What they did right in Alaska

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Well! Its out, and I don't think in all the speculation about the price and whatnot that anyone, including me was as silly as to suggest it would all be simply deposited on the floor in front of us gift-wrapped for just $14.99

 

Considering what I and a lot of others have grown accustomed to paying for these sorts of things, its going to cause a bit of consternation, as I expect it was intended to. So, what did we get for this $14.99?

 

Well for starters, around 600,000 square miles of scenery. Sounds impressive, but if it looked like a dogs dinner, then.... not so much. Fortunately Microsoft seems to have mostly delivered, and in some cases exceeded quite a bit what many might have been expecting. Some will hate that. Some will deny it and point frantically to FSX and claim parity But the simple technological advances inherent in flight are going to make that a tough one. Nonetheless I am sure we will hear that debate and I will leave it for others to pursue.

 

There will also be the "still not good enough threads" and most of use here will leave that debate also to others.

 

What I want to do is collect here some of the good things about this release.

 

I will start with the sheer size! This is going to be the gift that keeps on giving as far as places to fly to. We have literally hundreds of airports to explore, and who knows how many unique locations. Its apparent in many I have seen so far that while not always successful, the flight team have taken care to make the legacy city textures blend more naturally into the scenery, and I appreciate the obvious effort.

 

The new weather themes work well. Ice flows look much more natural than they did in the teaser photos and have a three-dimensionality that I was not expecting (based on those photos) Waterways snake realistically through cities and the landscape, liquid in summer, frozen over in winter. Houses are covered with snow in the wintertime and shipping in the harbor can change with seasons; small details that matter

 

The handling of light and shadow, as in Hawaii, remain a strong point and do a lot to enhance the "You are there" feeling of this scenery both in the air and on the ground.

 

Plenty of places to practice ILS approaches and VOR navigation: The Alaska map is bursting with places to go, and people are already looking at their charts, and salivating.

 

I like how the passage from Alaska to non-covered areas is handled so gently, with a smooth transition to hilly, tree covered terrain that seems to go on forever before finally giving way to featureless wasteland. Going near the border will not be an eyesore!

 

There is a free Aircraft. Its cockpitless, and many, perhaps most will dislike that a lot, but considering that the price of the whole package is $14.99, either Alaska is being practically given away, or wonder of wonders, the plane is actually free. I can live with that. Being an American, I like free, and I have other planes to do more involved flying with that should work quite nicely in Alaska for now.

 

Overall I have to say I am generally surprised and Impressed, and would have probably paid more for this package with no qualms whatsoever.

 

Lets hear from others what they are liking about this product!

[jcomm 5,930]

It's difficult to add anything to your wise words/thoughts... They express excatly my feelings and thoughts regarding MS FLIGHT.

 

There are lot's of missions to keep us occupied now, new challenges, and, above all, there is MS FLIGHT which is exactly what it is, at least for me - the most realistic GA flightsim I have ever used :-)

[Bobsk8 12,719]

I would like to add a few things to this list, having flown PC sims since the 80's and thousands and thousands of hours in FS9 and some time in FX. To start out with, the planes in Flight actually fly like real airplanes. That is something that I have never seen in an out of the box sim. The default planes in FS9 were total junk, and a real pilot had a heck of a time trying to fly them, because they didn't fly like an aircraft. Then when you mixed in the stutters, in the video, and the jerky response, it became a pilot's nightmare to try and fly a decent traffic pattern,.The solution, buy add on planes that were a bit better, at $25-35 a pop. Even then, it was a gamble. I can remember one highly rated 182 RG, that needed about 3 updates to the software and you still had to tinker with the flight model to get it to be somewhat realistic.

 

Then the default scenery, was an adventure. I can remember landing at airports and watching the main gear sink into the runway surface. How about that for a bug, or runways not aligned correctly, or VOR's that didn't work when you got a few miles from the airport. So you buy mesh, and scenery and airports, and then what happens, the frame rate goes into the dumpster and the stutters get worse. I remember flying into Boston Logan, and turning final, the frame rate would get so bad, you couldn't figure out where you were in the pattern, and I had a high end gaming PC. So everything had to be dialed back to make it flyable.

 

Now add to that the crashes to desk top, the blue screens of death, the screen going black in the middle of an approach after a 4 hour flight, and so on.

 

So what do I hear about Flight, an airport doesn't look as good as an add-on in FX, there aren't enough Missions, the tire pressure on the right main gear is low in the Stearman ( I made that up), all minor little nit picking as far as I am concerned. If the folks that are finding all kinds of faults with Flight, had downloaded FS9 or FSX a couple of weeks ago, they would be ready to go to Seattle and drag Bill Gates out of his house. I think this is what bothers some of us, because we have been though all the iterations of FS, we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, and believe me, Flight is the best thing ever compared to the older versions of FS.

