And with a little magi... ops, I mean MS flight! menu you can change fuel, livery or maybe whole aircraft and than continue where you paused few seconds ago (yes, in air). "Now THAT'S realism." The Star Trek one.

And which awesome sim are you using in which you can NOT do that...? You do know you can do that in FSX too?It's all about HOW you use the game. The fact that you can do things which you can't do in real life doesn't make the sim a game: if that was so, then sims do not exist at all. It's all about how you use the game. I can do arcade things in FSX and sim things in MS Flight and the other way around. That doesn't make one a sim and the other a game.

And which awesome sim are you using in which you can NOT do that...? You do know you can do that in FSX too?It's all about HOW you use the game. The fact that you can do things which you can't do in real life doesn't make the sim a game: if that was so, then sims do not exist at all. It's all about how you use the game. I can do arcade things in FSX and sim things in MS Flight and the other way around. That doesn't make one a sim and the other a game.

I think you missed the point, being not able to chose stand/gate/parking call it however you want, is lack of feature, it deserved to be criticized. Instead of that, you found alternative way, and that's it, thats just an alternative way.I use many great simulators, but I do not think its good to compare flight with other simulators.

Hello good people and prepare for a long read, B)I will first comment on the IGN "review" of Flight.IGN is quite a reputable site, i give them that, but apparently they have reviewers that simply fail at what they do. To clarify this a little bit, it is always the easiest thing to bash, criticize and diminish virtually anything in the world. I never paid too much attention to any reviews and i always value only what i think of a certain product. Many times i made a mistake by buying something i knew absolutely nothing about first hand but i read somewhere that it was awesome :) Also, so many times it turned out that i was more than happy with a product that got rather bad reviews. In time, i learned few things regarding reviews in general and that is - they are almost always biased. People cannot be generalized, as they are very different. I have few friends who praise Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and bash Battlefield 3, while i enjoy Battlefield 3 extremely and yet think CoD is garbage. But, if you read the reviews, you would realize that both games got really good ones. This may be due to the fact that quite often, major gaming sites, magazines and such are "sponsored" by certain publishers. Pretty much the same as in car industry, cell phone industry or home appliances industry.Another poor "point" that IGN reviewer made was "jobs are boring and repetitive". Has he ever talked to a real world pilot? I happen to be friends with three real world pilots ( commercial pilots flying B737-800, A320 and such) and they do not consider their job boring. Repetitive? Yes. Just like most jobs in the world but not boring. What did the IGN reviewer expect to see in the jobs list? Fly with one hand and an eye patch while having to answer 100 questions about Justin Bieber asked by your co-pilot? I mean, come on.Now, there are certain aspects of every product that are simply factual (price, build quality, color, tech specs, etc) and that do not allow for a biased opinion more than "i think the price is too big / low" and such. Still, there is no such thing as an unbiased review and therefore they are next to worthless and useless.With all of the above said, let me share my 2 cents about Flight:Fact is, our "new toy" is rather young. Really young in fact. At the moment, we are far from having enough information about MS plans for Flight's future. For all we know, AI traffic and working instruments might come in the very next patch or DLC. IGN reviewer keeps saying that this game does not appeal to anyone; hardcore simmers or gamers. I happen to belong to both "classes". I am 33 years old, been playing computer games for more than 25 years now but am also in constant pursue of "as real as it gets" in virtual world, mostly regarding things i still cannot afford / make happen in real life at the moment. Flight happens to be one of those things for me. I love FSX and even though i am not a real world pilot and still pretty far from a top class virtual pilot, i appreciate it's sim side more than anything. I love that feeling while flying an airplane knowing it will take a loooooot of practice, reading, trial and error process and such to achieve a safe landing under certain weather conditions. In Flight, i might not have nearly as many planes as in FSX ( at the moment, that is) but i LOVE the feeling that those few planes provide me with. It is immersive, feels much more realistic than FSX ( there, i said it :P ) and looks really good too (alright, it's not PMDG grade but it's still really good). Not to mention the frame rates. So, to me, Flight provides me with one thing that it is made to achieve - simulation of flight. And while it would make me extremely happy to see AI traffic, flight planning, ATC and fully functional aircraft instruments, i find it satisfying enough to fly with what i have. Flight is what i am primarily after and that is what i can do in Flight. Also, missions in Flight are pretty nice but of course i would love to have hundreds of them. Challenges i find really interesting and fun, even though they mostly require me to land an aircraft perfectly. It is a flight simulation / game after all, not Wings of Prey.Time to make a conclusion:Does Flight lack certain features we all had back in FSX and other sims? Yes.Do we know for sure that we will not get those in future? No.Does Flight let you enjoy GA flying while providing more realistic flight model than other sims available? Yes (considered by many real world pilots).Would it be great to have the whole world available? Yes and no. (Yes if the whole world would be modeled and detailed as Hawaii is, no if it would resemble FSX default scenery).Does Flight appeal to someone? Most definitely - Yes.Would it be great to have working instruments? Yes.Does the lack of certain features prevents us from enjoying what we have? No (at least not in my case).It is too early to know what exactly to expect from Flight's future but i guess we will find out soon. Let's just all hope MS does not abandon it, keeps providing us with quality DLC and adds FF and TrackIR support.I sincerely apologize for an extremely long post and for some possible grammar or other mistakes since English is not my native language.Cheers

