Follow this line of thought: MS Flight gets "loads" of people to download and play flight and, theystart liking this "flight" thing. Human nature, I need my next fix and, I need it now therefore,the question arises, what can "it" do now/next? And that is the potential for disaster, they

There are several disaster resources. First of all: A Flight Simulator isn't a pretty goodconcept to earn money with DLC. The idea with download content is great if you have contentthat most people will need. You develop one time but many people will buy it.And now look at Flight. The need for a special plane is rather limited and with the locations you haveseveral severe problems. Some would mainly be interested in a beautiful or funny scenery. They wouldbe interested in something like a Fireworld or something like that.If you use real locations you won't ever find a solution for most of the people. As an example:Hawai doesn't really have an appeal for european pilots, but somerthing like the alps would onlybe interesting for a limited amount of pilots too. Something like New York might be a different question,but they would want this location for different purposes. Some people would want to fly their planesbetween skyscrapers, while others would be interested in the bigger airports (but they would need destinations),while a third group would want to go sightseeing.But for each of these groups you would need a slightly different development. It is one thing to say that therewould be millions of people that want to fly, but the problem is, that they want in reality totally different needs.And if they don't find their needs satisfied they will leave it after a few hours, and most of them will never look back!And the readiness to really pay for sceneries will be really limited. After a few days you won't see the game as afree game, you only see the price for the next gimmick.

So in steps Flight Simultor "next". Get it?

Well I get your idea, but it won't happen. The problem is how these projects find their budget.The big reason behind Flight was: We have all these libraries, and there are people out their whoearn money based on our software. Wouldn't it be a good idea to earn this money directly?But while there are a huge number of developers, they don't really earn so much money asmost people or even Microsoft did expect. In the beginning they probably thought that theycould write the next Flight Simulator in this manner. But the internal management of Flight had torealize that this kind of money would never be enough to meet the demands of the higher management.So they dropped the SDK and the support for third party developers. In the long run theymight find, with some miracles, a way to reach the hardcore community, but I think that they areright now in disaster recovery and they try to find the break even by concentrating to the none hardcore flyers.The big problem inside such a huge company is to get the budget from the higher management.So it is very likely that the people who wanted the next Flightsimulator had in fact joined forces withthe "DLC"-content group. This explains nicely the active communication to 3rd party developers,and the sudden drop of communication in a later phase. The problem with a world wide simulator: You need an open SDK. No one is able to meet the demandsof all the customers. Instead you have a number of older customers, to have the resources tobuy payware, but you have a huge number of younger folk who have time, but no money. With an SDKpeople can build what they want. And if they share their projects they can cover a huge area, while payware canproduce islands with a much better resolution. Without an SDK a worldwide simulator can't work. So the drop ofthe SDK from Flight was pretty significant It gets nearly impossible to cover larger areas with a medium resolution for GAplanes. You could only add Heavies at a later time with a number of bigger planes at a later time. But the development isn't cheap.You need a much bigger weather engine, ATCs and the airports. How can you sell these projects, that will only work interlinked with each other?

I really just don't get it.From what I've seen and read officially from Microsoft regarding the features in Flight it would seem like a miracle if this software will make money at all. Not for a multi-million dollar company anyway.What makes Microsoft confident that the gaming audience would after flying through all the hula-hoops in Hawaii crave to do it all over again in Dallas, in Sidney, - or over Innsbruck for that sake ?! I can hardly imagine players fancying this kind of easy desktop entertainment actually paying for additional material. They move on to the next "fast-food title" when they are satisfied, they do not build customer relationships.It would be a totally different situation if Flight was instead a traditionally addictive title like Farmville, The Sims, WoW, Battlefield or even World of Tanks to mention a few. But it isn't - its a plane flying over some static scenery, only fractured by some linear missions. How hooked can you get ? And by excluding the masses of productive 3d-party developers they completely trust in some kind of factor I myself at this point fail to reveal.To stand a chance Microsoft should at least have the rest of the world done in great detail ready for purchase by now. Waiting for additional scenery and missions seem to be just another nail in the coffin...The OP might have a valid point, - if Flight turns out to be something else rather than what they have shown us and told us on their official website.regards :(

Hawaii is popular as a vacation spot and is known around the world. It has a little bit of everything. Water, mountains, cities, towns, waterfalls, etc. I can see why it was chosen. This is a test bed for Flight. The response by the public will determine where MS goes with this. It could very well be successful, or it could end up in the round file.Bob

