Pardon me for straying a little bit off topic, but since we're talking about backwards compatability, I like to make a point just in case.
From what I have experienced and seen over the past several years, some people usually complain that M$ is ignoring the community when it comes to improvements. In my opinion, I think they are listening rather than ignoring.
Think about it. You all want M$ to improve many things like the dynamics on the next sim, right? But at the same time, you want the next sim to work well with the addons that you have used for the old sim, right? That's where the red tape comes in. In order for a sim to be backwards compatible with addons of an old sim, it will have to be based on a few of the principles that revolve around the old sim. Therefore, the new sim will still inherit the old design flaws of the old sim because we, the common users, wanted backwards compatibility.
If everyone on the entire globe decided to forget backwards compatibility, then M$ would then have the chance to fix the major bugs that are apparent in the current and old sims, therefore giving the FS series a fresh start and get a better chance against X-Plane. However, in reality, most users want backwards compatibility. So we're going to see at least one old flaw in the new sim one way or the other.
So knowing that, I hope to see that giant spike when FSX comes out.