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There was a time when I thought comments like that were both unnecessary and hurtful to the recipient. Now I just feel sorry for the person who wrote them.

Lol. Not in the slightest. I haven't got a clue how many there are at LM. I'm sure you know since you are so closely involved with them. I am simply drawing my own conclusions from what I see. If I'm wrong, I really don't care, because it doesn't actually matter. The only thing I'm interested in as far as MSFS is concerned is - is it any good? If the answer to that is "yes" then I'm looking forward to flying it. I don't actually care how they get there!

Exactly. It's interesting that precisely because of that I am tending to conclude that there is no point in LM continuing to develop P3D software. They've done sterling work, and hats off to that. But it's really not LM's specialism. They are little fish in that particular big pond, and are simply unable to compete (should it ever come to that) with the giant of Microsoft. So unlike you, I draw the opposite supposition by thinking that LM has been very much in the loop, and it will be just a matter of time when they will step out of the game again. I see LM's long-term involvement/partnership as being that of a military/jet manufacturer, not as a software developer. 100% speculative. Just drawing from all the circumstantial evidence I see.

I think you'll find it does. If the first declarative statement of any new SimConnect Class is not something like: : Inherits SimConnectxxxx… I'd be extremely surprised.

No. That isn't the point I was making. That comment of mine had nothing at all to do with SimConnect. I was talking by then about the business sense of Microsoft not having to reinvent the 64 bit wheel by starting again where they left off with FSX, but what sense it would make to take business advantage of all the development that LM have done in that direction (and DTG to some extent). It all seems (to me) to add up to concluding that a LM partnership in this project is not something to be unexpected and it would not surprise me one iota if I were to see it announced just a couple of months before Flight Simulator is finally released. That's all.

Gosh no! I thought your amplifying post was super, and I learned a lot from it. Thank you. My "being knocked" was not aimed at you, but at Rob who told me bluntly a lot of what I said was wrong, but then failed to point out anything that actually was.

No. But inheritance does. That's all I was trying to say.

Possibly - but such as? 1. Nothing I said contradicts your point 1 2. I never mentioned speed - just how SimConnect works in principle in laymens' terms for those who have no idea what SimmConnect is. I made no comment about its architecture or whether it should be retained or otherwise. I am not an advocate of SimConnect, but it was Microsoft who have said it will be supported, not me. If you read what I actually said about "low level" I was not using purist programming thinking on that - as you seem to be doing. I clearly explained what I meant by "low level". I said ": When I describe it as “low level” it means that the average person on the street can’t do much with it unless they know how to write programs". Sorry that wasn't clear enough. 3. Believe it or not I am aware of that. I was in aerospace for 30 years and climbed on and in more military aircraft than most. None were LM, as it happened. I fail to see what your comment has to do with anything. I merely pointed out the absence of jet/military manufacturers, and the coincidence that LM does manufacture jets and military aircraft and they aren't on the partner list. 4. I didn't suggest it has. 5. Yes. So? Again I never implied faster or better. I was just trying to explain (in simplistic terms) what is the significance of inheritance. You come across as being very defensive of P3D and no doubt - to use your words - The idea of my post was not for the professional developers such as yourself who know vastly more about SimConnect than I admit to knowing merely to knock my statements down to show how clever they are, but to provoke a few thoughts as to the direction things might be going. I don't care whether I'm right or wrong, but it seemed a bit more constructive than wondering whether Flight Simulator was mere vaporware - which has been quite popular and wasteful.

