Hmmmmm This is exciting. I can feel it in the air.

Cubs are nice and all for Alaska, but too slow... I certainly won't be doing my planned cross country flight with a Cub!

New music, new flash screens. Really pumping Alaska. I think it's going to be great. Did notice, however, that there will be some ring challenges along with it. Not really my thing, but with all the landscape to fly in, who needs rings?

 

I just tried the mixed weather theme. Looks interesting.

Pics and video of the new themes and trackir working .... Stat!

Cubs are nice and all for Alaska, but too slow... I certainly won't be doing my planned cross country flight with a Cub!

 

It's not my first choice, either. A Maule variant could do pretty much the same stuff.

 

I'm still hoping there's a Caravan or something similar also coming.

Looks like I saw a Super Cub with tundra tires in one of the opening screens also. Very nice. Hope we get a larger cargo carrier also.

 

Having spent a week flying around Anchorage, that Super Cub with the Tundra tires sure looked realistic. Now if they could start working on a Beaver with floats, that would be cool.

Great -- Flight's now broken again. Still crashes after 2 reboots. ...

 

SCRATCH THAT... Waited another hour, rebooted again, and now the game works.

 

On the intro video, noticed a couple new things:

• New plane (Piper Cub-ish), yellow (and a red one? Not sure.) Looked like it had tundra tires.
  
• Maule flying through driving snow.
  

New controls:

• Trim Bank left/right
  
• Trim Nose left/right
  

The new mixed weather looks interesting. Will investigate more later.

New trims? Are the trims button-only, or can they have axis assignments?

Well just playing with the update. Don't have track IR so I cant speak to that. I will mention what I have noticed so far:

 

Ground textures: City ground textures seem much clearer: Buildings can now be picked out better from the clutter, and the whole thing looks less like a big blurry mess. Sharp edges at the boundary's between tile types are still intact, but overall its a nice improvement and a step in the right direction.

 

Multiplayer: Is noticeably smoother. Much smoother; to the point that what was a clear annoyance when flying with others previously has receded to become almost a non-issue.

 

New weather themes: Both seem interesting but first I looked at the legacy Fair Weather theme. The big cotton puffballs all in neat rows have been replaced by..... randomly placed big cotton puffballs. Maybe they should just quietly retire this theme, because the other themes are beggining to talk about it behind its back. :P

 

Mixed Weather: May become my second favorite theme after low and threatening, but so far, I still see no lightning. (yet)

 

Heavy Weather: Seems to be a mix of everything, and my trips were highlighted by vertical cloud columns and several low columns that looked almost like forming tornado's. Whatever, it certainly looks interesting.

 

New Flight theme music: Very evocative of Alaska. Slightly cornball; might grow on you. My first thought is that there is going to be some sort of Alaska TV show tie-in. Its seems telegraphed from miles away, but maybe its just my imagination.

 

Martekplace: Seems better organized/more logical: Divided between New releases, Experience packs, and aircraft. It seems smart enough now to only offer you aircraft you have not yet purchased. New aircraft dutifully displays the Corsair.

 

Of note is the newly added World Icon, which obviously does nothing yet! :P

 

Apparently they are going for an Orbyx-Style select-your-region to fly in approach, but it remains to be seen if that will inhibit long haul fans from flying from region to region directly, should they desire to do so.

 

Overall, I am sure the flight community is going to be buzzing, with track IR fans eager to give it a try, and multiplayer goodness everywhere leading up to the Alaska release.

It's amazing already, and Alsaka didn't yet get released!

 

I noticed single engine controls only... Apparently there will be no multi-engine aircraft comming with Alaska... Most probably only for a future DLC (?)

 

No problem for me.... The ones I fly in real life don't even have one :-)

As expected Track IR adds greatly to the experience. With Alaska coming it might be time to at last bid a fond farewell to FSX.

I stopped using Track IR about a year before I quit flying sims, cause 95% of my flying was in heavy jets, and it made no sense. I was thinking about that today, and wondered what I did with my Track IR ( I threw alot of stuff out). Lo and behold, the unit is still sitting on my computer desk hidden under some books I placed over it. I hooked it up, downloaded the software and it looks like it is working. I just have to get the Vector license for it cause I lost the serial number. Going to be interesting to see how it works after all these years. I even found the unit that clips to my hat.

I am on Steam...no update yet. Are you guys on Steam? is Steam just a bit late with this?

Steam updates the stuff late... That's what happened with the Corsair. I think the day AFTER the Corsair was released did it go up on steam.

Great -- Flight's now broken again. Still crashes after 2 reboots. :mad: Well, I'm off to see how long it'll take to get it unscrewed THIS time.

 

I know how you feel, get this every second time I start Flight. Usually 1 reboot helps. But took already more times in cases. Too strange. Yesterday for the very first time I even got my profile reset, started Flight and should to the intro mission. Luckily I made a backup of my profile.

 

EDIT: btw, did NOT install the update yet. Will see whether that changes something.