This ain't like dusting crops, boy!

[corinoco 22]

Actually yes, it is.The year - 1986. Flight Simulator 2 on my old C64. FS2 had a 'WW1' mode that was about as good as the vector-graphics arcade game 'Red Baron' by Atari. I found FS2 in the 'Games' section of the local computer store.The same year - the first game I bought for our new disk drive was Solo Flight 2 by Microprose. It was nowhere near the realism (!) of FS2, but it had a rather engrossing mail-delivery game. You had a schedule you had to keep, fuel & payloads to manage, and changeable weather. OK, primitive changeable weather, but it was fun. It also had synthesized voice ATC & instructor - extraordinary in only 64K RAM! The point: Solo Flight was equally as FUN as FS2 because of the mail delivery game. Both games used the primitive C64 joysticks, but keyboard was preferable as it had finer control.The year - 1989. Flight Simulator 4 on an i386SX. 16Mhz, 16 colors, SB soundcard! We didn't have the WW1 game, but we still had the Sopwith Camel model. We did have a Crop Dusting mode, though - you had control over the smoke system, and had to put even coverage over fields with annoying trees & telegraph poles against the clock. It was also FUN. There was also Gliding - using both thermals & slope-soaring. Primitive, but FUN. There was an aircraft carrier off San Francisco, but FS4 didn't come with fighter-jet models - yet landing and taking off from the carrier in Learjets, Cessnas and (with the expansion pack) the 747 was also a lot of FUN. Not realistic, no timetables to keep, no pushback, no ATC, just FUN. I flew mostly with mouse & keyboard, I didn't get a joystick until about 1995. I found the mouse a great way to fly, especially for gliders - you could dial the sensitivity right DOWN and it gave you very slow, very smooth control input - important even with the primitive flight models of the time.The same year - 1989. Sublogic UFO - built on the same engine as FS3. I still know what klaks and gorads are. You flew around in a UFO, sucking 'power' from buildings like the World Trade Centre (causing them to collapse, IRRC!), then flew at supersonic speeds up to the Mothership, and docked (that was HARD, by the way!). It was FUN. Better yet, it came with some bizarre scenery for Hawaii - fly into a volcano and end up in a giant kitchen, or land on a piano, or an entirely different dimension where gravity goes sideways... that was a HEAP of FUN, especially as that scenery disk worked with FS4!I have every release of FS since FS2, up to the present - I'll skip a few releases....FSX - when it came out it was big, pretty, but stuttery on my AthlonX64. Now I have a Q9550 and a GTX275 - hardly cutting edge, but I get more than 10fps landing at KSA with all my Orb-X, MyTraffic and REX switched on. I fly with a Saitek X52Pro HOTAS stick, but still occasionally use mouse-yoke if I don't feel like clearing off my desk. I find helicopters easier to fly with a mouse than a joystick. I loved the missions that came with FSX - sheep-scaring, barn storming, flour-bombing, UFO-chasing, bus-landing - all great FUN!I still love blasting down the Grand Canyon in a Douglas Skyray at M1.5 - inverted. My passengers love it when I fly the 747 under the Sydney Harbour Bridge before landing - they get great photos of the Opera House. Tropical Queensland looks beautiful from the air, whether it is in the AirTrike or a SR71. I have a lot of FUN in FSX.Flight intrigues me; it looks like FUN.I notice a lot of people getting upset about the coin-hunting 'game' in Flight - do you remember that there is EXACTLY the same game mode in FSX - the landing a Learjet mission? Better boycott FSX too!What looks like a persistent career mode could be FUN too... sure, it looks to be aimed at the Xbox crowd, but I am sure it would also form a great base for more serious career-mode systems.I love the look of the little amphibian - it's NOT a 737! HURRAH! OK, thems fightin' words there.... but I'm serious. How many of the files in the Avsim library are repaints of 737s or A3x0s? 75%? There are probably more repaints than there are actual 737s...I freely admit to only looking in the file