Just brief mention, I did read the interview and like many have said it was simply politician talk not trying to promise anything but say a lot of words, but that's not what this post is about.I feel, due to the fact that graphics libraries (such as OpenGL, DirectX) keep moving forward (due to advances in graphics hardware) there's always going to be a desire to see a better looking simulator. With all the 3rd parties out there and nice revenue that came from sim enthusiasts I don't see why they should not sit down together and release a competitor to Flight.Even if it starts out only as yet another Hawaii but as long they add content that is really missing from Flight like real weather and a jet-liner along GA aircraft,- imho would gain more attention of people who do try sims (kids or adults).I am sure 3rd party developers can produce even better looking content than MS dev team.For example:ORBX will do the Hawaii islandsPMDG will do the aircraftORBX,Aeorsoft, FS Dream Team do the airports on the islandsSimul for weatherOuttera maybe for entire global scenery (for future releases)? to do sim engine and framework?, maybe Aerosoft with creating new department and hire additional staffI am sure I did exclude many others but this is just to show how possible this is.Now, sadly, I think I will answer my own post:Reason you would never see this is a simple fact:The more people you bring together, the more disagreements are there.Brings to my mind how companies got together to create competitor to MS Office Suite. They had all the pieces to create a grest product but ... not agree on anything,- end result was: MS Office revenue and market share saw no competitor,- MS made a killing, more then MS Windows revenue.Feel free to add your comments to this post.

I'm sure they can do better jobs individually. But can they also do a better job combined ?I am sick of watching trees grow on runways.

Hi ActiveX.I think you don't consider some already existing solutions.Apart the old FSX, that is still valid, but unfortunately not more developed by MS, at present some alternatives to the new Flight path do exist.Apart Prepar3D, that I don't consider, mainly for the cost, there are:-Aerofly FS. The new kid in town, spectacular graphics, simplified procedures, could appeal to those who want a relaxing game/sim.-X-Plane. This is my opinion could be the sim that will gain more from the MS "revolution". Its complexity and variety is comparable with FSX, is actively developed and, very important and related to your question about 3PD, it seems that many of the big names (PMDG, Carenado and others) are interested in developing for it. If really Flight remain totally close to external developers, probably many of them will try to find a new platform, and at present XP seems the most probable. And I suspect that the same path change will be followed in the next months by many simmers, myself included.A.

Also, I think you would find that, as with MS with Flight, all of those listed devs would rather protect their own profits and IP, and that by just doing 3pd stuff they can do exactly that..and that sim by consensus would take 50 years to build LOLGood idea though..I like it..bestjake

1 PMDG plane: $70,-1 Orbx region: $40,-3-4 Aerosoft airports: 3* $20,- = $60,-So your sim already costs $170,- and we haven't even started on weather, ATC and AI traffic yet. That really is the big problem with these ideas, creating scenery with Orbx levels of details or planes of a PMDG level is a massive amount of work, and by extention costs a large amount of money. It's unlikely that (e.g.) PMDG will be able to reduce their development and distribution costs by much by actually being involved in the core sim development, that means they will still have to charge $60-70,- just for the plane component of the sim, so the final price of the sim will not be much less than the sum of the price of current add-ons.

Hi ActiveX.I think you don't consider some already existing solutions.Apart the old FSX, that is still valid, but unfortunately not more developed by MS, at present some alternatives to the new Flight path do exist.Apart Prepar3D, that I don't consider, mainly for the cost, there are:-Aerofly FS. The new kid in town, spectacular graphics, simplified procedures, could appeal to those who want a relaxing game/sim.-X-Plane. This is my opinion could be the sim that will gain more from the MS "revolution". Its complexity and variety is comparable with FSX, is actively developed and, very important and related to your question about 3PD, it seems that many of the big names (PMDG, Carenado and others) are interested in developing for it. If really Flight remain totally close to external developers, probably many of them will try to find a new platform, and at present XP seems the most probable. And I suspect that the same path change will be followed in the next months by many simmers, myself included.A.

I am aware of the other sims, here are my brief comments:Prepar3d: Dated graphics for $500? No way.X-Plane 9: I have it, I play it, dated in all aspects.X-Plane 10: Lots of great features but has also its problems: Biggest for me is terrible FPS on ATI cards,- this is at higher end machine with reduced content, graphics. Btw, that platform is in and out of beta so I would not consider this as a release.Aerofly FS: Georgeous VFR switzerland,- that is it.I guess I was not clear with my post.What I meant is by alternative is new GENERATION of Flight Sim incorporating new ideas, features and up to date Graphics. Yes, there could be another sim coming out, and another, but was is the point if the results are not much different than what I saw in 5 years ago?If you want to see some really good examples, take a look at Arma 3 for example, no it is not a flight sim (I am not try to compare it to a sim) but you can see progress of that combat sim as compared to its previous predecesors. Same can be said with other game engines.

There's FlightGear, don't forget about that one....

, and, you have World Coverage too !!!

1 PMDG plane: $70,-1 Orbx region: $40,-3-4 Aerosoft airports: 3* $20,- = $60,-So your sim already costs $170,- and we haven't even started on weather, ATC and AI traffic yet. That really is the big problem with these ideas, creating scenery with Orbx levels of details or planes of a PMDG level is a massive amount of work, and by extention costs a large amount of money. It's unlikely that (e.g.) PMDG will be able to reduce their development and distribution costs by much by actually being involved in the core sim development, that means they will still have to charge $60-70,- just for the plane component of the sim, so the final price of the sim will not be much less than the sum of the price of current add-ons.

