On many occasions people have said that FS9 is only a $50 sim. In reality it is a multi million $ sim yet the $50 dollar unit price is used to excuse faults or lackings usually with the quote that "its only a game".Reality says that while Joe Bloggs may have the untouched version of FS9 on his computer I suspect that very few in these forums do.Add up all your addon payware aircraft, mesh scenery, airports, utilities etc and it is conceivable that your $50 sim could be into the thousand/ thousands of $.Every day there are multiple releases of commercial ware ranging from $10 to $50 and it wouldnt surprise me if someone out there hasnt got a version of FS9 loaded to the hilt with addons?What has your version of FS9 cost?This brings up another point what should be addon and what should be standard.There is now worldwide detailed mesh on 3 cds? should this be addon or standard fit in the next version of FS.People are doing their best to add SID/STAR data should this data be full and complete and part of the FS package?Should we have to purchase programmes like Activesky and the beautiful Chris Willis clouds or should that be standard?If you are honest I bet the FS you see goes into at least many hundreds of dollars. What do you think? What should be standard and should Microsoft sell a package with maybe 10 discs ;-)Finally as a teaser what airport is in this picture I took yesterday and what of interest is in it?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/112807.jpg

really, it doesn't matter what we all add-on to the sim to improve it. Bottom line is that it's a 50 dollar sim from MS' perspective. It seems that what you are suggesting is that MS should be selling us the $2000 version of the sim for $50. I would suggest that for $50, the bog standard out of the box product is pretty impressive. Over the years, I've purchased countless games/sims that didn't offer anything close to what MSFS does even without all the add-on stuff...that's not to say its perfect of course becuase obviously it isn't. There are lots of things that can be improved and hopefully some of them will be. But the tone of your post is that it's a cop-out to note that MSFS is "just a $50 PC game" and I really don't think it is in most cases...

Gawd knows what the airport is!!.Anyways, I to doubt that there are many people about with a "vanilla" install, but thats the beauty of FS, the MS team give us a blank canvas, a core product if you will that people with more talent in a certain area can add too.I believe it will always be like that, since if it was not the development time would be huge.As for the price, yeah, I would say most of us here have spent alot of dosh on it, but there is always the choice, in its default form FS is adequete, but most of us strive for top realism, and this is were addons fill the gap.Bottom line for me is, I don't drink, I don't smooke, so once in a while I spend little money on my main hobby, I have no problems with that.I would reckon that if everyone were to look at exactly how much money they have spent versus the amount of hours spent using FS the

Finally as a teaser what airport is in this picture I took yesterday and what of interest is in it?___________Not sure what airport this is but it looks like a Concorde in the background on the left.

There are plenty of people out there who don't know you can get add-ons for Flight Simulator. They haven't even heard of Avsim. Undoubtably Microsoft are on the right track here with a "$50 sim". It means the general user can get a basic idea of flight simulation while the hobby-ists, like myself, can take it to the next level.... and the one after that. It's all down to choice in the end, which makes it such a winner.FS is the kind of platform I only dreamed of when I was a kid. I still can't get over how amazing Flight Simulator can be. No matter how good the next installment might be, there will always be room for improvement and it's these improvements that make this hobby so great. These are my opinions of course, yours may be completley different. Best RegardsBoone,[email protected]"Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle. It's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes."

Is the airfield Filton with the Seven Estuary in the background?The point about FS and add-ons is that it gives us choice. I'm enjoy VFR flight so my add-ons are UK VFR Photographic scenery and Terrain.I'm not interested in flying in other countries or in flying airliners and I'm happy with the standard sky so I don't want to have to pay for worldwide photographic scenery/terrain, clouds, or SID/STAR data etc. Add-ons enable users to tailor their system to meet their own requirements without having to pay the requirements of others.Commercially, I guess MS relies on "Joe Bloggs" for most of it's revenue and has to price FS accordingly. Most computer games on the shelves in the UK are priced between

Yes it's Filton, with poor old Concorde on the ground and the Severn (with an 'r') Estuary in the background.Ian

Peter,I don't think we should be calling FS9 a $50 sim as I paid a lot more for FS9 when it originally came out. Today you can get it for less than $35 through several outlets on the Internet. So now it's really a $35 sim. What a deal! The biggest difference between the previous and current version is GMAX and Autogen. It would be nice to receive a similar major improvement on the next version that addon developers can improve upon. I like the concept of addon's where others can also share in the wealth of this hobby. Just like in sports and other hobbies many companies are involved and should be.The expense of this hobby is more than the cost of the sim and all the addon's. FS9 and previous versions are graphic intensive and, to get the most out of this product, an upgrade of the graphics card and computer system is highly recommended. It is probably the most graphic intensive game/hobby on the market today. Agree with another poster that the Concorde is located in the upper left portion of the photo. I can't figure out the airport. Ciao,Jim

Well said. One thing: many things can indeed be improved but how many of them can only be improved by making the unit price go too high for the mass market, or making the product too complicated to use for the average customer (which none of us are, remember)?Sure Microsoft could add a full blown FMC to their 747-400 and a panel rivalling the PSS one. But that would be completely lost on 90%+ of their intended userbase and the rest knows (and is willing to buy it) that there are addons that can give that functionality.The investment might also raise the unit price a bit, possibly loosing a few sales and thus costing Microsoft in revenue.Now multiply that for all the other included aircraft...And that's just the aircraft of course. Adding locally correct ATC procedures worldwide would be nice for us but probably overly confusing to Joe Average (who doesn't care one way or another) and thus an investment lost on the majority of the customer base.