library once every few months these days - I prefer aircraft I find interesting; ones I don't get to see every day. The most recent planes I have bought are the Cessna 337 and the Douglas Skyray. My aircraft library is full of strange gliders, experimental aircraft and Things-Wot-Go-Fast like X15s and SR71s and Concordes; aircraft I know I will never get to fly in, let alone pilot. The vast majority of online FS libraries are CHOCK FULL of 737 / Airbus repaints.Please, enough with the medium-range commuter airliners. Enough with the wide-body long-haul airliners too. Unless someone promises to model SOFIA.So I'll be downloading Flight and having some FUN on the 29th. I think the full Hawaii scenery is a no-brainer at $20 - I think that's the right price for that scenery from what I have seen so far.I'm NOT so sure about the Maule for $20, and I think I'll skip the P51 at $10. Both of those are priced too high in my opinion. I would pay $5 at most for the Maule, $10 for an all-bells-and-whistles plane. Personally I wouldn't pay anything for an aircraft with no internal VC, though in my opinion a price point of $1 - $3 would be correct for a VC-less plane. I still wouldn't buy it - but I am sure plenty of others would.The FS Store is a BRILLIANT IDEA and is what this hobby has needed for a long time. Here's my reasoning:In 2002-2005 I worked on a model of the Rutan Boomerang for FS2000-2004. It will partially work in FSX - the panel needs updating - something I have slowly worked on for a number (ummm... that number would be EIGHT) of years now. I uploaded it to Avsim & Flightsim.com, but over the years it has spread across many other sites too, including some that charge for access - in defiance of my stated wishes in the readme - NON COMMERCIAL!As far as I can tell, over all of these sites it has been downloaded about 5,000 times - maybe more as data from Avsim was lost in the dark days a few years ago.I admit my work on the Boomerang, and my two follow-on projects - the Avtek A400 (95% complete) and the Bugatti 100 racer (basic model so far) became personal projects only, with release only to people by email planned. I wasn't happy with uploading my work to free sites, only to have it appear on pay sites against my wishes.Given the chance, I would give the Boomerang a restoration job that matches the recent one the real plane had, and upload it to the store. I think somewhere between $2 and $5 would be a fair price for a plane with an alien-head sticker in the rear window, a working LavaLamp in the cabin and the worlds only fully flight-simulated goldfish bowl with a Real Live Goldfish called Fred. I would certainly release a version with simplified LOD and very basic VC as a free or micro-payment model.Working on that plane was FUN and the prospect of earning a little bit of cash on the side is enticing. I also like the idea of a moderated store - like the Apple App Store and Steam - that allows moderated voting & comments. I also like the idea of protection of my work that such a system entails.Not much has been revealed, but I hope that MS will open it to the public in the same manner as the Apple App Store or the Valve Steam Workshop. Hopefully the Flight Store will support hobbyist devs like myself, and have a free or micro-payment system for 'demo' models.The prospect of buying all of my scenery again is a little scary I admit - I have REX, all the ORBX releases, FS Global 2008 Terrain - not $1,000s but certainly $100s. I read of ORBX's experience with some disappointment - but I also keep in mind that Valve had a shaky start too - and now I buy almost every game on Steam.TLDR; I'm going to get Flight on the 29th, I will get the Hawaiian full pack, but not the other DLC at the present time. I have some trepidation about the DLC prices so far, but am optimistic that Microsoft will open the store as a moderated addon store to 3rd party developers, including hobbyists, and will include a system for payments / micropayments. I also like FUN; which is the primary goal of a PC-based flight simulator.PS, I'm sick of seeing that silly laughing smiley icon - it's not big, it's not clever, it's not funny.

