Take a look at the tree shadows, aircraft self shadows, realistic lighting, soft building shadows, volumetric-looking clouds, Rex-quality water, Orbx quality Hawaii scenery, and new sky textures. Looks nothing like FSX. And it probably has outstanding performance as MS says it will. Impressed now? Honestly, after looking at the screens of Flight, then looking at FSX, I want to throw up because of how bad FSX looks.

This is a joke right?There are no building/tree shadows in these screen shots, no lighting change, same cloud polygons, Orbx would be offended at the comparison xD Your comment had to be tongue in cheek surely. Just in case though I had to bite, there is no improvements other than new textures & shaders in these images compared to default FSX, period.

This is a joke right?There are no building/tree shadows in these screen shots, no lighting change, same cloud polygons, Orbx would be offended at the comparison xD Your comment had to be tongue in cheek surely. Just in case though I had to bite, there is no improvements other than new textures & shaders in these images compared to default FSX, period.

You're the one that must be joking...look at screenshot 3 from January and 4 from march. The buildings cast shadows. Soft, blurry shadows. Not your jagged FSX shadows. The lighting on the plane is not as fake compared to FSX...more natural looking. (if you have the March/April PC Pilot magazine, you can clearly see this in one screenshot not published online) Also, another screenshot in PC Pilot shows a cockpit screen of the Maule. There is some amazing self shadowing from the cockpit. Again, soft shadows, which cannot be achieved in FSX even with DX10 enabled. The rivers and streams everwhere, even on sharp cliffs are not blurry. Same with cliff textures in general. In FSX, they would have been a stretched blur. This doesn't appear to be the case in Flight. The overall rendering looks much improved in my opinion. No matter what you do to FSX, it cannot match what you see in Flight. And by the way, Orbx signed an NDA with Microsoft several months back. Also, look at my FSX - Flight comparison thread. Improvements are quite obvious in those screenshot comparisons. In fact, here's a quick one I did for screen #4 for March:

You're the one that must be joking...look at screenshot 3 from January and 4 from march. The buildings cast shadows. Soft, blurry shadows. Not your jagged FSX shadows. The lighting on the plane is not as fake compared to FSX...more natural looking. (if you have the March/April PC Pilot magazine, you can clearly see this in one screenshot not published online) Also, another screenshot in PC Pilot shows a cockpit screen of the Maule. There is some amazing self shadowing from the cockpit. Again, soft shadows, which cannot be achieved in FSX even with DX10 enabled. The rivers and streams everwhere, even on sharp cliffs are not blurry. Same with cliff textures in general. In FSX, they would have been a stretched blur. This doesn't appear to be the case in Flight. The overall rendering looks much improved in my opinion. No matter what you do to FSX, it cannot match what you see in Flight. And by the way, Orbx signed an NDA with Microsoft several months back.

Which buildings have soft shadows? Some seem to have 'soft shadows' and others don't. It looks like a satellite photo being used for the Airport ground texture (and not a very high res one). So I think the shadows you are seeing are not dynamic building shadows but shadows on the original satellite ground texture.Agreed the cliff textures look much better! No more vertical stretching, well done Microsoft!More rivers and streams sure but that's just a improvement to the underlying vector data. You can achieve the same in FSX with better source data (eg KML traces from GE or OSM imports).Regarding blurry textures, we have seen in the last batch of screens that blurred textures are still present in Flight. We know its because Flight is based on FSX so it will of course suffer many of the same underlying performance issues (ie blurred textures).

Which buildings have soft shadows? Some seem to have 'soft shadows' and others don't. It looks like a satellite photo being used for the Airport ground texture (and not a very high res one). So I think the shadows you are seeing are not dynamic building shadows but shadows on the original satellite ground texture.Agreed the cliff textures look much better! No more vertical stretching, well done Microsoft!More rivers and streams sure but that's just a improvement to the underlying vector data. You can achieve the same in FSX with better source data (eg KML traces from GE or OSM imports).Regarding blurry textures, we have seen in the last batch of screens that blurred textures are still present in Flight. We know its because Flight is based on FSX so it will of course suffer many of the same underlying performance issues (ie blurred textures).

