hi Mike T.very well said. i whole-heartedly agree.happy flyin, fm

I wouldn't want that. I would want 1 version fully configurable (sliders, and all that) by meRhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

I stopped buying and using products from Valve after STEAM came out. I understand that I am missing some content involving Half Life as well as other games. I do not feel that having those games on my system is worth the bother of maintaining STEAM. I would be most displeased should Microsoft adopt a similar strategy with MSFS. This is just my personal opinion only, and may or may not reflect any actual official opinion AVSIM has regarding this subject, if any. Jeff ShylukAssistant Managing EditorSenior Staff ReviwerAVSIM

So FSX cannot run full sliders today given today's hardware. Ok, fine. With FS11, will the scenery/terrain engine be redesigned?Is the train sim have a different engine?Tim

No offense Jeff, but I think that's terrible. Steam is a fantastic service. The publisher model in games has been screwing small devs for years. Digital distribution services like Steam, with all of its community features, automatically deployed updates, etc is a great step in the right direction for gamers.

>This is a pretty awful idea. Imagine the shake-up if every>add-on developer had to go through MS for approval for>publishing of their add-on. Also, imagine the cost increases>related to that. MS is not going to put a system in one of>their programs that allows anyone to just throw some code up>for purchase or download without verifying and certifying the>code, because then they would be liable for what you>download.Then how about the "shop" page shows banner ads from online retailers such as Aerosoft, Flight1 and self publishers such as Full Terrain X, FS Genesis etc. User clicks add to go to associated website.

You don't need to run steam all the time. If fact I have it turned off except at the end of month with my broad band quota is about to reset and so I use up my any unused capacity by updating or downloading new content.

I wonder if the opposite is true also.. How many "seasoned" flight simmers have really tried out the variety of FSX default airplanes?Based on past experience with FS default aircraft, and even the aircraft that FS9 came with, it is real easy to skip over them all and only look to the add-on industry to "save FSX". I'm actually finding, now that I've got FSX running right, that there are a number of very enjoyable and well made aircraft in the FSX hangar! While the flight characteristics in some cases could use some tweaking, the virtual cockpits of the C172, Caravan, Baron, Maule, 737, LearJet, and CRJ are all really good. Readable gauges, reasonably complete instrumentation and nice textures make for pretty enjoyable flying !No comparison to the FS98 style virtual cockpits of FS9! I'm surprised that this (positive) aspect of FSX has gotten so little press .. just one picture to make my point.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/184847.jpg

I think that Aces made only two mistakes with FSX:1. They released it too soon2. They mis-stated the hardware requirements on the boxNow that a year has gone by, with two service releases, the first problem is behind us, although it no doubt left a sour taste in many buyers' mouths.. Really too bad, for FSX with SP2 (in my mind) is a wonderful sim and one that has pretty much pushed FS9 into the corner of the hangar on my system.The second problem is in some ways worse, because it has lead many to spend all their time tweaking to reach the elusive goal of "good performance". If the requirements were re-printed with minimum Win XP requirements: P4-3.0, 1.5 GB RAM, 256 MB video memory and recommended requirements at: Core2Duo 2.4, 2 GB RAM, and 512 MB video memory, buyers would have had a realistic expectation of what it might take to enjoy FSX. (Vista requirements probably 3-4 GB RAM..?)As many have attested, FSX on a current technology system actually runs quite nicely ! I think that many (myself included) failed to understand that increasing the scenery detail by a factor of 16 would require both more CPU horsepower, as well as a lot more video memory to run halfways smoothly. Just run a memory monitor, like Memstatus while flying FS9 (showing 100 MB of video memory in use) and then FSX (using over 400 MB).

"The average system spec version allows for smooth preformance but not all features enabled. The higher system spec version allows for more features but requires a state of the art computer but is available at current release."That is exactly what I did with fsx. I had a 4 year old p3.2 (I'd call that average when fsx came out)-I turned autogen,water, and ai to the lowest settings and got very smooth performance in the mid 20's. 3 months ago I upgraded-now I have autogen maxed, water low 2x, and ai traffic 40% and get 35-40's as an average. If the product lasts another 2-3 years I may yet again upgrade though I am more than satisfied now.I agree-more customization of features in addition to performance would be nice. I sure like the ability to grow though. http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

Well said! I also think a big part of the problem is that fs9 was so good-not that fsx is so bad!In a similar way-if fs11 caters mostly to heavy drivers and adds lots of things I am not interested in I may not migrate to fs11-not because it will be bad-but because fsx does pretty much all I need.http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

Rhett,I find it hard to believe that you have never touched one thing in your config file. Any config file. Lets say changing Mesh Terrain from 19 to 20 or 21 in FS9. Same thing a slider does in FSX was done by changing the config file in FS9.Just couldnt live with that huh? Something we already have. Not if it kept the general public from having a bad time when using FS. Glad that your thinking of yourself first.

Geofa,How much more stuff can MS put into FS? We currently have plenty of AI, Auto-gen, 3d clouds and weather and life in the sim and on your system you can run most of that maxed out and get a smooth flight.More work on multicore and use of GPU power along with DX10 should allow to reach having everything maxed out and smooth next version. So what else could/needs to be added thats missing thats going to cause FS to have another major hit?Light bloom is something that I can see but could be removed from the sliders and just enabled and disabled in the config file. I will let this be my last point on the topic and respect your opinion. Its just that I dont see the need for sliders to show a user what they cant have when thinking of the general public. Hidden config files which allow the hardcore simmer the ability to modify the sim beyond what their computer will handled seems to me the better way in this point and time.

>This is a pretty awful idea. Imagine the shake-up if every>add-on developer had to go through MS for approval for>publishing of their add-on. Also, imagine the cost increases>related to that. MS is not going to put a system in one of>their programs that allows anyone to just throw some code up>for purchase or download without verifying and certifying the>code, because then they would be liable for what you>download.I think this is a pretty good idea. What are the customer benefits ?a.) A 100% compatible modelb.) A bug free model (no need to wait for update 1.03 which makes the product actually usable...)c.) Not possible to break certified models with MSFS updates or service packs.Live would be more easy, no ?Heiko

Except that there would be fewer add-ons at a higher price - even if Microsoft were prepared to become involved. What's in it for them?If it did become involved, Microsoft would charge developers for providing that service and some developers wouldn't bother to get certified