 

Now I admit, it doesn't have ATC, or Heavy Jets, and some other things that FS9 and X have, so the folks that want and need those things have FS9 and FSX to fly. Posting on this forum about why Flight isn't like FSX and FS9, makes no sense to me. If you don't like Flight, don't Fly it. You couldn''t pay me enough money to install either FS9 or FSX on my PC and fly it, even with a thousand dollars worth of free add-ons. I just want to start the aircraft up, go to an airport, fly somewhere, shoot and ILS, land and have fun doing it with zero problems, and that is what Flight lets me do.

[jcomm 5,930]

Good points to Bob!

 

Also, people still didn't stop comparing.... Are you FSX, FS9 or XPlane users? Great! Enjoy - those are very nice simulator games as well!!! I couldn't afford having it all on my disk, and, to be honest after "flying" MS FLIGHT's aircraft I wouldn't really need to (talking GA single engine aircraft...).

 

Enjoy MS FLIGHT for what it provides. Can you? Is it that difficult? Have you spent a fortune in the base game and add-ons/DLCs to feel that it was a bad "investment"?

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Good points to Bob!

 

Also, people still didn't stop comparing.... Are you FSX, FS9 or XPlane users? Great! Enjoy - those are very nice simulator games as well!!! I couldn't afford having it all on my disk, and, to be honest after "flying" MS FLIGHT's aircraft I wouldn't really need to (talking GA single engine aircraft...).

 

Enjoy MS FLIGHT for what it provides. Can you? Is it that difficult? Have you spent a fortune in the base game and add-ons/DLCs to feel that it was a bad "investment"?

 

Well I don't think its perfect, I just think that its not the devil!! :LMAO:

 

I actually would have almost liked to have gone on and tried a balanced full review, but I don't think my technical credentials are up to it.

 

I will happily read somebody else's fair one, though.

[toedv 1]

Me, I'm only worried that you all are going to pee yourselves with happiness, and leave the plane flying unattended into a mountain side while cleaning up the mess.

[jcomm 5,930]

Me, I'm only worried that you all are going to pee yourselves with happiness, and leave the plane flying unattended into a mountain side while cleaning up the mess.

 

We glider pilots have long found a solution for that :-)

[toedv 1]

We glider pilots have long found a solution for that :-)

That's very comforting to hear. You just drill a hole in the bottom, right?

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Just a note about the ice flows. I was just flying near Nome and went out over the frozen water..... absolutely beautiful textures. The airport itself probably only rates as "better than FSX" but it was still overall a promising start. I could easily imagine paying a few dollars to see these types of areas in better detail......

 

(Wait, I think I have heard of that scheme before.....)

 

[Bobsk8 12,719]

Just a note about the ice flows. I was just flying near Nome and went out over the frozen water..... absolutely beautiful textures. The airport itself probably only rates as "better than FSX" but it was still overall a promising start. I could easily imagine paying a few dollars to see these types of areas in better detail......

 

(Wait, I think I have heard of that scheme before.....)

 

 

 

And that is what it looks like if you are actually there.

 

Me, I'm only worried that you all are going to pee yourselves with happiness, and leave the plane flying unattended into a mountain side while cleaning up the mess.

 

I have had more fun today, flying Flight, than anytime I have been flight simming for almost 3 decades.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

I think that says it all, Bob. :good:

 

Best regards.

Luis

[Air1 136]

_{I love FLIGHT and Alaska is looking really great. The only thing I don't understand is, and I will say it again, why in the world would they give anyone a aircraft without a cockpit as the only new aircraft in this huge download. I know, I know, we have been over this time and again. I will not mention it again. I just can not figure how they think this is a good thing.}

_{I would have gladly payed more for a whole aircraft. Off my soapbox now, and back to the joys of flight.}

[Bobsk8 12,719]

_{I love FLIGHT and Alaska is looking really great. The only thing I don't understand is, and I will say it again, why in the world would they give anyone a aircraft without a cockpit as the only new aircraft in this huge download. I know, I know, we have been over this time and again. I will not mention it again. I just can not figure how they think this is a good thing.}

_{I would have gladly payed more for a whole aircraft. Off my soapbox now, and back to the joys of flight.}

 

I agree with you, and think they should have left all the no-cockpit aircraft out of the mix. You can't fly them properly in a sim, because your optical references are not there. It's like trying to drive a race car with no fenders and hood. Bad marketing decision by someone. The Maule and Stearman and Icon are perfectly capable and well suited to fly around Alaska.

[FrankFasi 0]

I've been flying sims since my 1985 Commodore 64 days. "Flight" is the best I've seen. It brings with it the same "awe" factor that Flight Unlimited had when it first came out. I think allowance for some sort of third party creativity would seal the deal. User-designed challenges and missions, for example. This may be the only sim I can remember that allowed no such creative contribution. There's two sides to that. The thing in favor of not allowing outside stuff is that the end user doesn't have to work through a pile of items of dubious worth to find the good stuff. Nothing is released until it has a seal of approval. That's a good thing. It's the "waiting and wondering" that can be difficult.

[xplanery 250]

I don't think that allowing even complex third party sceneries and aircraft would be bad idea if they all went through testing by MS to ensure that they are completely compatible with each other, and would be all then sold and installed like regular MS DLC so there wouldn't be any hassle with that part either.