Flight! could be the Windows7 after Vista for FS...

[Dillon 2,197]

I'd like to start a very positive thread with high hopes for Flight! after more thought. If Patty Wagstaff is on board, Orbix might have a hand in this thing, and the game eliments are only optional for users this could be great. If we look at history in the FS world an outstanding version of FS followed a disasterous release. Looking at the timing of this sim compared to when Aces was shut down the only way this thing could be in an alpha state is if development of FS11 never stopped. Only the named studio was shut down.What if this thing is what we've all been waiting for. What if Microsoft deep down didn't want to leave the FS franchise on a sour note as it took FSX so long to get off the ground. We know this isn't going to be an XBOX title, we know this sim will take advantage of the latest in technology as there's no new Windows on the horizon (this is a stable period with Windows 7 and DX10/11), and we know hardware is pretty set in what it's going to do for the foreseeable future. We couldn't have a more perfect mix for FS development. The bottom line is this release could be fantastic as a new team will exploit all the technologies that are out there for the sim, they have fresh eyes on the code, and some of them seem to be legacy Aces members.Last I'd like to say this community's spirit has made this possible as well. I'm sure Microsoft saw the dedicated support around the franchise and knew they couldn't just drop it cold so development quietly continued. So a quick look at history shows us this:FS5 - FS5.1 (Great release)FS95 - FS98 (Great release)FS2000 - FS2002 (Great release)FS2k4 (Great release right after FS2k2)FSX - Flight! (TBD) :Praying:PMDG and others (Aerosoft) may need to rethink their Pro-FSX development cycle for future releases including the new 737NG. Flight! may be a ways off but if this thing is released within the next two years and is actually good on day one many of us have just skipped FSX and went straight to Flight! (FS11)... :(

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

FS2k4 - Pretty goodFSX - Best release yet :( Flight! - (TBD)

[meshman 109]

FS2k4 - Pretty goodFSX - Best release yet :( Flight! - (TBD)

Nice perspective, Sean. Being a glass half-full type of a guy, I am cautiously optimistic that Flight! will be a FSX.5 release. Much to like about FSX and it's capabilities, that has yet to be fully appreciated and explored.I'll await the factual information about the new product and just grin at all the rampant rumors and speculation. Gosh knows, we've already witnessed one development house try to position themselves as being "the major player" in any thing that comes along. The "ego-watching" aspect makes forum browsing entertaining... :(

[paracines 0]

I will say this -- I have high hopes for the new Microsoft Flight - If Microsoft will keep money and time budgets away from this project then it will be a great success. If money and time budgets are the priority then I promise it will fail.

[dmaher 0]

I will say this -- I have high hopes for the new Microsoft Flight - If Microsoft will keep money and time budgets away from this project then it will be a great success. If money and time budgets are the priority then I promise it will fail.

I think Flight Gear is built without money or time budgets – so that’s an option.But I know what you mean :)For Flight maybe it’s better to say ‘manage’ money and time budgets.That comes down to managing scope.There’s tremendous pressure to add features and detail – from users and staff.It takes a strategic design to deliver the most you can - on time and on budget.It’s a huge challenge.

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

Nice perspective, Sean. Being a glass half-full type of a guy, I am cautiously optimistic that Flight! will be a FSX.5 release. Much to like about FSX and it's capabilities, that has yet to be fully appreciated and explored.I'll await the factual information about the new product and just grin at all the rampant rumors and speculation. Gosh knows, we've already witnessed one development house try to position themselves as being "the major player" in any thing that comes along. The "ego-watching" aspect makes forum browsing entertaining... :(

I agree.I keep thinking that its possible that Flight could be almost like a patched/updated version of FSX.While I am more optimistic than a lot of people, especially considering some of the negative posts I have read from people who know absolutely nothing about the product, I will continue to buy stuff for FSX and enjoy it while I wait since the features of the new sim are still unclear.

[dmaher 0]

I keep thinking that its possible that Flight could be almost like a patched/updated version of FSX.

