While it's easy to dismiss the IGN review, keep in mind I have not seen any general advertisement for Flight. I read previsouly how Microsoft hopes to have 20,000,000 users eventually, however without any effort to tell the general public that Flight exists your average gamer's first exposure is going to be through sites like IGN which hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people follow and. most importantly, trust. While it's all fine and dandy to rebutt the review in this forum the general gaming population is not going to read it. You're basically preaching to the choir (even if some of the choir members are singing a different song). It's the general gaming sites that MS has to win over, however it appears they are failing in this regard. Most won't bother with the free download if the reviewers are saying, "Why bother?". These reviewers have to review what they are given, not what could be. Hopefully they'll review the expansions as well and update their opinions (and scores) of Flight afterwards, but the reviewers are under no obligation to account for future possibilities in the scores they come up with today. If that were the case almost every game released today would be a 9 or 10.

I have a friend who is into aviation, flies well in combat flight sims such as IL2, loves to play complex strategy games and is extremely detail oriented. Yet, he won't give a flight simulator the time of day. It's just too boring for him in his own words.It's not going to be pretty.

I don't see a problem with the review. I think they hit it spot on.. The world is lifeless, not much in the game to hold the attention of the general gaming crowd.. They should have at least had AI planes, ships and cars to make the world a living place.

I would love to see AI traffic in Flight, but I don't believe it's ever going to happen. In my opinion I don't think Flight was designed to handle it. I think all those lovely frame rates people are experiencing right now would drop dramatically if Flight had to calculate/draw the movements of air and ground traffic. I believe this is why it was never included in the first place. It's also why I think the Destination marker in Jobs exist: Now Microsoft doesn't have to bother with accurate real world navigation (or give you access to a map during jobs) since they've provided a work around. While I would love MS to prove me wrong MS has always been profit driven, not excellence driven (Vista, Zune or Windows Phone anyone?). Just my $0.02

They will re-review it if something substantially changes. However, first impressions are important, Final Fantasy 14 though patched, tweaked, fixed and altogether made a better game never recovered from the horrible first impression it made on players. Flight really needed to make a good first impression, and in my opinion simply fell short of this. It can still be turned around, but MS will have to go into damage control with all those people it cold shouldered in the process of making Flight more appealing to the masses. I just don't think widespead acceptance in the major gaming circles is in the cards for Flight anytime soon, if ever.

I just don't think widespead acceptance in the major gaming circles is in the cards for Flight anytime soon, if ever.

Well for the sake of the flight sim community, I hope you are wrong - but you may very well be right...

I would love to see AI traffic in Flight, but I don't believe it's ever going to happen. In my opinion I don't think Flight was designed to handle it. I think all those lovely frame rates people are experiencing right now would drop dramatically if Flight had to calculate/draw the movements of air and ground traffic.

I can't help but think - FSX is been out now for how long, fall of 2006 I believe when it was released?And still today, one of the major hits on performance for it, is AI traffic. So often in the FSX forum , especially for new users, it is usually mentioned as one of the first things to reduce to a really low number, or in some cases turn off, to get a reasonable performance out of the system the user is using - again, this is over 5 years later.One would think hopefully, the new graphics engine - assuming it is new or tweaked heavily at least - would manage to run better with AI traffic, of course we won't know until/if they add it to Flight.And what is up with 64 bit programs? I mean cmon, 64 bit cpus have been out how long now? And finally 64 bit OS's are becoming mainstream, thanks to Vista and especially Windows 7. Hard pressed to find a serious PC simmer/gamer that does not run Windows 7 64 bit. Why are not more 64 bit games/sims being developed, to take advantage of this? MS has a kick butt 64 bit OS like Win 7, and does not develop a sim as recent as Flight to be 64 bit? I guess probably still too concerned about it being backwards compatible. I am by no means a programmer, know absolutely nothing about it - just seems to me though 64 bit over 32 bit, the 64 bit program should be able to handle such things like being discussed better.But what the heck do I know...

