The fact is that a "Flight sim" is just a temporary state for a sim. With evolution, it just can't get anything else than a FULL simulation.

Why ? Simple: Take a plane... if you want it to behave correctly on the runway, you have to model correctly the reactions of its contact points, or wheels... leading to a car sim

That's just a very simple example, of course. Basically, if you want to model properly a moving object, you will have to model a lot of physical stuff that will be common to most moving objects, flying or not flying.

The question Cobra has asked, as well as the tendency of the community to provide ships, cars etc... is just the sign that the FS universe is getting complete enough not to stay only in the sky.

If you look at FS9, with the best detailled available sceneries (let's take for example the Holger Sandsman North Cascades scenery), you will notice that the roads (tarmac, or mud) are very detailled and sometimes very lovely. If you land on a road in the middle of the forest, next to a lake on top of a hill, you will actually get a viewpoint, a landscape that NOT ANY OTHER CAR game can offer.

Of course, in FS9 the ground reactions still sucks, the contact points of a moving object are not taken into consideration correctly and thus it is almost a pain to go on a road that is not flat. Anyway, on the visual point of view, one realizes pretty soon that with just some more precise road textures, the sim coud easilly "look like" an amazing car game  8)

Now, to FSX.... it is obvious that the roads have been greatly enhanced, with traffic, precise textures and more. I coud not determine in the available shots if the landscape adaptation for roads (you know, like in FS9, the fact that the scenery is flatten to allow horizontal road on a mountain side) was enhanced as well... let's hope.

I've talked only about cars, but surely enough, with the quality of the water and the details of the scenery (even default), there's a great chance that the "ship" community greatly increase

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Marking are not the main concern in my opinion. Nothing of the roads concern me because I am glad to see that the roads are finally straight in FSX.

Anyways, I agree Daube's idea that other aspects of the new sim [like the shipping lanes] would most likely allow smaller communities such FS-Shipyard to expand and allow the already large communities such as Vatsim to incorporate new features built into the sim.

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Very good point and so true.  Never though about it before but that IS awesome!!

Kevin