MS Flight has been available to download for over two months now, and I am curious to know how it has been received by casual gamers. Is it looking like a success, or a failure? I was originally intending to download and install it on release day, but in the end I decided not to bother.

MS Flight has been available to download for over two months now, and I am curious to know how it has been received by casual gamers. Is it looking like a success, or a failure? I was originally intending to download and install it on release day, but in the end I decided not to bother.

 

Seems to be a success among casual gamers, possibly a bit less among some flight sim veterans, although you'll find quite a few veterans who like it.

 

Were you intending to get this for someone else? I'm guessing that with 4500 posts at Avsim you probably aren't a casual gamer.

 

If you aren't paying by the megabyte for bandwidth, Flight is a free download. It should be worth checking out in any case, and you can make your own decision rather than relying upon others.

 

Hook

MS Flight has been available to download for over two months now, and I am curious to know how it has been received by casual gamers. Is it looking like a success, or a failure? I was originally intending to download and install it on release day, but in the end I decided not to bother.

 

Well, I guess it is too early to call it a succes or failure yet. I think the upcoming Alaska DLC will be an important release to see if Flight really failed or not. I do know that Flight brought quite a few of people to this hobby: casual gamers who gave it a try and wanted to know more about flying. However, if the game is a succes in general, I don't know. I wonder if we will ever know. Hm, well, we will know if Flight is still here in a few years.

 

It's a shame you didn't bother... There ARE some die hard airline pilots who really love the game... But of course there also are some die hard airline pilots who don't. Anyway, it sure is worth checking it out...!!! (Pity though that to really see what Flight has to offer, you should get the Adventure pack or the Maule... A lot of the 'Flight is not a sim' comes from people who only tried the free version, in which you can't use VOR and ILS....)

 

BTW I see this topic has a whopping 1,813 views in a day and a half... My goodness. Hot topic...! What does that say... (oher then that people are apperently more interested in this talk then in for instance how to use VOR... )

MS Flight has been available to download for over two months now, and I am curious to know how it has been received by casual gamers. Is it looking like a success, or a failure? I was originally intending to download and install it on release day, but in the end I decided not to bother.

 

I agree with Jeroen and Hook. Just try it! You don't loose anything should you not like it. And you can use the opportunity to lure some interested gamers to Avsim or one of the serious sim platforms. Just spread the good word!

 

Even though Flight may not be intended primarily for serious simmers, you can still have some fun with it. Some of the challenges in Flight require some serious flying skills and I don't think that casual gamers will master them all with a gold achievement.

MS Flight has been available to download for over two months now, and I am curious to know how it has been received by casual gamers. Is it looking like a success, or a failure? I was originally intending to download and install it on release day, but in the end I decided not to bother.

 

The "casual gamer" target market tends to not post to forums like this one, so it's really hard to say. MS's DLC sales and in-game data tracking would be the only concrete evidence of how it's doing... and they're not going to publish that.

 

My own anecdotal evidence is that packed multi-player rooms are rare, but it would be quite a stretch to extrapolate from just that.

 

I've also seen a few of the casual gamers getting a lot more interested in flight sims due to their experience with Flight. They are hungry to learn and seek out places like AVSIM for information. Whether Flight is eventually deemed a success or a failure, it is growing the population of serious simmers by at least a small amount.

 

It's even bringing some back, as I haven't touched a flight sim in a decade. The tactile sensation of actually being in the air found in Flight has brought me back into the fold. I'm probably going to be back in a real cockpit soon, too. I'm going to need some serious refresher training before that happens, though. But it's, in big part, thanks to Flight.

 

It's a free download to try it out. You've really got nothing to lose other than an evening of your time, assuming you give it at least a couple of hours to make a fair assessment.

The reason that I decided not to download MS Flight is simply because I don't need it. FSX satisfies all of my current flightsim desires. I was just curious to know if the new direction taken by Microsoft had worked out for them. However, I agree that two months isn't long enough for an accurate assessment to be made.

The reason that I decided not to download MS Flight is simply because I don't need it. FSX satisfies all of my current flightsim desires. I was just curious to know if the new direction taken by Microsoft had worked out for them.