[RichLP 32]

Actually yes, it is.The year - 1986. Flight Simulator 2 on my old C64. FS2 had a 'WW1' mode that was about as good as the vector-graphics arcade game 'Red Baron' by Atari. I found FS2 in the 'Games' section of the local computer store.The same year - the first game I bought for our new disk drive was Solo Flight 2 by Microprose. It was nowhere near the realism (!) of FS2, but it had a rather engrossing mail-delivery game. You had a schedule you had to keep, fuel & payloads to manage, and changeable weather. OK, primitive changeable weather, but it was fun. It also had synthesized voice ATC & instructor - extraordinary in only 64K RAM! The point: Solo Flight was equally as FUN as FS2 because of the mail delivery game. Both games used the primitive C64 joysticks, but keyboard was preferable as it had finer control....(edited for brevity) ....TLDR; I'm going to get Flight on the 29th, I will get the Hawaiian full pack, but not the other DLC at the present time. I have some trepidation about the DLC prices so far, but am optimistic that Microsoft will open the store as a moderated addon store to 3rd party developers, including hobbyists, and will include a system for payments / micropayments. I also like FUN; which is the primary goal of a PC-based flight simulator.PS, I'm sick of seeing that silly laughing smiley icon - it's not big, it's not clever, it's not funny.

Get out of my head! Seriously... great post... I think there are more of us than the every light, every switch, every dial, every sound, every smell must be accurates want to admit...I don't mean that in a bad way, my point is this... I, too, have been playing (god forbid) every single edition of FS since the first one. And I've yet to spend a penny on DLC, either planes or scenery. I HAVE downloaded freeware planes and scenery from here and other sites that I found interesting, some good, some not so much.I've never built a cutsom FS rig, although I plan to soon. Hopefully, I won't have alienated ALL of you with vast knowledge in this area by then, as I'm sure I will be seeking your guidance and advice.I'm not a pilot, I don't know all the proper procedures, and I'm constantly impressed by all of you that are, and do. I mostly fly offline, but when I DO fly online, I AM polite, and do my best to follow the procedures requested of me.We may not be "the 99%", but there ARE a lot of us who are willing and eager to give FLIGHT a chance, and hope it meets OUR expectations of fun, and can also meet the expectations of those of you who enjoy a much more 'realistic simulator'.Guess we'll all find out in the coming months... Edited February 8, 2012 by RichLP

[Guest jahman]

I notice a lot of people getting upset about the coin-hunting 'game' in Flight - do you remember that there is EXACTLY the same game mode in FSX - the landing a Learjet mission? Better boycott FSX too!

You're missing the obvious point: Nobody is upset because Flight offers coin hunting, we're upset because of all the serious sim stuff was left out and all we're left with is coin hunting. Take away all the serious simming stuff from FSX and only leave coin hunting and you would get exactly the same negative reception towards FSX as you are getting towards Flight.Cheers,- jahman.

[corinoco 22]

Take away all the serious simming stuff from FSX and only leave coin hunting and you would get exactly the same negative reception towards FSX as you are getting towards Flight.

I didn't get into the beta, say I can't answer for certain... but I'll have a go.What 'serious simming stuff' is missing? There certainly seem to be navaids, VORs, GPS. I am going to guess that there will be some form of ATC. The ability to add our own planes or scenery? Don't know yet!One of the points I made was that in the early days - and don't forget this is 1989-90 I'm refering to - there wasn't this 'serious simming stuff' in FS4. Ok, there was VORs and NDBs and very primitive ATC - but no airliners! FS4 was the first game (and it WAS a game!) that I can remember was specifically made for modding. A large amount of the content I had for FS4 came from BBS / early internet (pre-www, I used Gopher, FTP and newsgroups!) - ALL of which was instantly made obsolete by FS5. By the time FS5 came along I din't mind replacing all the scenery I had bought - I forget who, but someone in Australia made scenery for the whole country - it overlapped the USA so the lat/long was all wrong, but at least we could fly around Australia!It doesn't look like the only activity is 'coin hunting' - maybe it is in the free part. What is wrong with that anyway? It is not so dissimilar to the tutorials that came with FSX - which I went and did. Yes, I have been flying sims since 1986 and I have flown RC planes and had the controls of real aircraft, but it was still FUN to zoom around Edwards in an ultralight trying to spot SR71s.The career mode, of which I have seen only one or two screenshots looks VERY interesting, and in my view has the greatest OPPORTUNITY for 'serious simming' - what better than an official logbook of flights & achievements? Sure, there will be kids who will want to get the 'most coins' award or the 'most bridges flown under' awards (they will have serious competition for THAT if there is one...) but that doesn't mean YOU have to. There is every opportunity for a leaderboard for smooth landings, or on-time arrivals, or least deviation from flight plan.Thats what excites me the most - the structure is being put in place to allow these more serious activities to occur. Sure, it might not come with all of this from the 29th, but its FREE!I can't be certain, I haven't tried the beta; there will be support for 'serious simming stuff' in Flight. Apart from 737s I don't quite know exactly what this 'serious simming stuff' is, anyway!

