I think the real risk with investment is for DLC developers who decide to cooperate with MS to produce content.If Flight doesn't hit it off, then as a user I guess you won't see so much content produced, get bored with it, and move on. MS might try a few drastic changes in a last ditch attempt to draw in the crowds, for example by introducing a combat expansion, or some kind of adventure, but once it starts going down that route I've no idea what will happoen.No, the real risk is for the developers. Who would want to invest loads of time, money and knowledge in a venture where they are not allowed to promote or market what they do, where MS take a percentage of the revenue, and where they are forced to work to MS restrictions and deadlines? If Flight goes well, it will be ok, but if Flight goes badly, MS will drop you like a stone, and that might prove difficult to recover from.My own view on Flight is a puzzled one. I am having some difficulty in understanding why pilots would want to use it, since it is too basic and gamey to be of interest to them; nor can I see why gamers would want to play it, it being to boring (if one compares it, for example, to GTA IV). I can see it appealing to a group of casual gamers, but I can't see those spending loads of money on DLC, because of all the casual FSX users I have come across, they have never bought any add-ons and would never dream of doing so.

+1

I don't own the AeroFly flight simulator, but it is my understanding that the graphics are limited to day time only.

I do not have it either, but should not be too big deal for game developer to make night time textures & environment too. Anyway something way better looking than Flight is possible to run with even todays lower priced computers, those with not so good computers could just put graphics settings down a bit. Heaviness of FSX really has nothing to do with its amount of eye candy, but just bad unoptimized code and general bugs.And old engine is what causes Flight to look kind of outdated already. But I can understand using it as Flight probably is relatively low budget project and making completely new engine for graphics would take a lot of work. Microsoft should have finished their FSX by applying SP3 which would have fixed most of its bugs and heaviness, too bad that they just put these tweaks to Flight instead of having them in FSX too.

Edited February 15, 201214 yr by FScamp

And old engine is what causes Flight to look kind of outdated already. But I can understand using it as Flight probably is relatively low budget project and making completely new engine for graphics would take a lot of work.

You are basing your entire argument on an erroneous assumption, and based only on still images (badly compressed) and some video clips (again, not really hi-res due to compression).Having looked at the assets first-hand, about the only commonality is that Flight is still using DDS/DXT5 textures... :(

You are basing your entire argument on an erroneous assumption

Hello BillThe graphics in Flight! are really not all that good when you really look at them.The autogen houses and buildings are in many cases worse than we had in FSX.Out of curiosity I have been loading the same locations in both Flight and FSX and I have been surprised, in many cases I preferred FSX.The sense of scale just seemed better, also some of the transitions between different textures can be a bit abrupt in Flight!.It is certainly not six years of progress as some would have us believe.

Even if the 'eye candy' portion is only on par with FSX, I'm good with that as long as they freed up my CPU cores to do other, more 'hard core' things. Not now, of course, but somewhere down the road. . .

You are basing your entire argument on an erroneous assumption, and based only on still images (badly compressed) and some video clips (again, not really hi-res due to compression).Having looked at the assets first-hand, about the only commonality is that Flight is still using DDS/DXT5 textures... :(

Maybe so then. Well at least release is not too far away from now, then I can compare FSX, Flight and X plane 10 texture quality myself. Anyway I would myself expect much higher graphics quality from game that is limited to only small areas than from one that has whole Earth modeled.

Edited February 15, 201214 yr by FScamp