Hi.
Their flight mechanics before were a bit of a joke—I wonder if they plan to improve them?
In the meantime, we have X-Plane 11 (commercial/slick) and FlightGear (open source/rough around the edges), both of which have flight physics models lightyears beyond anything MS bothered with. A lot of the old add-on community moved to X-Plane, so there's no shortage of custom add-ons (free and commercial).
XP11, or any other version, generates an end product, flight dynamics wise, worse than FSX especially when it comes to Light GA. The C172 in the MSFSX, with some small tweaks, has much better feel and behavior than any of the XP versions.
I am not sure why some people think that one approach, theory behind it, to creating a flight model is better than another, what it counts is the end product, the way it behaves when you use it as a tool. I can use the FSX to demonstrate, and perform, commercial maneuvers much better than anything I can come up with in the XP.
As to the "commercial" version it is no different in the output of the flight dynamics it generates, it's the same engine.
MSFSX has, and will continue to have a very large support, just about everything for XP is payware and if you buy one now it may not work in the next version. There is no plan ahead in that group, they just try this, next time try this, with total disregard for customers and even the Commercial developers.
LR spent more time and effort in trying all these useless effects, reflections, smoke... that use a lot of the system's resources and completely ignore any of the real life pilot's input. They think that making all these will attract more people that are not into real flying, I assume, but that is likely to be a problem for them because most people cannot run it unless you have a real good system with a good throughput.
Given the poor free support, their inability to create a decent Light GA, and the new MS sim, which is likely to be more of a game, going in the same direction, the same market, as XP, their days are numbered, unless they start listening to input from people that know how an airplane performs and concentrate on what is important, flight dynamics, how it feels, and performs in the many regimes in flight and on the ground.
Try this, C172 any airport 15Kts of Xwind and try to taxi / take off. That is just one glaring short coming, I can give you hundreds more that re very important to a real pilot, in my opinion.
If anyone wants to get access to tons of free ad dons, decent end product, and longevity, I would suggest LM, an MSFSX Gold if you can find it, or the Inet version which I do not use or recommend.
