment, the joy and the fun. Let's strive for mediocrity, the average, the kitsch and the 99 cent products of the world. Let’s sell everything we own, quit our jobs and go change the world, or become one with the gray mass of comfortably numb nitwits and carenots. Let’s stop talking about everything we can’t empirically prove, end all religion, gossip, art and fictional literature and movies. Creativity, curiosity and strive for progress is all futile. In the end a meteorite might strike the blue planet upon which we whine and extinct all human life. We might as well seek shelter and prepare for the end while we’re still able. Tomorrow might be just a dream…

Quit being a drama queen. This is a piece of hobby software we are talking about here, not then end of civilization as we know it.

A passionate minority of this hobby is what keeps this hobby alive. Hundreds of thousands of people have purchased FSX but only a few thousand hobbyists are still keeping the title alive and keeping the third party developers in business.

You expect Microsoft to develop Flight Simulator to meet the needs of a few thousand hobbyists and to worry about the fortunes of third party developers? And what keeps flight simulator alive are the hundred thousand 's of the other buyer,s who you seem to despise.

Quit being a drama queen. This is a piece of hobby software we are talking about here, not then end of civilization as we know it.

Says the guy who can't stop making pointless posts about tea just to increase his insane post count.

Tea is fine and I am not insane.

How about not attacking fellow flight sim enthusiasts ? Seems like a good plan to me-after all we all share hopefully the same passion?

Just out of interest why would anybody care about how many posts they have made.I have no idea how many posts i have made .I couldn't care less either.Have a cuppa in the morning Have a cuppa in the day.TEA TEA TEA so there!!!Because I am worth it .cheersLana FabulonHoratio is on holiday Hawaii by the way.

+ 1000

-1001

-1001

Morning Jim Just out of interest ,what time is it were you are? assuming your not on holiday ,It must be very early in the morning in the U.S.Your east coast is about six hrs behind GB time so even there NY (perhaps) I make that 6.30 a.m.I have to confess to ignorance of Warren Michigan's location (anything to do with Lake Michigan and is that one of the Great lakes) if so that puts you sort of easterly and therefore a pretty early bird ,eager to resume the fray as you battle it out in these forums.AnywaysThis post is a NEW category neither serious (duel core, Hawaii right or wrong ,DX10 11 14) OR bonkers (tea ,more tea ,the occasional coffee , Dundee cake etc) but general interest ..Geography with the sims, locate your pilot type of Category.Cheers A

How about not attacking fellow flight sim enthusiasts ? Seems like a good plan to me-after all we all share hopefully the same passion?

I disagree with this statement. The people here share a passion for tea that is beyond me.

I think that mr. Freud would agree that someone has got a secret crush on mr. T!

Morning JimJust out of interest ,what time is it were you are? assuming your not on holiday ,It must be very early in the morning in the U.S.Your east coast is about six hrs behind GB time so even there NY (perhaps) I make that 6.30 a.m.I have to confess to ignorance of Warren Michigan's location (anything to do with Lake Michigan and is that one of the Great lakes) if so that puts you sort of easterly and therefore a pretty early bird ,eager to resume the fray as you battle it out in these forums.AnywaysThis post is a NEW category neither serious (duel core, Hawaii right or wrong ,DX10 11 14) OR bonkers (tea ,more tea ,the occasional coffee , Dundee cake etc) but general interest ..Geography with the sims, locate your pilot type of Category.CheersA

Yes that is correct. This is breakfast time before work.

To answer the original question: If the users of this forum are representative of the entire community, then somebody from the outside would probably answer yes.

To answer the original question: If the users of this forum are representative of the entire community, then somebody from the outside would probably answer yes.

