Jayskits

Some day, you yourself will experience a lot of stutter, and your graphics will look quite poor. You will be old, superceded [correct spelling], and you will be forgotten.

The OP gives the answer to his own question when he concludes "Why do people buy games . . . " To many here, it's not a 'game', a mindless idle diversion for 30 minutes or so. It is a lifestyle, a passion to which they have a great dedication. pmanhart hits the nail on the head when he says If you enjoy the Flight 'game' for whatever it is today, then buy it and enjoy it. However, Flight (right now as the 'game' that it currently is) offers nothing of value to those who want a long term true flight simulator with all the functionality that is attendant to that. If Flight ever matures to be a true (and better) replacement for FSX, then I'm sure that many on here who are dedicated to full flight simulators will gladly analyze the offering and make the switch if, as pmanhart syas, "it fulfills my needs".

What are your computer specs?

Before trying to take off, check to see how much fuel you have, and how much weight in passengers and cargo. The default setup for this aircraft may come to you with too much, and it is up to you to lighten the load before taking off.Also, some aircraft require you to set a little up trim. Try this and see if this helps.

Clarification: no BIG ENOUGH market to interest MS.

Remember that MS has already been down the "full flight sim" road for many years, so they know exactly what their costs are to keep one alive, and what ROI that can expect for their efforts. What they are doing now is using an existing (sunk cost) asset to explore alternative roads to see if there is a more attractive ROI to be had. If they don't find one, will they go back to the full flight sim model? Probably not. If it was so attractive in the first place, they never would have left it.

Neither does Howard, my friend. He's leaving all his options open. He'll take it down the road that seems to offer the best result. All he wants it to be is a cash cow. But if he's not careful, it may not turn out to be a cow - it may be a slug.

To those who have an interest in a flight simulation which replicates the reality, complexity, and immersion of real-world flying (and that would include everyone on this forum), the current offering falls far short of delivering that, it would seem with no possibility of achieving that in the near future.To those who want an addictive exciting game with many and varied levels and challenges, the current offering provides no graphically superb scenery-destroying explosions or mayhem that the gamer can cause, or other players to destroy. Like Arwen says, no one to shoot at. Or the heart-pounding adrenalin rush of someone shooting at you to terminate your game.So what group is left? The 'casual middle'. The person who thinks it would be interesting to "fly" a plane to see what it's like. To those who have this interest in casual flying (and by definition, that would be GA flying), the novelty wears off rather quickly and it becomes a little boring after they've done it for a while and looked at the scenery - scenery, which others have pointed out, is 'dead' with no life to it via moving cars, animated people, trains, buildings on fire, animals romaing around, or airports teeming with animated vehicles. There is no long term passion in it driving these folks to open their wallets to buy more and more DLC for many years to come.

And why would you start spending money on the DLC as it slowly comes out, only to find out a year or two from now that MS has suspended further development on it because it didn't live up to their revenue projections. Where would that leave you? You'd have spent hundreds of dollars on DLC, but be left with a flight program that doesn't cover the whole world, or doesn't yet have ATC, or AI, or whatever other feature MS hadn't gotten around to offering yet. So you'd be left with a flight program that never fulfilled the promise of the marketing hype, and does not satisfy you in certain respects. And no 3PD would be able to fill in the blanks.It might make more sense to wait before taking the Flight plunge, and let MS develop the DLC catalog to a point where it satisfies your particular needs in a flight program. If they eventually do, then Flight becomes a mature platform, and you get the thing you want complete with the features that are important to you.If MS doesn't, then you save yourself a lot of money.

Ask Arwen. She knows (but is not saying).

Its pretty clear that MS took the beta testers for a (plane) ride.

I've been saying it all along. Its been done before that way. Remember the SubLogic expansion packs? Mid-Atlantic states centered around Washington DC. Los Angenes and Southern California. The Pacific Northwest. The Mid-West centered around Chicago. Alaska, with all it's beauty for GA flying, will certainly be an expansion pack. Look for Japan. Look for the British Isles. The major European countries can each be a pack. Then there will be the specialty packs. Gibraltar in very high detail. Like waterfalls? How about the world's great falls in one pack (Niagra, Victoria, Angel, Bridal Veil, etc). You get the picture.

There could be another DLC ATC version - one you need for flying alone off-line. It probably will be the same as what is now in FS9/X. So, you could be off-line and have ATC (if you bought the DLC). You're right, you would be flying alone and the ATC would only have you as a customer, unless you also buy the AI DLC. That would have to be sold by region to match up with the expansion packs. MS couldn't sell just one world-wide AI package, because they would not know which geographical areas you had purchased to fly in.Now if you wanted to fly both on and off line, the stand alone DLC ATC would have to be compatible with the other AI client download you need for on-line flying. But MS is good at making different programs work well together with no glitches.

What does this mean for ATC? It means, for on-line multi-player flying, MS will have to host the ATC, and we will have to download the ATC client. Without some sort of ATC, on-line flying sessions could never be authentic recreations of real world flying, because individual players will be left to do whatever they want.

Without ATC to control the free-for-all airborne pandemonium, that will be, uh, . . . interesting.