FS X ?

On my daily visit to Sim-Outhouse I happened to notice a new forum - FSX General Discussion. On entering I saw a number of new threads on the subject of Microsoft's new sim Flight Simulator X [for X].

I do recall a thread somewhere [possibly AVSIM?] on a Flight Simulator X when XBox 360 was unveiled - many months ago. However this is the first mention such a product being the next incarnation in the popular Flight Simulator franchise.

My first inclination was to suspect some sort of hoax as there has been no official announcement from Microsoft - it's the wrong time of year for April fool's jokes - perhaps too much Christmas cheer? Maybe the ginger wine was a wee bit too strong? Anyway further reading revealed that this is based on a small article in PC Gamer magazine previewing FS 10.

AVSIM and Simviation have threads on this topic too. Just surprised that a magazine beat MS to the punch. Any hints of this on the MS blogs? Well we know there's a new version of FS on the way and of course we have a cryptic 'X Marks the Spot' Christmas greeting from pixelpoke, which could have meant anything ;).

I'm not going to speculate or offer much comment myself on this at the moment. I'm sure Microsoft's official announcements will be forthcoming 'real soon' as they say. If the article is correct then it seems that we'll have quite a rich environment to fly around in featuring cars, trucks, ships and even herds of wild animals going about their business. Cool :)

Sim-Outhouse FSX Forum
Sim-Outhouse initial thread with a scan of the PC Gamer article.
AVSIM thread
Simviation thread.

Looking forward to Microsoft's comments/announcements.