pjs37

I have not thank you for pointing those out to me! I will check them out.

I am pretty excited. I always liked the career mode in truck simulator and I look forward to that in MSFS 2024. I am also excited at the variety and difficulty grades of the missions. Objective based gameplay I always enjoyed for variety. The huge amount of planes is also very exciting and the air traffic. There is so much being added. I do share the concern on the ATC or lack of ATC mention which is a shame I do like using the basic ATC just for a slightly more immersive experience I am not looking for a full blown VATSIM thing really but the MSFS ATC was pretty bad at times to the point even as a completely casual user I ran into issues. But overall I am pretty excited.

I also found Pilot Emilie pretty handy videos not too long and she has a lot of good energy that kept me engaged. Here is her G1000 video:

Maybe my memory is a bit faulty as I get older. But back in the days when we used to get a new version of FlightSim every two years or so this was a common occurence as far as I could remember. We maybe could get a discount but very little could carry over and you had to re-purchase the new versions of your add-ons. We are only where we are not because we have literally been frozen in time with FSX which is a circumstance that had not really happened before. P3D kind of blew some new life into the community but is more or less relegated to the more serious simmers who want to make that investment into their software but I venture to guess most FSX simmers are still just using FSX.

Hey Martin, I did think of a questions-Missions and Adventures were popular in FSX and MS Flight is this something that will be in Flight School or FFS?

Interesting. I think it will be interesting to see the effects in the used market so to speak. But it sucks they look to be off-loading quite a bit of their heavies.

My sincere condolences to the family and his friends in this very difficult time.

Hmmm the way things sound to me possibly is that 64 bit P3D will happen. As others have stated LM is in this to make money and we aren't talking chump change money from people who paid MS for a $60 sim back when Vista was being released. I think as software developers they know they need to move to 64 bitas things do get more complex and as customer software demands increase. Is it possible that LM used this engine to get a foothold into the space and as a low cost way to see if there was a market and determining that there is a professional demand for this type of product has taken it as far as they can and in order to go further essentially needs to do what amounts to what is possible a massive re-write to the core engine to do what they want it to do on the scale they need it to do? I mean this is a sim that has a submersible component to it which it was never initially designed to do. What they may be working on their end goal may be large enough that a massive overhaul is required and what used to work as far as 3rd party add-ons go will not work on it without substantial overhaul on their own. The ESP framework has been great but it is old and it is dated and it is limited (Potentially I am speculating on a whole). There is eventually a point when it needs to be redone. As an example at work we used a simulator platform for training. The company sold the technology to LM and they maintained it for us. But eventually it became apparent that in the age the sim was written in it would not support the technology we needed to get it to do (In this case work on wide screen and multiple display set ups and sometime multiple machines) So LM ended up re-writing the core. The software and its assets were the same but the code and core is completely different. As a result a lot of the training things we used were incompatible and had to be converted to a new format. So personally I think that could be a scenario that occurs and it would fit with what the post from the ORBX people said and what we know the LM Developer team to be working on.

You have created a wonderful community as a legacy. I am very saddened to hear of this news. I will just echo what others have already stated: You and your family are in my thoughts in this difficult time and focus on what is truely is important in this difficult time. Thank you for what you have given us I wish you all the best.

Near us there is a chain of stores called Microcenter. The one near us had a fairly decent catalog of Flight Simulator Add-ons and Flight Sims. THe one near me doesn't have it in stock anymore but I have seen it on the shelf in the past. If you live near one it may be worth looking to see if they have one in stock maybe in a bargain bin.

Yeah true enough. I will probably do something like KPNE first or something.

I need to read up on the tutorials and start working on KPHL. I actually think this will be fun.

That is very true. It is a vulnerability that does exist. Ships can be and are actually attacked and the threat does exist. It has been said that terrorist organizations do in fact sponsor some of the piracy that does exist and they have actively pursued means to damage these high profile targets. I guess the real thing is anytime you get a large group of innocent people into a tightly packed space it becomes a nice soft target for terrorist. Still intelligence is our really only defense. You can only build so many walls and barricades and security rings before you become your own prisoner. It my opinion I do not let the fear they want to spread control me that is the best thing weapon we have.

There is more elements to TSA then just screeners, they run the Air Marshal program and the Flight Deck Officer program amongst other things but courtesy of the subpar quality screening work force that the public sees every day those efforts are often over shadowed. I didn't intend for my post to start a TSA bashing thread. As for cruises the Titanic was a disaster because of the arrogance of the ship industry. There were not enough life boats, nor were there enough training for crew and the total lack of regard for danger ahead. As a result there were many changes. On top of that a cruise ship is very very large which makes it much harder to do anything too. They also screen passengers and they have their own security. A plane by contrast does not take much to take out thus requiring less resources to achieve the terror one desires.

