>If we virtual airline captains are such a small minoruity in>the FS community then why.....Let's try to put some perspective on those numbers, shall we? Even though the 'hard numbers' are impossible to determine for certain, what empirical evidence that is available suggests that:Total number of FS sales = many million copiesTotal number of potential Add-on purchasers = ~30,000Total number of "freeware" downloaders = ~200,000Regardless of the "real numbers," the ratio is what is important to recognize... ;)Taken as an aggregate, the total number of "add on users" constitutes at most 3% of the complete universe of FS sales.

Bill everyone would welcome better ATC. The gaming crowd would love it as well as the hardcore crowd. Those of us buying the payware and wanting better ATC will spend the money on hardware to get a decent experience in the sim. I don't know who's doing the competitive analysis but I'm having a hard time understanding the logic.FSX is shaping up to be the most hardware intensive title released this fall of everything else in the holiday season yet it's really not for us (the hardcore simmer). So features that should have received attention get none and visuals are the main focus. We can afford the hardware but the average gamer has an XBOX and possibly a default DELL/HP mid to low range system with no plans to upgrade as long as 'Half Life' runs smooth... Bill it seems you get this more than me but it will be interesting to see what we really get with FSX. I feel if nothing more Aces could have beefed up the ATC system because Carlos makes some great points above. If nothing else ATC does the work for you in the skies. It tells you where to go and how to approach the field for landing (FS9 even grades you). ATC should tell you to watch your speed below a certain altitude and help you in bad weather but that

You make an excellent case, the thing is Microsoft did not want to do anything this time around. You make a good point in that of most of the upgrades we've gotten in the past, it seemed more for the hardcore simmer, now they've switched over to making it more a game and less a simulator. 6 in one hand, half-dozen in the other as far as they are concerned, I guess.We're not going to see a full, real default ATC in this version. I wonder what they'll take out of the final version as opposed to what they've shown us to hype it up so far. Remember the chickens and the barn in the fs2k4 screenshots before it was released? :-mad

>I hope that the ATC gets upgraded soon too...I deeply enjoy being the >bus driver. But if it can't be done just yet, then so be it.It's not that it can't be done, they didn't feel that it was worth the time, they went with something that's going to probably attract more people and make more money.

"now they've switched over to making it more a game and less a simulator"Yet the requirements needed are for a simulator versus an average game (although the box will tell you the sim will run on a 1gig machine)...

>Bill everyone would welcome better ATC. The gaming crowd>would love it as well as the hardcore crowd. >I don

Perhaps, except that we don't have "bean counters", as far as I know. ;) The product team designs the product...period. What features make it in are up to us and we make decisions that allow us to achieve our goals. So, if you didn't get the feature you wanted this time, we're to blame. ;)

There are chickens in the barn :-hmmm

I'm honestly not too surprised that we haven't seen much in terms of AI/ATC. Honestly, only a small percentage of flightsimmers mod the #### out of FS9. Do you think M$ really cares about this group? Not really. Ever since I saw the first FSX preview video (video of a presentation) I was concerned that M$ is trying to appeal to the gamer market to get more money out of FSX, no matter what they say. If M$ paid attention to the forums like they say they do (and I don't mean AVSIM, I mean places such as AI-Aardvark and EvolveAI) I think we'd see more improvements in terms of ATC and AI. I mean, come on guys, the FSInsider site still links to ProjectAI, which is (and has been) on its deathbad for a long time.Cheers,Dan

As a related person I won't be deadly silent then: :-)There are actually some serious simming (since 1981) pilots like me that consider not one item on your list of atc improvements necessary-I have never or rarely experienced your atc list in my 17 years (last 15 ifr almost exclusively) real world GA flying.....Doesn't mean that your list doesn't contain great improvements to atc-but so does my own list of atc improvements that happen much more often to me in my world of real flying-and I'll bet not one of them are on your list!e.g. your "MOST ANTICIPATED ONES" are not everyone's......In fact-for my GA ifr flying the stock atc is very good. Fs2004 improved atc so much (the inclusion of every approach-precision/non precision and ability to get vectors, for the entire world!-this was massive, and amazing!) that it seems quite understandable to me that the FS folks moved to other areas for improvement for this next version.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

ah, he said .. "We don't have a bean counter". So the project folks can just go spend what ever they wish. I don't believe it and hope it is wrong. Everyone has a budget and a boss, except Bill and I bet he has a budget he attempt to hold to. Regards,BobS

