Unfortunately, there is no easy answer, let alone a "correct" one.
So, I fully realize that the following is not what you were looking for.
However, it is worth taking into account that your MSFS/payware background may color your expectations.
FlightGear as a community of contributors unfortunately doesn't work this way, it's often been compared to herding cats
Besides, we probably see dozens of interesting ideas every month, sometimes people even agree that an idea is awesome, sometimes even the key people would like to see those implemented - but that still doesn't mean that ideas get implemented. That may even apply when people throw resources like money at the problem.
Which is to say, even great ideas may have a certain "shelf life" around here. There are some very real bottlenecks involved here. Primarily, spare time and motivation/expertise.
Usually, the most experienced contributors are lacking sufficient spare time, whereas new contributors may have more ideas/spare time but not the expertise/background or dedication/motivation to make up for the lack of that.
Also, keep in mind that with so many new interesting ideas being discussed each month, your ideas are literally competing for the same scarce resources - namely developer manpower.
In a way, this is to say that this project may not work the way you think it works - which is not to say that we like the current "modus operandi", it's just something that's evolved over the years, i.e. it's a "fact" that seems to work for most contributors.
Unfortunately, it's a fact that's hard to bring across to newcomers or people familiar with different work settings/projects.
What I've found to help to illustrate this point is that people should imagine being handed "they keys" for the project, as in access to key infrastructure (forum, devel list, wiki, source code, issue tracker etc) - at that point, they would be considered "FlightGear developers" by most standards - yet, nothing would have changed for them, other than being faced with unrealistic expectations, from people who don't consider themselves to be part of this community "as much".
That is actually one of the reasons why my first response to you here ended up being what it was: long and extensive...
I was trying to make the point that we do have many features related to this already in place, so I shared screen shots, videos and links to the wiki, so that you could look up things to see if/how things relate to your own ideas/vision.
And that's in fact how some of these features originally also came to be.
The thing is, there is no team of developers waiting for great ideas - unfortunately.
You could have the greatest ideas, and you could even have the right background, and maybe sufficient spare time - that still doesn't mean that features get implemented/integrated.
Overall, this has more to do with facing a certain "window of opportunity". Ideas being implemented has much more to do with motivation and perseverance, i.e. showing a willingness to learn how this community works, and how ideas are turned into features.
And more often than not, this has more to do with doing research and networking behind the scenes to see who has done related work, and who might be interested in teaming up with others.
One of the major showstoppers is that people are focused on their own particular ideas, without willing to compromise - which often means someone is looking for skill set X to implement Y, but will spend weeks or even months debating with contributors that their efforts/ideas should take precedence. We've seen this numerous times actually.
People don't seem to realize that this more about a pain/gain thing than anything else.
In other words, people will judge you by your track record usually - this is why some people get to implement/finish ideas, whereas others who may be much more experienced/skilled, may never finish something.
So this literally has to do with "networking", i.e. seeing how to get people to work together effectively, which first of all means bringing them onto the same page, i.e. identifying common, identical or overlapping/shared goals and identifying ways to collaborate.
Usually, the first step is looking up related work/features (and sometimes ideas), and reaching out to the corresponding to see who is currently around - that, too, is another key factor: this project stands largely on the shoulders of people who contribute primarily in their spare time - so that some idea/feature getting implemented or not, may have to do more with who is around (or not!) than anything else.
Obviously, we do have counter-examples, too - i.e. complex features that were single-handled prototyped by a few folks, without much networking (originally). For example, the bombable add-on or the local weather system (Advanced Weather).
But speaking in general, there is no fast-track here - the two examples mentioned above were prototyped/implemented by people with a corresponding professional background (PhDs), so that they didn't need as much networking originally.
Most others will have to spend some time getting to scratch with FlightGear concepts, especially those entirely new coding.
Apart from that, if you have something to share, the forum is usually the right place -alternatively, you can use the wiki.
Still, that may not suffice to receive much valuable feedback, you might still want to reach out to people who have done related work. At which point, my original response should come in handy (hopefully).
Again, sorry, I do realize that this must sound frustrating, and many of us were also once disappointed by the way the project works, but things change massively once you consider yourself part of this community, at which point you are also part of the problem if you are not part of the solution
I do hope that others will chime in, too - and I even hope to be proven wrong here, by someone volunteering to code this up.
But my experience has been, that it's indeed best to do "research & networking", as in identifying potential contributors, gathering related information (ideas, related features, drafting a concept) and refining/tweaking the whole thing over time.
And in the meantime, you could obviously consider getting involved in other smaller efforts to learn a few new skills, and maybe tinker with FlightGear tutorials, so that you can help others, which sooner or later means, that people may team up with you to implement certain ideas (YMMV).
Like I said in my original posting, a good starting point would be the "tutorial" system (Stuart) and Marius_A'S "missions & adventures" system.
If you are serious about your ideas, it should not be too much to expect you to read up about these two efforts so that you can put these into context, and see if/how they could be used to implement your ideas.
And who knows, given your own background, maybe Stuart and/or Marius_A would be interested in learning more about your concrete ideas, so that their "scripts" could be extended accordingly ?
Again, my original posting contains all the pointers you should need - so, the real question is what your goals/priorities are, and what kind of roadmap/time frame, and degree of engagement/involvement you have in mind, and what you want to throw at the project in terms of resources (skills, expertise, spare time etc)
PS: This is a recurring question, and we once tried to put together an article answering these questions by copying various responses over to the wiki:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/How_the_Flig ... ject_works