Three things that should never discussed at SimV...religion, politics, latest game/sim release from MS...
I will again throw in the crucial factor as I see it -- OPEN INPUT is what made FS what it is today. MSF has just a few contracted developers who in no way can create what has gone before ...
Open input, in my mind, allows for free and varied thinking and therefore far greater progress.
--- and this is why simviation exists ---
FSX, Flightgear and possibly P3D (and probably others we have yet to hear about) all have enormous potential as they are open digital world landscapes upon which to do whatever anyone wishes to do ...
Welcome to Catch22. Microsoft has for some time now been examining their revenue streams on all their products. FS had a small revenue stream for MS due to the fact that it WAS open. So on the one hand we would expect Microsoft to create FS11 etc but expect them to do this for little money.
however MS knows that flight games are a good potential market area. I am quite sure that inside Flight there is a lot of FS code. Has to be. And I can also imagine that someone inside MS had to fight hard to keep them in the flight simulation game. So they came up with Flight. it is probably the only way the MS management allowed the developers to stay in the flight simulation game. Stripping out the third party element. Where they went wrong, was in NOT actually releasing a FS11 with the third party development option removed somehow. (So existing planes would fly, inside Flight running a FSX emulator) while all the fancy new stuff , better planes, graphics etc would run in Flight only. Although it would not please all, it would be a compromise that could have worked. This way MS would have kept everybody on board I think. As it is, they have decided that the existing simmers community isnt worth bothering with at the moment. Eventually flight may develop to a point where it once again becomes interesting. But that product will deliver MS a good revenue stream by then. We are enthusiasts, they run a business. I think they messed up. but its their choice.