It may be an exaggeration, but MSFS only seems to innovate in responce to competition. They weren't the first with Dynamic weather, GPS, Round World, (somewhat) realistic looking clouds, (somewhat) Accurate Ground Mesh, and the list goes on.A little healthy competition is a good thing.Now some are migrating to X-Plane for performance reasons, and MS will make performance a priority in FSXI. Who woulda Thunkit??? :-)Best Regards, Donald T. FLYing? It's cool. Trillions of birds and insects can't be wrong.

And just wait until more developers jump ship and>start providing payware/freeware airports and planes for>XPlane. The things that can be done with version 9 are>amazing. One problem, is that versions of X-Plane change rather quickly compared to MSFS. And what works in one version may not work in the next, let alone all of the in-between beta versions. This makes it awful tough for developers that actually spend many months or even a year or more on a specific product. I'd even go as far as saying.........that's why you never see the detail in X-Plane addon's, that you do with MSFS.L.Adamson

>There is nothing wrong with making money and building a good>life for oneself, but flaunting one's wealth to one's audience>is not recommended.think of this w/every microsoft product you buy -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates'_house--

Ray I agree with you. I had bought Fly! as well and the clouds were stunning. It was a much better sim performance wise than MS and its too bad that development could not continue. Bill

>One problem, is that versions of X-Plane change rather quickly>compared to MSFS. And what works in one version may not work>in the next, let alone all of the in-between beta versions.How much of this is personal experience? I have several commercial X-Plane add-ons. The stuff I bought for X-Plane 8 works without problems in X-Plane 9. I also have no problems in the current 9.20 Beta (even though its just a Beta).Yes you get more updates with X-Plane and sometimes stuff breaks in the newer builds. Thats why veteran X-Plane users keep popular builds installed and use a test install for the newer stuff (just to be safe). Even with FS-X I see people not instaling the latest service pack because it breaks some things so its not that different.>This makes it awful tough for developers that actually spend>many months or even a year or more on a specific product. I'd>even go as far as saying.........that's why you never see the>detail in X-Plane addon's, that you do with MSFS.The reason we didn't see the MSFS detail with regard to aircraft is because for a long time Austin kept the external 3D models limited (as you know the X-Plane 3D model is also used to do the flightmodel calculations). From version 8 and onward you can use a seperate 3D model (just for looks). The X-Plane community is slowly adapting to these posibilities so they slowly get new add-on aircraft with the same 3D looks and animations that we have in FS9.Scenery add-ons don't have these problems. Its also relatively simple to convert Fs9 sceneries and use these in X-Plane. So the quality of scenery add-ons is almost even between FS and X-Plane (you miss AI traffic and scripted animations). X-plane now also has a free plugin to convert Google earth images to photo scenery (just Like FS-X has) and in my opinion (and on my machine) the X-Plane scenery engine produces sharper, clearer images then FS-X does.My experience with X-Plane is that the add-on community is improving rapidly and their aircraft add-ons are reaching a level comperable to early commercial FS-9 add-ons. In comparisson FS-9 / FS-X add-ons seem to have little left to improve on (the standards are already high and popular aircraft have several add-ons dedicated to them). The high level hardware needed to run FS-X also limits the progress complex add-ons can make without ruining the framerate.I hope MS learns from the current situation (design choices in FS-X and THE competition from X-Plane). I hope it will lead to lots of improvements in FS - Next. I agree with the notion that the FS franchise needs a good competitor to accelerate improvents. The competition that X-Plane provides will in the end proof benifitial even to those that never used it.

I've looked at X-Plane, but tell me what is it lacking?From what I have briefly looked at, it appears not to cover the whole world.Correct me if I am wrong, I don't think it covers Oceiana at all.if that is the case , it is limited.

It does cover the entire globe, one just needs to install 80 gigs of data. I am starting to do flight to Thailand and I use X-Plane 9 as the Thai coastlines are lightyears ahead of any MS sceneries.

>Who cares what he does with his money? Are you jealous? He>hasn't forced me to buy XPlane. I bought it willingly.Not in the least! DO try to read what I wrote in the context of that which I quoted...It was nothing more nor less than a somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment concerning this statement:"I bought the latest version to show my support and also give>them some $$$$."...as though Austin Meyer were some poor schlock who was barely making ends meet and desperately needed the "support." :-lol

>It does cover the entire globe, one just needs to install 80>gigs of data. I am starting to do flight to Thailand and I use>X-Plane 9 as the Thai coastlines are lightyears ahead of any>MS sceneries.Since topography is one of my greatest interests when it comes to flight simming............it's also the main reason I use X-Plane with the global scenery disks.What I've found, is that it is all hit and miss. In some areas X-Plane has the best detail, and in others, it's MSFS. And then it's also a combination of man made objects such as buildings, dams, roads, etc; and how they are presented for the final combination of scenery and objects.L.Adamson

Thanks for all the replys guys. I didn't expect so many. Sounds like both have their pro's and con's. It will be very exciting to see how flight sim changes in another 10 years from now for both the MS versions and the X-Plane versions. What really sparked my interest was the article published in either PC Pilot or Computer Pilot last month on X-Plane. I had never really taken a look at X-Plane up to that point. Then some fellows starting posting some screens in the screen shot forum and I was really interested based on the cloud shadows and how the sky environment looked.Looking back to when I had a C64 running the SubLOGIC version, I never would have though that 30 years later the sims would look and perform the way they do now. Perhaps MS not getting together with them is good and will spark more competition between the two, providing better content for us, the end users.