EAA Aviation Center?If so, they have expanded it quite a bit, in FS it has just a grass strip...Best,Martijn

I too agree that MS is on the right track. Give us a basic, stable and functional core sim, provide the needed SDK's, and let the experts take it from there. I think the pros at Flight1, DreamFleet, FSD, HiFi Sims, Caranado, etc. are able to dedicate much more time, resources and research into specific aircraft, scenery and weather interpolation than MS could economically provide.And for some of us, the "joy of the hunt" is part of the overall fun.....finding all the best add-ons and building the perfect virtual world and fleet of aircraft to fly it with; and of course "perfect" is a relative term and each user has a different definition.And for the record, at last count I'm into my FS hobby for well over $3000.00 (includes the comp system to run it on, numerous payware aircraft, CH Yoke, CH Pedals, CH Throttle Quad, Saitek X45 (helicopter flying), ActiveSky, FSNav, regg'ed FSUIPC, FSBuild 2.2, blah, blah, blah....And when asked about how I can spend so much on a "game", I ask how can anyone spend much MORE money on super fast sports cars or suping up their stock cars with nitrous/etc, when in fact they cannot be legally driven over 70mph anywhere in the US?? And of course the really good part is that if you're running along at 120mph in a sports car and make a mistake........you're dead! Me, on the other hand....if I make even a HUGE mistake (landing gear comes to mind...hehehe) I simply hit "Reset Flight" and go again!

From what I hear, there are a lot more "casual" fs9 users out there than those of us who add many things to the game. I know I have talked to a few people who have fs9 and I ask them what their favorite addon is. The response is often, "what's an addon?". I for one an strongly AGAINST adding the types of 3rd party programs to the default game. Having everything sold by 3rd parties gives us the choice about what to add and what I don't need. People seem to think that excellent 3rd party addons show how "bad" the sim is, but in reality it shows how good it can be. Incorporating 3rd party addons into the default game not only adds cost but also time. Look how long it takes to develop the higher quality addons.

The picture is Filton in the UK and yes the aircraft in the background is Concorde.What a shame this bird isnt gracing our skies anymore :-(My feeling is that there are certain things which should be part of the MSFS package.A full database is one. Microsoft already deal with Jeppesson and there should be no reason why the database shouldnt be expanded to include SIDS and STARS.Microsoft offered two versions of FS. Standard and Pro and in FS9 the emphasis has been far more to a closer union between sim world and real world by the tie up with Jeppeson and King training.I placed this thread because I wondered what others thought should come as part of the package and what should be left to developers.Peter

A full database would be nice but then the next step would be demanding it were kept up to date with real data constantly?Remember that for 90%+ of users any data at all is a big WOW factor. They wouldn't know the difference anyway and don't have any real charts (let alone keep them up to date).Choosing between 2 or 3 approaches is a challenge for many, now imagine having to choose between dozens of approaches and entry points without paper charts to select the most appropriate one...So maybe Microsoft should include a full Jep tripkit for the entire world as well? And all that of course without raising the price a cent from what it is now.No, let that be the domain of the third parties. What Microsoft might do is make the database flexible so it can be changed by third parties, but I don't think Microsoft should be responsible for providing data more accurate than what they do at the moment.

I think I see your point Peter. I to get tired of the old argument "this addon costs more than the game". When I think about all the addons I have bought, the sceneries, the yoke and pedals, the design programs, it's well over 6-7 hundred dollars and that is conservative. All for the immersion factor and it's still got a ways to go! LOLI agree that to add things to the development might hurt their sales because of the added cost vs dev time, especially when you have a large majority of the FS buying public that have no idea what their sim "could" be like, but there are items that should and can be changed to make it more realistic and still keep it in the same price range as most games.Personally I wish they would go back to the standard and pro version of the sim, with the pro version catering to us "fanatical" users. I would happly wait for 4 years or more to get a more significant advancement, and pay more also. When you fly around 3rd party sceneries like the new LFRD one, with no hit to framerates and much better detail than the default, you realise how good it can be and want it all to be like that.I am tired of buying (or installing for that matter) addons, not because of the price or the anti piracy methods that make our lives ####, but because they mostly compromise the performance in the sim (yes, there are many exceptions). While I am all about detail and being as realistic os possible, when do you say this is too much as a developer. I am still amazed that anyone uses or can use a simflyers scenery, can fly into a fly tampa scenery with 100 % realistic AI and bad weather in the RFP 747 in the VC. I am sure many of us would pay to have a program that offers all these things as default that are all programmed to play nice together with good performance on a less than AMDFX-55 dual SLI 6800 rig, LOL.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International