If you're fortunate enough to know someone who knows someone you get a good look at what Flight is and isn't. I think we're pretty clear on what Flight isn't and that horse has been beaten to death. That is pretty bad, but if that were all, it would be easy to move on. The shame is not in not what Microsoft did do, but what they didn't do and that's really what is a pity. What they DID do is optimize FLIGHT for far better performance that you can get in FSX. They then took that performance and lovingly rendered Hawaii in intricate beauty that rivals ANYTHING that ORBX has released. New lighting and shadows lends a total suspension of disbelief. The airports they did included are rendered in the type of texture detail that we have come to expect from Fly Tampa and FSDT. No not with all the bells and whistles but 100% improvements that any generic airport in FSX. Hawaii is not setup like a photorealistic overlay, rather it is using better quality tiles than FSX. Even the trees sway in a strong breeze all around the island.As far as the arcade stuff, you can turn it off and never see it again. The problem is once you turn it off there is nothing to do. There is no AI, there is no ATC, there is nothing. Sure you can go pick up mail or a drop your sexy voiced chick off on her yacht but that will keep you busy for about an hour before you turn it off and go play BF3 again. If Microsoft had simply released an FSXI with all the arcade stuff PLUS the optimized engine, left everything in and maintained, 3rd party support (even if it was not backward compatible) all of us would have flown to the Redmond campus to worship at their feet. It would be more palatable and understandable if they did a poor job on the scenery, performance stunk AND they crippled the sim. Then you can just say, hey well, it was garbage anyway and move on. The truth is it is NOT garbage its actually quite beautiful. Unfortunately at the end of the day what the developers of FLIGHT did is like trying to make chess more appealing to a new audience by adding death matches, magicians and zombies to the game. Chess appeals to a certain type of audience. The best you can do is put a chess timer in place to speed up the "action" but that is not going attract a soccer hooligan to become a chess fan. And if you did change the rules of chess so that you can gather power ups, bonus rounds, and gold coins, 99% of the people playing chess will simply stick with the original chess game with the old rules and not buy your copy of "Death Chess".My reaction and most other reactions are classic. First anger: How the HELL can Microsoft release this garbage..let's burn them in effigy!!! Then Denial: Maybe we can turn this into a viable flight simulator just like FSX, everything will be fine, everyone is over reacting. Then finally acceptance: Flight is simply Flight and nothing more. Time to fire up FSX...nothing has changed (except that we will have a lot more teenagers in this forum.)I think I'm in a state they call apathy. I simply don't care. I am not the audience for Flight so I will not buy Flight. As long as Microsoft doesn't do anything to cripple development for FSX or do anything else to prevent my continued enjoyment of it I could care less if they come out with Microsoft Bird Flu next . They stay out of my way...I'll stay out of theirs :-)

Edited January 6, 201214 yr by Mike T

My reaction and most other reactions are classic. First anger: How the HELL can Microsoft release this garbage..let's burn them in effigy!!! Then Denial: Maybe we can turn this into a viable flight simulator just like FSX, everything will be fine, everyone is over reacting. Then finally acceptance: Flight is simply Flight and nothing more. Time to fire up FSX...nothing has changed (except that we will have a lot more teenagers in this forum.)

Thanks for switching on the light.Now to forget Flight ever existed...Best regards,Robin.

If you're fortunate enough to know someone who knows someone you get a good look at what Flight is and isn't. I think we're pretty clear on what Flight isn't and that horse has been beaten to death. That is pretty bad, but if that were all, it would be easy to move on. The shame is not in not what Microsoft did do, but what they didn't do and that's really what is a pity. What they DID do is optimize FLIGHT for far better performance that you can get in FSX. They then took that performance and lovingly rendered Hawaii in intricate beauty that rivals ANYTHING that ORBX has released. New lighting and shadows lends a total suspension of disbelief. The airports they did included are rendered in the type of texture detail that we have come to expect from Fly Tampa and FSDT. No not with all the bells and whistles but 100% improvements that any generic airport in FSX. Hawaii is not setup like a photorealistic overlay, rather it is using better quality tiles than FSX. Even the trees sway in a strong breeze all around the island.As far as the arcade stuff, you can turn it off and never see it again. The problem is once you turn it off there is nothing to do. There is no AI, there is no ATC, there is nothing. Sure you can go pick up mail or a drop your sexy voiced chick off on her yacht but that will keep you busy for about an hour before you turn it off and go play BF3 again. If Microsoft had simply released an FSXI with all the arcade stuff PLUS the optimized engine, left everything in and maintained, 3rd party support (even if it was not backward compatible) all of us would have flown to the Redmond campus to worship at their feet. It would be more palatable and understandable if they did a poor job on the scenery, performance stunk AND they crippled the sim. Then you can just say, will it was garbage anyway and move on. The truth is it is NOT garbage its actually quite beautiful. Unfortunately at the end of the day what the developers of FLIGHT did is like trying to make chess more appealing to a new audience by adding death matches, magicians and zombies to the game. Chess appeals to a certain type of audience. The best you can do is put a chess timer in place to speed up the "action" but that is not going attract a soccer hooligan to become a chess fan. And if you did change the rules so chess so that you can gather power ups, bonus rounds, and gold coins, 99% of the people playing chess will simply stick with the original chess game with the old rules and not buy your copy of "Death Chess".My reaction and most other reactions are classic. First anger: How the HELL can Microsoft release this garbage..let's burn them in effigy!!! Then Denial: Maybe we can turn this into a viable flight simulator just like FSX, everything will be fine, everyone is over reacting. Then finally acceptance: Flight is simply Flight and nothing more. Time to fire up FSX...nothing has changed (except that we will have a lot more teenagers in this forum.)I think I'm in a state they all apathy. I simply don't care. I am not the audience for Flight so I will not buy Flight. As long as Microsoft doesn't do anything to cripple development for FSX or do anything else to prevent my continued enjoyment of it I could care less if they come out with Microsoft Bird Flu next . They stay out of my way...I'll stay out of theirs :-)

Good stuff Mike and I feel the same but I am holding out hope that there are addons or more to come that make it appealing for simulation still. If not then sure at the end of the day it'll just be Flight and nothing more.

