I thought it was just me being peculiar, inverting mouse pitch first thing.

Glad I'm not alone

Just another bit of info from the Devs !

 

MAX Setting in Options menu ??

"Maximum is only available on 64-bit OSes, or if you enable the /3GB switch in your 32-bit OS."

 

Fred.

 

When they say "maximum" is only available on 64-bit OSes, what do they mean by that?

 

I have win7 64-bit and I have "Maximum" available for Shadow Quality, Sharpness, and Scenery Density options but only "High" is available for Texture Quality and Weather Quality options.

I have been a beta tester since Jan 5th and although the beta closed on Feb 14th, the Devs decided to keep the beta forum open so that we could still give feedback etc.

Today, they have given us the go-ahead to post on other forums so that the release of Flight might go as smooth as possible.

 

First of all some known issues and quotes from the Dev Team about them.

1.Brakes Axis ??

" We weren't able to fix binding the brakes to joystick axes for final release. We will be fixing it for a future update. As a work around you can bind the brakes to buttons and it should work, although I know this is not ideal."

2.Water Reflection ??

"You should see clouds, terrain, autogen and scenery all reflecting on Maximum settings now. For Medium and above settings we also increased the resolution of the reflection map, rewrote the water shader with a different lighting and reflection model and the wave and bump map parameters were tuned a bit."

3.Wet Runways ??

"We actually removed the wet look because it didn't look very good and caused problems in many cases."

 

I will post more when I know more !

 

I personally really enjoyed the beta phase and I do think that Flight has a great future as a Flight Simulator. Why do I think this ?

1. MS can update the base platform when and where it is needed. (the beta was updated once during the testing)

2. I am now certain that Flight will have ATC, AI etc.........

3. By seperating the Platform from the Content, users can freely purchase the things/parts that interest them the most.

 

This might be worth mentioning as well !

The files that we were testing were dated Jan 1st 2012 (after the jan 17th update) and that was all we saw up to now.

The release version files are dated Jan 31st so what the devs are seeing now is a month ahead of what we all see now.

 

If anyone has any questions about the Beta...........Fire away !!

 

Fred.

 

This is VERY exciting news! thank you.

Posted by the Community Manager on the beta forum. (I am posting it here with permission)

********************************************************************************************************

Hi everyone!

 

Now that we’ve gotten the title update out the door, I wanted to respond to some of the opinions and comments I've been reading about the release of the Zero.

 

Before I go into that, I want to make clear that we’re very proud of the work that went into making sure the Zero meets our high quality bar for the way our planes look, sound and feel, and we’re pleased about the response as indicated by purchase numbers.

 

But since there's a lot of speculation in various community channels as to our motives and decision-making in releasing content, here are some answers. I realize it’s long, but if you’d like a peek behind the curtain into our decisions, why we talk about data so much, etc., here it is. I’m going to try to paraphrase some of the questions, comments, objections, anxieties and so on that I’m hearing from parts of our player community (not necessarily from you guys, but I figure you'd like to know too :-) ).

 

Why release another basic model when people have been commenting on your blog and Facebook page that they prefer deluxe planes (with cockpits)?

 

Please keep in mind that it’s been only four weeks since we launched (and released the P-51). Work on the Zero was started before Flight was released, because we felt it was important to set a regular rhythm to our content releases, as opposed to releasing some content then going dark while we gathered data and feedback and reacted to it. The release of a plane is preceded not just by the actual production of the content, but by testing, the certification process, and the process of getting it onto LIVE. There’s also the time it takes to get reliable data and interpret it.

 

So, it was always going to be the Zero that came next. Our next DLC plane is also already locked.

 

Have you been sensitive to potential concerns about the Zero?

 

Every word, image, outfit and gesture in our games gets reviewed by our geopolitical risk assessment team who assesses the potential to offend people in any region in which we're shipping the product. The product team then decides whether the level of risk is acceptable, or whether to remove the content from the game.

 

The Zero was no different. In the end, it was decided that since the Zero in our game has no weapons and can't do any damage to the environment, and it’s been over half a century since Pearl Harbor, it represented an acceptable level of risk. In addition, a number of historical societies fly Zeros with historically-accurate livery similar to that featured in Flight. Ultimately, we’re a game about flying, and the Zero is an interesting plane to fly.

 

You keep saying you’re “gathering data.” Why is it taking so long?

 

We are listening and adjusting as necessary. However, the type of data that's useful to us takes time to gather.

 

One of the reasons for this is a statistical concept called sample size. (Sorry in advance to people who already know this – please be patient with me!) Broadly speaking, when you’re trying to understand the behavior of a group, the more members of that group you observe, the greater the precision with which you can draw conclusions about their behavior. Similarly, in many cases, the greater the length of the study, the more data you have on behavior trends. More data = more reliable conclusions.

 

Flight’s been available for a month, and we’re just now reaching the point where we have enough data about our launch content to see trends rather than blips.

 

But your users are telling you what they want. Isn’t user feedback the best type of data to have?