There are several disaster resources. First of all: A Flight Simulator isn't a pretty goodconcept to earn money with DLC. The idea with download content is great if you have contentthat most people will need. You develop one time but many people will buy it.And now look at Flight. The need for a special plane is rather limited and with the locations you haveseveral severe problems. Some would mainly be interested in a beautiful or funny scenery. They wouldbe interested in something like a Fireworld or something like that.If you use real locations you won't ever find a solution for most of the people. As an example:Hawai doesn't really have an appeal for european pilots, but somerthing like the alps would onlybe interesting for a limited amount of pilots too. Something like New York might be a different question,but they would want this location for different purposes. Some people would want to fly their planesbetween skyscrapers, while others would be interested in the bigger airports (but they would need destinations),while a third group would want to go sightseeing.But for each of these groups you would need a slightly different development. It is one thing to say that therewould be millions of people that want to fly, but the problem is, that they want in reality totally different needs.And if they don't find their needs satisfied they will leave it after a few hours, and most of them will never look back!And the readiness to really pay for sceneries will be really limited. After a few days you won't see the game as afree game, you only see the price for the next gimmick.Well I get your idea, but it won't happen. The problem is how these projects find their budget.The big reason behind Flight was: We have all these libraries, and there are people out their whoearn money based on our software. Wouldn't it be a good idea to earn this money directly?But while there are a huge number of developers, they don't really earn so much money asmost people or even Microsoft did expect. In the beginning they probably thought that theycould write the next Flight Simulator in this manner. But the internal management of Flight had torealize that this kind of money would never be enough to meet the demands of the higher management.So they dropped the SDK and the support for third party developers. In the long run theymight find, with some miracles, a way to reach the hardcore community, but I think that they areright now in disaster recovery and they try to find the break even by concentrating to the none hardcore flyers.The big problem inside such a huge company is to get the budget from the higher management.So it is very likely that the people who wanted the next Flightsimulator had in fact joined forces withthe "DLC"-content group. This explains nicely the active communication to 3rd party developers,and the sudden drop of communication in a later phase.The problem with a world wide simulator: You need an open SDK. No one is able to meet the demandsof all the customers. Instead you have a number of older customers, to have the resources tobuy payware, but you have a huge number of younger folk who have time, but no money. With an SDKpeople can build what they want. And if they share their projects they can cover a huge area, while payware canproduce islands with a much better resolution. Without an SDK a worldwide simulator can't work. So the drop ofthe SDK from Flight was pretty significant It gets nearly impossible to cover larger areas with a medium resolution for GAplanes. You could only add Heavies at a later time with a number of bigger planes at a later time. But the development isn't cheap.You need a much bigger weather engine, ATCs and the airports. How can you sell these projects, that will only work interlinked with each other?

Hi Longranger,thanks for pointing out Microsoft's difficulties: you're "correct" (logic) of course. I do wish that flight will succeed: we here, are all aviation hobbyistsincluding any real world pilot who has any flight simulator installed on his rig whether for recurrency, testing or... We all love aviation.I trust that Microsoft comes up with an honorable way to keep every commercial, noncommercial, fan sites and, all aviation enthusiasts involved.I am disappointed with what I've seen so far. I would like to see Microsoft develop the base sim and allow others to continue expandingit by creation of "stuff" which they (3PDs andTinkerers) would like to see in such gamesim.We have alternatives, and I've always had XPlane: but we need Microsoft to have some serious skin in the game.I have "flown" into my home strip in MSFS numerous times and, the generic airport never turned me off.I don't believe that Microsoft will walk away allowing Flight in the form as I've seen it so far,being representative of its legacy in flight simulation: at least I hope not.

Edited February 12, 201214 yr by eSimmer

The graphics look good but the freedom of choice is gone, you are only limited to the scenery and planes that Microsoft gives you. This in my opinion is not fun at all.

Hawaii only finished it for me. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Hawaii. (maybe flew around it once if I remember in FS9 to have a look around)

Hawaii only finished it for me. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Hawaii. (maybe flew around it once if I remember in FS9 to have a look around)

Seeing how my Hawaii glass is half full, instead of half empty...................I rather enjoy the area. I've flown to numerous Hawaiian Islands both commercially, and in GA. I was happy to see that prior versions of MSFS duplicated some well known areas quite sufficiently, and Mega Scenery for Hawaii made it all the better. Looks like I might just be looking forward to Microsoft's new incarnation...............since realistic scenery duplication is high on my list. After all, it's the reason I took up real flight. My area of the world, has some of the most diverse scenery there is, to see by air.L.Adamson

FSX is alive and well under a new name and 10x the price tag - Prepare3d. Most of you know this but Microsoft sold the FSX concept to Lockheed. Lockheed recognized the real value of this sim, streamlined the software, cleaned up the bugs and increased the price tag 10 times. Great business move. I think the most hardcore flight simmers will move to Prepare3d despite the high cost. After all if you own a 20 grand home cockpit, spending $500 on the most sophisticated flight sim is not that much. The slightly less hardcore (and in my case slightly poorer) flight simmers will probably move towards X-Plane 10. I think X-Plane users are still very serious about aviation and good flight modelling, but not too many of us will spend many thousands on this hobby. i would rather fly in real life if i had thousands to spend on flight simulation at home. I have a hard time seeing the market for Flight. I can see most real life general aviation pilots introducing their kids to the fun of flying using Flight. Great visuals and great flight models (of simple aircraft) is a new market segment. I would use flight to enjoy some VFR flying, especially if it has great flight dynamics. It's 2012 and although X-Plane lacks in flight modelling at this time, we have the right to expect a lot in terms of flight modelling and accuracy, and i am certain Flight will deliver on that. Still it will be very hard to get users "hooked" on Flight and paying to get more missions and new scenery. I think one plane and one region will be enough for what Flight offers.

