Why are so many people feeling so bad about Flight being made to be played even by normal people? Now why should that be problem as long as the flight experience is good enough with assists off and joystick in hand? From my point of view that is not a correct argument - if there is something to be criticized in that respect it is accuracy of flight model and systems in aircrafts. Thanks (for example) to the check-lists I have digged deeper into learning how aircraft operate then ever before. These rants about well-made controlling with mouse seems to me to be narcist a bit - I am far better at operating airplanes, and no-one inferior should be allowed to that with ease. Now why? It's only a way to bring in new people - and well, I still remember my beginnings :)

What do I look like dropping everything because they came out with a game that my 8 year old grandkid can play?

Mr.midnight:Of course Flight is a game. FSX is a game. That space shuttle simulation I sometimes play is a game. FSX even has the same kind of game elements that Flight has, a fact few people seem to remember.The shuttle simulation is a real sim. It has full control panels with all the pertinent switches working. You can take a shuttle from cold and dark on the launch pad to cold and dark on the runway, and match orbits and retrieve a satellite in between. FSX is a sim that has the 737 NGX, and any bets that the shuttle sim is an even more complex system's simulator? Flight is also a sim, something that many people seem to ignore. And while I won't ever fly a shuttle, and you won't ever fly a 737 NG (only one person on this forum ever has, far as I know), almost any of us could fly an Icon.I've been doing serious flying since the first days I had Flight. Following all the rules for uncontrolled airports (I prefer to avoid large controlled airports myself), using proper procedures, proper checklists. I seldom ever see AI in FSX, because I fly off the beaten path. I stay out of controlled airspace so I don't care about ATC. I don't need an autopilot to do an instrument landing.Yeah, I'd like to fly out of my local airport, but I can do that in real life, or in FSX.There are no brick walls around Hawaii. People have flown to other islands, and you could conceivably fly the Mustang to the mainland, with a bit of careful fuel and engine management.I'm a serious simmer. I also enjoy flying. I enjoy Flight. I enjoy it for what it is, not put it down for what it isn't. I do flight plans in FSX, and if you don't do some serious flight planning in a clandestine cargo mission, you'll find yourself intercepted. Even flying the Icon for fun, I do proper descent profiles, for example. Don't need instruments, as it's all VFR and it's hard to get lost in Hawaii. If you want to do IFR filght, the Maule and RV-6 both are equipped for it, and all the navaids are there and usable.It's ok that some people don't care for Flight. No one has a problem with that. You may notice quite a few people on this forum originally didn't like it, but have found it to be a great sim and game. And it IS a sim, as serious as you want to make it. It just isn't a 737 NGX or a space shuttle. It's as serious a GA sim as I've ever seen.t's also a lot of fun, just like real world flying is a lot of fun. People have written about doing things that I haven't done in a flight sim since the earliest days on the Apple 2 or MSFS version 1.0. FSX took a lot of fun out of it, and Flight puts it back.No one's saying you have to drop FSX, or FS9 or anything else. Flight is there in addition to those. But curiously, I haven't wanted to play FSX since I started Flight beta testing the end of January. I only loaded it once to compare FSX Hawaii to Flight. (And actually, I prefer FSX's default autogen with the sliders at max.)IHow did you do on the landing challenges? That's not a game at all. The only "gamey" element is the pointer to the runway, and honestly it's not that useful to getting landed in gusty crosswinds at dusk or bad weather.Hook

Why are so many people feeling so bad about Flight being made to be played even by normal people?

To me the problem isn't that Flight is made more accessible. Many of the user friendly features like better GUI, automated checklists, automatic saving of aircraft's last position, imrpoved framerates etc. are all good! My problem is that the gameplay is unstructured and lacks clear goals, story lines and sense of achievement. It blends together unrealistic flying missions/challenges with realistic ones, and most of the missions are boring and repetitive.It doesn't really matter if the flight model is better than that of previous verisions of Flight Simulator, because so many other realistic aspects of flying aren't there. Also, the graphical improvements doesn't really do anything for the game since it is without a living dynamic world.The missions and challenges aren't any better than those of 99 cent games from the bargin bin. Flying a passenger or cargo is like flying with a tape recorder or a voice inside your head. Nothing ever enters your aircraft. Flight is the flying game where you - the pilot - is the only living being left on Earth and fly invisible cargo and passangers around the Hawaiian islands. Because that is what you do when all life except yours is extinct?I think giving this game 5 out of 10 is a pretty good score all things considered. It is a score reflecting how little Microsoft has invested into this game, yet giving it the benifit of the doubt in hope of better things to come.

Let me summarize the IGN review: "Waaa, waaa, waaa, I wanted FSX 2, and this isn't it". IGN once again cements its reputation for producing horse manure in large quantities.