The thing about the shadows is that they appear to match the position of the sun. The reason some buildings don't have shadows might just be the angle of our view. (shadow behind building)Regarding blurries...yes, there are still blurries, but I'm sure they will work it out. If they want to keep their word on good performance, that will be a must. (unless they have somehow magically coded Flight well enough already that the blurries are not affecting performance and they are therefor ignoring the issue. hopefully that's not the case)

Brandon, I do agree that on a default vs default basis Flight does indeed look better and in some cases it might even look better than FSX with GEX and UTX due to better looking water textures/water class and vector data. Will the whole world look like ORBX AU? Probably not, but if default can look like this, I would venture to say that ORBX developed for Flight will probably look better then ORBX in FSX. MS could release Flight with resized autogen and photoreal textures to cover the world, but then some people would be complaining that the autogen is too small or that the satellite data is too old since some buildings are missing in it. No matter what, the one thing you can count on in any version of FS that MS releases, is that not everyone is going to like it for one reason or another.

I don't know how people can look at these screenshots and become overwhelmed with jubilation. Yes, it looks better--hard not to beat. But as of now, and be honest with yourself, MS Flight looks like a mod. You know a game is not much of a change when you're forced to create comparative screenshots to notice improvements, especially versus one made in 2006. This is what you call an upgrade from a game made five years ago? In the span of those five years, there's been a gigantic progression of graphics/tech. For example: Battlefield 2142 (2006) vs. Bad Company 2 (2010) or Battlefield 3 (Q4 2011) and Call of Duty 3 (2006) vs. Modern Warfare 2 (2009) (unfortunately) or Black Ops (2010). But before I get raged and trolled out of this forums for simple skepticism (I will anyways, just know that I don't care), I will note a couple things:1. The game is still early in its development.2. Because this is a simulator, and to satisfy their goal of a larger target audience, the graphics need to be more accommodative. Comparing them to games like BF and COD, that thrive off attracting graphics-junkies like myself, may be a little unfair. Although--as I mentioned--the game is still early in its development, these screenshots most likely provide an accurate view of the final product. To which I say I'm not impressed; I expected more, not crazy Battlefield 3 more, but just more than this. You can be happy that the game looks a little better but, get real, stop acting like the messiah is coming. Graphics are average at best.

+1 "Graphics are average at best"

Take a look at the tree shadows, aircraft self shadows, realistic lighting, soft building shadows, volumetric-looking clouds, Rex-quality water, Orbx quality Hawaii scenery, and new sky textures. Looks nothing like FSX. And it probably has outstanding performance as MS says it will. Impressed now? Honestly, after looking at the screens of Flight, then looking at FSX, I want to throw up because of how bad FSX looks. :biggrin:And remember, the FSX engine is fine. It's not outdated. It just has a lot of bugs. Remove the bugs, add good performance, a big graphical improvement like we have mostly seen with Flight, and you have a winner.

"Softer shadows" and "more natural looking light" are very basic improvements and do not impress me in the slightest. *Facepalm* I really shouldn't have to explain this; I'm starting to think many of you are not familiar with games outside of flight simulator. The "REX-quality" water is not stunning; it's certainly better than the FSX default, but it looks average, and by no means something to brag about. Look at how dull, lifeless, and flat the waves are (e.g. expand the 5th screenshot, Dec. album).Can't tell from the screenshots if they are truly volumetric clouds. But I did catch something that might shed light on the issue (expand the 5th screenshot, Mar. album): look at the second closest hill to the camera, where the cloud meets the hill. Not familiar with Orbx, so I cannot comment on that. What's different about the sky textures?All of these graphics improvements (effects) you're pointing out have been implemented in games made many, many years ago. Nowadays these features are expected; not including them in a game like this would be unacceptable, period. If you strip the game of these elements, what is there left? So using this as evidence in your defense of MS Flight is a little comical. I wanted to see a new, dynamic flight simulator. You'd think after five years of the community (+ companies) chipping in with add-ons and mods, they would be aiming for the stars with many diverse ideas. Not to mention the numerous graphical/technological advancements to allow them to pursue greater goals. I've read a lot of awesome ideas for the new game; there's still a lot that can be done to make flight simulator a more fulfilling experience. Unfortunately, none of them will be included. Not an iota of innovation present from the developers. Of course, they will rely on the companies to do their job--creating add-ons (excluding aircraft) costing more than the game itself. Two words: bare minimum. This is becoming like the Madden series.

