Must Have Features In The Next Flight Simulator

Microsoft recently announced that it has halted development of the Flight Simulator franchise. It's hard to comprehend the quality and mind-boggling scope of the product, and also the amount of work that has been poured in by developers over the last 25 years. It's nothing short of amazing. And to top it off it sells at such an unbelievably cheap price.

However, X-Plane is still actively in development (I have yet to try it out yet, but I will), as is the open source Flight Gear. Probably other high quality flight sims will appear in the future. Anyway, the following are some features that I'd like to see in flight sims in the future. For sure, some of the features I mention probably already exist in X-Plane and add-ons but I'm just not aware of them. Nonetheless, here are the features that I'd love to see:

Immersion Features
There should be moderate to violent screen shaking on landing depending on touchdown vertical speed. Because flight simmers can’t actually feel the force of the landing, this can add significantly to immersion. Slightly exaggerated screen shaking during takeoff and landing run to simulate the bumps on the runway would also help.

I'd like to see graphically damageable aircraft (this was available in Flight Unlimited II, released in 1997). Graphical damage modelling has never been a priority in Microsoft's Flight Simulator franchise After all, the purpose of a flight sim is to simulate flight, not to simulate crashing. However, this feature would add to the immersion. If anybody has played IL-2 Sturmovik (a World War II combat flight sim), you may appreciate things like how stressing out the aircraft in a dive pulls the wings off, but the simulation keeps running. In IL-2 Sturmovik the landing gear and gear doors come flying off the aircraft if you try to extend the gears when going overspeed.

World & Environment
Keep the scope smaller. Focus only on a part of the world. This allows more time to get the other priorities in order. E.g. just focus on the United States, or even just a part of it. Of course you may disagree :-)

Things like bird strikes - I believe X-Plane already has this feature - and the effect of other foreign material - e.g. ash - entering the engines would be nice.

Rain should form droplets on the windshield (this was available in Flight Unlimited II, released in 1997). Often it’s the tiniest things that add immense amounts of immersion.

Graphics
What I really want so see is the "mirage" effect behind the engines.

Cockpit and Instrumentation
A weather radar would be an awesome addition to the cockpit. Simulating smoke in the cockpit would also be a welcome feature, and would add to the immersion. Simulating the stick shaker on the airliners too, would be nice.

ATC
I'd like to be able to declare emergencies.

System Failures
Doing long flights in any flight simulator can get tedious, and often you want to simulate system failures to challenge your flying skills. FSX has a flexible way for you to organize system failures, but it could be improved upon. One weakness is that you know when the failures are going to come and the nature of those failures. It would be good if the player had an extra option to set the % chance of a failure happening on a flight. Futhuremore, failures like cabin depressuration should also be modelled, along with simulating hypoxia with blurriness of vision and the enventual loss of conciousness. If you think that's too far fetched, you should keep reading for more far fetchedness ...

Eearning Awards
"I don't need no validation from the computer game", you might say, but still, earning awards for your flying can be a nice touch, if not a big touch. FSX already has an awards system but I'd like to see it expanded on. It should also be possible to go online and show off your awards to other flight simmers.

Next-Gen Flight Sim Features
There's no harm in getting creative, right? Who says a flight sim has to be limited to you sitting in the cockpit? That's just limiting the possibilities. Let's envision what the flight sim genre could be.

It'd be awesome if the pilot could stand up and walk around the aircraft - assuming we're in an airliner. Perhaps, not only can you walk around the cabin, you can also talk to the passengers and crew in the cabin. You should also be able to brief the crew in emergencies. This would happen via some sort of menu system not unlike in a role-playing game.

In some airliners there's a trapdoor in the cockpit floor that you can climb into. Access to that would be nice. To be honest I don't know what's down there but it'd be cool nevertheless.

There is also a fire extinguisher in the cabin ... you know what I'm thinking. I want to be able to pick it up and use it in emergency scenarios.

Maybe some people think that's too far fetched, but I certainly don't!

Programmer API
The programmer API should be well documented and have functions that are self explanatory, and allow developers lots of flexibility to do what they want. It would be good if high-level scripting languages such as Python could be used to very complex create add-ons, in addition to the low level C++.

Conclusion
And that was my 2 cents!