Flight was designed in my opinion for the folks that are not serious simmers, just folks that want to enjoy Flying that’s all.

I partly agree. I'm a serious simmer. I own a stick, throttle and pedals. I have Track IR, and I've memorized the start up sequence in Black Shark. But at the moment, my favorite sim is Flight, flown with a gamepad (!). It's a game with a great feeling of flight, controls just advanced enough and scenery that's the best any first party developer has ever released. It also happens to focus on bush flying, which is what I love to do in flight sims anyway, so it's right up my alley.To each his own, I love Flight, in spite of its many flaws, and I also fervently hope that this leads to MS reconsidering the decision to kill Aces and publishing FS XI sometime next year. Then we can all be happy :).

The only negative he had on the game: Too bad there's no debris when you crash into a building.

Well, he had some other, legitimate, complaints as well. But considering the ridiculous scores IGN hands out right and left, this was not a 60% review!I also got caught up on the "planes just roll around when they crash" bit. I've seen GA planes crash, and unless you're coming straight down, they DON'T blow up into tiny sparks, or fly apart spontaneously. But then, neither do people who get shot emit 50 gallons of pink smoke, like they do in Call of Duty.

My problem is that the gameplay is unstructured and lacks clear goals, story lines and sense of achievement.

That sounds more like FSX than Flight. Lessee, what do I want to do today? Well, I need two more clandestine cargo runs to get the 2 ton badge, and that'll put me close to the 4 ton total cargo badge. Which animals haven't I flown yet? Ah... ducks. I wonder what they sound like if you upset them. I should have the 500,000 XP Grinder badge and level 20 by the end of the week. At least Flight keeps score.

It doesn't really matter if the flight model is better than that of previous verisions of Flight Simulator

That only doesn't matter if you don't actually fly the plane. This is one reason why I'm glad there's not autopilot yet. Let's get people actually flying. "Better flight models don't matter." Oy.

Nothing ever enters your aircraft.

Just like FSX.

Flight is the flying game where you - the pilot - is the only living being left on Earth and fly invisible cargo and passangers around the Hawaiian islands. Because that is what you do when all life except yours is extinct?

Fly around west Texas some time and experience the same thing. In real life, that is.

It is a score reflecting how little Microsoft has invested into this game,

Just pray that Microsoft is able to grow the flight simulator market with Flight. Grow it enough to make it worthwhile to invest in FS11. Because as it is, there just aren't enough of us to make an FS11 successful... to Microsoft. They gotta at least break even.Hook

The only negative he had on the game: Too bad there's no debris when you crash into a building.

Well, he had some other, legitimate, complaints as well. But considering the ridiculous scores IGN hands out right and left, this was not a 60% review!

I was talking about my nephew. :)Hook

FSX had emphesis on realistic flight simulation, Flight doesn't, so in many areas comparing the two is futile. FSX is based on tech from 2006.

FSX had emphesis on realistic flight simulation, Flight doesn't

I totally disagree. Both have emphasis on realistic flight simulation. It's just that Flight has been made more accessable by more casual gamers in order to expand the market.Of course, your definition of "flight simulation" may be totally different from mine. For me, if it acts sufficiently like a real plane, enough to get favorable comments from real world pilots, then it's a good FLIGHT simulation. If your definition just includes "all the other stuff" like radio coms (one of the planes I trained in didn't even have a radio), AI (there are almost no aircraft that fly from the field near my house), traffic on the roads (I never noticed from the air), baby elephants (ok, I'll give you that one), moving jetways (I avoid large airports even in FSX), etc, then you're right according to your definition. I just want a FLIGHT simulator, and with Flight I've got that.Hook

FSX had emphesis on realistic flight simulation, Flight doesn't, so in many areas comparing the two is futile. FSX is based on tech from 2006.

What exactly do you mean when you say realistic? I mean a simulation is always to some degree an abstraction, and I would like to know what are the main factor for you. For me its flight model, weather, landscape, ATC, graphics as such.

What exactly do you mean when you say realistic? I mean a simulation is always to some degree an abstraction, and I would like to know what are the main factor for you. For me its flight model, weather, landscape, ATC, graphics as such.

When I say realistic I mean something suited for real world flight training in a local flying club, flying school or small airline. Flight isn't suitable for that and wasn't meant to be either. We use FS9 and the default Cessna at our local flying club for pilot training.Graphics are not high on the list, and you can check that with your national FAA or Military standards. For example most of the initial military pilot training in my country is done with a simulator with no visuals at all. It's just a dummy cockpit.

Thanks for answer, I certainly udnderstand that graphics might not be very important for some people. But I still do not understand why is Flight unrealistic and not usable for pilot training from your perspective? I thought that accurate flight model would be important...