Oooh. That's a BING-O!.......< Sorry, I just liked this line from that movie >You're underselling it a bit...IMO...call it ‘next-gen’ - or at least ‘sequel’.All the events (recent+past), the few bits of official information; point strongly to Flight being very familiar.Particularly the core.That’s a very good thing.If it’s good enough for Lockheed Martin I think I can live with it ;)Danny

[paracines 0]

I think Flight Gear is built without money or time budgets – so that’s an option.But I know what you mean :)For Flight maybe it’s better to say ‘manage’ money and time budgets.That comes down to managing scope.There’s tremendous pressure to add features and detail – from users and staff.It takes a strategic design to deliver the most you can - on time and on budget.It’s a huge challenge.

I speak from the perspective of one who was there from the begining of the beta stage in FSX. Yes there was much imput about new things people wanted -- but I m talking about basic features that are included but dont work correctly or at all because of time and money budgets....one example is DX10 preview, with a bit more time and effort this could be a feature that made FSX really shine. Another example is the B737-800 overhead panel, the landing lights are on when off and off when on - this kind of thing was let go because there was no more time....unacceptable to me but when there is a budget that takes priority, these are the kinds of things that ruin a project. Then FSX ends up a wash hence why the whole program was washed away by a flood of budget cuts leaving a small remnant behind. The phrase "On Time" has killed many people when real pilots do anything to be on time and make a foolish mistake doing so.The phrase "On Budget" has ruined millions of peoples lives when they get fired because of budget cuts - I would guess that many have died from suicide. If the new Microsoft Flight program is developed with time and money budgets as the priority, it will fail, just like FSX.

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

..it will fail, just like FSX.

It did? You better call the folks over at PMDG, ORBX, FSDT, FlyTampa, and alert them to this before they waist anymore time with their current projects. :(

[lost16 0]

People tend to forget that the reason we have FSX in its present state was the cost of replacing FSX's terrain/graphics engine. Phil and crew wanted to rewrite it, but MS nixed it on cost grounds. That alone causes most of the headaches in running FSX. The graphics engine is still a mish-mash of FS 7,8,and 9 code at its heart. Using the same engine would NOT solve anything as it is a SOFTWARE renderer not a HARDWARE renderer. That is why FSX and previous editions are so CPU dependant. This time, I hope MS has learned it's lesson and gives Flight a hardware driven graphics engine(like every other PC game out there) so that it will work much better across a wider rande of PC/Windows platforms. Will

[dmaher 0]

I speak from the perspective of one who was there from the begining of the beta stage in FSX. Yes there was much imput about new things people wanted -- but I m talking about basic features that are included but dont work correctly or at all because of time and money budgets....one example is DX10 preview, with a bit more time and effort this could be a feature that made FSX really shine. Another example is the B737-800 overhead panel, the landing lights are on when off and off when on - this kind of thing was let go because there was no more time....unacceptable to me but when there is a budget that takes priority, these are the kinds of things that ruin a project. Then FSX ends up a wash hence why the whole program was washed away by a flood of budget cuts leaving a small remnant behind. The phrase "On Time" has killed many people when real pilots do anything to be on time and make a foolish mistake doing so.The phrase "On Budget" has ruined millions of peoples lives when they get fired because of budget cuts - I would guess that many have died from suicide. If the new Microsoft Flight program is developed with time and money budgets as the priority, it will fail, just like FSX.

I guess…But I think DX10 is a good example of what I mean. It’s the designers and producers job to assess if the feature should go ahead.Using their best information they set out a budget and expectation of quality.That’s very hard to do well – and they live with a lot of stress :)When they are mistaken they release a substandard feature, or more likely cut the feature altogether.This stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor is all paid for.It’s paid for with money that might have been allocated to improving other features that did make it into the box.Honestly in the run of a project there are many hundreds of these types of gambles.You just hope the wins outweigh loses.Obviously developers don’t have unlimited funds for investing in a product.They do have to be cautious or else lose big time. - and, hurt many thousands of people.So budget must be the first priority. (That’s the real world, right?)Although producers do try to shelter the rest of the team from it, so they can concentrate on the task at hand.So you’re right in that budget is not everyone’s first priority :)But it’s the fuel that drives the engine.

[Silverbird 115]

People tend to forget that the reason we have FSX in its present state was the cost of replacing FSX's terrain/graphics engine. Phil and crew wanted to rewrite it, but MS nixed it on cost grounds. That alone causes most of the headaches in running FSX. The graphics engine is still a mish-mash of FS 7,8,and 9 code at its heart. Using the same engine would NOT solve anything as it is a SOFTWARE renderer not a HARDWARE renderer. That is why FSX and previous editions are so CPU dependant. This time, I hope MS has learned it's lesson and gives Flight a hardware driven graphics engine(like every other PC game out there) so that it will work much better across a wider rande of PC/Windows platforms. Will

Thats what I have been thinking, did they add more hardware rendering support I hope so!

