Bottle

Doh! Genus is always capitalised. At least you used italics. Sorry, you only get a B for this homework.

IL2 Sturmovik had grass something like 10 years ago and I agree, it makes a big difference for immersion.

When they first announced grass for the sim I though a 3PD could easily sell a grass addon; There would be a big market for it (not saying that the default is no good and it has clearly improved). All sorts of grass colours, shapes, heights, seasonal changes, growth patterns, flowers, mown lawns, crops, wild, etc. I would certainly pay for a well made grass addon and suspect it would become one of the best selling addon for the sim.

That's highly debatable. Very true. Point taken. But some here could lower their blood pressure if they thought about this a bit more.

The OP puts me in mind of these thoughts.If Bill Gates was the flight sim advocate that kept the franchise going, he left to do other far, far worthier things. i.e., he changed his perspective and priorities and maybe (pure speculation on my part) finally realised that the world doesn't revolve around a hand full of rich kids with enough time and money to waste on a computer game. We should keep in mind that the FS community is a minority of a world-wide monority of people. Perhaps time, money and mental energy could be directed somewhere better than self-indulgent leisure activities?

Info I've just obtained from another forum post here;ORBIX estimate the addon-purchasing community to number about 40,000 (an informed estimate).Phil Taylor has stated in the past the yearly sales of FSX was about 280,000 (an informed estimate).Some FS community people will have left so the total is likely to be a bit over 40,000 (perhaps maximum 45,000?)Sales of FSX will have decreased over time, so total sales to date, maybe tops 400,000?Thus, the addon-purchasing community probaly figures at about 10%, perhaps 15% at the most.'nuff said.

Do you have any figures to substantiate your first post? I have none to assess if it is one way or the other, just my suspicion that it is not. It would be nice to have a knowledgeable 3rd party producer give some actual figures or estimates. Until that time, we're all just speculating on how important/unimportant the addon-purchasing punters are to the sales of FSX.As to your second point, I agree completely. Stupid flying game (without guns) won't sell well. Is MS really that stupid though? I personally don't think there's been enough information yet to evaluate what the final Flight game will be like. I'm not convinced the beta that has been released is anything near feature-complete. Most likely it's just a 'place holder' to evaluate the architectures stability and major graphic issues. It makes sense to keep it simple and have it locked into arcade mode. The stupid thing is MS hasn't been clear in communicating just what the beta contains and how it relates to the expected gold release.

I haven't posted here in a long long time but obviously the Flight hooha has got me back.How many copies of FSX were sold?How many copies of 3rd party software has been sold for it (I don't include FS9 or earlier addons)?I bet the vast majority of FSX units sold have never been associated with a single piece of 3rd party software, i.e., this flightsim, addon purchasing, forum dwelling community is most likely a MINORITY when one consideres the whole community of FSX customers.I accept I don't know any of the figures and so may be way off, but my personal experience of online communities (over the entire history of the Internet and for multiple completely seperate pursuits) is that they completely over estimate their improtance and their contribution to any particular pursuit/business/etc. That is, I'm willing to bet that you guys and gals here are the vocal MINORITY.If the FSX/3rd party publisher symbiosis was such a great business model for MS, why did they decide to kill FSX and subsequent flight sims? Obviosuly, from MS's perspective, it was not such a flash deal.If 3rd party publishers were the only reason a flightsim would be viable for MS, do you really think they would be so brainless to invest further millions in a new game and exclude the 3rd party publishers?As one of the largest companies in the world, I suspect MS have their fingers on the data, the details, extensive professional analysis (not armchair forum dwellers opinion), etc. to have a pretty good idea as to what will make them money. And that, at the end of the day, is what they are in business to do; It's not a non-for-profit organisation, it's not an aviation evangalist organisation, it's not Father Christmas, it's a company and they are in control of their destiny. As the saying goes, "deal with it".I'm with the OP. I think the current state of Flight is in part due to the actions of the 3rd party publishers. If you read the PMDG, he clearly states that MS approached them to be part of Flight and they repeatedly "demured". After multiple attempts, MS finally washed their hands of them and now they're crying foul. I'd say that sounds like a major business miscalculation on their part and if I was MS I would have done exactly the same.As to what Flight will become, sounds good to me although it's far too early to tell and the leaks obout the beta are mostly transparently sour-grapes. I never saw the point of publishing a half-baked piece of software that had to be 'rescued' by further substantial expenditure on 3rd party software. Most people wwould simply no go there. Now that they know it will be fully supported by the primary publisher, MS will see a much better buy in to it. That's good for them and that's who they are looking after....not you.Rant over.