After all the surveys, monitoring software, FSX forum discussions, and opinions taken from us by the Aces development team, we are still not the target market. The Flight Enthusiast crowd offered some of the most thoughtful suggestions yet few of those were actually considered over a three year period. Most of the beta team is most likely comprised of the very people we talk to in the forums each day yet Microsoft is not trying to reach that crowd. The many add-on developers flown to Redmond is great but, the sim is not really for us.Updating only visuals is very advantageous to our add-on community as it extends the life of their products another 3+ years. This is great news. Radar Contact can rest easy as nothing real major is planned for the default ATC and they get to work with the Aces development team. But let's look at this target market.I wanted to buy the latest version of Tomb Raider for my PC. After reading the reviews of what that game required I opted to purchase the game for my XBOX. Most game titles I see on the market don't require 3+gig machines or shall I say new XPS systems from Dell to get great performance. If one has at least a 2gig processor the games run very well. So who is this target market that pays little attention to aviation but loves a real shootem up??? Why would a gamer who runs his titles very well on his default PC system with less than a gig of ram care to upgrade when FSX is released??? How can FSX be called a game and try to compete in the same arena as XBOX360 titles? Compare the price of an XBOX360 to a new Dell XPS system running at 3+gigs. Why aren't we, Aviation Enthusiast, and Flight Schools the target market of software that's going to require so much of hardware to run??? Have any of you talked to people about Aviation only to find a less enthusiastic response than what you thought. I myself think flight is the greatest invention man has accomplished next to the computer. My wife thinks nothing more of flight than she does of the family van. My son plays Half Life and Ruin Scape on his PC and could care less about flight (yes he owns both an XBOX and a PlayStation). My son is the target market for FSX... I've taken him to a real airport on a real plane and got little excitement out of him (thank god I have two sons). My son is the target market of FSX. All the pretty graphics in the world is not going to tare my son away from his XBOX360 titles but people like him are the target market for FSX.Either your into Aviation or your not. This usually happens at the airport and then you find titles like XPlane or in my case Flight Simulator v4 back in 1986. Half Life and Grand Turismo have some great graphics but I'm not drawn to it. I won't spend extra money if those programs called for it to upgrade my PC to the latest Dell XPS. So how is it FSX is going to pull people away from their XBOX360

It's about $$$$ Dillon but in this case the $$$$ don't make since when you think about the price of hardware needed for a good experience with the sim...You make a great point, if the target market is not the Hardcore simmers then the requirements for the sim should be comparable to other games on the market. Last I checked all I needed was a 2gig rig with 512 memory to get great framerates and awesome graphics. I didn't even need a screaming video card. I was out about $75 on my last video card. If you think about it, what's an XBOX360 got under the hood???I'm at a loss on the logic here to... :-roll

Have a slice of cheese.What's the point with all the long "editorial blather?" Absolutely nothing anyone says is going change a darn thing.What it is, is. Get used to it, leave it alone, or take up knitting. :-roll

Wow! Why don't you apply for the lead position at ACES studios? I hear they may be looking for someone...:-wave

I take it FSX doesn't run well on your current system?Ian.

:-violinSo buy it, or don't, or write your own.

Or use the SDK to fix it

>Have a slice of cheese.>>What's the point with all the long "editorial blather?" >Absolutely nothing anyone says is going change a darn thing.>>What it is, is. Get used to it, leave it alone, or take up>knitting. :-roll Jeez Bill,I always considered you to be one of the most level headed posters on this forum... Always considerate, always measured, always respectful... I guess it must be getting late wherever you are and you have had a particularly bad day huh.Give the guy a break and let him have his say. Whether you agree with his point or not, calling his long and considered post "blather" does you no justice whatsoever.For what it's worth...Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern Australia

Guys some good points are made here. This is a discussion forum right??? :-outta Bill who cares if the decision is final or not. I'm pretty sure these concerns have been raised before at Redmond but the suite with the most clout won out. Does that make him right, no... Maybe someone wants the franchise to fail and be discontinued??? I started to write something similar to this myself but Dillon beat me to it. It's just food for thought nothing more. Dave's post was food for thought as well. We think about things, put it down, and toss it around here on these forums. Will it change anything no, will it cause people in the right places to think, maybe. If nothing is said what good does that do, nothing... :-)

Why should some 10.000 out of over 2.000.000 customers be the target market?You seem to be delusional to think that that's a large enough market share to determine the future of the product and have Microsoft change it so that they have everything they want even if it looses them 3/4+ of their potential sales.Maybe if you (and everyone else of those 10.000 hardcore users) were willing to $500 or more they'd consider it, but that's not going to happen.

Chris, if they wanted the franchise to fail they'd have done exactly as Dillon wants them to: make the product so it appeals only to a few thousand (10-20.000 at most) hardcore people while leaving the rest of the millions of potential customers out to pasture.That would ensure massive losses and therefore an early no-go decision on any further development.The product NEEDS the millions of sales to people using it as a game to survive in a market where a first person shooter can make more revenue in a day than a flight simulator in a year (and that at a fraction of the development cost).

>After all the surveys, monitoring software, FSX forum>discussions, and opinions taken from us by the Aces>development team, we are still not the target market. The>Flight Enthusiast crowd offered some of the most thoughtful>suggestions yet few of those were actually considered over a>three year period. Most of the beta team is most likely>comprised of the very people we talk to in the forums each day>yet Microsoft is not trying to reach that crowd. The many>add-on developers flown to Redmond is great but, the sim is>not really for us.>How do you know that? Why do you assume that, because it may not float you boat, FSX doesn't excite the majority of people here? How do you know that Aces didn't take notice of the survey information they gathered and make huge use of it in the new version of FS?

I think Bill deserves a break too. This recurring discussion about market segmentation gets old after a while. Sometimes you just get tired of defending the other position.

As I see it, FSX updated features to increase its mass appeal, so in this respect, the post is correct. However, MS did not forget the flight enthusiast crowd, because, unlike with previous versions, they have been working with third party add-on folks to make sure their products work with FSX much sooner than with previous versions. So, for us, we will have to settle for purchasing Level D's 767-300ER, Extreme Traffic (or whatever its called), Radar Contact, plus others to get it where we want it. No problem, just a bit more cash.RH

The other problem is the blanket statement that only graphics have been improved and a new massive machine will be needed to run the darn thing. As far as I know nobody has used the final version of FSX so performance is still not known, and similar to FS9, low to moderate settings may be acceptable on the standard computer of today whereas the "wow" settings may need a more powerful computer of tomorrow, but again that is sheer speculation. Graphics are indeed a major focus (keep in mind FS9 is grahically 3 years old), but many subtle internal improvements happen with each iteration of FS and as far as I can read this version seems not to differ from that ongoing trend, so to say the only improvements are graphic improvements just seems somewhat argumentative considering the multiplayer updates, default aircraft revisions and upgrades including 2d and 3d panels with head latency, mission editor, interface upgrade, flight planning upgrade, ATC bug fixes etc.I will concede dissapointment about the ATC, and I'm still waiting on information concerning weather and atomspheric modelling and aircraft interaction with the enviroment, though dynamic thermals have been confirmed. Still, any upgrade to the base product is welcome in my opinion as the 3rd party community will surely fill in the gaps.Ian.