Well ISIS is bad news however airports employee many many people from surrounding areas and frankly you tend to have a good number of....less savory people who work there. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that a person who sympathizes with terrorist groups would/could be working at a US airport and still passes the background check. If you aren't in the vast database there is no way anyone would know unless you go around the airport telling people your intentions. It is a very difficult situation to address. In the US there is the vaunted layers of security TSA maintains it has and flying enough times you see it in action. Checkpoints, Baggage Screening, Random Gate Checks, Random Aircraft Searches, Canine etc. On top of that I would hope if an airport employee suspected anything they would report it immediately. People are quick to report bags that are randomly (and often) forgotten at the airport so people are still vigilant. Unfortunately really our only hope remains still with good intelligence coming and being disseminated to those who need to know in a timely and precise manner. Aircraft remain sadly a nice target for terrorist because it can dominate the news for weeks especially if you can do it in a manner like MH370 you make it hard to piece together how and who. That all being said it is not as easy as slapping together some explosives throwing it into a plane and calling it a day. It takes resources and resources can be traced. Thus the intelligence bit.

I would back it, I want to see as many new sims as possible. I don't want a one or two horse race anymore. We had that and look where it got us today. We need fresh ideas, fresh directions. I am not a programmer I have no art skills but a kickstarter will still let me help even if its in a small way.

I read through it once and while it was interesting it really didn't give us any more insight into what they are doing with FS they did address some of the concerns people had with how Train Sim is handled and how they feel about 3rd party developers. But overall its nothing earth shattering. People who are nervous about it will continue to be nervous about it. Those who are optimistic will remain so and I think most people will overall just take the wait and see approach.

I have certainly noticed much increased performance. I wish you guys all luck in sorting it out

Honestly I am not that surprised. They were heading this way before the Nokia acquistion went through even. Just on a corporate level things move slowly and there is a lot of "layers" to move through it sounded like from what I heard of various MS Reporters (Like Mary Jo Foley) Still a lot more then I expected they would end up cutting I think they are finding the Nokia division was either too large for their tastes or now too many jobs are found to be redundent as a result of the merger.

Awesome I cannot wait to get home and play with this. I may even throw money their way to support them. Just in general its exciting even if no flight sim comes out of it (To which I will be very sad about)

The only reason I know about Flight Simulators at all was because I was younger I saw in target a Flight Simulator for Windows 95 disk I bought to play because it looked neat and I liked planes. Now days try and buy a PC game in the store; its all hidden object puzzle games and a few of the AAA titles. You won't "stumble" upon some gem randomly anymore. Steam is where that is at with their huge sales people buy games they normally wouldn't and they discover things that way. There is no downside for X-Plane or FSX to being on Steam its just another place to get it. There are many friends who I tell they should try them and they are all like "Where can I download it" and once you explain to them it needs to be bought and shipped to them its like a wall went up because too much work. Yes its lazy and what not but people like Steam. A lot. Look at the numbers in this thread. That is why these deals were done even for FSX a title which MS has essentially given up enitrely on except in this one single aspect.

I have to agree with the OP: There needs to be a presence in some capacity even if you just crown a bunch of people who have good reputations "Community Ambassador's" like so many industries do nowdays to do it. Having the same toxic idiots going "ITS NOT A GAME ITS A SIM" is not helping in the least. I have X-Plane I am slowly learning it and once Verizon replaces my router so I have access at home again I am at least going to try and help with what I learned trying to learn X-Plane and answer questions in a reasonable way. But they need some ACTIVE moderators there to at least keep some people in check. I don't care if its Prepare3D, FSX, X-Plane, or Farming Simulator-If people are trying your product then you need to put on a good face or you will get buried in short order.

Fantastic looking clouds that is for sure

The thing I would be most excited about with X-Plane on Steam is hopefully not having to play the game of "Which Disc 1 do I need to get it out of demo mode" without resorting to a $30 authentication drive. Also not having to worry about whether my DVD drive works with the DVD's because I had a lot of issues originally installing it and with a lot of help of the X-Plane store I figured out it was my DVD drive lol. As for the Dovetail thing I have a lot of thoughts and concerns but until I see anything I am not saying a word on it. X-Plane is replacing FSX for me as it is no need to look back lol

Color me impressed. I cannot wait to get to the larger aircrafts. I just need to start putting more time into learning things. Thanks for the added incentive. I think I will add this to my shopping list.