INTERVIEW: LIGHTING AND TERRAIN

[LAdamson 240]

I guess coming from the world of flying real aircraft, the idea of flying in different countries, or even vastly different areas was never a priority for me. Almost all my flying of RA was done in Florida with a bit in Georgia. I used to get a kick out of flying between 2 airports about 15 miles apart doing touch and goes.

 

You should have got out more...

 

Within just a few hours by RW plane, in all directions..............I have the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, Sedona Arizona, and thousands of miles of excellent scenery in between. And to all of those places, we've flown. With a CPU upgrade (haven't done it yet), I'll look forward to Orbx Jackson Hole, and RealAir's Lancair. I'll even use "Flight" more..., and XP10 too..

[HiFlyer 9,376]

But the thing is, all of those places really only became interesting with hundreds of dollars of addon scenery. And in later times that in itself became a problem as scenery's from different companies began to interfere with one another, all of them drawing on the already strained FSX framerate resources....

 

When it came to the point that I realized that more of my time was spent tweaking and chasing down anomalies than was spent flying, and that I was at re-install number who-the-heck-knows, my interest started to wane. FSX became a system testing program to me. Only the fact that there was no real alternative kept me in the game.

 

My actual purchases had dropped from a high of several hundred dollars a month to $30 or $40 every few weeks and trending downward and possibly outward from there, when flight entered the picture.

[Bobsk8 12,880]

But the thing is, all of those places really only became interesting with hundreds of dollars of addon scenery. And in later times that in itself became a problem as scenery's from different companies began to interfere with one another, all of them drawing on the already strained FSX framerate resources....

 

When it came to the point that I realized that more of my time was spent tweaking and chasing down anomalies than was spent flying, and that I was at re-install number who-the-heck-knows, my interest started to wane. FSX became a system testing program to me. Only the fact that there was no real alternative kept me in the game.

 

My actual purchases had dropped from a high of several hundred dollars a month to $30 or $40 every few weeks and trending downward and possibly outward from there, when flight entered the picture.

 

Coming from New York, I used to love to fly Airliners in the North East . I spent a fortune on airports like JFK, BOS, LGA, EWR. DCA, IAD, BWI and the surrounding terrain. The end result was, it looked good sitting on the ramp, but when making an ILS approach the frame rates went down the tubes the closer you got to the airports. You can write tons of data into a program, but then you have to have a processor, video card, and memory to process it all. You can't have it both ways. Tons of scenery, add ons, complex aircraft, ATC, weather clouds, and goodbye smoothness. You have to figure out which is important to you, an eye full of goodies or a smooth simulation of flight.

 

The other issue, is that when I was flying in these areas , in large jets, the only time I was close enough to the ground to see much of anything, was during approaches, since with takeoffs, you are usually seeing not much of anything once you rotate. From 30,000 feet everything pretty much looks the same, just as it does in a real jet. How many people, when they fly in a commercial airliner, look out the window? But when I used to take people in a C-172, they couldn't get enough of looking around. That is why I like the idea of low altitude flying in a light aircraft, but then you don't want stutters to ruin the experience.

[Guest]

Orbx's PNW was released somewhere around february 2010. I spend almost 95% of my FSX-time there since that release until the release of Flight. That's almost two years. In between I flew the 737NGX between four European airports (which I had received for free) for a month or two. I did buy some other Orbx regions too but never really flew there. So... Alaska is HUGE to me.

 

Yesterday I had a look at one of those National Geographic documentaries about Alaskan pilots: they do nothing but fly in and out of the same airport day in and day out. Calling a game not complete or not a sim or not realistic just because you can't fly anywhere you want to, is a bit weird.

 

And btw... those pilots fly in and out of the same airport day in and day out in the same airplane too...! I spend months with just ONE aircraft in FSX. The last months it was the RV-7a and before that it was the Katana 4X, which I flew in for months and months. Having just one airplane at your disposal is quite realistic...

[LHookins 3,113]

The last months it was the RV-7a and before that it was the Katana 4X, which I flew in for months and months. Having just one airplane at your disposal is quite realistic.

 

I've got 1270 hours on the Grumman Goose in FSX. :)

 

Hook

[Bobsk8 12,880]

Orbx's PNW was released somewhere around february 2010. I spend almost 95% of my FSX-time there since that release until the release of Flight. That's almost two years. In between I flew the 737NGX between four European airports (which I had received for free) for a month or two. I did buy some other Orbx regions too but never really flew there. So... Alaska is HUGE to me.

 

Yesterday I had a look at one of those National Geographic documentaries about Alaskan pilots: they do nothing but fly in and out of the same airport day in and day out. Calling a game not complete or not a sim or not realistic just because you can't fly anywhere you want to, is a bit weird.