I do not like business model MS chose and the fact they released half finished game, and Im going to criticize that aspects of flight every day if I have to.

You certainly can do that but why would you want to? Why be so bitter towards a company over a piece of entertainment software?Like everything else in life, if you do not like a company or the way they do business just don't use or buy their products.

I bought all but the P-51 and it was the best investment in terms of flight simulation I ever did! Well, Condor, and PS1 too :-)FLIGHT IS GOOD (the WILL BE is Past...) now I think we all know... even if some of us don't like this or that aspects, but, as you said... Let's give FLIGHT it's time and I am sure it will be worth the trust...

So much negativity in one thread... Give Flight some time. In a year it will be THE most awesome simulator around. In the mean time i challenge all the neighsayers who hasnt bought the Hawaii pack to do so. Currently you guys are playing a demonstration, and treating it like a full game.

Very good post Eevun with some very good points as well, many of your thoughts are shared by me as well.

Very VERY well said! Agree 110%!!!

Hello good people and prepare for a long read, B)I will first comment on the IGN "review" of Flight.IGN is quite a reputable site, i give them that, but apparently they have reviewers that simply fail at what they do. To clarify this a little bit, it is always the easiest thing to bash, criticize and diminish virtually anything in the world. I never paid too much attention to any reviews and i always value only what i think of a certain product. Many times i made a mistake by buying something i knew absolutely nothing about first hand but i read somewhere that it was awesome :) Also, so many times it turned out that i was more than happy with a product that got rather bad reviews. In time, i learned few things regarding reviews in general and that is - they are almost always biased. People cannot be generalized, as they are very different. I have few friends who praise Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and bash Battlefield 3, while i enjoy Battlefield 3 extremely and yet think CoD is garbage. But, if you read the reviews, you would realize that both games got really good ones. This may be due to the fact that quite often, major gaming sites, magazines and such are "sponsored" by certain publishers. Pretty much the same as in car industry, cell phone industry or home appliances industry.Another poor "point" that IGN reviewer made was "jobs are boring and repetitive". Has he ever talked to a real world pilot? I happen to be friends with three real world pilots ( commercial pilots flying B737-800, A320 and such) and they do not consider their job boring. Repetitive? Yes. Just like most jobs in the world but not boring. What did the IGN reviewer expect to see in the jobs list? Fly with one hand and an eye patch while having to answer 100 questions about Justin Bieber asked by your co-pilot? I mean, come on.Now, there are certain aspects of every product that are simply factual (price, build quality, color, tech specs, etc) and that do not allow for a biased opinion more than "i think the price is too big / low" and such. Still, there is no such thing as an unbiased review and therefore they are next to worthless and useless.With all of the above said, let me share my 2 cents about Flight:Fact is, our "new toy" is rather young. Really young in fact. At the moment, we are far from having enough information about MS plans for Flight's future. For all we know, AI traffic and working instruments might come in the very next patch or DLC. IGN reviewer keeps saying that this game does not appeal to anyone; hardcore simmers or gamers. I happen to belong to both "classes". I am 33 years old, been playing computer games for more than 25 years now but am also in constant pursue of "as real as it gets" in virtual world, mostly regarding things i still cannot afford / make happen in real life at the moment. Flight happens to be one of those things for me. I love FSX and even though i am not a real world pilot and still pretty far from a top class virtual pilot, i appreciate it's sim side more than anything. I love that feeling while flying an airplane knowing it will take a loooooot of practice, reading, trial and error process and such to achieve a safe landing under certain weather conditions. In Flight, i might not have nearly as many planes as in FSX ( at the moment, that is) but i LOVE the feeling that those few planes provide me with. It is immersive, feels much more realistic than FSX ( there, i said it :P ) and looks really good too (alright, it's not PMDG grade but it's still really good). Not to mention the frame rates. So, to me, Flight provides me with one thing that it is made to achieve - simulation of flight. And while it would make me extremely happy to see AI traffic, flight planning, ATC and fully functional aircraft instruments, i find it satisfying enough to fly with what i have. Flight is what i am primarily after and that is what i can do in Flight. Also, missions in Flight are pretty nice but of course i would love to have hundreds of them. Challenges i find really interesting and fun, even though they mostly require me to land an aircraft perfectly. It is a flight simulation / game after all, not Wings of Prey.Time to make a conclusion:Does Flight lack certain features we all had back in FSX and other sims? Yes.Do we know for sure that we will not get those in future? No.Does Flight let you enjoy GA flying while providing more realistic flight model that other sims available? Yes (considered by many real world pilots).Would it be great to have the whole world available? Yes and no. (Yes if the whole world would be modeled and detailed as Hawaii is, no if it would resemble FSX default scenery).Does Flight appeal to someone? Most definitely - Yes.Would it be great to have working instruments? Yes.Does the lack of certain features prevents us from enjoying what we have? No (at least not in my case).It is too early to know what exactly to expect from Flight's future but i guess we will find out soon. Let's just all hope MS does not abandon it, keeps providing us with quality DLC and adds FF and TrackIR support.I sincerely apologize for an extremely long post and for some possible grammar or other mistakes since English is not my native language.Cheers

