It would be nice if they let us know that there's not going to be an FS200X in the near future. What do they have to lose?RH

If FS2006 is not announced this month, with the upcoming opportunities to announce it, then I would not expect an announcement any time soon. But, then, the question arrises, "What in the heck have they been doing over there the past two years (or close to it) since the release of FS2004? The Windows 64 and Duel Core do add to the mire. XBOX 360, well that's a-whole-nother topic.RH

Get it out of your head (or into it): as long as they don't tell it WILL be soon it WON'T be soon.Therefore no announcement is an effective announcement it won't be soon :)What'd you expect, a weekly press release from Redmond stating which potential future products that haven't even been announced yet will not be released within the next few weeks?Could get rather long and lead to a lot of speculation as to why Monkey Island XXIII hasn't been listed as not being released any time soon...

I have a source that tells me that Microsoft has been developing the next generation Flight Sim for Apple's OS X system. Of course, you know that Microsoft produced software for Macs already (Word, Excel, Entourage, etc.) Well, apparently they have been working on the Mac version for quite some time,in secret, and it was due to be made available shortly after Apple released Tiger. Since that has now happened, we can expect the new version of flight simulator soon, but for Macs only. It will not be until much later for PCs, assuming, of course, Microsoft decides to continue producing new versions for that platform. There is increasing doubt about that.This has been a fairly common rumor in Mac circles online, only recently confirmed (albeit only semi-officially) at the big Maxpo 05 show in San Francisco last week.The Mac-only version is said to take advantage of Mac's Quartz technology to produce framerates of 60+ FPS with full AI traffic, photoreal 3-D weather with an individual raindrop ballistic model, with default aircraft that put the latest crop of current payware to shame. We're talking virtual cabins with "virtual passengers" for the first time: 3-D businessmen, tourists, annoying children of any combination of 50 different nationalities. Of course there are flight attendants taking care of all those passengers, too!That's about all I can say at this point. Look for a release before mid-July.

that was pretty funny

I appreciate that, am happy for you, and I am sure they will.RH

I think it's a very good guess that they're overhauling the engine and giving us a truly modern graphics renderer that's going to be on par with the stuff we're seeing in other genres of gaming. Evidence for this would be that one article that was posted about a big time DX9 shader guy being hired to work on the FS team, plus the amount of time it's taking to announce the new version. Rewriting the core engine takes time - many including myself have been calling for them to do this though - the sim is not slow FPS wise because hardware can't handle it, it's because the code, which has now been building upon itself since FS98 and 2000, doesn't display graphics utilizing all the advanced features of our newest video cards...Whenever the announcment does come, the first screenshots will probably blow people away if my theory is correct. A lot of simmers don't play other PC games like Half-Life 2 or Far Cry and aren't away of how amazingly lifelike things have gotten when cutting edge DX9 programming is used.

This story reminds me of way back in the early days when BAO (developer for MS) created a Mac version of FS. It had both the Cessna and the Learjet, ran in B/W dithered graphics and blew the PC version out of the water. Now this was back when a new FS versions came out like ever 4 years or so and I can remember foaming at the mouth at the possibility of flying the Lear and even considered buying a Mac just for Flight Sim! LOL I had no idea how long I'd have to wait for the PC version to catch up.I never did get for the Mac version, and stuck it out with the PC version. Probably a good thing considering where the PC version is today and I never saw another Mac version since!Bruce

Hi Gang.I think that you will find the lack of release information is quite innocent, it is more than likely because they are a)still working on the core components. b)still trying to decide on which route to take for the specs for it to run "satisfactorily" on our PC's and c)they have not finished off the graphics arrangement yet either,all this has been compounded by the recent simmers survey, which indicates to me that they are indeed trying to make it more tailored to what we actually want in the Sim, a few examples for you are the mention of stability, and what aircraft type and amount we want to see, and also the mention of VATSIM and navigational equipment such as FS Nav etc.they are aware that a lot of people will scream blue murder if they have to "buy a new PC for every new version of FS" and yet, at the same time they are also aware that a good amount of people use so called "state of the art PC's" and that they want to utilise the graphics qualities that these PC's can deliver.for instance, we have now come to the stage where our FS can sometimes look somewhat "aged" because our graphics cards / CPU's / RAM etc can now out-perform the basic Sim itself, and, not forgetting that FS9 was still written for DX8.so, they are trying to work on a trade off, and yet still make it actually worth while buying a new version.well, this is my theory anyway.thanks,

What do you think about the XBOX360 and FlightSimultor news?RH

>What do you think about the XBOX360 and FlightSimultor news?>>RHSounds like a load of #$%

I, like many of you, am in a situation where I need to upgrade my computer but don't want to do so because I don't want to waste my money on something that is not going to be decent for the next version. Right now, it takes the best computer avaiable to run FS2004 with many add-ons and complex scenery and weather. Saying, that, I am not sure that a computer will be available for two to three years that will run FS2006. And, now that processors are going multicore, it might be 10 years...RH

As I've speculated elsewhere:MS appear to have announced an FS for XBox.MS have been pushing XNA as a new game development environment first for XBox, but then ported to be mulit-platform, XBox, PC, Media PC, mobile.So, it doesn't take too much to see MS developing an FS under XNA. If that is right, then there may not be another PC version of FS until XNA is available for windows. The problem, is that XNA port to windows seems to be related to Longhorn, which is replacing both DirectX9 and the NT 3 windows GDI with a new graphics API. Since Longhorn seems to be quite a long ways off what does that mean for FS10? Would they do a version for DirectX9? I don't see why they would, unless it was part of a development that would allow FS10 to run under both XP and Longhorn.Back when I was running FS5, OS/2 was my main OS, so I can't remember how FS played in the transition to NT3/Win95.scott s..

It might be a while before we see the next version of FS200X. I wish MS would give us some word as to what they are doing in terms of FS production. RH

Microsoft has not announced FS for XBOX, i watched the Microsoft conference at E3 and there was no mention of FS for XBOX or PC.That does not mean it wont happen, but its not going to be this year.OHN