Don't worry. At the AVSIM convention, everything will be copacetic.:-coolMike

Well, I just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the "Shrine of All Things Aviation," aka: Oshkosh Airventure 2006.While it was indeed quite hot, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (at least during the morning), all the demo machines present were behaving quite nicely thank you, in spite of the hot air, not all of which was weather related... :)I had a great time meeting a few of the ACES folks I hadn't met yet, and renewing friendships previously established with the other ACES team members, as well as Katy Pluta, and the other voluteers who were bravely manning the FSX booth.I had a wonderful time last night, having the privelege of breaking bread with Hal Bryan, the other ACES members in attendance, the volunteers and a few other guests, including Jim Cambell, Editor in Chief/CEO of Aero-News Network.All of the folks who managed "hands-on" time during the time I was there walked away with very positive feelings from what they had seen. More importantly, great pains were taken to make sure that everyone was made aware of the vast third-party community, including websites, freeware and payware available. Understandably, they were pointed to http://fsinsider.com to avoid any possible 'favoritisim' for one website, group or company.It was quite interesting to note the number of adults "trying it out" seemed to outnumber the kids! ;)

Details Bill, give us details.....:)

>Details Bill, give us details.....:)Ok, I had the 20 oz. bone-in ribeye, crabcakes, bacon-wrapped scallops, potato-bacon soup, stuffed mushrooms, iced-tea and strawberry shortcake for dessert... and several hours of delightful conversation!Oh! You meant details about FSX? :) I'm too tired right now for that. I'll try again after a few solid hours of sleep in my own bed first! :-eek

Sleep is for the weak!Rhett

>The news on FSX will be happening at the AVSIM Convention in>September. What do I have to do? Draw you guys a picture??? Be>there or be square! (now if that doesn't date me, nothing>will) :)>>/shameless plug offhaha, I'd like to keep my job by working that weekend migrating 10 WebSphere servers that way I can at least get FSX.

Er, whoops. Sorry. Wrong topic >_>

Hello. I was at Oshkosh today (The B1-B takeoff = Wow) Any of you hanging out at the FSX booth, i was there for a minute. I was wearing a Desert Camo boonie cap, a grey t-shirt, white pants, and i had a lawn chair slung across my back. But anyways. I didnt get to try the demo, but i did watch some people. I did notice one guy loaded up a plane and the cockpit didnt render right and that messed up the rest of the graphics and the runway appeared grassy. Im sure it will be fixed in future versions. Other than that, i thought it looked pretty good. The little pice of paper you get from there said "TODAY! Own the skys this October. Pre-Order today!". Luckily for me, my birthday is also in October and im expecting to get that for my present.

It would be appreciated if you can "spill the beans" after your sleep. Especially if you have photos? :-jumpy

I just completed two full days at Oshkosh (still have one day left) and spent a good bit of time hangin' around the Microsoft FSX area in Hangar B. The place was a beehive of activity with an even split between kids and adults. It's interesting how many of the younger kids were already familiar with the standard FS key combinations... as if they're already familiar with FS2004. Many of the adults were genuinely interested in what the sim could do and the team of MS evangalists and volunteers were busy talking up the capabilities. I met Owen there and spent some quality time discussing the new features of FSX, particularly the new graphics system. There is a significant third party focus within the team and I expect a large number of our favorite FS2004 addons (certainly EagleSoft :) )will be ready when FSX ships at the end of October. It was mentioned that the total installed load (I assume the Deluxe version) will be somewhere around 14 GB which likely translates to 2 DVDs (compressed install files). That's a whole lot more data (mostly scenery) than what we currently have on the 4 800MB CDs with FS2004!According to one of the volunteers the majority of the terrain mesh is 38M where available (certainly the entire USA). To me it was awesome! The entire "look" of the sim is richer than FS2004... sort of like the major visual improvement you see in Windows Vista over XP. It'll get even better when FSX runs in Vista after the DX10 patch and using a DX10 GPU.The "Create a Flight" dialogue is greatly improved and now shows all the aircraft graphically in a window when you select a particular manufacturer. The dialogues are generally much more refined and pleasing to the eye (well mine anyway).All the default aircraft I saw look great... a huge improvement over FS2004 and largely due to the new graphics engine. All the VCs were much better than their FS2004 bretheren but they're not as nice as the third party stuff we get from EagleSoft, PMDG, LevelD, and others. Thats OK since FSX is aimed at a much larger demographic then those of us in the hard core fanatic ranks... more complicated panels might overwhelm some less obsessed customers and negatively impact the products success. As long as FS stay open to the third party developers, then I'm fine with what they deliver in the base product. The third party community is exactly what us purists need and enjoy and MS seems intent on ensuring the third party community stays engaged!The sim seems to operate OK but there are some perfomance problems with the Beta 2 build that still need to be ironed out, which is normal and to be expected. I am confident that when FSX ships we'll be blow away by it!Anyway, all for now. I'll stop by the FSX area again tomorrow and try a glean a few more tidbits.DougDell XPS Gen3 (3.6GHz/800FSB) | 2GB DDR SDRAM | 74GB SATA, 10k RPM (C: ) | 120GB SATA (D: ) | 256MB ATI Radeon X800 XT (Catalyst 6.5) | Audigy 2 ZS Sound | MS Force Feedback 2 | WindowsXP Pro (SP2) | DirectX 9.0c

> when FSX ships at the end of October. oh really?

All I can say is that's what the team was telling the many folks who asked while I was standing there. I'm not making it up and I don't believe it's a secret. That's their target... time will tell if they meet the goal (which I hope they do!).DougDell XPS Gen3 (3.6GHz/800FSB) | 2GB DDR SDRAM | 74GB SATA, 10k RPM (C: ) | 120GB SATA (D: ) | 256MB ATI Radeon X800 XT (Catalyst 6.5) | Audigy 2 ZS Sound | MS Force Feedback 2 | WindowsXP Pro (SP2) | DirectX 9.0c

Yes, that is within the holiday of 2006 timeline. By October all the Christmas displays will be up in full force!Hope this helps,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development Team Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/AirSource Member: http://www.air-source.us/FSEconomy Member:http://dot.kelder.net:8080/fseconomy/

Seems the release date has slipped from early October to late October, but its still before the holiday. Maybe theres a buffer in case something goes wrong.

IF They put out a demo next month.. That'll keep us dogs licking that bone for another two months.We'll survive.:)Manny