>>I wouldn't hail a crook.Well, without 'Bill' you wouldn't be posting here, Big Al!Dave T. .........On the lovely warm Devon Riviera and active 'FlightSim User's Group' member at http://www.flightsimgrpuk.free-online.co.uk/

Absolutely. The trouble with Far Cry, though, is that it's made me very discontented with the FS scenery and graphics. But there's no reason why the next version shouldn't equal or exceed FC's graphics. I hope the next FS version also has AI people similar to Far Cry. Imagine watching realistic AI passengers boarding and real animated crew members in the virtual cockpit! It's all perfectly possible with today's technology. Bset regards, Chris

"The trouble with Far Cry, though, is that it's made me verydiscontented with the FS scenery and graphics. But there's noreason why the next version shouldn't equal or exceed FC'sgraphics. I hope the next FS version also has AI peoplesimilar to Far Cry. Imagine watching realistic AI passengersboarding and real animated crew members in the virtualcockpit!"I would love to see that as well!Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International

I find it ironic, but interesting and amusing, Lou, that you are participating here in a thread that would be immediately locked and/or deleted at Flightsim.com

I'm not talking about the vast majority of users who buy FS9, play it for a few weeks, then move on to something else, just like I stated before. How many users STILL fly FS9 to this day from when they purchased it and ONLY use the default aircraft and scenery? I find that hard to believe. Casual users are not what I was talking about, every hardcore user has add-ons, payware or freeware, and the hardcore users make up this small base who will always come back to the next version of FSYou can't really compare the registered users, how many of them are duplicates? How many never even posted?Yes the number is smaller than the sales, but like I said, the rest are just casual users who account for Microsofts sales, and they know it, so they spend as little time and money as possible knowing they can get the small community to put their time and money into doing the work MS should have done in the first place.Thats nice they have the ability to throw everything on the developers, I pointed out that its the only game that does that, and can get away with that

>Only this game can get away with doing a half assed job of>depicting scenery and expecting 3rd party developers to do the>rest. Imagine the next Grand Theft Auto series for the PC, and>Rockstar decides "were just going to create a bland city and>let developers create it all"Alex, you cannot compare FS with an arcade style game. There are major differences - especially, if it comes to computing power. GTA does not require a lot of CPU power, because there are not that many parameters to simulate (mainly collision detection). In FS, your CPU has to compute the aircraft attitude, AI traffic, ATC, wind, weather, clouds, update instruments, etc. If you strip that all down and have nice graphics, but an arcade-style game, not a simulator. The graphics in GTA cover maybe, what, 10sq miles?Take a look at the some FS screenshots - someone posted a video with TrackIR lately and it simply looks stunning. Sure, you'll need a bunch of add-ons and a fast computer for it, but that's also part of the fun of the hobby - looking for new scenery, new planes to improve your FS experience. If you expect it all from a $30 package, then you will be disappointed.

>They cut>corners to save money, and have basically just done touch ups>on an old and outdated engine, causing us to spend thousands>of dollars on nice hardware just to run the game sort of>smoothlyI couldn't aggree more. All the stutters and the shaky instruments suck. Yet it is still too much fun to give up.I'm just tired of tweaking FS all the time. I want to fly.If you know something about software development and look at the APIs provided by M$ you'll notice that this stuff is quite aged.I'd like to dump FS9 in favor of X-Plane (and a MAC :-)) if there would be something like the PMDG planes or the Level-D 767 for X-Plane.BTW: Did M$ ever care about performance in any of their software?another Alex