Well, I have always been critical of the default scenery in MSFS, but the screenshots that have been released to date seem to indicate a significant improvement over default FSX. The problem here is that I don't use default scenery. My flying is restricted to the UK, where I have high resolution photographic scenery, several hundred detailed airfields, and custom autogen trees. Considering the fact that I have invested a fair amount of cash in FSX to date, the key factors for me with respect to MS Flight are...1. Compatibility with existing addons.2. Improved framerates.If I do not get (1), then I will be extremely reluctant to purchase MS Flight when it is first released. I just do not want to start all over again when it is completely unnecessary. If I could get twice the framerates that I am getting in FSX (and full compatibility with existing addons), I would buy MS Flight in a heartbeat.Whilst I think that the screenshots released to date look OK, I have to agree with hisuleiman's point regarding a "new, dynamic flight simulator". If, as most people suspect, MS Flight is not compatible with existing addons, then why does it look like the next evolutionary step in "old FS" (for want of a better term), rather than something fresh and new?

You're the one that must be joking...look at screenshot 3 from January and 4 from march. The buildings cast shadows. Soft, blurry shadows. Not your jagged FSX shadows. The lighting on the plane is not as fake compared to FSX...more natural looking. (if you have the March/April PC Pilot magazine, you can clearly see this in one screenshot not published online) Also, another screenshot in PC Pilot shows a cockpit screen of the Maule. There is some amazing self shadowing from the cockpit. Again, soft shadows, which cannot be achieved in FSX even with DX10 enabled. The rivers and streams everwhere, even on sharp cliffs are not blurry. Same with cliff textures in general. In FSX, they would have been a stretched blur. This doesn't appear to be the case in Flight. The overall rendering looks much improved in my opinion. No matter what you do to FSX, it cannot match what you see in Flight. And by the way, Orbx signed an NDA with Microsoft several months back. Also, look at my FSX - Flight comparison thread. Improvements are quite obvious in those screenshot comparisons. In fact, here's a quick one I did for screen #4 for March:

Sorry but there are NO building shadows in that shot, those are ground textures, this was one of the things I first noticed. Because in webisode 2 we can see shadows on the taxiing plane, presumably from buildings or trees I found it funny that the screen shots did not show shadows being cast by ground objects. Possibly this could be because of testing and tweaking but regardless, none of the screen shots show ground object shadows.I appreciate the improvements that have been made, but they are only texture and shader modifications at this point, nothing more (at least visually). The rivers everywhere, sharp cliffs etc.... they are all textural improvements... my point is still valid.Looking over the images again, the plane and cockpit rendering is beautiful, probably the best improvement I can descern to date. I have already commented on this improvement though, if they can improve the rest of the world visually to the same degree it will be quite impressive. I am all for giving props where props is due but at the same time, try not to get carried away over such little improvements.Edit: Closer inspection of image 4 I can indeed see some shadowing off a couple of the main buildings, it's very slight because of the angle of the sun but I stand corrected. It appears to follow FSX in designating which objects cast shadows when the model is being built which would be why a lot of the objects are not casting any shadows at all.

"Softer shadows" and "more natural looking light" are very basic improvements and do not impress me in the slightest. *Facepalm* I really shouldn't have to explain this; I'm starting to think many of you are not familiar with games outside of flight simulator. The "REX-quality" water is not stunning; it's certainly better than the FSX default, but it looks average, and by no means something to brag about. Look at how dull, lifeless, and flat the waves are (e.g. expand the 5th screenshot, Dec. album).Can't tell from the screenshots if they are truly volumetric clouds. But I did catch something that might shed light on the issue (expand the 5th screenshot, Mar. album): look at the second closest hill to the camera, where the cloud meets the hill. Not familiar with Orbx, so I cannot comment on that. What's different about the sky textures?All of these graphics improvements (effects) you're pointing out have been implemented in games made many, many years ago. Nowadays these features are expected; not including them in a game like this would be unacceptable, period. If you strip the game of these elements, what is there left? So using this as evidence in your defense of MS Flight is a little comical. I wanted to see a new, dynamic flight simulator. You'd think after five years of the community (+ companies) chipping in with add-ons and mods, they would be aiming for the stars with many diverse ideas. Not to mention the numerous graphical/technological advancements to allow them to pursue greater goals. I've read a lot of awesome ideas for the new game; there's still a lot that can be done to make flight simulator a more fulfilling experience. Unfortunately, none of them will be included. Not an iota of innovation present from the developers. Of course, they will rely on the companies to do their job--creating add-ons (excluding aircraft) costing more than the game itself. Two words: bare minimum. This is becoming like the Madden series.

