The release date for 2004 is to be this summer. In the compatibilty section, it says any aircraft designed for 2000 and later will be ok if the designer followed the SDK. Please tell me thta FSDS designs are included in this!

With that caveat "..designer followed the SDK.", I think the answer will be "yes". When FS2002 came out, a similar statement was made about older aircraft. Of course, most aircraft designed for FS2000 worked with FS2002, but they probably didn't take advantage of all the new features.Most of the new features seem to be scenery related, however there is one key feature that will affect us - the truly-dynamic cirtual cockpit where we can select swithes, etc. I imagine that this will be fairly easy to incorporate, perhaps by naming key parts, or it might be influenced by the panel (for gauges anyway - not switches, of course).Of course, I sort of wonder since I think CFS3 aircraft are quite different, and thus required their own SDK. I haven't played around with this but I don't think that CFS2 or FS2002 aircraft will load into CFS3. Of course, this could just be the CFS-side taking a different path due to different priorities, and I still have faith that the legacy aircraft will work in the new FS.I've read a lot of posts about FS2004 (and beyond) supporting only GMAX scenery and aircraft, but I have NEVER read anything from Microsoft that said this. Can someone prove me wrong on this? There seems to be lots of word-of-mouth rumours to this effect. Whenever I read this, I always thought to myself "these people don't realize GMAX is just the modeling tool", since makemdl.exe is what does the actual object compiling.Anyway, I'll bet money that your FSDS aircraft will work fine. Besides, you probably have a good six months (at least) before you will see the next FS, so keep pumping out those planes!- Martin

I basically agree with everything Martin wrote. ;)Dee Waldron (HJG)

I hope you are right. It will be close to 6 months before I am done my plane. Wouldn't it be nice to work that hard and not be able to use it it the new game? hehe Thanks guys:)

It sure sounds like planes are included in the compatibility statement. I sure hope so. FSDS and Gmax should both be able to exist as development tools.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums Moderator[table border=2 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=1][tr][td][table border=0 cellpadding=8 cellspacing=0][tr][td bgcolor=#540000]http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/logo75t.gif[/td][td align="center" bgcolor=#FFFFF6]Bush Flying Unlimited"At home in the wild"Looking for adventure? Come join us! * [link:bfu.avsim.net|Web Site] * [link:www.cafepress.com/bfu,bfu2,bfu3,bfu4|BFU Store] * [link:bfu.avsim.net/join.htm]Join!][/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][/table

Well, I can only hope they do a better job of getting the SDK's out on this version. Their abilities proved pathetic on the current version. Particularly the scenery SDK, It just came out a few months ago! I will give credit to MS for 'at least' allowing us the use of the information. I hope Discreet has some new features up it's sleeve for gmax this summer. The new ME was a big step, but still very rough around the edges. I'd like to be able to view alpha channels inside gmax, as well as lighting and contact points, maybe a render key that uses the FS engine...dream dream dream...joe

I hope that the new FS doesn't require globally unique texture names like CFS3. That would be disasterous.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums Moderator