...Thread title says it all, having read the Flight forums for a while and watched almost every thread take a downward spiral, my two pennys, if it means anything is well it has potential, can see the FSX roads in there but im saying give it a chance, Im so happy to hear my GPU whirring and not totally silent (FSX) so they got somethings right at least?. Only thing I dislike in no realtime weather but hey its free!!!! Your thoughts please people?

That's essentially what I outlined in a previous post. Initially my reaction was one of disgust, but after playing with it a little, I do think it has potential. The engine is there, definitely. But I think what's going to make or break it long-term for hardcore simmers is the nature of future updates for Flight. By that I mean, I think Flight will gain more favor if an SDK is released, if AI/ATC is added, real-time weather, and probably most importantly, if Flight remains open to the 3rd-party addon community like FS9/FSX currently is. Tagging onto that last point, it will be interesting to see how MS manages DLC and pricing. I've read some theories others have posted about MS using Live to control content so they get a constant cash flow, which makes sense, that's a growing business model seen in Steam games. But will MS allow freeware and are those items that are paid for through Live reasonably priced or outrageous? Personally, those are my views on Flight and what will make or break it for the community.

It does have potential for our community, but the question is, does MS want to use this potential?The lack of an SDK says something about their direction. If you peek into .pak files with WinZip, you just see regular BGL files just like in FSX. There cannot be too many changes, so clearly, they just don't want to have independent add-ons.If this stays the same, the sim will probably be dead (at least for our community), just like FLY!, ProPilot etc. died without additional content, despite being more advanced in some aspects than the current MSFS version at their release time. Of course it will still have a chance in the marketplace for the general public.But X-Plane has a great looking SDK, so we are not without alternatives :) If Flight stays closed for most third party developers, there will be more content created for X-Plane.