Microsoft is apparently ready to release its Flight Simulator X playable demo. After seeing so much hype about its graphics, and the use it will eventually make of the upcoming DirectX 10 Application Programming Interface, it's finally going to be available to public in its first playable form as soon as tonight, in approximately 1h 25 minutes, as of this writing.
A countdown is available at source of the news, GameSpot. GameSpot also reports the demo will offer the location of St. Maarten, 2 airports and 3 missions of increasing difficulty, meaning it's a pretty complete demo.
UPDATE: It's out, though don't expect to play today. The servers are already struggling over the load, resulting in extremely slow speeds.
http://www.gamespot.com/promos/2006/flightsimulatorx-demo/index.html
A countdown is available at source of the news, GameSpot. GameSpot also reports the demo will offer the location of St. Maarten, 2 airports and 3 missions of increasing difficulty, meaning it's a pretty complete demo.
UPDATE: It's out, though don't expect to play today. The servers are already struggling over the load, resulting in extremely slow speeds.
http://www.gamespot.com/promos/2006/flightsimulatorx-demo/index.html
I don't think I'll get it right away (took me a year to go from FS8 to FS9) but the graphics seem to have improved greatly. Unfortunately, Microsoft focuses too much on graphics and doesn't develop other aspects they should really develop, like real flight dynamics for instance, they just leave it to third party developers to do the work and we (simmers) have to pay the price!(Yes, literally, some of the payware add-ons are pretty expensive) 