 

I genuinely believe that most of the people who write to us or about us are 100% sincere. The problem is that sometimes what they’re saying doesn’t reflect what they’re doing, or what they believe to be a strongly-held majority opinion isn’t actually in sync with what the majority of our players are doing. (I don’t want to get sidetracked into a statistics/psychology discussion, but if you’re interested, you can do a search on some of the following terms: self-reporting inaccuracy, confirmation bias, attitude polarization, and group polarization, which are all things I have to account for when I try to summarize community attitudes.)

 

For example:

• Out of all the people who’ve written in to give us a list of essential features for Flight’s success, I have yet to see two lists that match exactly.
  
• There are quite a few people claiming that they bought the P-51 but won’t buy the Zero, for various reasons. Yet 90% of the people who buy the Zero have also bought the P-51, and the Zero’s numbers for the length of time it’s been out are comparable to those of the P-51.
  

That’s why, in order to make sound business decisions, we compare what people say to what they actually do. We also look at how the data changes over time.

 

So does this mean it’s useless to talk to you about the game? You’re only listening to your in-game data and not to us?

 

Absolutely not. We are absolutely listening to our users.

 

User feedback is itself a source of data. It’s also useful for interpreting the other data we get about user behavior. Those in-game data streams can tell us if people are playing one mission way more than another, for example, but they can’t necessarily tell us why. That’s where the art and science of collecting the data, interpreting it based on what users are saying and other sources of information, and deciding how to change the game in response based on the expertise and creativity of our team members comes into play.

 

Okay, then how do I ensure I get listened to?

 

Well, the above should give you some sense of how we use customer feedback. Game data shows us what people do, feedback helps us understand why they do it. If people aren’t finishing a mission, for example, bug reports and support requests/feedback emails can tell us if that’s because there’s a bug that’s stopping them.

 

So, if you want to give us feedback that’s useful, letting us know when things don’t work, versus when you’re just not enjoying them, is helpful, as well as telling us what you’d like to see in future updates. Jon’s feedback threads are a really helpful example of this (thanks, Jon!), as are some of the threads on AVSIM.

 

But if you are listening, why haven’t you made any changes?

 

We have made changes, and are continuing to; big changes take time, and before we invest that time we need enough information to make good decisions on whether they’re the right changes. One change that’s in process is that – although at this time we have nothing to announce – due to the consistent and numerous requests for TrackIR, we’re actively working on putting it in a future update.

 

Finally, the quickest feedback-result loop continues to be fixing issues with Flight that are making it difficult for users to play, as we’ve done in our title update. We’ll continue to make changes as necessary to make Flight the best product it can be.

************************************************************************

 

Fred.

Great info Fred, thanks for getting permission and sharing with us!

Did you ask them when they're opening a forum that all Flight users can post to and read?

Did you ask them when they're opening a forum that all Flight users can post to and read?

Yes, that has been asked a lot since the beta started.

It looks like the forum on Steam is the forum they have chosen.

 

Fred.

Did you ask them when they're opening a forum that all Flight users can post to and read?

 

Here is the one at Steam

 

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1375

Here is the one at Steam

 

Well just great, all I need is yet another forum to keep up with!

 

Thanks for the link!

Yeah, I signed up for Steam Forum access a couple of days ago. Verified my email address and am still getting "Your account has been activated but you are currently in the moderation queue to be added to the forum."

 

Really? It's been two days. They have somebody who's job is to sit at a computer and press "OK" for each person who wants to join their forum? How long does it typically take for them to get around to doing that?

Yes, that has been asked a lot since the beta started.

It looks like the forum on Steam is the forum they have chosen.

 

Interesting choice. MS, much bigger than Valve for sure, has already an official site of the game with blogs, an official FB page, countless "neutral" specialised forums on flight simulation, but they "chose" the forum of a commercial partner (and partially competitor as online gaming service) as "official forum"?

And the interesting thing is that they never care to directly answer to the posts of the users on their existing channels, besides some hidden beta forum.

Singular strategy, really.

 

A.

Was it me or did i hear an echo over there? , 7 mods listed and not much else.

 

Another marketing outlet , facinating , I need ponder its portent, as its unlikely to have been planned from the outset it indicates to me sales via GFWL were perhaps wanting and this is plan B, and the echo, was that plan c in the distance? , ill wait till i see the pike being hammered into the ground outside Redmond before settling in for the show...

Hi Folks

 

Was it me or did i hear an echo over there? , 7 mods listed and not much else.

STEAM is slow at activating user signups.

 

Another marketing outlet , facinating ,

I need ponder its portent,

as its unlikely to have been planned from the outset

it indicates to me sales via GFWL were perhaps wanting and this is plan B,

Assumptions make....

 

FLIGHT's team have been using/testing on STEAM for the past 3 years.

 

HTH

ATB

Paul

STEAM is slow at activating user signups.

 

Obviously. I've now been waiting thirty-six hours. Even my Support Ticket remains unanswered after sixteen hours. For that matter, some of the MSGS devs haven't had their accounts activated yet!

 

I am not impressed with Steam or Valve at all.

Maybe they are just Steamrolling us Bill ! (......or should that be Railroading us ?)

My guess is that they are very wary of us old crazy flight simmers and are running a CIA-INTERPOL-MI5 crosscheck just to be sure.

 

:LMAO:

 

Fred.