I was on avsim and someone said there will be an SDK now, has anyone heard anything?

I will also add that, as a real pilot, not all real pilots feel the same way Fish Taco does. And by that, I mean different real life pilots enjoy different levels of fidelity in flight simulators. Personally, I prefer to save in-depth start up procedures and long cross country flights for the real thing. I fire up flight simlators to do things I can't do in real life (like fly way too low or blow stuff up). Not to say that there's anything wrong with Fish Taco's preference - I'm just saying it's not fair to imply that all real life pilots feel the same way.

Also, I think it's worth while to point out that discussions on SimHQ or AVSIM about what the flight sim market wants may be misleading. Sure, maybe 90% of people on SimHQ want a super high fidelity flight sim where you can do real flight planning and fly anywhere in the world, but that's because those are the kinds of people that hang out at SimHQ. The total population of SimHQ'ers that discuss FSX may actually only make up 2% of the people that purchased FSX. Maybe those other 98% would prefer smaller/fewer locations, but with better "eye candy", and those 98% want to pay $5 for a smaller add-on scenery area instead of $50 for something that includes areas they won't ever fly over. We just don't ever hear from those folks becuase they aren't here at SimHQ or AVSIM. Or maybe I'm wrong. I don't work for M$'s marketing department so I don't know.

No, and I cannot for the life of me see the relevance.


Funny how you assume I'm some kind of champion of non-realism. FYI even on max realism you still have virtual hoops in several of the helicopter missions. I don't understand what difference it makes. If you don't want to collect coins in the air noone's forcing you to. But why demand that noone else can do it? It's their game to do with as they please, and if they want to fly geocaching around Hawaii because the game has such a feature, then let them. If they want to fly through progressively more difficult hoops in the air, then let them. Do you ever fly under bridges in FSX? Can't do that in real life, can we? Have you ever crashed and then restarted the sim? Can't do that in real life either, can we? So the argument that "coins in the air is unrealistic" holds no validity whatsoever.

The whole point of flight and race and subsims is to give people the chance to do things only a very few can ever do in real life. So if we do what the hardcore crowd wants and set the bar at PMDG (since that's what everybody talks about) then that just means we make the hobby that much less accessible to people.

So what? What is the problem with that? A brand new Porsche 911 Turbo is not accessible for 90% of the people on the planet unless they steal one. Should we cry because 90% don't have access to a brand new Porsche 911 Turbo? That's tough titty. Nobody really needs a Porsche 911 Turbo; nobody really needs a hardcore flight simulation from MS. Some people want them. They are tools for entertainment and adventure. Maybe they should make ocean cruises accessible to the masses. You know, charge 50 bucks instead of 5,000 or more. Give me a break.

Just because some things aren't accessible to everyone is, well, life. So what?

It doesn't have to be accessible to everyone, but it does need to be accessible to enough people for the developer to justify spending money on it.

- FSX without addons isn't completely a hardcore simulator in fact it can be "played" as an arcade, doing missions and using a mouse.
- I do care if some things are not accessible to everyone...and that's part of the reason of the many problems of this world. But That's another story.
- Having tried MS Flight I have to say you'd be surprised because in some aspects it's even better than FSX without addons.
- As stated above create a simulator is expensive and needs to sell to as many people as possible so selling for just a few is not very wise unless MS wanted to charge $500 per license.

So why are you #%&*$# about not getting a hardcore flight simulation from MS? Or are you just too intellectually impaired to realize the amazing irony in your frothing-at-the-mouth rant there?

However, for those of us who do not ride minivans to school like, given the content of your posts here, you evidently do, it is not too hard to see that a more accessible sim is a sim with a larger userbase and larger userbase means much bigger market for addons which need not be priced at ludicrous sums anymore. Because, you know - people are generally more inclined to buy stuff when it's cheap - hence why Steam Sales are always such a massive hit.

Let's downshift a little here alright. It's amazing that every sim/game that comes out it's always the same thing. The pessimist vs the optimist. After the sim/game is released one side claims victory until a couple of patches come out then those that like it stay while all the haters are never heard of again.


...it's all a matter of time.

Hey Evil, stuff your insults where the sun doesn't shine. The MS franchise, starting with sublogic, has been around for almost 30 years and sold tens of millions of copies. That is hardly a failed franchise. It's Microsoft's greed that has set them in this doomed to fail direction. They've basically abandonded a long-time, loyal market segment. I'm an American, and that's typical of American companies. That's why you no longer see American companies prospering in the hardcore racing and flight sim market. They are always after the console masses. Making decent money is not enough. They want it all. They will sell bland junk if they think they can get extra customers. Then they fail, because their once loyal market segment abandons them. Thank God for the Russians.

There was a large user base for Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. So, should all games be like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros BECAUSE there is a large user base? What of those who prefer something a bit more realistic? Are they simply crap out of luck? Every game/sim isn't going to fit every game/sim player. So certain people here should stop blubbering on.

We've all seen a tiny few sims made to be accessible to more than one preferred style of game play. But the successful ones tend to have a hard core foundation (DCS A10, DCS Black Shark) with some accessibility for those who prefer less realism. Despite that noble attempt at egalitarianism in gaming, I haven't seen arcade console gamers flocking to the DCS sims.

On the flip side, I've yet to see the game created first with the masses in mind that came with sufficient scalability to make it equally appealing to the hard core crowd. Every such effort has failed, as will Flight.

The console crowd is a short attention span crowd. They have no interest in flying a plane around Hawaii that can't blow anything up. And most FSX players will sneer at Flight, and for good reason. I predict it's going to fail.

Locked as a matter of principle. Read/think before you post.