Check out the video that David Weller did with Steve Lacey, the graphics lead for Flight Simulator.
About 3/4 through the video his comments:
“The Managed DirectX stuff these days is a great starting point, and for a lot of people a great finishing point as well for shipping titles.”
and
“We internally in the flight sim team use Manage DirectX in a lot of our tools”
Always nice to see the professionals enjoying our stuff. Now just wait until they see the upcoming Whidbey stuff. =)