[dmaher 0]

People tend to forget that the reason we have FSX in its present state was the cost of replacing FSX's terrain/graphics engine. Phil and crew wanted to rewrite it, but MS nixed it on cost grounds. That alone causes most of the headaches in running FSX. The graphics engine is still a mish-mash of FS 7,8,and 9 code at its heart. Using the same engine would NOT solve anything as it is a SOFTWARE renderer not a HARDWARE renderer. That is why FSX and previous editions are so CPU dependant. This time, I hope MS has learned it's lesson and gives Flight a hardware driven graphics engine(like every other PC game out there) so that it will work much better across a wider rande of PC/Windows platforms. Will

I’ve never really understood these posts about the obsolete “graphics engine”Will - do you (or anyone) understand it enough to explain it further?Doesn’t the DX10 API (or 11) take care of rendering?Honestly I thought that’s what it did.Danny

[Dillon 2,197]

FSX - Best release yet :(

Even Microsoft knows this is far from the truth in which they need to go back and fix many things... :(

It did? You better call the folks over at PMDG, ORBX, FSDT, FlyTampa, and alert them to this before they waist anymore time with their current projects. :(

It did indeed, Martin at Fly Tampa hated FSX, all the others love the development of FSX but understand there's a fractured community that needs to come together to make it easier for all of us.Look it's apparent you really like FSX like so many do but not acknowledging every valid point or short fall of FSX is fruitless (yes I was going to convert to the perceived last version but that ended with Flight!). Just because after 3+ years FSX can finally run to some reasonable level doesn't negate the shameful condition this release was and is. I don't want this to turn into an FSX validation/bashing thread because some come in here and state facts and others dismiss them because their new machine runs FSX decently now. Some among us have never used any other version besides FSX so they don't know any better. The bottom line is FSX is one of the worst releases we've ever seen in the franchise that's why the community is split today (this never happened before even with FS2000 which held a record up until FSX. That fact alone deserves some kind of acknowledgement). At least with FS2000 we were all under one sim. Many say even with today's hardware they still have problems with FSX.Fast forward, I personally believe Flight! will be the sim we all want. If the best things of FSX/FS9 are retained/built upon and it's optimized to run on hardware available at the time of it's release it will be fantastic. If the 'Game' aspect is relegated to an as need bases versus a requirement to play then we'll be o.k.. If the core sim is there with the whole world rendered like we've had with all versions going back to FS5.1, we'll be in business. That's what this is all about, FS11 not FSX. FSX was crap no matter who cares to come in here and deny it it's a fact. We had no choice before as that was the last sim we believed was going to be developed. Now we're back on a cycle where MS is keeping the franchise going. FSX is history plane and simple like FS9 will be. Let's all deal with reality and look forward to the future which is FS11 not FSX... :wink:Now I will say if FS11 turns out to be crap and a shell of Flight Simulator's former self I'll happily buy a new machine at the time of FS11's release and enjoy a fluid FSX experience. Until the day comes Microsoft figures it out I'll be using FSX as it will run like a top by then (just like FS2000 would run great today on my current machine)...

[lost16 0]

I’ve never really understood these posts about the obsolete “graphics engine”Will - do you (or anyone) understand it enough to explain it further?Doesn’t the DX10 API (or 11) take care of rendering?Honestly I thought that’s what it did.Danny

The actual engine that renders the graphics is different from the API(advanced programming interface). In simplistic terms think of the graphics engine as your car and the API as a kind of fuel. For example Crysis uses the Crytec(2 I think) engine and it is designed to use DX9 and DX10. For the same engine to run DX11 would require some revision (but not much). The engine that renders Flight Simulator has more in common with the graphics engine that runs Wing Commander 3,4 and Prophecy than the Crytec engine as they depended almost entirely on CPU power to render graphics unlike most graphics engines today which rely on the GPU to take the lead in rendering the pixels you see on your screen. I don't know if my explanation is in any way accurate but I'm sure someone will correct me if it isn't. Will