[newthog 0]

Corinoco and Rich - thanks for the great posts! You both did a great job expressing my expectations and anticipations for MSFlight!

Edited February 8, 2012 by newthog

[corinoco 22]

The more I think about it, the more I am excited by the possibilities that the Flight Store might offer.The more I think about it, the more I think that it is the best way to expand the hobby that is Flight Simulation!Firstly - its a MARKETPLACE. My instinct is that the aircraft DLC prices stated are too high, but the whole concept of a marketplace is that prices can be easily altered to fit the market. Consider selling content on DVDs - you have to print boxes, print some sort of basic leaflets at least - you are immediately aiming for a specific price point. The online market gets rid of the whole distribution chain - and I do feel for stores like PC Aviator in Melbourne - this is going to hurt them - but content MAKERS are going to be very happy. All of a sudden the market is easily available, and you can respond easily to it!Say you notice 737 repaints seem to be popular (they appear to have been popular for a couple of years now) - you churn out a few 737 repaints and make some dollars - great! Market gets flooded with 737 repaints (gee, haven't seen that before...) demand will drop, you won't sell as many, and you have to drop your price... OR suddenly you notice Transavia Airtrucks are trending, and do a really cool repaint for them, and you start making cash again!Secondly - MS aren't going to have a team of 50 or 100 people churning out aircraft, scenery, etc. They are going to have two smaller teams - a team of MODERATORS who check content, maybe rate it - this team runs the store. The second team will be DEVELOPERS who will keep refining the truly important part - the CODEBASE. The developers won't get caught up in aircraft or scenery design beyond what they do for the SDK (I am sure there will be one).This is EXACTLY the model Apple use in the App Store, and EXACTLY the model Valve use in the Steam Workshop, and EXACTLY the model used in the Android store. Heck it's even close to what Amazon do. Amazon don't write books - they sell books (content) and develop a brilliant way of delivering that content (efficient and fast shipping) and go further by creating NEW MARKETS by investing development money in NEW CONTENT DELIVERY METHODS - the Kindle. (Which is BRILLIANT - I read more now than ever before)I'm really on a roll here - I have NO IDEA what MS are planning, but it is fun to meta-game what they might be doing!Imagine this - in 12 months time, Flight 2 is released! This is the same paradigm as Apple's iOS development. You've got the original free codebase, you've bought some DLC - suddenly your codebase updates. You get better framerates, and Flight now fully supports Nvidia's new 3D image-projection system - your DLC is STILL COMPATIBLE, or it AUTO UPDATES to be compatible!Thirdly - MS still own all the assets to their previous scenery and code. There is nothing to say they won't release the US states one-by-one with full challenge and missions for $20 each - and thats $1,000 sure. HOWEVER they can ALSO release a US-continent 'basepack' for, say $20 that gives you scenery at say FSX level for the whole continent, and you can buy the 'Extra' packs on a state-by-state basis. For instance I have sworn to never set foot in Texas, yet I'd love to see Montana, so I can buy the Montana pack, and continue to ignore Texas. Why buy scenery for a territory I never fly in?It makes sense to me that MS will produce some base 'continent packs' - say Europe, Africa, Oceania, Nth / Sth America, the Poles, and release smaller 'Detail Packs' for denser areas - just like in the FS4 days.I bought the FS Global 2008 Terrain scenery, which covers the whole earth, yet I've only really flown over Europe, bits of the US, Australia and the Pacific. Africa, Eurasia, Sth America - never been there. It makes sense to only buy the bits you need, and it makes sense to provide a marketplace that can deliver content in that way. Global would never have been able to give me a custom set of terrain for a fractional cost via DVD, probably not even online, as the overheads are too high for them to package their content like that. THIS is the power of the Flight Store - it can provide that level of content customization.I'm excited just imagining the possibilities - hopefully MS have the same ideas, and know what kind of a marketplace, and ecosystem they can create.It also puts an end to the horrific amount of content piracy that is the black side of the Flight Sim economy - which can only be a good thing.TLDR: Market forces will bring sensible pricing to DLC, auto-updates become possible, more money able to be spent on development rather than content; piracy reduced significantly, big opportunities for content makers in new era of Flight Simming.