I was blown away with the ATC system in FS2002 & 2004. I was expecting some lame recorded voices & scripted missions. The level of interaction was way more than that.However, there is a huge AI user base now. I personally love building up my AI. It's a geeky little secret of mine. I know we have overloaded it with thousands of flightplans but MS really should have helped us out a little with FSX.Microsoft has made an awful mistake turning there back on the AI community. Open Skies does not substitute for it in anyway. It has zero appeal to me; I think it is limited to 16 players if I remember right. It all sounds like a convenient foundation for a XBOX360 port eg. XBOX Live. Great big units sales for Microsoft & nothing for their current users.Once FSX hits the shelves, we are stuck with what has now become very limited AI system for another 3 years :(On the other hand, I remember a year or two ago we were all worried there would even be a FS10/X :)

Unfortunately I am a lonely flight simmer.The few friends I have demonstrated FS to find it facinating but not enough to engage in it to the extent I do. It is unlikely I could get a group of friends to do a session at all. Forget on a regular basis. Even dedicated VA's could not man all the required airports. So I need my "artificial friends" to fly with most of the time. Don't get me wrong, I love FS as it is. I am not complaining about eye candy. I think you have done great work Taildragger. I do fly VFR too. I do take breaks from the FMC, IRS, APU, etc. I have all the Carenado, Realair, Dreamfleet, etc GA planes and can't wait to fly them over FSX scenery, but would like to see improvements in other areas and ATC and AI traffic are on top of that list. Hopefully third parties will provide this for us eventually.Regards, Carlos

Just like we are worried now that there will be no FS11. Since we are told that we hardcore simmers are such a small percentage of users and we need all the "Gamers" to buy it just so Microsoft can break even. Maybe this is why we wanted all the features this time. Because there might not be a next time. That is unless a whole bunch of kids drop BF2, FEAR, etc. and become flightsimmers. Is it really that dire?Regards, Carlos

I too am very disappointed about MS's position on ATC, and AI Traffic! It's the 2 issues, that would make buying this version a no brainer for me. Right now I'm on the fence about FSX, and so far from what I see in the demo and all the info available, with all I have invested in FS9 right now, I just don't see enough to justify going to a new version at this point! Ever since FS1, I have always purchased the product on the day of release, right now though I'm leaning on holding off atleast to see what it will do with Vista/DX10. An improvd AI and ATC would tip the scales the other way for me, but alass it's not to be!! The main problem with MS's decision to consentrate on the MP market, is one of control. You can see the problem on some of the videos made using VATSIM! The problem is our ever growing need to enhance this product with addon scenery etc.. Say one user is using the default KSFO and another online user is using a more realistic addon, like say Fly Tampa!. The other aircraft won't line up correctly. It's kind of unrealistic to see a 747 sticking in the middle of a terminal building!! You don't have any of these issues with the AI system. It's only really main problem is how ATC separates aircraft on landing. Solve that, and I think everyone would be happy! I always thought AIsmooth was a good idea, and could be made to work if it had a way for control. This could be done with a single variable that could be updated by it in the AI Aircraft Object. Right now when AIsmooth puts an aircraft in a holding patern, when it exits, it checks again for obstructing traffic, if there is it sends it into another hold. At busy airports like KATL or KORD this could be indefinite. With the variable though it could be prioritized, which is what's lacking now. The way it would work is this, Each time AISmooth would put an aircraft in a hold, it would increment this variable. The next time around it not only would check for opposing traffic, but compare if that varible is higher than it. If it is, instead of it being sent around again, the other aircraft would be and it's value incremented while the first aircraft is cleared for the approach! If something like this was provided in an API in the SDK I think this could be done by a third party!