"I will concede dissapointment about the ATC..." Well, just purchase Radar Contact or something similar. The only downside is that it will add to the overall cost of FSX. It is much easier and less time consuming adding a product like this rather than trying add whole world textures/seasons -- if say MS had decided to significantly improve the ATC over scenery. RH

>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? because Dillon has always assumed that his opinion is fact, that everyone shares it who should have any say at all.Therefore in his mindset any deviation by Microsoft from his ideal is a gross insult to the entire community.

Never mind... I'm done... Mike, I think you missed my points by fifty miles... but in any case......please accept my profound apology for even trying to offer positive support and encouragement......I won't be making that mistake again.Once again, I'm deeply sorry if what I intended as complimentary came across as insulting, as that was the furthest thing from my mind! I admire and respect those at ACES I've met in person, and wish only the absolute best for the future.Bye!

I think maybe I should dispell some misconceptions:<>True, we don't have carte blanche, but we have very broad parameters when it comes to designing the product.<>Hmm. Not really accurate, Bill. Pretty much all the important "decision makers" (including designers, developers, artists, testers--even our studio manager) read this forum (and others) on a regular basis.<>Bill, I'm not sure where you are getting your information. The team designs the product, not some group of "corporate wolves". Seriously, that's an insult to our management team. Please stop promoting the idea that Flight Simulator's product design is out of our hands. And we are not frustrated (well, at least not very much) about the product design--only that we can't do more in the time we have.<>We are team of dedicated professionals who do our jobs. That includes providing input to the decision making as well as carrying out the implementation of those decisions, regardless of whether we fully agree with them. Suggesting that we play some sort of two-side game--satisfying the "bosses" while "slipping in" stuff on the side--is an insult to the professionalism of the folks on the front lines.My suggestion would be not to try and speak for us. We have enough opprortunity to read and respond to user feedback that we're certainly able to handle strong and considered criticism ourselves.

1. I don't believe this is a zero sum game. Just because there are eye candy does not mean that "real aviators" lose.2. Economics 101: It takes 20% effort for 80% functionality and and the other 80% effort to complete the 20% functionality. What makes economic sense for MS seems to be ....to do the 80%. Take ATC for e.g. They have reached the 80% functionality in it. Its too much a niche and effort to spend time and resource to make it 100%. 3. The stregth of the chain is the strengh of its weakest link. Not that aircraft flight models cannot be improved upon, however when there are other low hanging fruits out there.. DX-10 graphics.. that gets plucked first.4. There are some genuine things that they do need to consider that are IMO, part of the weak link. That is the ability of the flight sim to utilze hardware technology. Like Dual core 2 and multi processer and what not to get rid of stutters and other performance related issues. In this case, I really don't know the effort and cost for the ACES team to do that. Only they can know this. 5. The folks behind flight sim are real aviators for the most part..they are not the game crowd...so I tend to trust them and give them the benefit of the doubt as well.6. As far as the corporate bean counters.. well.. how do you get rid of them? Has that ever been tried anywhere and suceeded?:)Manny

You raise many good points, Dillon. The thing to remember, though, is that, like almost all products, Flight Simulator has more than one "target market". I'd think it would obvious that just on this forum there are a variety of needs and wants--imagine what that's like in the bigger world of flight simulation!So, like any other business with a complex customer base, we have to (a) carefully understand each market segment and (:( create a balanced design that tries to meet the needs of each in such a way that all segments find value in the product. If the balance shifted too dratsically toward a single segment it would appeal to the others.This forum (and others) is one of the best tools we have for understanding one (maybe two) of our target segments. That's why we spend so much time here. However, in the end, it is very unlikely that a new version is going to be anyone's "ultimately" flight sim. Still, I think everyone here will find there's somthing in it that appeals to them and makes it worth the cost to upgrade.

>Hmm. Not really accurate, Bill. Pretty much all the important>"decision makers" (including designers, developers, artists,>testers--even our studio manager) read this forum (and others)>on a regular basis.So, ACES has no one higher in the "chain of command" who have the ultimate power to "pull the plug" on the product? If that is true, then that is completely foreign to any corporate model of which I'm aware.It is those hypothetical "bean counters" whom I was referring to...

I absolutely agree, that was more or less a generic statement conceding others may be dissapointed. I myself enjoy stock VFR procedures flying mostly Bush via FSeconomy but do use RC4 for any IFR flights.I'm actually hoping RC5 will encompass VFR as well, great program though indeed. Ian.

Realizing that you might not 'read backwards,' Mike I quote myself below to show the edit(s) I've made to the original post:>Never mind... I'm done... >>Mike, I think you missed my points by fifty miles... but in>any case...>>...please accept my profound apology for even trying to>offer positive support and encouragement...>>...I won't be making that mistake again.>>Once again, I'm deeply sorry if what I intended as>complimentary came across as insulting, as that was the>furthest thing from my mind! I admire and respect those at>ACES I've met in person, and wish only the absolute best for>the future.>>Bye!

