Flight Review

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

But on the second thought, MS would treat their customers with a little more respect.

Please explain the meaning of that.. I can interpret it a couple of different ways.

[armchairpil0t 0]

Please explain the meaning of that.. I can interpret it a couple of different ways.

Well how about this passage:

Others, more open-minded, would like to give Flight a try; they look forward to it, but also do not yet see any content that could satisfy them. They shall just have to bide their time and wait for their wish to be released.

I don't remember Microsoft (or in fact any company) ever suggesting that people who didn't immediately get their latest and greatest product were not open-minded enough.And another quote from the review:

It is normal to resist change, even when beneficial. This is a common human trait and the reaction to Flight was to be expected.

To me, this kind of suggests that users who don't see any benefit for them are short-sighted and their thinking is eclipsed by their human weaknesses.In my opinion, a review should just concentrate on the product and not contain any rhetoric denigrating its critics. Play the ball, not the opponent.Besides, I find it questionable to have a beta tester review a product, since beta testers are usually biased towards it - after all, they were a part of the team and it's the fruit of their work too. It's almost like letting a Flight developer from Microsoft write a review. I understand that it probably painful for the team to read negative opinions, but that's just life :)Or at least have it written in bold letters in front of the review: This review was written by a beta tester of Microsoft Flight. This would at least explain its attitude without people wondering why someone starts the review explaining why he is right and they are wrong just one day from the release of MS Flight. Edited March 1, 2012 by armchairpil0t

[Illegitimi non carborundum 4]

LuisI liked the review it had all the information that I required about the new release, and it filled in some missing gaps in my knowledge about the inner workings of Flight.I received this today from MS Flight which shows unequivocally that this is only the beginning:https://news.microso...oft-flight.aspx "The release of Flight represents the culmination of three years of hard work and experimentation as we worked to reimagine the 30-year-old Flight Simulator franchise, push forward the evolution of the PC flying experience, and bring the thrill and wonder of flight to whole new audiences.""We’ve only scratched the surface of how we can deliver on our vision. There are a lot of opportunities on the horizon to continue to evolve the experience, and the team is already hard at work designing ways to fulfill the promise those opportunities represent. We’re excited about continuing to provide new and interesting ways to fly.The future is bright. We hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve made so far and can’t wait to show you what we’re working on next."Echoing your sentimentsRegardsPeterH

Edited March 1, 2012 by peterhayes

[Murray_CHYZ 1]

Like most of you, I was disappointed (angry actually) that MS had not continued with the next version of "Flight Simulator". I felt BETRADE to be honest... hurt to the core. When this "thing" called Flight was announced, I felt like barfing. How dare MS add insult to injury I thought? The dirty !*&$#%^#! Well, I've downloaded the "thing" and my first impression was, “it’s nothing' but a piece of #$&* game for kids! Then, I read this review…As I read, my feelings of disappointment and anger slowly turned to feelings of hope and optimism. Why? Because deep down inside, I want to believe that FSX won’t be the last version of FS I ever own.So, I made a decision. I have decided to “support Flight”. I bought the Maule, and the rest of Hawaii. From now on, the “glass is going to be half full… not half empty”. Only time will tell if I made a mistake.Would anyone like to join me for a “coin hunt”! LOL!Later guys!

[drohanp 0]

I find the review fair, and realistically hopeful.I find the reviewer brave too. It is a lose/lose situation for a reviewer...no matter what you say, someone always disagrees with you in a review :)I am not a half glass full or empty person...Therefore here is my nickel.FLIGHT will attract new, more intense simmers like ourselves. In the end, they will gravitate to FSX (or FS11 as some of us add-on addicts call it). For that, I thank MS for moving us forward, and in some ways even better than FSX. Thanks Luis for stepping forward. :Kiss:Patrick

[petedob 3]

"We’ve only scratched the surface of how we can deliver on our vision. There are a lot of opportunities on the horizon to continue to evolve the experience, and the team is already hard at work designing ways to fulfill the promise those opportunities represent. We’re excited about continuing to provide new and interesting ways to fly.The future is bright. We hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve made so far and can’t wait to show you what we’re working on next."

That sounds vague and slightly unsure! It's obvious Microsoft has their work cut out for them if they intend to engineer and market Flight to the larger flight sim community.