very well said hisuleiman. couldn't of said it better myself.happy flyin, FM

Sorry but there are NO building shadows in that shot, those are ground textures, this was one of the things I first noticed. Because in webisode 2 we can see shadows on the taxiing plane, presumably from buildings or trees I found it funny that the screen shots did not show shadows being cast by ground objects. Possibly this could be because of testing and tweaking but regardless, none of the screen shots show ground object shadows.I appreciate the improvements that have been made, but they are only texture and shader modifications at this point, nothing more (at least visually). The rivers everywhere, sharp cliffs etc.... they are all textural improvements... my point is still valid.Looking over the images again, the plane and cockpit rendering is beautiful, probably the best improvement I can descern to date. I have already commented on this improvement though, if they can improve the rest of the world visually to the same degree it will be quite impressive. I am all for giving props where props is due but at the same time, try not to get carried away over such little improvements.Edit: Closer inspection of image 4 I can indeed see some shadowing off a couple of the main buildings, it's very slight because of the angle of the sun but I stand corrected. It appears to follow FSX in designating which objects cast shadows when the model is being built which would be why a lot of the objects are not casting any shadows at all.

+1 On noticing the improvements - nice somebody has. All I can say is that the soft shadows are there! Maybe they haven't applied them to all object types but you can see them and the are not photographic shadows (not all of them anyway lol). I agree the plane renderings inside and out are truely beautiful! Hopefully we'll see much more of this in the coming months.The reference to webisode 2 is really unfair, any reference to material produced this far from release is far from definitive. Microsoft have claimed themselves that this video is barely up to FSX standards which from outside comments made they see as a complement at this early stage. Please people lets think about this and may be realise a lot more could still change for the better.It's difficult to have comparisons with other game genres, the overcroweded FPS scenes very competitive and is worth big money for the gaming industry right now. Flight would always struggle to complete with this especially as it's been grounded for 5 years or so. I think when Flight it released it will compare very well with its piers and flight sims in general. Already you can see more diverse scenery, far better default models, improved and more realistic lighting, more natural ground textures, better integration of airports, some nice mist effects (with the promise of better weather to be implemented) and some beautiful planes in what is still a small and early view of the Flight world...Cheers,Dave.

"Softer shadows" and "more natural looking light" are very basic improvements and do not impress me in the slightest. *Facepalm* I really shouldn't have to explain this; I'm starting to think many of you are not familiar with games outside of flight simulator. The "REX-quality" water is not stunning; it's certainly better than the FSX default, but it looks average, and by no means something to brag about. Look at how dull, lifeless, and flat the waves are (e.g. expand the 5th screenshot, Dec. album).Can't tell from the screenshots if they are truly volumetric clouds. But I did catch something that might shed light on the issue (expand the 5th screenshot, Mar. album): look at the second closest hill to the camera, where the cloud meets the hill. Not familiar with Orbx, so I cannot comment on that. What's different about the sky textures?All of these graphics improvements (effects) you're pointing out have been implemented in games made many, many years ago. Nowadays these features are expected; not including them in a game like this would be unacceptable, period. If you strip the game of these elements, what is there left? So using this as evidence in your defense of MS Flight is a little comical. I wanted to see a new, dynamic flight simulator. You'd think after five years of the community (+ companies) chipping in with add-ons and mods, they would be aiming for the stars with many diverse ideas. Not to mention the numerous graphical/technological advancements to allow them to pursue greater goals. I've read a lot of awesome ideas for the new game; there's still a lot that can be done to make flight simulator a more fulfilling experience. Unfortunately, none of them will be included. Not an iota of innovation present from the developers. Of course, they will rely on the companies to do their job--creating add-ons (excluding aircraft) costing more than the game itself. Two words: bare minimum. This is becoming like the Madden series.

Being an add-on developer for FSX, I know what FSX looks and feels like, whether it's scenery, water, clouds, the sky, and aircraft lighting. Honestly, I can clearly see improvement in every aspect.The water is better than anything in the previous versions of FS, as mentioned. It is dull, as it should be, in screen 5 from Dec. I see plenty of waves, Not sure what you're talking about. In FSX, it was completely glass/sky blue with the same wave pattern occurring very often. Ugly!Orbx doesn't do anything with weather, and their scenery wouldn't really affect the clouds.The sky textures are not as bright bright blue as they were in FSX. Now, they are more subtle, and the sunrise/sunset textures are nice and natural looking. These were one of the obvious changes, especially in the jan and march sets.I'm not sure if you realize this, but this is a flight simulator we are talking about. Not an unrealistic fighting game or something where you do not edit or modify the look. MS has to develop the FS series so that we are able to make add-ons and change the look of the sim. So, everything will not be perfect, especially if they are aiming at a wider audience, who doesn't really care as much about it looking like a $1,000 graphics engine. And Flight is representing the whole world. Not a small part of it. If they had the graphics and detail of some of the games you compare Flight to, it would be FSX all over again, or worse. (performance-wise) And it's not even fare to compare a flight simulation application to a games where all you do is play missions, etc.

