[railguy]

At first blush, what I', about to say may not seem related to OpenRails, but bear with me. My primary interest in simming has always been rail-oriented. Not surprising for me--I'm a railfan and rail historian who has also worked in the railroad industry. So, generally speaking, what goes on in the rest of the simming and gaming world doesn't much interest me. I realize, though, that many rail simmers have broader interests in other types of simming, and, for them, other sims may compete with OpenRails for their simming time. This is where "the elephant in the living room" comes in.

Here is a link ( https://www.youtube....h?v=fjsWsfJQpaw ) for a report on what is happening over in the Microsoft world and Flight Simulator. Back in the day, Microsoft Flight Simulator was pretty fun with some really good graphics if one stayed about a thousand feet above the ground. Once one landed, however, a lot of the graphics and scenery weren't that much different from MSTS. The new version of Flight Simulator coming out this year may set all of that on its ear. In addition, the promises that are being made about things like weather and flight physics may turn FS into a true "immersion" simulator. The point here is that FS may take simulations to a much higher level of sophistication and that may raise the bar for what simmers are willing to accept in all simulation programs. For OR, remarkable progress has been made in physics and train operations, but the visual component--"eye candy," if you will--still isn't what it could be and the potentially eye-popping graphics of the new FS may just draw more attention to those shortcomings. Food for thought. I don't have any easy solutions, but I would suggest that the OR team's emphasis may have to shift some to finally attacking the issue of making OR scenery and graphics more realistic.

One other note--I doubt that Microsoft has any desire to introduce a new FS quality train sim to the market, but some of what they are doing with FS certainly could be applied to a train simulator. Hmmm, and bunch of very dedicated volunteers have already written a bunch of open source train physics . . .

[R H Steele]

With microsofts history I'm thinking it is an invisible elephant until it appears for real...then there is a distinct possibilty MS will neglect it, until it starves to death.