Flight right now as it stands for me is just a game and not a sim, yes the graphics are off the charts and yes you can walk around your plane and yes you can have fun flying thru hoops and go under bridges and chase balloons. Yes you can fly around and look at all that wonderful greenery and water.And yes you can pay more money and fly all of Hawaii, and at the end of the day it is still a game.You can’t get serious with it like FSX, FS9 or X-plane.Try and fly your plane way out over the ocean you will hit a brick wall, never had that with the other Sims.Flight was designed in my opinion for the folks that are not serious simmers, just folks that want to enjoy Flying that’s all.So please don’t compare Flight with the other Sims.

I don't know- but it seems to me the folks that are most dissappointed with Fight, and most critical, are ones that seem to have been expecting Flight to be FS11, or FSX2. It is hard for me to imagine, a serious simmer that spends a lot of time with FSX, or even FS9 if that be the case, who most likely spends a lot of time on MSFS related web forums, would not be aware prior to it's release that Flight was in no way a sequel to FSX, or a competitor to say X-Plane. And I would say this both for serious flight simmers, as well as some reviewers.Recently a " serious flight simmer" came to this forum, posted that well he tried Flight for a few minutes, but it became apparent quickly that it did not have the depth or level of realism , and he had seen enough and was going back to FSX. Not the exact quote, but pretty close.I have to ask myself - how in the world can this possibly happen? How can any experienced flight simmer, install Flight and not know prior to clicking that download button that Flight is a whole new product, that is in the very early stages in say the road map and a very basic core product out the chute?I sure knew this when I downloaded it - and quite frankly, this serious experienced flight simmer was very , very surprised at what we did get, especially spending a little money and adding the Hawaii Adventure DLC.I never expected it to have the depth that it does - granted no where near the depth of say FSX - maybe a better word would be play-entertainment value, with all the challenges, jobs, missions - I also never expected to really like doing things like the aforementioned, rather than just flying around. And then add in the fantastic graphics and fantastic performance out of the " box" . And while there have been some that have had issues trying to run the program, it has been relative few - at least as exhibited on this forum . I KNEW going it, it would not have atc, would not have a flight planner, would not have AI traffic - would not have cars, trucks, humans running around. How could this surprise any serious flight simmer? I mean those debates were hashed over long before Feb 28th.So for me, since downloading on March 2nd I have been quite amazed with what Flight has turned out to be. And this still in it's newborn stage.I do agree though with Mr.midnight's last statement: Please do not compare Flight with other Flight Simulators. Especially FSX. It was not made as an extension, or the next level beyond FSX, it is a whole new product offering something else, in addition to FSX, to the flight sim community. Some may like it and choose to run it in addition to FSX - I would be in that category, while some may like it and choose to only fly it, while others may not like it at all and choose to remove it from their pc. And neither of these choices are right or wrong, and no one should be faulted whatever they choose to do.Flight is trying to reach a wider audience, remains to be seen whether it will do so. But my oh my, they certainly have a great core product to build upon should it succeed and they continue to develop.So let's have some fun, whichever direction we choose for ourselves!

When I say realistic I mean something suited for real world flight training in a local flying club, flying school or small airline. Flight isn't suitable for that and wasn't meant to be either. We use FS9 and the default Cessna at our local flying club for pilot training.

I'm going to assume that what you're looking for is not a flight simulator, but a procedure simulator. FS9 and the default Cessna are likely much better for that kind of thing than Flight.The new gamer isn't interested in procedures. He just wants to get in and fly. Same as we all did when we first started, whether it be in real airplanes or in a computer game. Except for ground school (if it was required before you could get your first actual flying lesson, it wasn't in my case), there weren't many procedures we had to deal with on those first few flights.

I thought that accurate flight model would be important...

Actually, for a procedure trainer, it's not. In fact, it may even be counterproductive and lead to "negative training."Hook

O have long used ELITE, now in v8... Excellent for IFR parctise... Visuals out-of-windshield... forget.... FM? Great inside the normal so to say IFR envelope :-)Anyway FLIGHT can actually be used for IFR parctise... All the ingredients are there, ATC being the majo limitation right now, but really not required for IFR procedures trainning (ELITE doesn't have it either unless you buy some clumsy IFR scenarios... :-)

When I say realistic I mean something suited for real world flight training in a local flying club, flying school or small airline. Flight isn't suitable for that and wasn't meant to be either. We use FS9 and the default Cessna at our local flying club for pilot training.Graphics are not high on the list, and you can check that with your national FAA or Military standards. For example most of the initial military pilot training in my country is done with a simulator with no visuals at all. It's just a dummy cockpit.

Well, not everyone wants something suited to flight training - I already have my license :). WHen I play flight sims, I do it to experience things I can't do in real life, like bush flying, hairy landings and flying around the mountains of Hawaii :).