This is a very nice forum here. Lots of really nice helpful people.
Some years back, I was very fortunate in that I was able to fly, Pilot in Command, a full blown ($7,000,000) 747 Simulator for several hours before it was shipped overseas for Flight Training. (I've been saving my pennies ever since that day) pretty soon, approx 1,276 years I'll have enough.
The folks there put me through fog, wind shears, all sorts of stuff. I did fairly well.. I only crashed about 50 % of the time.
Anyway I was surprised to find out that the Flight Safety rated simulator spent about zero.5 processing cycles on crashing. The full motion hydraulics just kind of vibrated for a sec and stopped. and "crashed" or "Reset" flashed in the middle the 180degree wrap-around display.
This is what I would like to see MS do to improve its simulator.
1) There are plenty of really good, very precise sat images of the earth that have no clouds. I'd like to see more detailed imagages of ground features and city features and outlines. For example, one of the prettiest sites is flying south from say Wichita to Houston and looking down at Dallas and Fort Worth from about 27,000 feet. In other words more realistic, better resolution scenery both day and night. Right now FS9 beats the pants off of X-Plane for sunrises and sunsets! But they are catching up
2) I would like MS to get rid of bitmaps that don't zoom well in favor of better res pictures type of structures like terminals, and other buildings etc.
3) I would like to see very HiRes fully functional cockpits that have virtually every switch enabled down to the APU , Hydraulics, Elec, Air Cond. Auto Pilot Bank Limits, Fire extinguishers, Emergency Shutoffs etc. And have simulated failures.
4) I would like to see better frame rates.
I have played X-Plane for over a year. Yes, they might have better physics and faster frame rates, but the experience is woefully inadequate for these reasons.
A) The latest version was so unrealistic with respect to the cockpit visual from a 747 that I got dizzy. The ground was moving as if I was in an old bi-plane with a wind speed averaging 70kts. It was terrible. (And that was fair weather, no wind!)
B) When you take off at night you lose all ground visibility within three miles (if you're flying outbound over the ocean. It becomes pitch black. But... you can see the Northern Lights ... in LA? What's up with that?
C) ATC is computer generated (HAL 2001 singing Daisy) kind of voice. That is not automatic. Radio chatter is sound clips played in random order. You could be taking off from LA and the clip playing is saying that JFK's 4Left is clear to land. And you will hear that over and over and over and over and...
D) The airports are dismal. No structures at all, next there is no taxiway lines or lights, taxiway markers, the runway lights are dismal compared to FS9.
E) There is no ATC. No take of clearances, no realism at all. In FS9, I flew from Frankfurt to JFK. When I was taxiing Ground Control had me stop and wait for two planes to take off. That's is amost EXACTLY what happend when I had a real flight. Only it was an SST taking off at that time. X-Plane does not even come close to that kind of realism.
5) Have a working version of FMC (but that would happen if they did #3)
6) You all are going to hate me for this one but take out all of the bloated processing stuff for crashes. The effects everything and concentrate on making a better FLIGHT sim instead of a CRASH sim. I hope I have not offended anyone. I'd be up for a sim that specialized in crashing just for realism sake. But have it separate from the one you actually use for flying.
7) I would like to have much more responsive guages that have settings. (It's one of the few things X-Plane does exceptionally well. It's worth the down load for the free demo to experience how effortlessly it is to go from say 864 ft to 32,768 ft in altitude or 120 IAS to 34O IAS
I think thats it
I look forward to everyones comments.
Happy Flying Everyone
wiz
You must be a fast typer! 