It disgusts me to think that they were in direct contact, sharing ideas, and sharing tech with prominent 3rd party developers well into the development. It's clear that for a period of time Flight was going to be what we all hoped. Then they pulled the plug, dumbed it down, limited it, and decided they can make more scratch with less work selling DLC's for a free game. Just sucks.

An excellentpost. Mike!

As far as the arcade stuff, you can turn it off and never see it again. The problem is once you turn it off there is nothing to do. There is no AI, there is no ATC, there is nothing

That's why I keep saying that Flight is an operating system for flightsim, with a few bones thrown in for cheap entertainment. I mean, how much fun is Windows by itself plus Paint and Mine Sweeper?So we have to be patient and see what MS will deliver in the next year. As others have said already, in the first year FSX was pretty useless too for any an advanced FS9 simmer for lack of decent aircraft and scenery.In the meantime, let's all forget about Flight and concentrate on what Ivy Bridge and PCIe 3 will do for FSX :Big Grin:Cheers,- jahman.

Edited January 6, 201214 yr by jahman

Finally, someone with some common sense!

An excellentpost. Mike!That's why I keep saying that Flight is an operating system for flightsim, with a few bones thrown in for cheap entertainment. I mean, how much fun is Windows by itself plus Paint and Mine Sweeper?So we have to be patient and see what MS will deliver in the next year. As others have said already, in the first year FSX was pretty useless too for any an advanced FS9 simmer for lack of decent aircraft and scenery.In the meantime, let's all forget about Flight and concentrate on what Ivy Bridge and PCIe 3 will do for FSX :Big Grin:Cheers,- jahman.

I guess their is a chance, albiet a slim one, that in a year or two MS determines that the Flight business model as it currently stands is not making money and they release it as a full sim again. I guess time will tell.

_{Tom will tell you more after the show....}

The airports they did included are rendered in the type of texture detail that we have come to expect from Fly Tampa and FSDT.

No they dont.... Look in the Beta videos and you can CLEARLY see the airports look like total crap.

_{Tom will tell you more after the show....}

At least you don't lie... sorry for being a blunt idiot that past few weeks calling you a troll.

At least you don't lie... sorry for being a blunt idiot that past few weeks calling you a troll.

LOL don't worry about that, I've never took what was said here about me on a personal level, I was fair game like everybody else.

Edited January 6, 201214 yr by alainneedle1

No they dont.... Look in the Beta videos and you can CLEARLY see the airports look like total crap.At least you don't lie... sorry for being a blunt idiot that past few weeks calling you a troll.

Those beta videos (the ones that look like crap) and obviously running on low settings with very low texture resolution. We've seen other videos and screenshots to confirm this. That's little condolence for the overall situation though.

Mike T...Can't help but admire your rig.Rig: Intel i7-2600k @ 5.1Ghz, 8Gb Corsair Vengence (8-8-8-24-1T), Asrock Fatal1ty Motherboard, Corsair H70 Liquid Cooling, 2 x ATI 6990 GPU, 2 x WD Black 1 TB RAID 0 (Operating System), 2 x WD VelociRaptor 600 GB RAID 0 (FSX Drive), Rosewill 1100 Watt PSU, Thermaltake Level 10 GT Case, 2 x HP w2408 Monitors.Since the reality is that FSX is now my only real practical choice, how does it run on that puppy. And is getting it up to 5.1 difficult do do ?Bob - Las Cruces, NM

Mike T...Can't help but admire your rig.Rig: Intel i7-2600k @ 5.1Ghz, 8Gb Corsair Vengence (8-8-8-24-1T), Asrock Fatal1ty Motherboard, Corsair H70 Liquid Cooling, 2 x ATI 6990 GPU, 2 x WD Black 1 TB RAID 0 (Operating System), 2 x WD VelociRaptor 600 GB RAID 0 (FSX Drive), Rosewill 1100 Watt PSU, Thermaltake Level 10 GT Case, 2 x HP w2408 Monitors.Since the reality is that FSX is now my only real practical choice, how does it run on that puppy. And is getting it up to 5.1 difficult do do ?Bob - Las Cruces, NM

FSX screams on my rig and I'm flying and not tweaking. The Sandy Bridge "K" processors are the easiest overclock ever and probably the best processor for the desktop that Intel (anybody?) has ever released. Hell you can hit 4.8ghz on my Fatal1ty MoBo just by selecting a drop down!!! The only thing I've done is run it through Bejote's auto-tweak tool and never looked back since. Is it hard to get to 5.1? Well... It's trial and error because no two pieces of silicon are the same so you have to find your sweet spot, don't be cheap with your mobo, memory or your power supply (clean power is under-rated). I can clock higher but 5.1Ghz is my 24x7 that gives a good balance between performance, stability and energy consumption. Now to see what Ivy Bridge has got to offer later this year....

Edited January 6, 201214 yr by Mike T

Those beta videos (the ones that look like crap) and obviously running on low settings with very low texture resolution. We've seen other videos and screenshots to confirm this.That's little condolence for the overall situation though.

He was running on high.....

He was running on high.....

Nope..