[heywooood]

I think a certain amount of useful material is garnered occasionally from some of the outlandish wish posts...or that an unintentional idea could be taken at a tangent from some of them.

as to the nattering and bashing that goes on well...I think people are quick enough to recognize and dismiss those (another definition of R&D) so I doubt they cause Oleg or Ilya much distress at all - they're big boys and can handle an open forum warts and all be sure.

I don't care for the suggestion to make those threads available by 'invite only' because it is pure cheese -

You think Oleg and company don't already have a close association with their own inner band of talented, experienced artists, historians, fliers, and engineers??? Thats where the 'closed' or 'invite only' development threads are...

They only come here for our sake to keep us in the loop like no other software development team in history (this is a huge part of the way they 'market' their sim)
...if they happen to get an idea or two they had not considered before so much the better.

but don't fool yourself into thinking that they might miss some brilliant idea of yours here in this forum because of the roughage that accumulates in the specific threads you refer to...thats just ridiculous