Well I hope that the article was written for the PC Gamer market. The description there sounds like a total waste of time. ##### do I want AI cars and herds of animals for unless I can round them up with a Helicopter, then again that would be short-lived enjoyment. I can state that never, I never once, not once thought "I wish this glass had more reflections".

Let's see, to get the cows and cars I probably will have to upgrade my PC which is less than a year old, buy all new add on's , etc... etc. Well I guess cars and cows should be worth spending a couple of thousand dollars... :-roll

fs always performed fine right out of the box; if all the included stuff look and handle ok, why add on? keep it simple....

RandyI think you missed my point.Of course MS don't need to let 'us' know first - what I mean is that there are so many very qualified 'snoops' in this community that any news will 'get through'. Some must be taken with a pinch of salt, but ultimately the real situation always gets reported here, whether official or otherwise.I also think you belittle the importance of the community to MS. Although small in global sales numbers, WE are the ultimate beta testers for MS products and they DO listen.Be well.Toni.

I am afraid that lot's of you have skewed picture of what is "public" beta for (and if they gave FS9 to people outside company to test, it was public beta).It's not about features, it's very unlikely that any of feature suggestion from public beta tester would make it into the game. Features are designed by game designers :) if we agree with it or not.It's cheap way to test compatibility on various machines and configurations and for marketing. Usually doesn't work well though, so companies tend to do it in house nowadays, except maybe ones who have extensive network code to test (like MMORPGs)A game is feature locked way before it enters that late stage of beta test.I have very strange feeling that FS10 won't be backward compatibile with FS9. As for "Vista optimized".. I don't know too much about Vista, but some about DirectX 10, I doubt MS will opt to NOT to release DX10 for Windows XP, so I'd not worry about upgrading to Vista just to run FS10.

When I was developing applications internally for my company I always chose a particular individual as a "beta" tester. He was computer illiterate (but had other valuable skills). If anyone could break a program or misunderstand a manual, he could.He was invaluable in keeping egg off my face!

I'm not going to upgrade anything if they don't include goats and lamas.

Well at least now I know what this was about!http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search:-lol :-lol :-lol Victor

I would say that the article and news about FSX is accurate. However, the concerns I have is the release date. I would think they would give more lead time before a Feb 2006 release date. But some games need very little time to build hype. The FS world is pretty large compared to a lot of other games out there. Many other major games usually spotlight their games at E3 or other major trade events, even before final development. FSX wasn't even mentioned by MS at the last E3. My other major concern is the performance on Windows XP. I was reading up on Direct X 10 and it is built specifically for Vista. And some developer communities are not happy that their will not be as tight of backward compatibility in the API to older versions of Direct X 9, 8 and such. Mainly more support for Direct X 9, but that is as far as it goes. So to get the very best results of FSX you will need to have Vista which will not be released until sometime in late summer or fall of 2006. Considering they are still only in beta 1. I was also reading an article that some nVidia cards may not work with Direct X 10. SO be ready to upgrade. (Dang!! I just got a new computer.) Also, be ready that this will be more tightly wound to .net 2.0. For this is highly used in Vista and its new Presentation Layer.As far as new enhancements, I am excited to see new the possibilities in more lively airports with (gas trucks, baggage carts, jetways). The add-ons have done a good job of this, but in my opinion it now paves a even better way to accomplish this.I didn't see anything about birds in the air, but this would be really cool.

To all the guys complaining about performance already:What the heck? The sim isn't even out and you're already nagging about the FPS?! :-lol I am sure the dynamic animals can be switched off, so can the cars and most of the stuff you deem so "unnecessary". Me, I'd like AI cars. And as has been said ad eternum in these forums, all the flightsims ever made run wonderfully out of the box. Now, if you have 20GB of photoreal mesh, 15GB of add-on aircraft that aren't even SDK-compliant and have custom everything, and you stuffed your sim silly with AI traffic, I don't know how you expect it to perform without extensive work on your part.Daniel P.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpgMember of SJU Photography. [A HREF=http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?userid=9004]Click Here[/A] to view my aircraft photos at JetPhotos.Net!The official psychotic AA painter. :)

>My other major concern is the performance on Windows XP. I>was reading up on Direct X 10 and it is built specifically for>Vista. And some developer communities are not happy thatHardware requirements for Vista:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvi...e/vistarpc.mspx

"...but I would like to see Microsoft cut a deal with Google Earth. VFR flying would take on a whole new simming experience."

Outstanding idea, that would be the ultimate experience in my opinion, and I couldn't agree more! Some day that will come, and I'll be more than ready!

I hope all the scenery and aircraft 3rd party dev's don't now stop production and wait to see what happens come Feb. That would suck.

If the PC Gamer preview is true, it is more and more obvious that MS with FSX aims more to the Adventure Game category, than to a high end Flight Simulator. :-hmmmIt would be interesting to see the complete feature list for FSX. Anyone in for a bet that there will be no mention what so ever about any improved EPR variables. :-rollLets face it guys and gals,..we are only a fraction of the target group for MS. :-(Anyway, I will not trust any anouncment prior to an official one from Microsoft.http://www.scandicair.com/images/sa_banner.gif"Real men fly with round gauges"[/color]

Remember, this is just a pre-release article. Just because something isn't mentioned, doesn't mean it isn't there. Wait for a full feature list from MS before getting too excited (or disappointed). :)