Flight is about taking an open architecture program and turning it into a closed architecture program, for the purpose of closed door profit. That is what the movement to the "cloud" and "freemium offerings" by virtually all the big software game players is all about...

Welcome to the second decade of the twentyfirst century...

Nothing wrong with making profits, and cloud based services ARE the future. I see that Google have just entered the online data storage market offering 5Gb for free and another 25Gb for under $2.50/month?

Welcome to the second decade of the twentyfirst century...

Nothing wrong with making profits, and cloud based services ARE the future.

 

You probably know that there are millions of discussions at all levels about that question. Just remaining in MS world, when they presented the new Office 365, cloud based, in Europe, journalists asked them how would they managed the privacy questions respect to foreign laws, as the famous Patriot Act in US. The answer was quite disconcerting, confirming the huge doubts many have (myself included) in the general cloud approach.

Further, coming back to the passage FSX (box) -> Flight (cloud), a normal customer can also judge if the value of the different product remains more or less equivalent, and it is clear that in this case that's not true, as repeated many times.

In conclusion, there is difference between reaching the second decade of the twentyfirst century as mature citizens, or simply passively accept all the impositions of the market giants.

 

A.

hopefull for what? Microsoft has left behind our hobby and this community long ago...

 

EXACTLY!

Since the early 1980's, all attempts to limit program use have failed. I do see a future in "the cloud" for some uses and applications. But let's take a serious look at real flight simulation as it relates to this issue.

 

As Microsoft heads to the closed architecture of the cloud, other major game players in flight simulation are reacting by going exactly the opposite way. And now the major third party software developers are getting on board with these people. Orbx even now includes a dual license (FSX and Prepar3d) and a whopping 44 percent discount. Prepar3d is even developing Window's 8's DX11 for FSX, while now also including a new $49 version and "all user" classification.

 

Then the hardware people such as Intel are reacting to consumer needs by creating super fast chips with 1.4 billion transistors and speed inprovements, simplified overclocking, and even a cheap overclocker's chip destruction insurance protection plan for just $29 bucks. They say the new Ivy bridge "K" version can even be overclocked clear up to 4.5 GH with just one slider movement in the included bios. And huge on-chip caches, massive dirt cheap RAM, and dramatically improved data movement from SS drives and double transfer-speed hard drives are the rule.

 

For every action, there is a reaction. It was true before, and it is still true now, That is going on in flight simulation as well. In fact, the things I describe above are the direction I am taking as a result. I can give up a little extra cartoon style eye candy for full-world, real world, and full-industry functionality.

 

Remember... Purchasing Alaska from MS, is the same as adding a whopping discount to a third party developer in FSX for the same terrain. A lot of people forget that when they buy a 12 dollar T-bone at the grocery store...... :LMAO:

 

Bob

There is no reason for you to defend cloud, or MS making a profit. That's not even the point of post.

As a long time user of webmail, online storage, and collaborative remote working using cloud services, I was just trying to make the point that it is not surprising that such techniques are being used by a company like Microsoft who with flight are also giving us collaborative flying. I don't accept that making such a point, nor the fact that they are entitled to maximise their revenue streams, is either a personal attack on anyone or could even remotely be considered trolling...

Cheers vB - it takes a real man to apologise, so thank you for that. I appreciate the gesture, and do recognise the frustration from the other side as well. Maybe we are all going slightly stir-crazy waiting here for Alaska, and for what it might reveal about the future of Flight ;)

In my opinion, the "make it simple" argument as the main purpose for the existence of Flight is ludicrous.

 

Who said opening doors via simplicity was the main purpose for the existence of Flight? It may not even be in MS's "Grand Plan" whatsoever. But regardless of it being deliberate or planned, the need and the effect it's having is quite real.

 

As to Flight being about MS gaining control of the total revenue stream... well, obviously!

Just to inform a bit about some interesting cloud issues, I think it is important that people could choose

knowing better the various facets of the (very important) argument:

 

http://www.cloudpro....-hidden-dangers

 

A.

