Figured I'd try to organize our thoughts here since the announcement thread is growing ever-larger. (If the mods aren't ok with this, just destroy this thread.)

Simply an "wishlist/debate center" regarding possible features in the new sim related to online usage.
Does the community here want everything to be online? (No offline capability)

What about third party content being centrally distributed (free or pay) through Windows LIVE?

Continued partnership with Gamespy? (I already know the community's opinion on this..  )

Etc, etc.

Thankfully, Gamespy is history...

i go with the online + the offline also i would make like make like 4 servers for all players so not every 1 makes his own server and let every big comunity have his own server

I like the way gamespy set it up where there is a server list... But gamespy was bad for connecting!!!

I would really love realistic carrier deck ops(have someone be a LSO, etc.)

Knowing that Gulfstream downright refuses to allow reproductions of their aircraft, I would be surprised if MS wanted to go through the legal hassle and fees of trying to put one in the sim, when there are other options out there. Regarding the legal aspect and fees, that goes for "realistic airlines" as well.

Regarding the online aspect, it would be neat if they used a system similar to how VATSIM is now, where there is a large database of low poly models representing many aircraft, and your sim will draw the closest match, rather than using a default model that may be nothing like what the other user is flying.

Having previous versions of the aircraft from FS available for Flight will severely limit the designers for the new sim, since they would have to make everything backwards compatible.  This is a step in the WRONG DIRECTION.  MS needs to start over, since it's high time we got rid of some of the crap that has accumulated in the converters over the past few renditions.

That being said, I may have come up with a solution for the downloading of aircraft.

It's based off of the LOD system.  Each designer, if they want to have their aircraft available for online flight, would need to create a LOD set for their aircraft.  These would be separate models for each aircraft that would be loaded into the database.  The key is that they would be separate models that could be downloaded by the user's computer when the aircraft reach a certain distance from each other.  Your computer would then download the lowest-poly LOD set and place it in the sim.  Hopefully, this would be such a low-poly version with small textures that it wouldn't lag the system.  When (and if) the two aircraft closed to another certain distance, the sim would download the next LOD.  It would continue to do this as the two got closer.  But if you only ever see the aircraft as a speck on the horizon, the sim would only download the base LOD and textures.  This would save tremendously on diskspace and processor time.  All the files would be stored permanently on your HD, and you could choose to delete them upon exiting the sim, or hold them indefinitely so that you wouldn't have to keep downloading them.  This would come in handy if you flew in a certain area, with recurring aircraft around, constantly.  There could even be an update manager that downloaded certain aircraft (say, a new Boeing or Airbus) automatically so that you had it on hand immediately, although this would have to be VERY customizable.

An alternative would be to have generic templates (Boeing, Airbus, MD, Cessna, Mooney, Piper, etc) that are placed within the sim and each designer must designate in the airfile, or whatever comes next, which should be used during online flight.  This is by far the easier option, but eliminates the possibility of having novelty aircraft suddenly show up out of nowhere, just like in previous editions.  I don't favor this route, simply because of the above reason.

I agree with Travis on the backwards compatibility stuff. I think it would do a world of good in the long run if this new program served as a fresh start. Start from scratch with a release that is graphically beautiful, but does not tax systems extremely (maybe on par with FSX). It's going to be better to streamline the program rather than retain code that likely dates back to at least FS '95.