Today's major announcement...

[toprob]

I've been waiting for this for a long time, I knew it was coming, as I'd seen an announcement that there would be an announcement today, that this was coming. So this morning I sat down at 9am and fired up Facebook, and sure enough, Hollie Smith had announced the release date for her new album, plus there's one more song out today. Pity it's Itunes only at the moment, I don't let that near my computer...

Oh, and then there's that other announcement, something about Dovetail Flight Simulator, coming later this year apparently, looks like the modern, 64 bit version of FSX people have been screaming for...

[Ian Warren]

Never heard of Hollie Smith till now , sound like my kind off drawing music , the video had some artistry to it tho all digital it was smooth and went with the sound.

[chopper_nut]

I wonder what they're going to do with the helicopter flight model...... I'm not holding my breath

[toprob]

...... I'm not holding my breath

Good advice, I'm getting too old for this, I've been though too many new sims in the past, initially it was always fun, but now I'd be happy to ignore anything new -- apart from Prepar3D updates -- until they get over the teething problems. This can take years, so it's a rush to get a 'proper' sim before I retire in 5 years.
My understanding was always that LM would concentrate on the requirements of their main customers -- military etc -- so you would think that their customers would be screaming out for improved flight models etc for everything military-related -- which includes a lot of copters. So I'd expect a race between the new sim's modern graphics, and LM's gradual improvement on what's already there. And at the moment I'm just beginning to discover the best bits of P3D 3.1.
But I think it's important to remember that Dovetail (I had to scroll down to remember their name, which shows how old I'm getting) plan to release something a lot more like MS Flight initially, and then a 'proper' simulator, so I'll be jumping in when people here get them confused.

EDIT: On a more positive note, last night Spotify emailed me saying that Hollie Smith's new release was available there, so I don't need to rethink the Itunes thing...

[chopper_nut]

The trouble with P3D, (apart from the whole license thing) is that it's still a 32bit platform. These new sims are supposed to be 64bit so that in itself is an improvement. The helicopter flight model thing is possible to do properly in the current sims, Dodosim have proved this but it requires developers to actually take the time and effort to make it correct. The press release from Dovetail that I read stated categorically that both would be worldwide simulators, so not like MS Flight (which I never tried) so I'll be interested to see what the differences are.

[NZ255]

This will be interesting for sure. I wonder how long it'll take them to get where LM have got with v3.
It's not simple stuff... especially having to first understand and get familiar with the FSX source code... I guess they've been doing that since before steam edition was re-released though.

[chopper_nut]

From what I've read, the architecture is going to be similar to that of FSX and P3D. It remains to be seen what the SDKs are like and what the 'simconnects' or whatever it's going to be, function.

[Charl]

The trouble with P3D, (apart from the whole license thing) is that it's still a 32bit platform. These new sims are supposed to be 64bit.

Yup, could it be that I finally dump my trusty FS9 WIN XP box and buy a hot 64 bit machine for flightsimming? There's surely a whole new generation waiting to get into a Real As It Gets experience?