Interesting and all good points, especially for small to medium sized businesses to consider, who might be attracted to cloud services as a cost saving measure. But hosting a game in the cloud is right up there with hosting personal music and photo collections online. It's already happening. Facebook is, I believe the de facto cloud storage for many millions of such photos already. I'm old-fashioned enough to keep (several) digital back-ups of important personal stuff, but I'm guessing many don't?

Interesting and all good points, especially for small to medium sized businesses to consider, who might be attracted to cloud services as a cost saving measure. But hosting a game in the cloud is right up there with hosting personal music and photo collections online. It's already happening. Facebook is, I believe the de facto cloud storage for many millions of such photos already. I'm old-fashioned enough to keep (several) digital back-ups of important personal stuff, but I'm guessing many don't?

 

I think you guessed right. I also frequent some photography forums, and there are a crescent number of people complainign because their remote hosting service (add also famous names) suddenly disappeared, or blocked their contents for lacking of renewal, so they lost their precious masterpieces.

And don't worry, I'm also more old-fashioned than you, I never registered to Facebook, go figure

 

A.

But hosting a game in the cloud is right up there with hosting personal music and photo collections online. It's already happening.

 

Just to continue that thought, Facebook is already one of the world's biggest players in online gaming as well... I know several people who spend a couple hours each day playing games on Facebook!

 

Related to the same topic, I read an article this morning about changes at EA Games. The change of focus seems to be a trend in the gaming industry overall:

"EA's Montreal studio is reorganizing, with a change of focus from AAA titles like Army of Two (a game it developed) to more social and mobile game properties."

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/04/27/ea-confirms-restructuring-ea-montreal-studio

Now I have a PC-Version of an xbox game.

I'm not happy and have no hope for 3PD's to get involved.

How insulting to buy "tokens" ....

 

 

Will this be the guy flying the airplanes?

why would we not have hope? there are FOUR flight sims available for us to choose between. there has possibly never been a better time to be a flight simmer.

 

I've been flying MSFS in one form or another for nearly 30 years, it's been far far worse before, believe me

 

I just downloaded MS Flight this evening, after becoming enraged at another FSX ORBX slideshow (I love their scenery, but they've lost focus on guys with slower pc's like me) I was very pleasantly surprised with MS Flight, I was able to run on max settings smoothly on my gear (Q6600 with 512 MB vid card low-end) and it didn't look as good as orbx, but looked pretty awesome anyway. If they add some good content, there's no reason I wouldn't continue to support it, God knows how much money I've spent on add-ons for FSX, which to be honest in the big picture of flight sim history is a flat out failure of a sim on purely technical grounds.

 

So, I'll probably blow some dosh on p3d as well, probably not Xplane again though, and maybe If I can upgrade the pooter I'll be happy with FSX, or maybe if we all just wait, MS Flight will arrive at it's potential. even if it doesn't there's no reason not to hope.

 

 

... oh and a short answer to the poster above mine, Why wouldn't we want the skateboarder dude to learn a bit about flying? would it sully our precious hobby to let some of the unwashed masses come in and behold the magnificent way we handle our pretend flying machines? I'll be honest, I'd have much more enjoyment from an evening of flying with skater dudes, than I would debating the finer points of ATC etiquette with the good folks on VATSIM, just sayin'

... oh and a short answer to the poster above mine, Why wouldn't we want the skateboarder dude to learn a bit about flying? would it sully our precious hobby to let some of the unwashed masses come in and behold the magnificent way we handle our pretend flying machines? I'll be honest, I'd have much more enjoyment from an evening of flying with skater dudes, than I would debating the finer points of ATC etiquette with the good folks on VATSIM, just sayin'

 

I'm pretty sure bob34 wasn't saying skateboarders were "undesirables". I think he was making a joke at the Microsoft Live cheesy avatars you assign to your profile. So pretty sure you don't need to throttle him....just sayin'

well, I couple the image with the "xbox game" comment, and the token comment to indicate that he felt that this was inviting an undesirable element in. no biggie, if he was really making a joke about the avatars then I would say I probably agree completely and would apologize for having taken his comments the wrong way. If however, his post was intended to promote the sort of VA/VATSIM flightsim elitism that has been irritating me among some small minority of members of the flightsim community for some time, then I would not retract those comments at all! I confess to not having a full understanding of bob34's character and motivations beyond one post and some sig items, so you could be right.