In a perfect world, with unlimited development resources, what would the consumer be willing to pay for a truely "professional" edition with a limited market, say one with1) Advanced ATC, with regional accents, and following local protocal,behaviors according to the region2) High end, low poly AI aircraft (Aarvark,Evolve AI, HTAI quality) of virtually every type of aircraft, including military, currently flying, that behave realistically (seperation, approach speeds and altitude, proper airways)with proper AI sounds at airports.3) Up to date, realistic navigation built in with SIDS/STARS4) All major metro areas, and popular detinations in photoreal or similar, with all, and I mean all, major buildings, landmarks recreated.5) VATSIM type multiplayer world built in.6) As many airports as humanly possibly done in high quality detail.7) Extemely realistic weather and smooth, realistic, visiblity changes8) Detailed flight models, gauges, FMC's etc9) Maybe develop and sell the product one region at a time (North America, Europe, Asia, Autrailia, etc)10) High end flight planners, editors.11) More stuff than I can think of.....After all, this is all possible with the time and resources.Would you pay $500, maybe $1,000? Could you afford it?It's fun to dream....Brian S.

>>>Would you pay $500, maybe $1,000? >>Could you afford it?>>>>>I would pay $1.000 one time.I just checked the amount I've spend for a last 3 years and it's more than $1.000. BTW, AI planes are not included. Thanks God, AIA, EVAI, FSAI, HTAI are still free now.

"In a perfect world, with unlimited development resources, what would the consumer be willing to pay for a truely "professional" edition with a limited market"There is the real kicker-"professional". That all depends on your frame of reference: :-)I have been flying 17 years-last 15 almost exclusively ifr-and I've seen more birds/wildlife on runways than I've gotten sids/stars, foreign accents, and a lot of other things that are on some lists as to what makes a "serious" sim vs. a game. (My atc list of realism "professionalism" is way different from what I commonly see mentioned-starting with atis that doesn't start automatically at the beginning when you tune it in, requests for a series of practice approaches with appropriate vectoring, deviation for weather, vectoring around hot moa's,change of destination without filing a flight plan, pop up ifr clearances etc....sids/stars and accents-no interest on my end whatsoever as they make a very limited appearance in my reality of real world flying).It is impossible for MS to make a sim that is everything to everyone-but they do make a sim that can become everything to everyone-pretty amazing. I am and have been part of the same market (been simming since 1981) that has made Fs a top selling software product from the beginning-and I didn't care about the ww1 ace game in fs1, or the addition of stars in fs4 at the time either-but I don't think the market or strategy has ever changed from the beginning.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

"Pretty much all the important "decision makers" (including designers, developers, artists, testers--even our studio manager) read this forum... on a regular basis." :)Can I quote that?

You'd also have to spend several thousand a year on updates for your navdata, a few hundred a month for the online ATC, and as you're indeed not going to spend anything on the next version (you said so yourself) you'd be killing off the franchise.

Maybe the FS team is actually working to getting us what we want, just the long way round?I think they needed to address market share and improving VFR is a very important step. Imagine someone doing this the first time with FS9, finally getting off the ground in the cessna and then landing. "Hmmm yeah that was ok, but what do I do now?" There are alot of people that just won't spend enough time to discover the enjoyment of FS. If you can get some kid to take off fly over an area and try and find some elephants then land that's a big step forward from where we are now. One of the most important features we have that makes flight sims more realistic is what we bring to the table. The knowledge of procedures, aircraft, charts etc. So our own ability to suspend reality is based on our own learning and experience. Someone coming to this new won't be able to do that straight away, but if like in my example you get someone flying to do some "sight seeing" and there are these VFR goodies then they are a) being rewarded for getting through some basic training :( being taught how to suspend disbelief and "play along" in the FS world. It's funny because as a community we are our own worst enemy sometimes. The new scripting ability sounds fantastic.....blows me away that we are not celebrating this ground breaking feature. What I imagine we are going to see is a public repository of adventures to download (maybe like adding a word template?). I also gather that from what we have been told we should find it reasonably easy to write our own too. How cool is that! I think the new features for developing adventures have been almost ignored by the community. With regards to specs I don't know why FS is singled out and hammered for having high specs (needed to run on high settings...sheeesssh)Unless you are rich enough to do a system upgrade every 6 - 12 months then no probably can't run everything at max with 10x AA and AF. FS team seems to get beaten too often with criticism for the specs required BUT this applies to every other title on the shelf. I want something scalable so when I do upgrade, a bit more juice means better framerates, better textures. So maybe this relase won't all be about us but I just know us hard drinking, hard fighting "could land a 767 in real life" simmers will be the first ones to go and look for those dam elephants.:(