[cstrosser 0]

LuisI liked the review it had all the information that I required about the new release, and it filled in some missing gaps in my knowledge about the inner workings of Flight.I received this today from MS Flight which shows unequivocally that this is only the beginning:https://news.microso...oft-flight.aspx"The release of Flight represents the culmination of three years of hard work and experimentation as we worked to reimagine the 30-year-old Flight Simulator franchise, push forward the evolution of the PC flying experience, and bring the thrill and wonder of flight to whole new audiences.""We’ve only scratched the surface of how we can deliver on our vision. There are a lot of opportunities on the horizon to continue to evolve the experience, and the team is already hard at work designing ways to fulfill the promise those opportunities represent. We’re excited about continuing to provide new and interesting ways to fly.The future is bright. We hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve made so far and can’t wait to show you what we’re working on next."Echoing your sentimentsRegardsPeterH

Let's be honest for a second. Many of the very serious flight simmers have spent a lot of money on hardware, addons, and software. I try not to think about how much I've spent on this hobby, but I get so much enjoyment out of it, I don't really care! At the end of the day, it becomes an investment of sorts. With that said, people who aren't satisfied with MS Flight will continue to invest and spend their money elsewhere. To me, that decreases the likelihood that someone will switch to a new simulator in the end. Look at the # of people still on FS 2002/4. To spend so much $$$, only to find much of it unusable, is a hard pill to swallow. The lack of backwards compatibility will inevitably be an issue with many people. In my opinion, being realistic about this is realizing that Microsoft changed their focus. I believe MS kept their message incredibly vague on purpose.

[Claviateur 789]

I was also part of the Beta team although I was not the hardcore beta tester but contributed as much as my interest could guide me through the one build we received of Flight.Many of the beta testers I met on the test forum were unfortunately sort of dreamers, continuously convincing themselves that we will get more builds to test and these builds will contain more features until the full FSX features appear in the release version... They were certainly disappointed big time when the beta testing phase was over with only what we saw available in Flight...Others were convinced that although we were not testing the "FSX features" they will be there in the release version... You can imagine their disappointment as well when the game was available the 29th...Now there is a 3rd category of dreamers, those who will say that DLC will bring all what FSX had... A whole world to fly over? Detailed weather? ATC and Flight planning and an animated world with cars, boats and birds and A.I planes and and and...I am also afraid the 3rd category will be disapointed. I hope I am wrong this time!Flight concept is certainly smart, they feed the audience one bite at a time, and look and see how their "stomach" digest it... This way MS can have full control on the future of the game, they can finetune what to release as DLC based on the market response. Hence MS is not commiting itself to any promise or any announcement regarding long term DLC type... because I think, it is not certain and DLC decisions might be changing continuously...And now the question is, will Flight find a successful and profitable future in the big gaming scene as MS wishes to... I hope so for the survival of the flying entertainment PC genre but I doubt it will... Any civilian flying game can have fans among the aviation enthousiasts... FS or a simplified version of FS needs a spirit who loves flying... And if these spirits exist in the general gaming community, they are already either using an FS version or an XP one...What I still think might be a fair audience, are the young ones who like aviation but are intimidated by the technical simulators we use...A scenario among others: Could it be possible that after hitting the wall (from one side non interested harcore simmers and from the other side gamers who are non aviation fans) and of having a not so big community embracing Flight therefore not allot of money flowing and therefore no points of making DLC as limited regions vs missions, and maybe i say, that MS will try to find a slavation ground for FLight and then change its strategy and release a plain big world with FSX plain airports, some SDK tools, FSX ATC salvaged with other little options brough from the 6 years old simulator?!.Could it be that with this scenario, MS will find that the old faithful MS FS fans/geeks (like me :) ) are the only ones who could make its title avoid a big flop commercialy and also as a marketing reputation of some kind...Here I am another type of dreamer :))Yet it's a scenario and other than drawing scenarios in our heads, Flight is and will remain an obscure yet smart marketing scheme that can shift one way or the other and who knows, that can simply stall or even crash...To be back to the review, it did not bother me, it had some mature thoughts but at the same time, it reminded me of the thoughts of many beta testers whom I had the chance to meet on the Flight beta forumAs for the game concept: I have nothing against DLC games or against the fact the MS decided that Flight is a simplified version of their FS... However my major problem with Flight is that it was stripped from the engine advancements that FS got until FSX... In other words, the satatic world of FS is back with no life or animation on earth. Nothing moves... And of course this can help performance... Yet this is something that I never saw in games engines evolution! (i.e: reverting back to the primitive aspect of the engine to help performance)... How can it be that MS chose this shortcut? Well there is a clear answer that everyone might know: To help performance and make FLight avoid the FSX issues and therefore make the prospects avoid being scared... However again, in my opinion, stripping a game engine from a series of technological evolutions to help a new version of the game gets positive performance is certainly a sort of cheating!!... We usualy optimize for performance, we rewrite part of the core code but removing innovative ideas, that Laminar XP for example are now starting to implement is really sad... And a cheap shortcut...I wished if the reviewer had addressed the previous point... He mentioned it but did not comment on it at all...And by the way, I have to mention that MS was nice to give me at the end of the beta testing phase, even if I was not the most involved among testers, all the DLC content available for purchase now, for free. So I installed it and I tried to give another chance and like Flight with this content but unfortunately my flying session in it was short... Just like during the beta... In fact, I had also to close it and rush to install Outerra engine that was released as a demo. And I spent more than a couple of hours amazed at the beauty of this primitive but breathtaking Outerra world... A world that will hopefuly be the birth nest of a future flight simulator... And its authors are clearly taking it toward this path... Until now at least...All in all, Flight is not for me, for now...And yes, I still use FSX as my only salvation for now!Cheers!