+1

/SoapboxMode=OnOkay, so its getting kind of dramatic around here. Why are so many simmers upset about the way Microsoft is handling Flight? After all its just a game right? Chill out and go drink a beer and don't worry about it right?Well, not so fast. For thousands on this board MSFS is a HOBBY. Who cares you say? Well let's see. Hobbies are hallmarked by the dedication spent on it that is measured in both time and money. Time? Thousands of hours of two decades. Money? For many of us, thousands and thousands of dollars in hardware and software. As a hobby it is an investment in time, energy, money, time away from other things and is a big part of thousands of peoples lives. When you have invested as much time and effort in this hobby, passion is the end result. I mean, if you spent decades building your dream home would you care if someone walked by and burned it down? It's just a house right?To that point, lets talk a little more about passion. A passionate minority of this hobby is what keeps this hobby alive. Hundreds of thousands of people have purchased FSX but only a few thousand hobbyists are still keeping the title alive and keeping the third party developers in business. What happened to the other few hundred thousand who purchased FSX? They installed it a few times, flew upside down into a bridge to impress their friends one evening, uninstalled it and are now playing Call of Duty 3 full time. If the few thousand people who are passionate about this hobby did the same, the hobby would be DEAD. No Flight, no 3rd party developers, no Avsim. Nothing. Microsoft needs to get a clue that not only do they want to attract NEW customers to Flight, they want to make those new customers PASSIONATE about Flight.But let's talk a bit more about that. Microsoft wants to EXPAND the appeal of Flight beyond the audience of FS9 and FSX. How do they do that? Well, lets look at World of Warcraft and Bilizzard Entertainment. Role Playing games have hardcore, medium and casual followings just like Flight Simulation only to a larger extent. So how has Blizzard kept growing the franchise over 7 years? - First and foremost Blizzard knew that they had to keep the hard core people engaged by thickening the lore, making the game more engaging and challenging. To do this they had to embrace the hardcore community and deeply take into account what these people were telling them. This is called locking your base customers in place. As in Flight Simulation the hard core are the base customers that you don't want to ever leave.- Second, is to cultivate the medium core fans so that they move up the chain to become hard core fans. This means making the lore interesting so that people would dive deeper. Blizzard fostered, encouraged and helped grow the Guild culture which paired the hardcore and the medium core together in groups to quest and learn together. This is called expanding the base of customers. The more customers you have becoming hard core about your game the more loyalty to the franchise, the more they play, the more money you make.- Third. Attract new players to WOW and engage casual players to become more deeply entrenched to move up from casual to medium core. To do this, Blizzard expanded the game but at the same time made it easier for new players to quickly get up and running. They didn't dumb down the game or the lore but made it easier to level up to where you were powerful and knowledgeable enough to move up on your own. They added things to excite the new comer as well as things to make casual gamers want to play more and move up the chain.- Forth. Get deeply involved in the community by sponsoring forums. Engage with the community. Now, if you have ever seen an unpopular change made by Blizzard voiced on their own forums, it makes the forums at Avsim look like we are on Valium at a charm school reunion. They know that angry customers are PASSIONATE customers. They know that ideas are not always expressed with the civility of tea time in charm school. Sometimes comments are raw and off the cuff. You can either whine that your feelings are hurt and go cower in the girls bathroom or you can use that energy to make your product better. Blizzard knows that the community is passionate about THEIR game.By THEIR I mean that if a franchise is truly successful then the product stops being only the property of the developer and becomes the adopted property of the community. The community supports it, nurtures it, has a say in its growth and direction. The community makes it their own and has a vested interest in keeping it going. This relationship that companies like Blizzard, Bioware and others have with their community is something that Microsoft is sorely lacking and that is very sad. The best ideas and suggestions don't just come from a handpicked elite group of beta testers and developers but also from the newbies. The newbies represent the people who have little experience your title but you are expecting to draw in as a long term customer. Microsoft has had and still has no concept of this. And THIS fiasco in this forum is the result.What I do think though is that some people on this forum should stop mocking things they don't understand. Just because YOU don't understand it or agree with it doesn't mean that it doesn't ring true. The same thing happened upon FSX release and we were told to stop whining and complaining, everything's fine, FSX is great. Well everything WASN'T fine and WASN'T great and it was the outcry from the "whiners" that caused Aces to release two service packs AND that compels Flight to be "optimized for performance." Sometimes someone has got to stand up and declare that "the emperor has no clothes" and go from there./SoapboxMode=Off

Mike T, your words are plenty of shining intelligence.A brilliant and passionate mind like your should be awarded by this community and I am proud you are part of it.Just please keep on fighting, you are not alone, there are others like you who understood the big picture.Thx Mike T