oaknest

It's interesting that Joshua confirmed that they have no desire to work with third party developers today, although he leaves a vague opening for maybe sometime in the future like they have a magic switch to turn third party developers on and off. In other words, if Microsoft Flight doesn't meet long term sales goals, than they expect third party developers to rise up and improve Microsoft profits. Since high-end add-ons take months to years to be ready for market, I'm not sure how fast this magic switch will work.By contrast, X-Plane today is actively recruiting and training the third party developers including the big name FSX developers. They just completed a seminar in Mallorca where X-Plane developers and third party developers traded ideas and development tips for development with X-Plane 10.

Be sure to try the free X-Plane 10 demo. It's got current graphics technology with a huge variety of planes, features and worldwide scenery. It's new and still has a few growing pains, but at least fixes for its issuess are coming regularly. That's better than FSX with five year old bugs and no hope for fixes.

Thanks for the suggestion. I spent hours reading the FSX forums and was struck by two things:1. FSX had a very vibrant community of people and companies developing a wide array of addons2. FSX is over 5 years old with crashes and bugs that will never be fixed (I was amazed at how many people are still using FS2004 for that reason)Reading the forums took me into the FSX Vs X-plane 10 debates. The two things I came away with that debate is:1. X-plane 10 also has a very vibrant community with open support for any person or company to create addons.2. X-plane 10 is new, which means several bugs and performance issues are still being worked on. (at least there are new builds every week with significant improvements)Since I want to put my efforts and money into a flight simulator for the next 5 years (not the last 5), I like the thought of an open community that can create addons (whether John Smith down the street or Carenado), and I liked the X-plane 10 demo once I got everything configured properly (configuration took much longer than Flight, but at least I COULD configure everything the way I wanted without editing XML system files), I just placed an order for the X-Plane 10 full package.I understand lots of people have other opinions, but this is the direction that seems best for me.

The Icon has been fun to fly around, but I don't get the feeling of "real" flight with it. I guess I'm looking for a plane with the full "six pack" of instruments, something that i can continue to use through cross country navigation without the big yellow diamonds in the sky pointing the way, then eventually IFR.I guess I could use the Icon for a few weeks then progress to the RV6. But it would be so much nicer if I could watch a training video today, then duplicate it closer than the Icon allows.

After reading about Flight, I was looking forward to trying it out. After playing around with the Icon and Stearman for a few hours on my laptop, I was getting hooked. I ended up buying a new tower computer with the power to run everything at high quality along with Saitek Yoke, throttle and rudder pedals so I could do a complete simulated flight training program.I then bought the Hawaii scenery to get the RV6 to fly as my general trainer. The scenery flying around is awesome and everything seems so smooth.I was ready for more formal direction and instruction, so watched several of the Angle Of Attack videos to learn the basics of Flight Simulator takeoff, flying and landing. I then tried repeating everything I watched.That's where everything is falling apart. The videos stress the importance of stable approaches with minimal control input while on approach to landing. But my RV6 on approach is all over the sky. I did manage to land a few times, but my approaches are more roller coaster than stable. I'm sure it's a combination of my lack of skill and the nature of an aerobatic aircraft, but it could be partially the settings on my Saitek controllers. But there doesn't seem to be anywhere in Flight to adjust the sensitivity and range of the controllers.Also, for initial flight training, I should probably be starting with a stable, forgiving airplane like the Cessna 172 they use in the videos. Unfortunately Flight doesn't seem to have one. I considered the Maule, but a bush-plane tail-dragger designed for short, dirt strips doesn't seem like what I was looking for either to learn basic flight skills at airports with paved runways. At least it didn't look good enough to me to risk another $20 to try it out.I'm getting frustrated and starting to look around for Plan B.