 

And btw... those pilots fly in and out of the same airport day in and day out in the same airplane too...! I spend months with just ONE aircraft in FSX. The last months it was the RV-7a and before that it was the Katana 4X, which I flew in for months and months. Having just one airplane at your disposal is quite realistic...

 

 

I talked to a pilot up in Anchorage, and most of his flying was flying tours in a Beaver from Lake Hood up to Mt McKinley and back. He never sounded bored talking about it.

[LAdamson 240]

And btw... those pilots fly in and out of the same airport day in and day out in the same airplane too...! I spend months with just ONE aircraft in FSX. The last months it was the RV-7a and before that it was the Katana 4X, which I flew in for months and months. Having just one airplane at your disposal is quite realistic...

 

That's why so many commercial pilots that I know, who really enjoy flying after office hours................keep a Pitt's, Lancair, RV, Cub,etc........to play with on their days off.

[Bobsk8 12,880]

That's why so many commercial pilots that I know, who really enjoy flying after office hours................keep a Pitt's, Lancair, RV, Cub,etc........to play with on their days off.

 

In the New York metro area, the big thing with airline pilots are gliders. They drive up to Wurtsboro NY, about 80 miles from NYC, which is supposed to be one of the best glider flying areas in the country, with their gliders on trailers, behind their cars. http://www.wurtsboroairport.com/gliderInstruction.cfm

[Oracle427 45]

Really? I did all of my training right around the corner from there. I can't believe that is a premium spot for gliding.

[Bobsk8 12,880]

Really? I did all of my training right around the corner from there. I can't believe that is a premium spot for gliding.

 

On the weekends, you see gliders soaring all over there. It's good because there are 2 small "mountains" which create alot of updrafts.

[jcomm 6,020]

Here in Portugal there are a couple of airline pilots flying gliders... The great majority are lawers, architects and a few engineers, the rest originating from various professional sources.

[Gibbage 199]

I don't get it, frankly. We have over 87,000 registered members of this forum. We have 60 to 70 new registrants every day. Go to the bottom of the forum index page and you see that in addition to the hundreds of registered users in the forum at any given moment, there are hundreds more in the "Guest" category. That's exposure to tens of thousands of people a day. I would counter that the marketing opportunity is right in front of your face.

 

With all due respect, those numbers dont tell the full story. How many of them are "active" and how many are just spam bot registry's? I have a VERY VERY small forum for KCFS, yet I can get 10-20 new users a day, ALL OF THEM SPAM BOTS. Very frustrating. Im not saying your members are inactive or spam bots, but that its impossible to sift them out of the numbers.

 

Yes, there are good concentrations of FSX users, but out of the millions of copy's sold, there are only a scant few that we could actively market too, and there is no single focal point. With in game sales, it would solve that problem. Also one of the biggest problems with FSX is 99% of the buyers didnt even know about 3rd party or that the game could be greatly expanded or enhanced. Again, in game sales solves this problem also.

[xplanery 250]

Yesterday I had a look at one of those National Geographic documentaries about Alaskan pilots: they do nothing but fly in and out of the same airport day in and day out. Calling a game not complete or not a sim or not realistic just because you can't fly anywhere you want to, is a bit weird.

With "complete sim" I meant a common simulator like FSX which can be effectively used for both GA and airliner flying. Sure, Alaska and Hawaii offer plenty of room and pretty views to enjoy GA flying. However very likely flying between few major airports out there with airliners would get quickly boring. Also at least in here Finland a lot of GA community seems to be especially interested in flying around their home airports, and I am afraid that this place would be one of the least interesting places and thus least likely place for Flight team to ever model.

 

 

 

Flight is already pretty good GA simulation (other than lack of ATC). But in my opinion to completely simulate world of airliners you do need pretty much whole earth modeled as most people who fly airliners like to simulate real world flights, many of them long haul ones that cross really big areas and arrive at destinations in different parts of the world.

 

 

I just don't like the idea of flight simulation getting divided too much into different simulators, one GA simulator and one airliner simulator. What I would like the most would be MS making a simulator that would allow both airliner flying and GA flying as widely as in FSX and would still keep good performance of Flight. Anyway, still I am glad that they at least made Flight a GA simulation, after they released that there would be no new FS it sounded like they wouldn't make any kind of flying software that could be called a simulator.

[RoboRay 126]

With "complete sim" I meant a common simulator like FSX which can be effectively used for both GA and airliner flying.

 

May I suggest "comprehensive simulator" instead? I don't think anyone would argue that FSX is not a comprehensive simulator. :Thinking:

 

"Complete simulator" has connotations that I don't think any simulator will ever be able to match, no matter how much money is thrown into it's development.

[xplanery 250]

Yeah that's better word for what I meant.