great post man ..But i just had to laugh at this

Fly with one hand and an eye patch while having to answer 100 questions about Justin Bieber asked by your co-pilot? I mean, come on.

:LMAO: :LMAO: :LMAO: .....

@Dburne and Jcomm:Thank you very much guys :)Cheers

Eevun; I also agree 100%, yours is a very good post.--------------------------------------------------------------------------Now that you mention "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3". It was praised all around, even before it came out. They (Them) created such an expectation that the first day sales figures were in the millions.I rushed to the store and paid US $70.00. For what?A campaign mode that lasts around 8.5 hours and then forced to do multiplayer which I don't even go near in that type of games. I felt I wasted good money.I don't think it’s fair what many are doing. Comparing Flight (1 month old) +1 DLC to FSX (6 year old) + thousands of add-ons and enhancements. Compare both products but on equal terms. (out of the box)I’m not getting into the DLC, SDK or 3PD involvement frenzy. The truth is known only to MS and whoever is involved with the Flight project.

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.

Eevun; I also agree 100%, yours is a very good post.--------------------------------------------------------------------------Now that you mention "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3". It was praised all around, even before it came out. They (Them) created such an expectation that the first day sales figures were in the millions.I rushed to the store and paid US $70.00. For what?A campaign mode that lasts around 8.5 hours and then forced to do multiplayer which I don't even go near in that type of games. I felt I wasted good money.I don't think it’s fair what many are doing. Comparing Flight (1 month old) +1 DLC to FSX (6 year old) + thousands of add-ons and enhancements. Compare both products but on equal terms. (out of the box)I’m not getting into the DLC, SDK or 3PD involvement frenzy. The truth is known only to MS and whoever is involved with the Flight project.

Thank you Kabronicus :)I also have to say i agree with you 100% on what you wrote. CoD franchise is known to have one of the most aggressive and effective marketing strategies in gaming industry and while it's singleplayer aspect in history had that "movie feel" about it and was fun to play, it did fall really short when it comes to multiplayer by using a 6 year old engine and just adding some make up on it, simplifying gameplay to a ridiculous level, rewarding "one man army" philosophy while at the same time promoting team based modes and such. Hypocrisy at it's worst :)Regarding your comment on Flight, you couldn't be more right! People are quick to judge and criticize while forgetting what FSX vanilla looked like. I think it's only fair to at least give Flight a chance to either disappoint us or impress us.P.S. I sent you a friend request as agreed few days ago in another thread.Cheers

I showed Flight to my 16 year old nephew today. He likes various shooters, and also plays The Sims. I set up my game the same as what a new player would see. Let him fly the balloon mission with the mouse, then land the plane, although "land" in this case basically means he was on the ground, in one piece, at the airport. :D Then I showed him the first gold rush. After crashing once, his next pass got a new high score for my account. I showed him the hangar, let him fly the Stearman and then the P-51. Since he'd never seen the cockpit yet, he had no problems accepting that the Mustang didn't have one. Let him fly around a bit, up the river to Rainbow Falls, then up and down the canyons to the north.He liked it. He had NO problems flying with the mouse. He asked how far he could fly or how high up he could go and was surprised that it was only limited by the limits on fuel or the aircraft. Heck, he even liked the fair weather clouds, said they were more realistic than he'd seen in other games. Obviously he liked the terrain. He liked the buildings a lot more than I do. I changed the weather to among the giants, and he flew the Mustang up to see how high the cloud tops were. He enjoyed flying through clouds.The only negative he had on the game: Too bad there's no debris when you crash into a building.Obviously this was a short flight, a half hour at the most. But he enjoyed it a lot, and will be downloading the game. I'll keep up with what he's doing and see how it likes it after a longer workout.That's the only review I need.Hook

