cloose

Great analyze,
 
If I may add, Austin did say they are ditching OpenGL, but this is just for the main world renderer and not for the plugin (confirmed with Ben Supnic).
My concern is with the ground textures, although personally it is not a priority for me, I think that if they won't ramp up these textures they would be mocked although their other efforts in other areas.
 
I guess only time will tell. 

Thanks... I am seriously worried that the decade old textures will also get a miss, and that effect will have big repercussions on the whole simulator, and as you noted, that one aspect will overwhelm all the very good presented. The better and higher quality global textures are required for far better airport fit into the scenery, for intergrating the 3rd party city addons, and for good VRF flying, plus the overall look while flying high... they are essential for X-Plane to step forward to it's Next Gen title, we hope, or pray that they are coming in a big surprise feature....

While I'm sure it's top quality based on owning their Mark IX but talk about diminshed expectations when they revealed this one.  They were already in my warbirds niche and I expected something with 12 or 18 cylinders as their next offering.  The still forthcoming F117 doesn't do much either - I think they're misdirected but hopefully will recover.

The season thing wasn't bad. From what I remember Laminar has mentioned that IF they would do seasons, it wouldn't be texture-based, but they would have to develop a new way to do it with shaders. So this would be for sure new technology that people would be glad to pay for.