 

That's cool, but how do you know you don't need it...? Well, obviously there isn't a single soul in the universe who really NEEDS Flight, but if you like GA you might perhaps 'need' Flight more then you think!

 

But back to your question (because I'm not here to convert you or drag you into Flight: it's up to everyone to decide if they want to give Flight a try or not ): I think even MS doesn't know if it this worked out for them. The DLC that's available now and even the upcoming DLC has been planned before Flight was actually released. The whole idea of creating content based on the wishes of the customers hasn't even taken off yet. (At least not that I know.)

Looking at what MS said the idea is that Flight should be here for a few years at least so even if a lot of people downloaded Flight and even if a lot of DLC has been bought, that doesn't say anything about the new direction working out for them. That really only can be seen if Flight is still in use AND being developed in a few years! It may have worked out for now, but I don't think MS is interested in 'now'.

My own anecdotal evidence is that packed multi-player rooms are rare, but it would be quite a stretch to extrapolate from just that.

 

Unfortunately, because of the nature of the P2P online environment, and the "filters" that are being used for selectively displaying only a tiny subset of all current online sessions, it's really not possible to make any reliable "guesstimate" of just how many Flight users are active at any given moment.

 

There could well be ten thousand active "Public Sessions" at any given time, but because of the "filters" used, we might only see a half-dozen of the "nearest/strongest" whenever we go looking for one to join...

 

...just trying to keep this in perspective.

 

On a related note, the latest PC Pilot Magizine has a very nice review of Flight. Here is a synopsis I read elsewhere of it as compared to similar reviews of XP10 and AeroflyFS:

 

Flight, XP-10 and aeroflyFS all got a Classic product award. Flight scored 90 and the other two scored 80 If you take all the reviews in the magazine as a benchmark a score of 80 was the lowest. All in all The Flight review was positive and the reviewer picked up on how addictive it was.

There ARE some die hard airline pilots who really love the game

Im one of those airline pilots that enjoys the heck out of flight and will do my best to support the product . I like to get home and when ever i cant call to swipe my card to rent a plane if i have time just fire up flight and relax not tweak and flight.

LOL! I actually tried Flight BECAUSE of the vitriol!

 

No, seriously… I had read some unflattering reviews, and I was dismissive at first as sounding too much of an “arcade game.”

 

But when I read all the (sometimes comical!) “outrage,” I decided that I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

 

So I tried it and I found that I actually LIKED Flight! Accepting it for what it is…

 

I’m not an airline pilot like "rtodepart" above, but I’m an engineer, CFI, and former military pilot. I’m also more of a “simmer,” but I find Flight to be a pleasant diversion from my usual sim repertoire (which includes FSX). I bought the Hawaii pack for Flight, but since then I’ve “reinvigorated” my interest in FSX with addons such as Warbirdsim’s Mustang packages, A2A’s Accusim Spitfire, and Flight Replica’s Super Cub Ultra (pardon the shameless “plugs,” I guess…? :-).

 

I do enjoy Flight’s “eye candy,” weather modeling, and some of the flight behavior such as crosswinds and downdrafts. I don’t miss the ATC functionality or all the AI traffic, but I’m more of a GA or vintage “simmer.” I enjoy Flight’s Icon, Stearman (though a bit “buggy” with engine idle & braking), and the RV-6A. Hope they add a helicopter. Seeing the helipads in the scenery, that looks like a reasonable bet.

 

Don’t want to reopen any wounds, but I agree with "Yahooligan’s" previous observation. I wasn’t a beta tester, but having visited the Microsoft forum my observation is that their leadership team could’ve done a better job seriously communicating in order to avoid some of the negative reaction from customers (in my observation, both “gamers” and “simmers” alike). That would be my biggest “dislike” about Flight. But it’s Microsoft’s choice whether to respond seriously to customers’ (civil) feedback, and it’s customers’ choice whether to buy additional Flight DLC or not. It’s not difficult.

 

But Flight shows wonderful potential to be enjoyed by veteran “simmers” who can accept it for what it is, AND offers a friendly, non-intimidating experience for newcomers to our hobby!