To be honest, reviewing Flight in an attempt to score it at this point in time, with little in the way of DLC yet available, is a bit like attempting to review a restaurant after one mouthful of your starter. It is true that the basic game/sim is there of course, but it should be apparent that the forthcoming and small amount of presently available DLC is really what is going to make it tasty, in just the same way that DLC (aka add-ons) are what make FSX worthy, and in fact every recent version of Flight Simulator has been the same in this respect, since about FS4.If a reviewer can't see that, then I would invite them to compare FSX with the A2A Spitfire or PMDG 737NG to an installation of FSX without them back in 2006 when it first came out. Moreover, you'd be looking at a crapload more than the 43 Dollars mentioned in the review for those, in fact, if you bought FSX and Acceleration, plus the PMDG 737 and that A2A Spit, I reckon you'd be into about six times that price, which brings us to the other problem pertinent to the IGN review...The Hawaii add-on gets a slamming in the review in question without it even appearing as though the reviewer actually tried that out at all, But as serious a reviewing infraction as that is, seriously? slamming a cost of 20 Dollars for a whole load of terrain, missions and challenges and an add-on aeroplane as well; how is that going to alienate hard core simmers who are used to paying vastly more than this for an aeroplane alone and generally more than that for a bit of scenery as well, when they've also had to buy lots of other stuff? To miss this smacks of knowing little of what is a large part of MS's target market, which is poor form for a reviewer when a little bit of research would have revealed what the reviewer needed to know in order to be an informed writer on this matter.Paying for additional stuff is exactly what hard core simmers do, regularly. And MS know this, just as a reviewer should if he or she is to review a flight sim. MS would be insane if they ignored or alienated the hard core, especially since we know that wanting a slice of that lucrative hard core pie is precisely why they went with the business model which Flight is using, and they have said this. As noted, for a computer software reviewer to have missed this point, more than anything else in the review, speaks volumes about how little they follow the computer gaming industry's trends, and indeed how little they know of tackling a review's focal points properly. It does get a tacit mention, but its importance seems to be missed in the overall focus of the review and the scoring, which should take into account relevant matters, such as the technical and market's potential to match the planned route Flight is taking business-wise.In fairness to the opinions expressed in the review, I will say that I don't necessarily disagree with some of the points that were made, but on the whole it was a very poor effort at a fair appraisal of exactly what Flight is at present, with many detail errors in evidence, which is not a good thing for a reviewer to do, especially when they have done such poor research on all the other points as well.This is precisely why the Avsim review was a better effort; not because it was more complimentary, but because it served the most logical purpose of a review at this point, in that it simply told us what there was on offer right now, rather than attempting to find fault with content that isn't even available yet, but which will be in the game proper. And in the meantime, if the IGN reviewer is of the ilk to find no joy in flying around in a Boeing Stearman at 100 fps with the graphics on full tilt, as you can do for hours on end with Flight as it is now, then the fact is that they were not the right person for the task of reviewing this flight sim in its present state.So in short, I don't necessarily demand a complimentary review of Flight, because everyone is entitled to their opinion, and Flight does indeed have some faults, but I do at least demand a competent one, which this was very far from being.Al.

I don't see a problem with the review. I think they hit it spot on..

Do you rally consider the review on Flight is “spot on..”?On December 2006 the IGN reviewer gave FSX an overall rating of 7.0

Gameplay 7.0"It was a very sad moment for me when I stopped playing Flight Sim X and put Flight Sim 9 back into my CD-ROM drive. This pretty much sums up how I felt about the game."

Presentation 8.0“Flight Simulator X presents a very similar interface that was previously seen in FS9.”

Graphics a 7.0"The graphics and framerate were not very good when compared to Flight Simulator 9."

On March 2012 another IGN reviewer gave Flight an overall rating of 5.0

Gameplay 4.0“One word: Boring. Second word: Confused. What does it want to be? Why the lack of interesting stuff? Where's the life?”

Presentation 7.0"Certainly one of the easiest civilian flight sims ever to negotiate and learn, Flight is polished and pretty and likable from the outset."

Graphics a 5.0“From you own plane to the general world around you, the Flight environment is, initially, impressive. But

our world isn't empty. Why is this?”

So from his point of view not having simulated life and AI at the moment downgrades the overall scenery graphics, and gameplay.Sorry but he has to choose one or the other.What is this last reviewer reviewing or comparing? Flight 2012 to FSX 2006 or to 2006 FSX + add-ons and enhancements .I would like to see his stats on Flight, I doubt he spent more than an hour to test the game and hurry to write his review.If you want, You can read the rest over at IGN.