Edited March 2, 2012 by Claviateur

[Robert W 3]

I'm loving all the forum comments written about Flight but I have to chip in: 1. Flight is a game, it's not a flight simulator. We shouldn't be comparing apples and oranges. 2. The author volunteered to write about the game for AVSIM. He is not a staff member, he is a fellow simmer like yourselves. He was also part of the voluntary BETA team. 3. The author's opinion is his own, not AVSIM's. He reported on what he experienced with the game. Your results may vary and your opinions are your own. Not everyone agrees with everyone else. That's why they are called opinions. 4. I love the english language. Many say that the author is "biased". The Oxford Dictionary says that a bias is to enspire with prejudice. Everytime you make a decision and stick with it, you are biased towards that decision. Therefore we are all a victim of bias. 5. To make it clear, I'm biased towards FSX and X-plane. I don't like Flight either....there I said it. 6. During our visit to Redmond, the Microsoft team told us straight out that this is not aimed at us hard core Flight Sim enthusiasts, it's for the unwashed (my terminology) who have never experienced flying a plane before.

Edited March 2, 2012 by ReviewsEditor
forgot something

[tf51d 284]

2. The author volunteered to write about the game for AVSIM. He is not a staff member, he is a fellow simmer like yourselves. He was also part of the voluntary BETA team. 3. The author's opinion is his own, not AVSIM's. He reported on what he experienced with the game. Your results may vary and your opinions are your own. Not everyone agrees with everyone else. That's why they are called opinions

I'm confused now! Your now saying this is his own opinion, not AVSIM's, yet it's in the form of an official AVSIM Commercial Review? If that's the case wouldn't the Readers Product review section be the more appropriate place to post this then?

[n4gix 4,947]

I am not really fussed about Flight.....it is what it is.I chuckled a bit when I read this:Yes, we can display all Navaids, they are all there. And if you mouse-over any of them on the Map, you will see the Nav frequencies and hear the Morse. Now why would the developers have bothered putting Navaids in an arcade game for kids? They are all operational and you can fly all published approaches with IFR-capable aircraft, although the Icon and the Stearman are not.How does the reviewer know if you can actually "fly all published approaches" if the aircraft provided are not IFR-capable?

Well, two of the aircraft (Maule and RV-6) are "IFR-capable" so Luis' statement is absolutely correct...

[Claviateur 789]

...6. During our visit to Redmond, the Microsoft team told us straight out that this is not aimed at us hard core Flight Sim enthusiasts, it's for the unwashed (my terminology) who have never experienced flying a plane before.

Interesting to know because this contradicts clearly the MS public announcements to appease the FS enthousiasts :) Marketing was playing it safe when saying in the press releases that it will please both new and FS enthousiasts or something like that...I also think MS would want, to try at least, to pull the life tube of FSX, I have the feeling that with the public announcement as well as the other marketing strategies for Flight, MS will try to end the healthy add-on development market of FSX and make its supporters shift to Flight.And I feel that if MS fails to do so (attract us FS enthousiasts to Flight as planned), the whole saga could become a funny competition between MS Flight and FSX... Can you immagine in the upcoming months, MS competing with its own product that got out of its control (FSX I mean)?! Or more precisely with the add-ons of its own product, FSX ... :)It could be a very interesting situation to watch!Cheers

[ahuimanu 50]

Flight is FREE. Download and try it out for yourself.

I have done just this - it is what it is.

[TedG 1]

Well, two of the aircraft (Maule and RV-6) are "IFR-capable" so Luis' statement is absolutely correct...

Thanks for the clarification.

[petedob 3]

6. During our visit to Redmond, the Microsoft team told us straight out that this is not aimed at us hard core Flight Sim enthusiasts, it's for the unwashed (my terminology) who have never experienced flying a plane before.

...which is why we've seen disagreement in this forum about Luis's review. His writing suggests Flight is an evolution that flight sim enthusiasts should accept.