Here is the basic problem with flight: The Elephant is still in the living room, i.e. regardless how MS want to dress up Flight, it's still a SIM (yes, that dirty word which causes glazed over eyes and muttering in the gaming masses). IMO MS is attempting to do something in the gaming market with Flight that's about as popular as having a Jehovah's Witness knocking at their door. (Please, no offense towards Jehovah's Witnesses is intending by this).BTW, I've put about 3 hours of flying into Flight. I quit flying it because I'm addicted to using 6DOF TIR and, plainly put, flying without it is very irritating for me.

I did some research out of curiosity to see how many "E" rated games actually crack the top grossing. From what I found it does not look good for Flight in terms of gaining a mass acceptance, especially on a game that requires patients. Microsoft may not have picked the best time to break from tradition and attempt to bring it to a broader audiance, can they get the attention of the A.D.D. generation on a game that involves nothing other than flying?Top Grossing according to CNBCName, ESRB, RatingPortal 2, E10, 9.5Lego Star Wars: The Clone Wars, E, 7.5L.A. Noire, M, 8.5Mortal Kombat 2011, M, 8Pokemon Black/White, E, 9NBA 2K11, E, 9.5Zumba Fitness, NA.Call of Duty: Black Ops, M, 8.5I was surprised that there is actually 3 of them on that list, however they all are either highly rated or carry a big license. There are more adults playing games these days, Microsoft should know that. Of Microsoft Game Studios' top 10 rated games of all time, 6 of the 10 are either Halo or Gears of War titles, and shockingly Flightsim 2002 was number 8. I am not sure where MS got that 20,000,000 figure, but it seems overly optimistic on their part.

I would love to see AI traffic in Flight, but I don't believe it's ever going to happen. In my opinion I don't think Flight was designed to handle it. I think all those lovely frame rates people are experiencing right now would drop dramatically if Flight had to calculate/draw the movements of air and ground traffic. I believe this is why it was never included in the first place. It's also why I think the Destination marker in Jobs exist: Now Microsoft doesn't have to bother with accurate real world navigation (or give you access to a map during jobs) since they've provided a work around. While I would love MS to prove me wrong MS has always been profit driven, not excellence driven (Vista, Zune or Windows Phone anyone?). Just my $0.02

There appear to be parts in the config files dealing with AI Traffic. I haven't done any experimenting with it, but I wouldn't count that out completely yet.And what's with the Zune/WP hate? Those are actually pretty good.

Why are not more 64 bit games/sims being developed, to take advantage of this? MS has a kick butt 64 bit OS like Win 7, and does not develop a sim as recent as Flight to be 64 bit? I guess probably still too concerned about it being backwards compatible. I am by no means a programmer, know absolutely nothing about it - just seems to me though 64 bit over 32 bit, the 64 bit program should be able to handle such things like being discussed better.But what the heck do I know...

Try importing video frames to layers in the 64 bit version of Photoshop and you'll get a pop up window telling you to use a 32 bit version of Photoshop. If Adobe couldn't sort that one out with the CS5.5 64 bit version of Photoshop, then it is hardly surprising that some game developers cannot manage everything on 64 bit LOL. Of course they may do it in CS6, but we won't know until that is out, although I do know that most of their stuff (apart from After Effects) will cheerfully install onto a 32 bit copy of XP or Vista, and so I suspect some of the decision is based on not wanting to alienate the (still) very large numbers of people out there with 32 bit operating systems, and I reckon that might be part of the decision process for gaming developers too, after all, even ardent Win 7 64 bit users will admit that it has way more issues than XP had, which is why some people are still happy to use it, and if they see that a game which they fancy is not compatible with their 32 bit system, then that is a lost sale.Al

Hook what is the flight lacking? What kind of procedures do you mean exactly?

