Newsletter + NEW PHOTOS

[Guest meshman]

...My personal, more precise guess is December 2011.

I'm going to best your guess and say late October. Needs to be on the "shelves" so that Holiday upgraded computer buying can be done!

[FlyinMisfit 0]

Don't glance at the screenshots...look at the screenshots. Study them. There are indeed some major improvements. You just have to look.

i Did Look. there was No Glancing. and to me, the Only "Major" improvement that I see is the Terrain Textures/Mesh. sorry, but My opinion still hasn't changed.happy flyin, FM

[Guest anthony31fs]

The facts are no screenshots/movies show anything new in the visuals. Just updated textures and HDR effect.

This fact is incorrect. Webisode 2 shows what appears to be tree shadows being cast onto the aircraft (that's pretty damn new)Plus, I have already pointed out in this forum two other things that seem new in shot 3 (the airport scenery) of the latest screenshots. ie what appears to be separate detail textures for paths and grass (compared to FSX single global detail.bmp) and scenery shadows having a softer edge (compared to FSX hard edged shadows).If the facts you are using to draw your conclusion are incorrect then your conclusions are not worth the paper their written on.If you would like a fact to support the theory that MS is updating the FSX code then have a look at screenshot 4 and notice how the stars are visible when the sun is still in the sky. Classic FSX fault and hard to believe that MS would replicate the fault if they had built Flight from scratch.Bottom line is no one here knows what MS is doing to the code and how much or how little is from FSX. We will just have to wait and see.

[JoeD 0]

What Adrian Woods said speaks to the issue and about working on the sim to follow FSX.http://polypoke.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/why-fsx-has-rough-performance-2/http://blogs.technet.com/b/torgo3000/archive/2009/04/13/a-change-of-direction-sort-of.aspx

[MatthewS 761]

This fact is incorrect. Webisode 2 shows what appears to be tree shadows being cast onto the aircraft (that's pretty damn new)

Yes the tree shadows cast on the ground and aircraft are new... this is a Flight "tweak" of the existing FSX codebase.

Plus, I have already pointed out in this forum two other things that seem new in shot 3 (the airport scenery) of the latest screenshots. ie what appears to be separate detail textures for paths and grass (compared to FSX single global detail.bmp) and scenery shadows having a softer edge (compared to FSX hard edged shadows).

To me that looks like photo-scenery which may explain why the path/grass 'interface' is a little blurry. The building shadows definitely look softer, as above this is a tweak to the existing code base.

If the facts you are using to draw your conclusion are incorrect then your conclusions are not worth the paper their written on.

Sure, but my facts are not incorrect. I'll change my previous statement to "The facts are no screenshots/movies show anything that indicate a completely new engine".

If you would like a fact to support the theory that MS is updating the FSX code then have a look at screenshot 4 and notice how the stars are visible when the sun is still in the sky. Classic FSX fault and hard to believe that MS would replicate the fault if they had built Flight from scratch.

Excellent point, the stars prove that its still the FSX code base. So we agree!

Bottom line is no one here knows what MS is doing to the code and how much or how little is from FSX. We will just have to wait and see.

We know its not a completely new sim, your 'stars' point above proves that. If MS has thus chosen to reuse the existing FSX code then they are doing that for one reason only, to reduce development costs. It does not follow then that MS would make massive changes to the FSX code but instead simply tweak it since they are trying to save money on development.

What Adrian Woods said speaks to the issue and about working on the sim to follow FSX.http://polypoke.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/why-fsx-has-rough-performance-2/http://blogs.technet.com/b/torgo3000/archive/2009/04/13/a-change-of-direction-sort-of.aspx

The blog post is almost 2 years old.

[JoeD 0]

Perhaps some live near cities (light polution) where you can't see any stars until it is very dark?Fact is, it's possible for some very bright stars (and planets mars and venus} to be visible before it is completely dark.

The blog post is almost 2 years old.

Yes, 2 years ago he was working the code that will become Flight.