Guys, when you develop a product as an entire release, it doesn't work that way. You don't take parts of the sim (every aircraft, every airport, every river, etc.) and market them for a price but instead you deliver base functionality for a price.But point taken, and that's yet another reason why we will not see combined effort to have better Flight Sims. The 3rd party developers would most likely be unwilling to take this expense. That brings us full circle why MS decided what they have done with their sim.I did see a lot of people upset about this but at the same time no one questioned 3rd party devs and their pricing and their willingness to set an example by creating a sim,- yes I truly understand they are in different position but honestly if they really care that much they can do it and the profit would definetly be there (they would just not be making a killing that's all).-lk

There's FlightGear, don't forget about that one....

, and, you have World Coverage too !!!

Nice little sim but there's no way I am going back to the dark ages. See my previous post for more clarification.

Guys, when you develop a product as an entire release, it doesn't work that way. You don't take parts of the sim (every aircraft, every airport, every river, etc.) and market them for a price but instead you deliver base functionality for a price.But point taken, and that's yet another reason why we will not see combined effort to have better Flight Sims. The 3rd party developers would most likely be unwilling to take this expense. That brings us full circle why MS decided what they have done with their sim.I did see a lot of people upset about this but at the same time no one questioned 3rd party devs and their pricing and their willingness to set an example by creating a sim,- yes I truly understand they are in different position but honestly if they really care that much they can do it and the profit would definetly be there (they would just not be making a killing that's all).

But it does work like that, even if you are developing an entire release. The NGX took a certain amount of work, to which we can design a dollar value. The major portion of that will be the salaries of the developers and in addition there will be some other costs as well, like the rent of the PMDG offices, website hosting costs and the like. Some of those costs can be spread out a bit if you're developing an entire sim, rather than just one plane, but in the end you're still going to have to invest the same amount of money to develop an NGX for your sim. That means your sim will have to earn back that amount of money, just to cover the NGX portion of it.The price of the sim (assuming break even, so no profit) is the cost of developing each portion of the sim divided by the number of units sold. It will obviously not be marketed to customers that way, but business wise this must be true or the developer will go bankrupt. Since developing an entire sim will not reduce the cost of developing an NGX quality plane or an Orbx quality scenery for it by much, a summation of the current add-on prices gives us a good indication of what kind of sales price you would be looking at.

But it does work like that, even if you are developing an entire release. The NGX took a certain amount of work, to which we can design a dollar value. The major portion of that will be the salaries of the developers and in addition there will be some other costs as well, like the rent of the PMDG offices, website hosting costs and the like. Some of those costs can be spread out a bit if you're developing an entire sim, rather than just one plane, but in the end you're still going to have to invest the same amount of money to develop an NGX for your sim. That means your sim will have to earn back that amount of money, just to cover the NGX portion of it.The price of the sim (assuming break even, so no profit) is the cost of developing each portion of the sim divided by the number of units sold. It will obviously not be marketed to customers that way, but business wise this must be true or the developer will go bankrupt. Since developing an entire sim will not reduce the cost of developing an NGX quality plane or an Orbx quality scenery for it by much, a summation of the current add-on prices gives us a good indication of what kind of sales price you would be looking at.

Yes and no. For example, should MS Windows of been marketed per functional feature? If yes, you could never afford it. I agree what you said but that doesn't justify neccessarly that you should divide each piece, run cost on it, and the sell entire package for the sum of all cost,- you would not be able to afford any software.I am software developer and I run my own company and I am also currently sub-contracted on another large software project. Yes, there's operating costs associated with development (what ever they maybe) but the point is that any software release should have a return on the investment. The company always eats up the cost of R&D work.Having said that I feel that with all the airports, aircraft, and scenery that has been released, the content is already there. Writing the framework, sim engine, and taking advantage of DX11 features is possible, is doable for an affordable price.

There is no alternative to Flight. The flight sim genera is lagging far behind technologically compared to other games. Flight just continues that trend with an ancient recycled game engine and unvisionary gameplay. Unless there is a Sid Meier of flight games out there, Flight and the rest of the aircraft games will remain a niche for people with a special interrest in aviation.

Prepar3d: Dated graphics for $500? No way.

I fully agree, for that reason I don't consider it a viable alternative.

X-Plane 10: Lots of great features but has also its problems: Biggest for me is terrible FPS on ATI cards,- this is at higher end machine with reduced content, graphics. Btw, that platform is in and out of beta so I would not consider this as a release.

I tried the demo of XP10 some days ago for the first time. On my PC, with i2500K and Nvidia GTX 560 it seems run quite well. The night scenery is really gorgeous, I must confess that yesterday I ordered the full version :-)

Aerofly FS: Georgeous VFR switzerland,- that is it.

True, but Switzerland is bigger than Hawaii :-)Jokes aside, for Aerofly it all depends if they will be able to develop the game, and possibly involve some external partner. If they add other scenery with similar details (I hope Italy) and maybe add complexity to the aircraft, it could become an interesting option. A.

So what about this thread again is about MS Flight? Oh right, hardly anything. Why is this here?

There's FlightGear, don't forget about that one....

, and, you have World Coverage too !!!

You're right, I forgot Flightgear. I still did not try it, but from some videos it seems that the scenery is not very nice. Am I wrong?A.

So what about this thread again is about MS Flight? Oh right, hardly anything. Why is this here?

It is about competing games or lack of... Thanks for you constructive addition to the thread. Very thoughtful of you.