[tom79 6]

So Feb 29th it is then. Expect to find me somewhere over Hawaii's main island trying to find those darn geocaches...corinoco, I share your opionion. I also loved the missions in FSX and I still have sleepless nights sometimes because I never finished that Baltic Sea Rescue.I think Flight will be nice to have on the hard disk for some casual flying every now and then. I also like the competetive aspects that it brings to the table for us armchair pilots.I wouldn't even expect MS to open the Flight store to 3rd party developers. But who cares? I don't intend to spend a fortune on Flight either. Just a few bucks necessary to get new missions.And why are all the die-hard flightsimmers so negative towards Flight? Because it didn't turn out to be FS11? Limited sceneries and planes? No 3rd party content?Talk about RoF or DCS Warthog or the upcoming Jet Thunder. Nobody is complaining about those, because nobody considered them as a replacement for FSX.Folks, enjoy FSX. MS can't take that away from you. Maybe you'll even enjoy Flight on the side. And if you want a next-gen sim, there's still XP10 that gets better and better every day.The glass is still half full.

[simmerhead 885]

I liked the mission element in FSX. It had great potential. The problem with FLIGHT isn't what it is, it is what it isn't. Yes it is futile focusing on what will never be, but it is impossible when I know what we have and were we could have gone.FSX is old and I don't want it anymore. I want FS11 - so shoot me. They could have made FLIGHT into FS11. It's really simple. Make a menu where one can select game/career mode or free flight/professional mode. That way everybody would have been catered for. Instead Microsoft has decided to turn their back on all the loyal fans of the franchise that has actively supported the franchise through many years. Instead they have pulled a 180 and targeted a completely different audience.

Edited February 8, 2012 by simmerhead

[corinoco 22]

Make a menu where one can select game/career mode or free flight/professional mode.

I think thats EXACTLY what MS will do, in one way or another. Maybe that choice will be a $15 purchase from the store, in which case you just bought FS11 for $15!I would rather a dynamic marketplace ecosystem with continual codebase development over a once-every-five-years $150 purchase. (FSX + FSX Accel totalled about $150)For all the criticism, I don't think MS are dumb - they wouldn't be where they are today if they were. They might be targeting new markets, but I don't immediately equate that to simplifying the experience for everyone. MS Office is FAR easier to use on a day-to-day basis since the advent of the 'ribbon' - which was widely ridiculed at the time - but the full functionality still exists beneath the simple interface.I seem to recall the EOTTAWKI when FSX came out too, especially due to the lack of backward compatibility - yet here we are today FSX as the market leader.Fresh fans, fresh faces, a fresh approach to Flight Simming - I'm looking forward to FUN!

[newthog 0]

I liked the mission element in FSX. It had great potential. The problem with FLIGHT isn't what it is, it is what it isn't. Yes it is futile focusing on what will never be, but it is impossible when I know what we have and were we could have gone.FSX is old and I don't want it anymore. I want FS11 - so shoot me. They could have made FLIGHT into FS11. It's really simple. Make a menu where one can select game/career mode or free flight/professional mode. That way everybody would have been catered for. Instead Microsoft has decided to turn their back on all the loyal fans of the franchise that has actively supported the franchise through many years. Instead they have pulled a 180 and targeted a completely different audience.

