Some quick comments here:
- FS One has only been available since Oct 2007. New planes are in the works. There's been no slowdown. A lot of time has been spent on supporting users and figuring out what we want to do next with this new product. And the answer is: new aircraft!
- There is a new help manual:
http://www.inertiasoft.com/fsonefaq/#Q1052-FS1
- For those who want to base their purchase on flying realism, I suggest read all you want, but then compare the videos all of the sim makers have posted. What looks real? What does not look real? Are they showing the really hard stuff (spins, snaps, stalls, tail slides, blenders, hovering, walls, elevators, parachutes, landings and ground handling, prop torque effects, crashes) or the easier stuff (like flying mostly "straight and level" where all planes WILL look the same and realistic). "You be the judge" or get a friend to help you.
- I agree the other thread is long, but I'm going to stick w/ the other long thread because it's convenient for people to search. There's also a wealth of information there. Someday we'll move all this FS One help forum stuff to the FS One site, but not yet.
- Malcomm has commented on the wing rock. I've commented back in another thread that research is being done to understand the aerodynamics of that. Some people commented on airplane hovering being a little too hard in the sim. I'm not completely sure that they're right, and this is based on sim flying feedback from the designer of the airplanes - Mike McConville, and others. Nevertheless there are updates/betas to 2 affected planes (hover type planes) and I await feedback from users:
http://www.inertiasoft.com/fsonefaq/#B1001-FS1
Both of these items relate only to freestyle 3D flying.
I've not gotten any general universal feedback that I should change anything else. What most people do is change the c.g. a bit, and tweak the expos and dual rates to their type of flying. That's a necessary step for those people know how they want their planes to fly. I will add that all Horizon airplanes in the sim are setup like their designers intended and defined in the building manuals, etc. So for most people, the planes are "RTF" without tweaks.
- I think this forum is good for getting help, but keep in mind all the major sim developers read this thread, and I'd guess that's 50% of the "readership". The point is asking what's the best sim here ... can lead to a skewed answer. Talk w/ your friends you know, and go from there.
Michael