Being an add-on developer for FSX, I know what FSX looks and feels like, whether it's scenery, water, clouds, the sky, and aircraft lighting. Honestly, I can clearly see improvement in every aspect.The water is better than anything in the previous versions of FS, as mentioned. It is dull, as it should be, in screen 5 from Dec. I see plenty of waves, Not sure what you're talking about. In FSX, it was completely glass/sky blue with the same wave pattern occurring very often. Ugly!Orbx doesn't do anything with weather, and their scenery wouldn't really affect the clouds.The sky textures are not as bright bright blue as they were in FSX. Now, they are more subtle, and the sunrise/sunset textures are nice and natural looking. These were one of the obvious changes, especially in the jan and march sets.I'm not sure if you realize this, but this is a flight simulator we are talking about. Not an unrealistic fighting game or something where you do not edit or modify the look. MS has to develop the FS series so that we are able to make add-ons and change the look of the sim. So, everything will not be perfect, especially if they are aiming at a wider audience, who doesn't really care as much about it looking like a $1,000 graphics engine. And Flight is representing the whole world. Not a small part of it. If they had the graphics and detail of some of the games you compare Flight to, it would be FSX all over again, or worse. (performance-wise) And it's not even fare to compare a flight simulation application to a games where all you do is play missions, etc.

i'm sorry HughesMDflyer4 but "fighting game" or not has no bearing on what "Flight's" graphics Could look like. imho, that has more to do with the MS bean counters not allowing time for Flight to be rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of the processing power of todays modern CPU and GPU's. and, to me that's a little disappointing to say the least. imho, it should have happened with FSX. and, judging from the Flight screenies i've seen so far i don't think it's happened with Flight either. using the capabilities of todays CPU & GPU's to the fullest i believe Flight would Look a lot better and Perform a lot better than what will ever be possible with "Flight" as it appears now when it's released.also, this mumbo-jumbo about how performance is somehow being affected because Flight and the old FS series is "representing" the whole world is getting a little old to say the least. Flight/FS "Representing" the whole world - Yes. the "whole world being drawn" while making a flt. from "JFK to LAX" in Flight/FS - i don't think so. as bad as i hate to say it, i have yet to see anything in the Flight screen shots that even comes close to what i consider a Huge improvement over FSX...much less Ground-Breaking. also, i don't think nothing much is gonna change between now and release either. but that's just me.happy flyin, FM

i'm sorry HughesMDflyer4 but "fighting game" or not has no bearing on what "Flight's" graphics Could look like. imho, that has more to do with the MS bean counters not allowing time for Flight to be rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of the processing power of todays modern CPU and GPU's. and, to me that's a little disappointing to say the least. imho, it should have happened with FSX. and, judging from the Flight screenies i've seen so far i don't think it's happened with Flight either. also, this mumbo-jumbo concerning performance where Flight and the old FS series is representing the whole world is getting a little old to say the least. "Representing" the whole world Yes. the whole world being "Drawn" while making a flt. from JFK to LAX - i don't think so. as bad as i hate to say it, i have yet to see anything in the Flight screen shots that even comes close to what i consider a Huge improvement over FSX...much less ground-breaking. but that's just me.

1st paragraph: The FSX 3D engine is not bad. It only has some bugs that ACES was not given the chance to fix. They also were not allowed to change enough code to make the sim run efficiently, from what I've heard/IMO. With Flight, MS seems to be letting the team do a little more digging into the code to fix problems and generally write portions of the code better for performance requirements. A rewrite is not required. It might be cool if they did, but with some tweaks, fixes, and enhancements, the FSX engine is very good.2nd paragraph: you don't make a lot of sense here, lol.3rd paragraph: Keep in mind that they are still in early development. Are there big/obvious changes yet? Yes. Will there be further enhancements that we will see in the future screens/videos? Probably. Even if they did not enhance the graphics any more from this point, I wouldn't care as, being a developer, I've already seen all the visual improvements I wanted. And besides, my main concern would be performance. The graphics are just some extra candy that is nice to have. Considering that the whole world has to be represented with good FPS, the graphics look really nice. Sure, other games have far better graphics. But do they have a whole world to represent? No.