I empathize with what you say your problems are with Flight - not what it is, but what it isn't. I'm not so sure Microsoft has turned their back on loyal fans, for a couple of reasons. When ACES was shut, I thought that was the end - at least Microsoft is trying something in aviation again. Also, we truly do not know the full extent of what Flight is meant to become - what it's aim will be.I feel - and my feelings and $8 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks - that there will be more to MSFlight (hopefully much more) than we anticipate. I may be wrong, but I am hopeful... Edited February 8, 2012 by newthog

[Attila 2]

Flight's aim is simple. Instead of releasing the whole world, some 20 airports in higher detail, higher detail Hawaii and a dozen or so planes for $75-85, they want to sell you a high detail Hawaii and 4 planes for $20+$15 = $35 and continue to sell you planes for $15-$30 and scenery for $20+. The missions and challenges are incidental in that they have to put these in to get the target audience to want to buy the new stuff.The problem is that there isn't anything really to do in Hawaii. Most of the airports are dirt strips in the middle of nowhere. There is no tower and there are no nav aids for any of these. If you want to do a flight of say 100+nm, you have to fly over water. Great scenery that is. In a Maule a 140nm trip is going to take 1:30 from one deserted airport to another.If you enjoy flying in bad weather, it will have to be into the airports with nav aids and there are only a few of these. Just look up Google Earth. Even these airports are rather simple, except for Honolulu, but without AI planes, it will look like a ghost town.If there will be AI, what will it cost? $8 a plane or 4? 40$ for 10 planes? In what livery? Orbit?Flight is late to the party. It should have been done 10 years ago, when people would have been happy with a high detail island chain, but now that FS9 and FSX have shown what can be done, Flight is taking a big step backwards in replayability and in many other areas.

[Glynn 405]

Corinoco and Rich - thanks for the great posts! You both did a great job expressing my expectations and anticipations for MSFlight!

HelloThe one thing the three of you have in common is that you have not used the Beta, and it shows

[Dillon 2,208]

TLDR; I'm going to get Flight on the 29th, I will get the Hawaiian full pack, but not the other DLC at the present time. I have some trepidation about the DLC prices so far, but am optimistic that Microsoft will open the store as a moderated addon store to 3rd party developers, including hobbyists, and will include a system for payments / micropayments. I also like FUN; which is the primary goal of a PC-based flight simulator.PS, I'm sick of seeing that silly laughing smiley icon - it's not big, it's not clever, it's not funny.

You wouldn't by any chance be on the Flight beta team?

[rtodepart 761]

Corinoco and Rich just wait till the 29 . simple as that. We are on the same boat as before .THE MORE MONEY YOU THROW THE BETTER IT IS.

[Rush1169 0]

Corinco and RichLP - I'm in your camp and I want to thank both of you for posting your thoughts on the direction of Flight. Flight will be FS11, 12, 13, 14, 15, etc. On February 29th, it'll be FS1-NG (Flight Simulator 1 - Next Generation). We get to take the ride all over again and it's going to be exciting. Remember how exciting it was with each new release of Flight Sim? Back then, we had to wait years between releases as the economic model pretty much mandated that approach, but today we can wake up the next day and see an update that takes it to FS1.1 or FS2 or see a new plane added or scenery area or challenge or ATC. Remember when a jet powered plane was added? How about when ATC came online? Exciting times ahead.It's surprising that so many people think that Feb 29th indicates the FINAL PRODUCT. I know MS doesn't think that way. I'm am so thankful that the series hasn't been cancelled (as I did a few years ago). It's going to be FUN to go along for the ride while Flight evolves from it's humble beginnings on Feb 29th to what it will eventually become. Feb 29th is not the end of Flight, it's the beginning of a new flight simulator. One that won't crash-to-desktop on final after an three hour flight or reduce your experience to a slide-show.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Rush1169