Four things I miss in FSX hobby

**kmentt** · 03-17-2007, 06:14 PM

I browse the forum and miss the high times of FS9 when there was so much to discuss, add-ons, new planes being released, fantastic cockpits, sceneries, links to developpers, frewares that excel, etc.
The forum now is soooooo boring, with only topics on how to set up the game, basic questions about flying, about fps or ...well, nothing that makes the serious hobby fan want to check it up regularly.

So heres a message to newcomers: This is not how the hobby usually is...stick around and in a year or two it will be much more exciting and realistic.

What are we most missing in FSX, besides the performance issue and patches that ought to be addressed by microsoft. What are we missing from the community?

1) Good sceneries of cities and airports (not just the terrain mesh)
2) Good add-on planes, specially ones from 20th century, the golden era with analog instruments.
3) Gauges, gauges, gauges and more gauges.
4) Decent Panels, yes...: the cockpit IS the sim, an excellent plane without a panel is useless. VC as most of us know, are still not good and fast in graphics detail.

I am not going back to FS9 cause I believe in the improve on realism potential of FSX. I am just waiting...
anyone agrees?
Luis

**jackhall** · 03-17-2007, 06:52 PM

FSX, in my opinion, is a major advance from FS9, and the add-ons will take a bit more time to come out. New stuff is being developed and released reasonably quickly. Hang in there; it will get better. Jack

**Rockcliffe** · 03-18-2007, 10:48 AM

I think Luis makes a good point. I am really impressed with FSX, but miss the excitement of logging on every morning in anticipation of another fabulous new third-party aircraft to try. And the forums are pretty boring these days.
I hope Jack is right and that the flood gates will soon open.
And as much as I like FSX, the release of Glacer Bay V.2 has me using FS9 more often now.
I guess the 'glass is half full' side of me is happy to have two excellent flight sims to enjoy.
Blair
CYOW

***jwenting*** · 03-18-2007, 12:53 PM

As FS gets more and more realistic and rich, it gets harder and harder to create addons for it.
And with users expecting ever more from addons, it also gets ever harder to create an addon that won't get you flamed all over the place (with some addon makers getting death threats over supposed flaws and imperfections).

Both mean that less and less people even attempt, and those that do take longer to create their masterpieces.

For FS98 many aircraft were created in just a few days (at most), and it showed. Those looked and behaved nothing like the real thing.
An aircraft of similar quality released today would never see the light of day, the creator would be flamed to death and ridiculed for months or years afterwards.
Instead creating an aircraft may take a team of people months to complete, something that a single person years ago did in hours.

Combine that with the smaller number of people involved in the process, and it's little wonder the number of releases is down.

For FS2004 (and some extent FS2002) that was partially hidden by the massive amount of AI traffic related things being released, most of which were simple textfiles and low grade repaints.
The models created were usually also extremely simple (along the lines of old FS98 models in quality and complexity), and for a reason (performance) and therefore accepted as such.
With the lack of TTools for FSX (because of the retirement of the person who created it and noone taking his place) that flood has dried up as well.
Take that flood of AI stuff away from FS2004 releases and you'll likely not find many more addons (not counting repaints) hitting the download sites in the first half year or so after release than is the case with FSX now.

**lalex** · 03-18-2007, 02:00 PM

jw* - I fully agree with you. AMOF, we are only at the beginning of a new FS period. Every beginning has it own rhythm - just as with FS2004, 2000, etc.

Now we also have a new O/S to deal with (and a new DirectX + specific graphics hardware + multiple core CPUs) so developers have so much more on their hands than before.