Am I imagining it or is there now a little more optimism being expressed about FLIGHT on this forum? To me, there seems to be fewer posts speculating that it will be just an arcade game stuck in Hawaii. Perhaps the hints being dropped by some of the Beta testers are providing some encouragement.I am just wondering how the game might be developed further. I wonder if, instead of additional geographical areas, add-ons will come as a series of packaged themes, e.g. an African Safari package, complete with AI animals, or a bush flying scenario in Alaska or Canada. The Swiss Alps, the Grand Canyon etc etc. When it comes to commercial airlines maybe airports will be sold individually while routes can be purchased to provide the scenery covered by the included flight plan. Umm – that sounds a bit too complicated. Anyway, it would be nice to know what the developers have in mind - when they care to share with us that is.

Am I imagining it or is there now a little more optimism being expressed about FLIGHT on this forum? To me, there seems to be fewer posts speculating that it will be just an arcade game stuck in Hawaii. Perhaps the hints being dropped by some of the Beta testers are providing some encouragement.

I think this may be the reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model :(

. When it comes to commercial airlines maybe airports will be sold individually while routes can be purchased to provide the scenery covered by the included flight plan. Umm – that sounds a bit too complicated. Anyway, it would be nice to know what the developers have in mind - when they care to share with us that is.

That would really not work too well... Anyway its completely impossible to make whole world area with that kind of quality that we have seen in Hawaii, I suspect that with commercial airliners you either see just sea below or teleport to another area.Also I would not say that there is much more optimism, people are just getting tired of speculating. On another forum I saw beta tester who did not like Flight at all. Of course nobody can be sure right now but my belief is that Flight will have only small, themed areas modeled in high quality and rest not available at all. I dont think that those who like flying big commercial jets on FSX will find Flight what they want.

Edited February 4, 201214 yr by FScamp

I think this may be the reason http://en.wikipedia....bler-Ross_model :(

EXACTLY what I was thinking! Trevor, I feel that (in addition to the "beta hints") positive posts from you and others make an impact - a well thought out and expressed post makes a bigger impact than a poorly supported rant. Yes, this is NOT FSX "plus" - however it will not make it or FS9 go away, it is a FREE download to try it out, it is being made to be more compatible with current computers, and we in the simulated aviation community truly do not know its capabilities yet. I am optimistic about it - sharing that optimism as you have can be infectious!

Am I imagining it or is there now a little more optimism being expressed about FLIGHT on this forum? To me, there seems to be fewer posts speculating that it will be just an arcade game stuck in Hawaii. Perhaps the hints being dropped by some of the Beta testers are providing some encouragement.

You're definitely not imagining it. The tone of the discussion seems to have shifted from fear, uncertainty and doubt to cautious optimism.

Yes, I believe that reactions have slowly transitioned from knee jerk to simply jerk!Let's hope that it continues to improve...

What you really need to look at is the number of people who are still browsing the forum compared to a month ago. The people who have seen enough have mostly left the forum and all you have left are the ones who are in the beta and the ones who go by what said beta testers are hinting at.It isn't that people are more optimistic, but that mostly only the optimistic people are left.

X-plane 9 is about 60 gb... to rival that it will be hard to make it download only. My bet is perhaps expansion dvd's.-

Oh here's hoping! The cut scenes on their site aren't making me hopeful though - I've watched them on several computers of varying power and the scene always looks grabby :-(. I've been playing with x-plane on my android phone and ok, so there's no auto gen but they've clearly started with "Smooth flight" as a design hard-point and worked backwards from there. Result - the terrain is simpler and more cartoon-like but by eliminating grabbiness it appears more realistic. Contrast that with my 4.8ghz watercooled core i5 with some good cfg tweaks and it still gets grabby and the FPS drops when the complexity rises... tragic! Given the power of my computer, there is something wrong when a sim still can't run smoothly. MS hasn't changed - they still don't understand how us humans work, compared to the apple people. In some ways they're still like the Russians copying the west with the Concorde, space shuttle etc... looks similar but since they're copying instead of developing their own, something is lost in the process. I have a great android phone with more of everything than the iphone 4s yet side by side mine gets grabby when scrolling while the apply doesn't - apple know how to convey quality! There has got to be a better way to depict a landscape in a way that appears more realistic yet doesn't use as much computing power. Maybe the real world needs to be scanned with LIDARs and algorithms developed to smoothly depict the resulting info?Anyway, I'll shut up and go back to sittin, wishin...

Flight is an MS effort to both have a flight sim and also make money. To do this they must do two things:1. Expand the customer base. Flight sims have a very small market. I would guess that for every 1000 copies a successful flight sim sells, a successful game will sell one million copies. Flying a plane is not easy, it requires a lot of knowledge for realism and flying at altitude with the AP is downright boring compared to Call of Duty and the like. Flight sims always get panned on gamer sites. So MS is remarketing it as a game. And it seems to be working as the gamers seem more positive than they were toward FSX. Of course free flight with appropriate add-ons will be available to retain the serious simmers.2. Collect revenue throughout the life of the title. MS has decided to go down the DLC route for this revenue. It is a proven model through which companies like Apple and Android are making a nice profit. The idea is that 3rd party developers can still sell products, but of course MS will get a share, let's say 30%. Possibly MS will contract some of the development of scenery, aircraft, ATC, etc to 3PDs. There simply is no way MS alone will provide all the content people want although it seems they want to try at the beginning. If they continue with that thought, then Flight will be a very short-lived title. I play COD, but if there was no multiplayer and additional maps, the game would not be used after about a week. What makes a title last is when many people can creatively use it to interact with each other.Ben

It's taken me a while to do the maths but...If the ratio sim:mainstream game is 1000:1000000And fsx sold 3,000,000 copies THENMainstream game sells 3 billion copies.Now, MW3 did get bought a bit, but i'm not sure it quite hit the magic '3 billion' mark. :)So1) I think the flightsim community is bigger than it sometimes gives itself credit for 2) there's reason to be somewhat hopeful that flight will find enough of a market to allow ongoing development.I'm looking forward to it. I also know that if no freeware development is possible I likely won't be playing it in a year's time. Microsoft - any chance of a model that allows DLC and community creations to co-exist?

