Flight Sim Fans: Microsoft Flight Simulator To Be Released August 18th With Three Pricing Options

I started FS on my trusty old Atari 1040 ST. I wasn't bad, given that it was early 80's tech.

Any recommendations on yolk, rudder pedals.

There’s not going to be a Steam version

I am some time off before I can build one. I just remember how my i7-920 paired with a GTX 285 (top of the line at the time) would cringe flying into JFK with any clouds as well as other air traffic (which is why FS9 needed a better CPU instead of GPU).

Yes it's a great advance for pilots to hone their skills and fly approaches before actually doing the
real thing. Make the mistakes in the sim.

Yolk is spelled yoke BTW. Yolk - egg yolk. Lol just sayin'

I also have 4 Monitors... Front, Left, Right, and Over Head Panel!

A 'game' could imply there is a winner and a loser, and a set point in time or level the 'game' is concluded. FS, everybody wins and the 'game' never ends...unless you embarrass yourself on a busy afternoon landing EGLL on VATSIM in front of a couple dozen others :P

If you will use it like a game it's a matter of time to get boring and turn it off.
If you look to it like a simulator (and you love aviation, of course) then it's forever.

I still use FSX, with serial port stick and rudder pedals. I purchased an adapter some time back. I've since added a 3ed party weather generator, and 3rd party A/C. The 32 bit architecture can make things a bit cumbersome on a 64 bit machine(memory access issues mostly), but it still works with a bit of massaging. However, I am excited about MS's first update in 14 years! It'll be nic to operate a FS with architecture built around modern hardware! Hell...If I have to go out and buy a new set of rudder pedals and stick...I'll do it.

They will keep supporting it and expand in future versions even. Since this basically kills all other flight sims I am guessing it will do just fine for a long time. And for that price I think you can't beat it.

They are counting on 5G to do the heavy lifting for the bandwidth. I would be wondering about the other issues also. I have been a fan of Flight Sim for a long time but they stopped supporting it. I still have my Combat Flight Simulator 3 but it would not load into the Windows 10. I tried to load it into Windows 7 but I lost a lot of data transitioning to 10.

Given their past history with FSX I would say probably 3-4 years. They did have weather data through Jeppsen but that expired and so it stayed cached for many years with the last days weather. More than likely if I had to guess as far as charts and navdata we will probably see the same that it will go fine for a few years and then just no more updates.
Landscape system the developers did talk about this as I recall to put at ease those who have poor internet connections or maybe none at all. It does have a base mode that you can fly in where all of the basics are still there but you don't get the graphic fidelity of course of having real time map data from Bing overlayed into it. So again once Microsoft no longer deems it worth it to keep the doors open this will go back to a basic mode (I'm guessing it will be closer to what FSX had as far as tiles but of course I haven't had a chance to fly it so it's just an educated guess)
Flightaware I would hope would go a lot longer given I am a feeder in my area. Also given the fact that a large majority of Flightaware's data is voluntarily given to them I would think that they might be able to get by with a lower cost point. But again when Microsoft pulls the plug on it I'm guessing we will have a cached copy of say the last 24 hours or so that it will fall back on.

That is pretty much with every game on the market today.... From Fantasy to First Person shooters.... They have a lifespan and then dies... If they game does not keep up with Technology, its life span will be shorter.... Flight Simulator has had an Unusually Long Lifespan, primarily because MS has continued to enhance it and upgrade it.