Before I begin, I'd like to thank all of you for your opinions and keeping this debate civilized. It's pretty shocking, and awesome, that I haven't been raged out of the forums yet (guess I've been on Rivals for too long). I honestly and sincerely hope that MS Flight turns out to be a fantastic game. I would still have FSX installed if it weren't for the inefficiency and the numerous bugs/crashes. Ended up spending more time searching, installing, and uninstalling programs than I did actually flying. But based on what I've seen of Flight, and my own experience following video games, the revamp that we were hoping for doesn't seem to be the case. I'm not the type to convince myself to like something that clearly lacks appeal.

+1 On noticing the improvements - nice somebody has. All I can say is that the soft shadows are there! Maybe they haven't applied them to all object types but you can see them and the are not photographic shadows (not all of them anyway lol). I agree the plane renderings inside and out are truely beautiful! Hopefully we'll see much more of this in the coming months.

Assuming they're there, why is this so significant? Why do we keep dwelling on these soft shadows? It's like marketing a new smartphone for its internet capability. Soft shadows should be a given. Good on you for being appreciative of this but as a potential customer willing to drop $50 on their product, I expect more than peanuts.

The reference to webisode 2 is really unfair, any reference to material produced this far from release is far from definitive. Microsoft have claimed themselves that this video is barely up to FSX standards which from outside comments made they see as a complement at this early stage. Please people lets think about this and may be realise a lot more could still change for the better.

Yes, as I've mentioned earlier, the game is early in its development and still has room for improvement. But I wouldn't say it's far from definitive. Usually public screenshots like these are a pretty accurate representation of the final product. Or else, why would they release them to the public? Why would the developers release material that could possibly alienate its audience or at best stir doubt? They are trying to impress you! Actually, it may be misleading in the opposite respect. Plus, I've never seen a game that looked drastically more impressive than its early, in-game screenshots released to the public. As for your third paragraph, I couldn't have said it better than FlyinMisfit; that this argument has no bearing on what the graphics could look like.

Being an add-on developer for FSX, I know what FSX looks and feels like, whether it's scenery, water, clouds, the sky, and aircraft lighting. Honestly, I can clearly see improvement in every aspect.

You would be right in stating that there are improvements in every aspect (MS Flight default vs. FSX default). No one, myself included, was ever really disagreeing with you there. I don't think you quite get it though. After witnessing massive graphical improvements and countless brilliant ideas shared around the community since 2006, many of us were foaming at the mouth in anticipation for this game. The game was also marketed in a way that played into our hopes and expectations--a new, revamped flying experience. MS Flight is not any of that; for lack of a better phrase, this was not the change we can believe in. This is more of the same with some peanuts.I'm actually getting a little tired hearing the excuse: it's better than FSX default. I sure as hell hope it is! FSX was made five years ago! I'll reiterate: this ocean does not impress me. If you want a decent ocean model look at Silent Hunter V (2010) (first to come to mind--could be better ones out there). Of course it does not need to be as intense.

The sky textures are not as bright bright blue as they were in FSX. Now, they are more subtle, and the sunrise/sunset textures are nice and natural looking. These were one of the obvious changes, especially in the jan and march sets.

This couldn't be improved with a simple add-on on FSX?

I'm not sure if you realize this, but this is a flight simulator we are talking about. Not an unrealistic fighting game or something where you do not edit or modify the look. MS has to develop the FS series so that we are able to make add-ons and change the look of the sim. So, everything will not be perfect, especially if they are aiming at a wider audience, who doesn't really care as much about it looking like a $1,000 graphics engine. And Flight is representing the whole world. Not a small part of it. If they had the graphics and detail of some of the games you compare Flight to, it would be FSX all over again, or worse. (performance-wise) And it's not even fare to compare a flight simulation application to a games where all you do is play missions, etc.

I believe, because you've been accustomed to the add-on business, you forgot the purpose of add-ons. Add-ons provide subtle improvements to the game (e.g. diverse ATC voices, not revamped ground textures cause the default ones are horrid). I shouldn't have to rely on them for a fulfilling flying experience. FYI a "wider audience" most definitely includes the gamers, who frowned upon FSX due to its terrible graphics. Improvements can certainly be made without resulting in another FSX fiasco. I've repeated this several times: we don't need to be as crazy. Anyway, users would have the option to edit the video settings.

But do they have a whole world to represent? No.

Is it acceptable that the graphics suffer greatly because they're representing the entire world? Actually, in some ways, yes. You obviously cannot create a planet-sized Crysis 2 or Battlefield 3 environment. But the graphics are simply not up to par with its possible potential. It was pretty obvious to me at first glance.