It's a little difficult to teach the procedures used on a Cessna 172, for example, using the default aircraft in Flight. But the poster I was replying to has already admitted he didn't really care about that, he was pretty much just ragging on Flight. There are a lot of posters here who haven't done much exploring of Flight to see what all it has and what it can do. They'll even justify this by saying "I won't play Flight until it has XXX" without ever seeing what Flight does have. That's unfortunate. Then they'll come here and post a lot of negative opinions that many of us have already found to be untrue. How many times have you seen "There's no ILS" for example? I didn't think I'd care much for the rings or coins, but I flew them anyway to see what they were like. And oddly enough, I found I enjoyed them. I also found that they helped my precision flying enough to get a landing on Stearman landing challenge 6. I've spent a lot of time analyzing why Microsoft did things the way they did, and have decided that what they've done works... at least for new players and the more casual gamers.Hook

I suspect some of the decision is based on not wanting to alienate the (still) very large numbers of people out there with 32 bit operating systems, and I reckon that might be part of the decision process for gaming developers too, after all, even ardent Win 7 64 bit users will admit that it has way more issues than XP had, which is why some people are still happy to use it, and if they see that a game which they fancy is not compatible with their 32 bit system, then that is a lost sale.

Well I can buy the assertion regarding their concern on the large numbers of people still with 32 bit operating systems.I don't agree however on the ardent Win 7 64 bit users admitting it has more issues than 32 bit XP.XP was good, was the best imho until Win 7 came along - I find Win 7 64 bit to be much better, exremely stable, the memory management is way better and oh having all the memory available - sweet. At least all the forums I visit regarding hardware and software, and gaming titles, this seems to be the dominating opinion anyway.But I do look forward to the day, that at least a 64 bit version of a game/sim is offered. One would think since MS entered the 64 bit OS arena , with Win 7 in a big way, they would be one of the first to do so...

It's a little difficult to teach the procedures used on a Cessna 172, for example, using the default aircraft in Flight.But the poster I was replying to has already admitted he didn't really care about that, he was pretty much just ragging on Flight.

I've played most of the challenges and missions and are at level 12, so I've tried really hard to find something to like. I'm just expressing an opinion. When all is said and done that doesn't even matter. Those who like Flight will like it regardless of anyone's negative opinion and vice verca. Flight feels like a game made on a budget only to sell addons. I've searched hard to find any real passion for aviation or gaming. Microsoft couldn't even be bothered to name the Kaydet by its rightful name. NO, it ain't all bad, but it is mediocre at best, so I would consider a score of 5/10 fair - if you give Microsoft the benifit of the doubt that Flight will become better in time.

I've played most of the challenges and missions and are at level 12, so I've tried really hard to find something to like. I'm just expressing an opinion. When all is said and done that doesn't even matter. Those who like Flight will like it regardless of anyone's negative opinion and vice verca. Flight feels like a game made on a budget only to sell addons. I've searched hard to find any real passion for aviation or gaming. Microsoft couldn't even be bothered to name the Kaydet by its rightful name. NO, it ain't all bad, but it is mediocre at best, so I would consider a score of 5/10 fair - if you give Microsoft the benifit of the doubt that Flight will become better in time.

I can understand that.During the beta, I had only the main island. Still got 500,000 XP and 120 hours of flight. I'm over 600,000 XP in the release version so far, over 90 hours flight.My least favorite activity in the beta was the biplane sightseeing tour. The main island is lousy for that one. But when I started doing them on Oahu, I discovered what they're all about, and they're my second favorite activity now, after the aerocache hunt, and I usually get the aerocache of the day on a biplane tour. My highest landmark count so far is 18, including the two you get for the ones you're directed to. That's 1170 points at 65 each, plus 400 for the two directed ones, plus whatever you get for the mission and a dawn bonus if you fly then. I could probably double that by flying to other islands.It's just that with some things it may not be apparent at first where the real fun is. Heck, I didn't like the Stearman at all when I first got into it. I forced myself to fly it for a while, got to know the plane, and now it's my favorite. I'm currently trying to like the Maule by doing cargo and passenger runs.If you haven't yet, do the Hawaii Photo Book mission, and don't skip on the way out. Skip on the way back, because nothing's going on then. It'll take you just over 2 hours, so plan for a bit of time. The reason you don't skip on the way out is because your passenger has a lot of commentary on what you're flying over, and it's very interesting.Hook

Looks like a very fair and even-handed review.