As a change from the myriad of purely speculative posts that have been published here since the announcement of MS Flight Simulator, I thought I’d try to address something a little more serious. Sadly my comments will doubtless lead to some more speculation; I might even speculate a tad myself. Let’s see how this goes….. One of the subjects that has not attracted too much comment yet has been the subject of SimConnect. To all professional developers and me (an amateur developer) this is an incredibly important topic, so here are some of my thoughts. For those who are not aware of what SimConnect is I’ll explain simplistically.: SimConnect is a low-level client server application that enables messages to be sent between a pc- based application (the client) and the flight simulator application (the server). Typical servers are FSX, FSX Steam and P3D – now Flight Simulator they tell us. When I describe it as “low level” it means that the average person on the street can’t do much with it unless they know how to write programs in C++, C# or VB.NET typically. SimConnect should not be confused with FSUIPC. I’m no expert on exactly how Pete Dowson has written FSUIPC and will invite wrath if I get it wrong, but I can reasonably accurately describe it as essentially a higher level shell that surrounds SimConnect. FSUIPC does all the hard work of connecting SimConnect and communication with the server, and exposes the methods and results in a way that does not need you to know how to write programs. SimConnect uses a fundamental principle of object oriented programming (OOP) called inheritance, or derivation. Every time a new version of SimConnect is released, the new version inherits all of the characteristics of the previous versions. So any new characteristics (properties, methods etc) just get added to what was in the previous version, meaning what’s already known does not need to be rewritten. The server is the controlling influence. Because of inheritance, any client application that uses an old version of SimConnect can be used to communicate with a newer server that inherited from it, but it doesn’t work the other way round. If the latest version of SimConnect attempts to communicate with a server written for an earlier version, they will not understand each other The last version of SimConnect that was written for FSX was 10.0.62615.0 (I believe). There might be a latter version than that. If there is, I’m not aware of it and in the context of this post, it doesn’t matter anyway. All subsequent versions of SimConnect have inherited from that version. That includes ALL the versions of SimConnect written for P3D. So – if you want to communicate with FSX, FSX (Steam) or any Prepar3D vs 1 thru 4.5…… you can use FSX SimConnect version 1.0.62615.0 without any problem whatsoever. You will be limited to using the capabilities of the FSX version of course. So anything new that has been added to the later versions in Prepar3D will not be available to you if you want to use the FSX SimConnect. If you want the latest bells and whistles, you have to use the latest SimConnect. But if you do that – inheritance doesn’t work backwards…… The latest SimConnect for P3D v4 can only communicate with v4! It can’t communicate lower down the hierarchy. So where is this leading.......? Well……. The clear statement has been written that Microsoft Flight Simulator will support SimConnect. Quote “ For those with a preference for using FSX tools, SimConnect will be supported”. Excellent news indeed…… The only thing missing for me is “...OK,,,,but……starting from what version of SimConnect?” . That’s incredibly important to know. If the answer is “10.0.62615.0” it means that every client application written purely for FSX using SimConnect has a chance of communicating with Flight Simulator right out of the box. Gosh, that’s such a huge thing! But…………but…….. anything written with a LockheedMartin. Simconnect.dll will not work – even though the LM SimConnect versions inherited originally from the FSX version. That’s because SimConnect does not work back down the ancestry – only up the hierarchy. Most of my own client apps have only been written using the FSX SimConnect because the new versions that LM added to did not give me anything special I desperately needed. So my apps can communicate with FSX, or any version of P3D without any adjustment. In theory they should also work with Flight Simulator too, assuming the SimConnect that the Asobo/Microsoft team says it supports, is inherited from the FSX one (I think that’s pretty much guaranteed) But wait……. (…….here comes some speculation….this is AVSIM after all……..)…….. What happens if the SimConnect version that Flight Simulator starts with is not the FSX version 10.something.or.other, but actually one of the LockheedMartin ones??? I mean…..surely it’s possible/likely/extremely likely/certain that LM and Microsoft (and Dovetail Games, maybe?) all sat down together and discussed the business benefits of not wasting all of LM’s good work for the past few years going to 64 bit, and adding all sorts of nice capabilities. Wouldn’t it just make a lot of business sense to join hands and go into the future with a single joint-venture that benefits both/all parties without treading on each others’ toes? What – in all honesty – is the point of 2 simulators being in the public domain that came from precisely that same root just 9 years ago, and have a high degree of interoperability and thousands of equally compatible 3rd party add-ons that should work? What would be the point? Who stands to gain from competing with products that start from the same roots? Maybe those meetings didn’t happen (but should have, imho) or maybe they did and failed. Or maybe we just have to wait and see……… Quote from Prepar3D web site home page:“Prepar3D furthers the development of Microsoft® ESP™ while maintaining compatibility with Microsoft Flight Simulator X, allowing many thousands of add-ons to be used within Prepar3D.” Hmmm...... Have you noticed all the talk about Prepar3D version 5? I haven’t. Only from speculative simmers. Number of statements about it from Lockheed Martin sources = zero. Strange……Wouldn’t now be the time to be telling people (if it existed) in the face of the potential onslaught from Microsoft? Just look at how Intel and AMD get at it once the other announces something. It’s all about “first to market”. Silence is not a terribly good way to go about it, generally. Now let’s look at the list of Flight Simulator partners. Note they are all aircraft manufacturers. I see light aircraft, and commuters and we’re getting to a few liners. But wait……where are the jets and military aircraft? So far – zero. Doesn’t Lockheed Martin specialize in them? (Just wondering) So back to business sense. Oh boy, wouldn’t it be stupid to announce right now if (big IF) that Lockheed Martin was a partner in the Flight Simulator project, because the number of sales of Prepar3D would dry up instantly. Not good business. So let’s hang on a bit and keep the revenue stream going…..until the time is right. Just wondering, just speculating. Sorry……………..Just throwing out some food for thought. Anyone hungry? I hope the explanation about SimConnect was helpful, if nothing else.