[MatthewS 761]

Perhaps some live in cities (light polution) where you can't see any stars util it is very dark?Fact is, it's normal for some very bright stars (and planets (mars and venus} to be visible before it is completely dark.

You cannot see planets or stars in the west in the late afternoon... the sun is too bright and would 'wash out' any light from them.

Yes, 2 years ago he was working the code that will become Flight.

And what have they actually done in all that time? Certainly not rewrite the graphics/scenery engine, they have just tweaked it.

[frankla 45]

What many people don't remember or don't know is that, in fact FSX had cloud shadows, but was thrown out (because of unacceptable performance hit) as a feature before it went Beta. I clearly remember the early pre release screen shots of FSX that was shown to us from January to March of 2006. In one of them they published a screenshot of the settings menu in which there was a check box for selecting/deselecting cloud shawdows. FSX was running like a dog on the 2006 era PCs without cloud shadows, so they just got rid of the feature some time during alpha testing.

[ahuimanu 50]

The facts are MS canned ACES to save a bit a money..

Evidence? I can't see how you can present this one as fact

[ahuimanu 50]

The blog post is almost 2 years old.

one is, one is not.

[MatthewS 761]

Evidence? I can't see how you can present this one as fact

GFC, TS2 less than a year from completion and being heavily publicized by MS. Oh I know, MS canned ACES just for fun right?

one is, one is not.

Yes... blog singular.

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

There is no proof that MS is for sure using the same code, nor is there any proof MS is using new code. It is likely that they are in the process of rebuilding much of it, but we cannot say for sure/jump to conclusions until we have the new sim on our computers, so lets stop all the arguing.

[MatthewS 761]

There is no proof that MS is for sure using the same code, nor is there any proof MS is using new code. It is likely that they are in the process of rebuilding much of it, but we cannot say for sure/jump to conclusions until we have the new sim on our computers, so lets stop all the arguing.

There's been ample evidence that MS is 'tweaking' the existing FSX code-base and not rewriting Flight from 'scratch'. There's been no evidence to contrary.

[JoeD 0]

There's been ample evidence that MS is 'tweaking' the existing FSX code-base and not rewriting Flight from 'scratch'. There's been no evidence to contrary.

What "ample evidence" are you refering to?If all they are doing is "tweaking", they have been doing some amazing, far reaching tweaking with changes to the engine and at some point, tweaking become essentially a rewrite.

[frankla 45]

So what parts are they rewriting that will be largely new code? The graphics engine? Nothing in the screenshots indicates a major rewrite. All I've seen so far are "tweaks".The flight modelling? The AI/ATC? The weather system? Complete rewrite? Why? The FSX code works fine for the most part and they will tweak not rewrite.The only thing completely new is the integration with Live (for multi-player I assume) and the Live Marketplace (to enable a Flight AppStore).

Mathew, The clock speed of PCs have not gone much higher in that last 6 years. (where as before it would double every two years.) In reply to horrible performance of FSX, ACES, in early 2007, said that, had they known that Intel would go to multi-core direction (instead of higher clock speeds)they would have coded FSX differently. Considering that FSX can not utilize more cores and considering that the clock speeds are not going higher, how would you suggest MS brings a sellable game in 2011 using the same code that was already obsolete in 2006? In fact FSX still brings the i7s to their knees!! That is not acceptable nor logical after 5 years of new PC advancements. I seriously doubt that they would not upgrade a good chunk of their code to take advantage of multi Core/Multi GPU PCs. If they do not rewrite the code to allow efficient use of Multi cores, Flight will not have any head room for added features and will not work on most non enthusiasts' off the shelf PCs. (Read their repeated statements of how they want to attract a broader range of customers many of whom do not have custom made, over clocked PCs). Lastly please note that this cycle of release would be 5 Years after introduction FSX (instead of typical 2). As soon as ACES was disbanded, many of the programmers got rehired to work on Flight. So development was not put on hold for long at all. Perhaps this long development cycle is indicative of a rewrite of the code rather than recycling that of FSX's old, tired and obsolete code. I admit I am speculating, but I am doing so based on what makes sense.