FSX is alive and well under a new name and 10x the price tag - Prepare3d. Most of you know this but Microsoft sold the FSX concept to Lockheed. Lockheed recognized the real value of this sim, streamlined the software, cleaned up the bugs and increased the price tag 10 times. Great business move. I think the most hardcore flight simmers will move to Prepare3d despite the high cost. After all if you own a 20 grand home cockpit, spending $500 on the most sophisticated flight sim is not that much. The slightly less hardcore (and in my case slightly poorer) flight simmers will probably move towards X-Plane 10. I think X-Plane users are still very serious about aviation and good flight modelling, but not too many of us will spend many thousands on this hobby. i would rather fly in real life if i had thousands to spend on flight simulation at home. I have a hard time seeing the market for Flight. I can see most real life general aviation pilots introducing their kids to the fun of flying using Flight. Great visuals and great flight models (of simple aircraft) is a new market segment. I would use flight to enjoy some VFR flying, especially if it has great flight dynamics. It's 2012 and although X-Plane lacks in flight modelling at this time, we have the right to expect a lot in terms of flight modelling and accuracy, and i am certain Flight will deliver on that. Still it will be very hard to get users "hooked" on Flight and paying to get more missions and new scenery. I think one plane and one region will be enough for what Flight offers.

The Xplane flight models are very good for the most part. Especially in the payware planes.... more realistic than FSX imo.I'm sorry that MS has let you down.I think you will enjoy Xplane if you give it a chance.

Having played the beta for the last month or so, I got bored with it after a short time. Just not enough to do and Hawaii got boring. However, The flight modeling seemed improved over FSX. I think it will have a market, but I dont see myself buying any extra content for it. I will keep my eye on it but dont hold out any hopes.Rob

Hi LarryYes that is the problem though. People like to fly the areas they are familiar with and I see you are familiar with Hawaii, I guess if I had been there or had some interest from another direction (ie volcanoes, Pearl Harbour etc), then sure I'd probably go have a look.I might still but I doubt it, especially as I'm on a fairly restricted bandwidth.

Seeing how my Hawaii glass is half full, instead of half empty...................I rather enjoy the area. [snip]L.Adamson

Hi LarryYes that is the problem though. People like to fly the areas they are familiar with and I see you are familiar with Hawaii, I guess if I had been there or had some interest from another direction (ie volcanoes, Pearl Harbour etc), then sure I'd probably go have a look.I might still but I doubt it, especially as I'm on a fairly restricted bandwidth.

At the same time, I like to sim fly to areas that I haven't been too. This is why a "plausible world", or build up your own cities doesn't interest me. At the moment, the big plus of X-Plane for me, is the included topography mountain mesh. I like seeing accuracy in topography, where it's available. This is why X-Plane needs a lot more 3rd party development. I enjoy FSX addons such as Orbx, because it gives me a reason to fly there. I remember my first real life landing at Sedona, Arizona (KSEZ). It's like an aircraft carrier on top of a plateau, with rising terrain off to one side. The landing pattern, which included several aircraft, was switched just minutes before landing because of wind reversal. I was totally familiar with the area, thanks to previous flight simulator landings. Everything was perfect in my mind, while a friend ahead of me, had the pattern totally messed up in his mind.L.Adamson

The taming of the turbulence model in the latest beta make XP10 more appealing to me now, except I still have a performance issue with my system, even at default levels, without road traffic or HDR. Funny, It's only been this bad since they consolidated the cloud settings, I was getting double the frames (about 18 vs 9-10 now) with the then posted cloud tweak. So unless I can get back some of those frames without losing anymore detail, I'll have to sit out XP10 until I can get a more powerful system. (A 3.0GHZ E6850 4GB system)

Edited February 13, 201214 yr by tf51d

I saw the pics of Sedona. Looks a bit of a wild place for a first time pilot. Sure it's good to go and explore around a bit. In my earlier flightsimming days I spent a lot of time flying around the ranges around Seattle even tho I lived in Australia. A friend and I used to link up and fly together quite often. We did quite a few flights around Austria. Places like Salzburg, Innsbruck etc;. Some great times when I think back.Have a look at this one for a hairy landing experience.http://www.plasticpilot.net/blog/2008/10/22/flying-the-alps-iii-courchevel/Default in XP9.7 is not so good. I haven't checked XPX cos I haven't got Europe installed but I'm not very hopeful on this one.

Have a look at this one for a hairy landing experience.http://www.plasticpi...iii-courchevel/

Just showed several of these videos to my wife. Good link. BTW--- the mountains just a few miles from here, have often been used as the "Alps" for motion pictures over the years.KSLC --- site of the 2002 Winter Olympics.