...….I don't think so. Come 2021 and you'll be using outdated software. Even worse, if it doesn't get released in 2020.... If the MS and Asobo's teams don't call it FS 2020 why pretend it has a different name than it does ? Long live Microsoft Flight Simulator! Case closed.... Can we now talk about something more constructive - or maybe even do some flying. Does anyone ever do that any more?

How does one manage to draw the conclusion that a poor performance on a shoot'em up game written by RockstarGames will translate into poor performance on a flight simulator using totally different software techniques, written by a Microsoft team?

Actually......no. I'm one of the so called "chosen ones" No-one has access to the build yet. We have ALL been told that the Tech Alpha 1 will not be downloadable until about 21st November (all being well). I can't comment about others who are Tech Alpha 1 candidates, but I have not been sent an NDA, nor have I been asked to acknowledge one anywhere. In the true tradition of many AVSIM members' philosophy of offering pure unadulterated speculation - I would not be surprised if there wasn't one either. This is a Tech Alpha 1 - and the whole world already knows that MS are building this simulator, so unlike a traditional Beta tester scenario, there isn't going to be a huge bunch to tell people that they don't already know. Not only that, we're mostly a bunch of amateurs - not "semi-professional" who are "testing" stuff that the authors want to keep a big secret from the competition. My guess is (more overt speculation 😎) that a lot of the feedback will be about technical performance which will be done by electronic data uploads, and compared with the DxDiags. Of course there will be scope for comments but those will (probably) be question/answers rather than free format to eliminate being flooded by endless wish-lists.

Yes.. apart from key performance criteria such as processor, graphics cards, memory etc., DxDiag analyses your entire system and shows every device you have on every USB and other ports, as well as most HID devices. However, having everything that you own plugged in does not necessarily increase the chance of getting onto the alpha or beta previews, because we don't know what the criteria are for doing that. The MS team might deliberately choose less powerful setups to see how well it performs on those, rather than selecting people with all-singing-all-dancing setups which might not be at all representative of their target market. Or - more likely - they will probably select a whole range of machine capabilities, to get a far better sample of how well the sim will perform to its widest customer base. Bearing in mind this is also intended to run on the Xbox, having lots of panels and other addons on your PC won't help in that scenario - nor even will a multi-function joystick and rudder pedals. Or maybe the next genre of Xbox will support such add-on devices? So many "maybe's". Do we need another speculation thread?...…………….

Copied from my own message on "What's Your Deal-breaker" Thread: "...……..It makes no sense at all to try to start a new simulator with a fresh piece of paper from ground up in the belief (hopes) that it can compete and improve on what's been around for years. It makes far more sense to "throw away" the weakest part (scenery) and capitalize on the ongoing development of - most likely FSW - and maybe even P3D. As far as I understand both contracts (from what little was made public), neither LM nor Dovetail Games were ever given complete rights to the FSX engine, so I would not be at all surprised to see a 64 bit engine remarkably similar to FSW and P3D (….including SimConnect) "

I'd lay bets that you won't be bothering then, if true to your word. It's a bit weird that you will only buy something if it uses the technology you demand. Isn't how well it performs a bit more important than what method you expect them to use to achieve it? The basic flight engines for both FSX and P3D are not too bad. The problem with both of them has more been the way in which the scenery has been stored, unbundled and displayed. That consumes vast amounts of CPU - hence poor performance in high density scenery areas. Most OOMs have been caused by that problem. As far as I can see and understand from what we have seen of MSFS so far, it is the scenery that is getting the most focus to improve, and I have no doubt whatsoever that that part of the engine is under complete change. It makes no sense at all to try to start a new simulator with a fresh piece of paper from ground up in the belief (hopes) that it can compete and improve on what's been around for years. It makes far more sense to "throw away" the weakest part (scenery) and capitalize on the ongoing development of - most likely FSW - and maybe even P3D. As far as I understand both contracts (from what little was made public), neither LM nor Dovetail Games were ever given complete rights to the FSX engine, so I would not be at all surprised to see a 64 bit engine remarkably similar to FSW and P3D (….including SimConnect) Personally, I'd be MORE happy if that's what happened than if a new engine came out, because otherwise we'd be dealing with "engine bugs" (FoD)? for years to come. If the engine changes, the community's millions of dollars worth of addons for P3D and FSX would be worthless. Wouldn't most of us be happier if most/many of them still worked, rather than none? I'd be totally thrilled with a new scenery engine though - and I'm sure I won't be disappointed, because that's exactly what we'll get for sure. I'm really excited about what I've seen, and would be more than happy to fly any of my current aircraft in that delicious eye-candy. I can't wait for it to become a reality. ……. I wonder if we'll soon be reading a press release that Active Sky or Rex have been acquired by Microsoft …. that would be interesting