Edited February 6, 201214 yr by OzWhitey

Oh here's hoping! The cut scenes on their site aren't making me hopeful though - I've watched them on several computers of varying power and the scene always looks grabby :-(. I've been playing with x-plane on my android phone and ok, so there's no auto gen but they've clearly started with "Smooth flight" as a design hard-point and worked backwards from there. Result - the terrain is simpler and more cartoon-like but by eliminating grabbiness it appears more realistic. Contrast that with my 4.8ghz watercooled core i5 with some good cfg tweaks and it still gets grabby and the FPS drops when the complexity rises... tragic! Given the power of my computer, there is something wrong when a sim still can't run smoothly. MS hasn't changed - they still don't understand how us humans work, compared to the apple people. In some ways they're still like the Russians copying the west with the Concorde, space shuttle etc... looks similar but since they're copying instead of developing their own, something is lost in the process. I have a great android phone with more of everything than the iphone 4s yet side by side mine gets grabby when scrolling while the apply doesn't - apple know how to convey quality! There has got to be a better way to depict a landscape in a way that appears more realistic yet doesn't use as much computing power. Maybe the real world needs to be scanned with LIDARs and algorithms developed to smoothly depict the resulting info?Anyway, I'll shut up and go back to sittin, wishin...

No other program than Flight simulators have to display objects from a small fuel pump to a mesh hundreds of miles away. X-plane 9 auto-adjusts the visibility down to for example 30 miles on my computer to keep up framerates. Even if you force greater visibility x-plane does not display full horizon at 35000 feet cruise level. Its about 60 nm max while fsx displays 200 nm before it switches to less detail. If you crank down fsx visibilty to 30 miles it can do better framerates too. Fsx was rushed so it wasnt optimised, fs2004 a better build. I looks like they take the time to optimise the program for ms flight. Also the terrain data for hawaii seems to be extreme maybe even more detailed than xplane, and the textures maybe four times as sharp. If you crank down the detail level of fsx to iphone x-plane standards fsx will go fast too.-

i have been reading all these past days people telling that MS flight will be good. Now my two cents. Two friends of mine were beta testers, both unistalled it after a week and discarded it.Why?, it is not a simulator!!, period!, it's a game just that. 1- no online experience, and when i say no online experience i mean you can not longer choose VATSIM or IVAO to fly with, and probably won't have that chance ever, cause Microsoft will force you to play in their enviroment. so you won't have that freedom anymore.2- Just fly where MS decides you can, no more freedom of flying from your hometown aiport unless you live in one of the packs they sell, but anyway forget about taking of from San jose Costa Rica, or Honduras. forget about the freedom to decide to fly around the world, unless you want to expend a lot of money. 8 probably it would be cheaper to actually buy a ticket than simulate it )3- forget about third party developpers that actually push up the bar in simulation, simple life rule, a monopoly means no need to push up, as long as you are the only one that sells.4- forget about those amazing guys that take their time and effort to upload wonderful sceneries and free add ons, and that have made this hobby so unique and noble. I really sad loss.5- forget about very complex and realistic aircraft to train yourself, get serious, MS has never made a good plane, all have been eye candy type, and if this game is not intended for the hard core fan, why should they developpe this type of planes?, someone could say that if Flight sells good they actually would, but then why? if they sell the dummy aircraft an people buy it, why should the change their selling politics?This are my two cents, but could hold from typing it as long as I read this very optimistic but not realistic comments here.regards fellow captains, happy landings

I think flight will be good at bringing new people into this hobby, which is needed. Some of the new people that flight brings in will eventually get bored with hawaii and the small planes and want more. Then FSX and Xplane come in. Bringing new faces to those products. Eventually 3pd's get more action as these new people will want addons. So overall, flight will be a benifit for everyone whether you use it or not. I dont think we will ever see a PMDG style complex addon for flight, but thats not what the users of flight are into. I can get into learning a 1/2 hour checklist to just start the engines and get all excited about it. For others, thats like watching paint dry and I totally get it. We all have different needs that we want out of simming and Flight caters to a different crowd and I think thats great. Ill probably get the extra islands and maybe a plane or 2 just to support the genre and Im sure it will be a nice diversion from FSX once in a while.Rob

Microsoft released a reasonable F18 with acceleration. They used external devs to make it. That's the model I like to see.I'm also hoping - but not necessarily expecting - that despite all the 'wedding yacht mission' cr@p - there is nothing stopping an external accusim-like product being bolted on. If Flight proves popular that might be attractive for everyone.

Two friends of mine were beta testers, both unistalled it after a week and discarded it.

Your two friends were too busy wearing their blinders trying to find reasons to carp about what Flight isn't, and was never intended to be that they completely failed in their task to beta test what Flight is......which includes looking at ALL of what Flight offers out of the box. They also should have explored to see what Flight can become with the right download content.Am I satisfied with Flight as it stands right now? Of course not. I'll not be uninstalling either FS9 or FSX anytime soon and that's a fact! I will however, spend some time with Flight each week, if for no other reason than to help steer folks into trying FSX whenever they want a more enriching and free experience! :(