Hi NAS,<>Well competition certainly raises the bar and makes good products even better but if you want to take your time that's fine by us ;-)What I think MS have done with FSX is to give us more control over Ai which indirectly will halp to make the traffic better behaved and probably more realistic. If we can get them to fly SIDs and holds that will be a huge step forwards.<>The feeling's mutual and I can feel my thirst building up now :-) My first time to one of these and it will be interesting to compare it to a British one. Until Friday...

JD,If you need testers? Maybe you want my help? I'm offering my assistance.Regards,Jeroen van SchoneveldVelserbroekThe Netherlandshttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/800driver.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-proud.jpgASUS A8N-SLI, AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2,4 Ghz) San Diego processor, 2Gb DDR 400 Mhz Corsair Mem, ASUS V6800 PCIE Ultra 256 MB video

the only thing stopping me from getting radar contact is the voices, they sound too slow and unrealistic IMO. If they used the options of the great program editvoicepack to speed up the speech and add new phrases, that would make it perfect for me

i'm curious, where have you heard the voices?and editvoicepack doesn't have all the callsigns, all the clearances, the international phrases, etc that i need to make rc realistic.jd

yes I know its limitations but I still enjoy using it because of the massive amount of traffic I have.I heard the voices in the preview videos that were made available. each phrase had a different tone making it sound really robotic and it was slow compared to EVP when you check the option to speed up the voice

that video was made with version 4.0, before the complete rewrite of the wav code. i no longer play each wav individually, but weave all the wavs together in one wav, and play one wav. that was 4.01on a small number of people's installations, that "weaving" caused a momentary stutter. that was eliminated with the new code i put in 4.2is it perfect? no. is it better than 4.0? absolutely. will it get better? definately.not sure what editvoicepack and ai traffic have to do with each other. but i have hundreds of airline names, aircraft types for the popular ai programs. so if it is tyrolean 322 pushing back, i will provide chatter to him as tyrolean 322jd

Well if there isn't much improvement from FS9 to FSX, then why did it take Microsoft so fricking long to develop this release????? July, 2003 - October 2006?They took a whole extra year in the development cycle?? With better development tools, why? I looked at one of the new X-BOX 360 table tennis games, and I was blown away! The graphics were spectacular and FAST! Why didn't Microsoft release an OPTIMIZED FSX for the XBOX 360? I think Microsoft really missed the boat on this one! If you look at it, it would have been way cheaper to buy an XBOX 360 console as opposed to the money being thrown around on high end server platform systems just to run FSX at half sliders, and not have to waist time tweaking different hardware (although some of the flight sim community enjoy this and love talking about it, personally I like to FLY!) and man it would look great on a big screen HD TV!! I (maybe the only one) am very dissapointed in Microsoft for not developing FSX on the XBOX 360 platform!Just my two cents worth!Sincerly,Sliders to the left!

There is much improvement from FS9 to FSX, just not in the ATC area.Gary

LIKE What specifically?? Moving ground traffic and birds? I have heard that there is little or no improvement in the following areas (which were the MOST requested, I know I know FSXI):(1) Flight Models(2) ATC(3) FPS (Sliders to the left) Most said it wasn't worse, but not alot better.I did notice the Cloud rendering seemed more efficient. Again, overall not nearly three years of development time worth??I hope there is a lot of Easter Eggs or hidden surprises with the RTM version.Sincerly,Will buy FSX anyway :)

There are improvements in all of those areas.Don't believe the naysayers...unless you really want to...Best,Geofhttp://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

http://blogs.technet.com/p-12c_pilot/archi.../24/449488.aspxmy thoughts on this is:that all sounds like some cheap excuse to me. We have add-on developers (and im sure they dont have the resources men+$$ like MS) that build excellent FMS.Whats the problem in recording the same text from different people and the give the sound file an area code ? Let us have 4 DVD's i dont care the extra dataOverall, FSX is just a graphic update. We see stuff that - in other games - is state of the art by nowIm not impressedof course this is my personal oppinion and others think different

It would be nice to have an advanced option for ATC to actually talk like ATC, this means fast like a TV sales man in a 15 second spot ;-).Best,Randy J. Smith

All you statement proves is you don't understand how SID/STAR work and how they are created.There is exactly ONE area in the default FS9 ATC which is deficient in the application SID/STAR - the use of / pronounciation of the SID/STAR name.To do that, and record the names of the necessary waypoints to use them would require a multifold increase in the size, and complexity, and resources of the voice pack files.SID/STAR is a FLIGHT PLANNING ISSUE - not an ATC issue.You can fly any SID/STAR you wish with the default flight planner and ATC.However,(1) it will not use the name of the SID or STAR at any point in the clearance process;(2) you must be capable of creating a real world flight plan,(3) you must be capable of flying a real world flight plan and approach.That's it.You don't need an FMS, you don't need a payware aircraft, you don't need any payware addons.Though it is easier with some of those.The biggest problem with aircraft with extensive FMS systems and addon aircraft is when they choose to ignore the rest of the FS world. The designers have chosen to not integrate their product with the FS world and use the capabilities which exist there.That is not Microsoft's fault.

A major development effort between FS9 and FSX was the redesign and rebuilding the entire world.We were pushing limits of what could be done with the old world model and the resolution of that world.It had to be rebuilt from scratch because it was a major impediment to further development.FS9 was a complete redesign of the approach and ATC system - and frankly because of the lack of exploration and use of that system by most posters on "hard core" sim sites - Microsoft probably decided "They are not using the capability which exists in FS9, why send a million dollars to make a major change until they push the limits of that capability"

You are welcome to explore the opportunities that other titles have to offer with their ATC functions...you might be more satisfied with a different flight simulator with more realistic ATC.When you find one, let me know.