Well, this is sad news. I guess we did see a lot of signs, but I didn't expect it to happen this soon. Honestly, it feels like there was at least one camp in the company that wanted this to fail from the beginning. They seem to have been pulling in two directions and wanted mega-blockbuster hit sales without spending much money on a larger development team or a coherent marketing strategy.

 

Why did they bother in the first place?

 

I will still enjoy flying Flight as long as they keep the servers going. I also have Flight to thank for getting me interested in sim flying and leading me to purchase FSX recently. Between Flight and FSX I should have plenty of years of clear skies ahead of me.

I guess I will not earn many kudos by this, but to be honest, the greatest disappointment for me was the community as whole. The rage against everything that didn't suit the "real simmers" (quote from above). The lack of understandment that Flight had priorities and that our wishes could have been grated in long run (as TIR was). Instead of supporting team of a wonderful, though narrow sim (no ATC, no damage model are the only real problems IMHO), there always was a barrage of nearly hateful comments everywhere.

 

The best example is the Cub: everyone was craving about DLX plane, then they gave it to us, and on FB 9 of 10 posts were just raging. I understand that some things were let-down, but the bigger picture is that the "real-simmers" have the attitude of a spoiled child: I want everything, I want it now, and if I do not get it, then let no one has anything.

 

I understand what many of you will not like what I said, but try to think about it for a while.

 

In the end... thank you Flight Team for all your efforts and for providing me a wonderful sim, that made flying fun. And better luck next time ;)

Are they gone to kill it, like Train simulation or sell it, I hope the second one.

 

Sadly, MS does not sell off products. They bury them if they cannot get them to work, as allowing somebody else to get them to work would look bad for MS.

can't believe they took so many months to develop and then shut it off in less than 6 months after the launch date.

Pft. That does not surprise me one bit. PC based flying is fun, but the majority of the market are medium to hardcore simmers. Arcade style general flying was never going to work.... bring back the aces development team and work on MFS11.

 

If I was microsoft, I would produce an update for fsx. Fix the bugs, change the weather system so we get wxr(shoot me down) make it more fps friendly, improve the flight dynamics etc and charge like $5.00 for the update. Haha dreams dont come true unfortunately.

I'm betting on Laminar Research. I'll use my FSX until the very end, but I find XP-10 very promising. Also, I don't think the original ACES team could go independent because most of the code is likely property of MS.

I'm just glad that Microsoft's strategy inadvertently ended up protecting all the add-on makers. The last thing we would have needed was to lose developers had they invested a lot of resources onto developing for flight and then ended up with no platform to work in.

 

I never went further than to try the demo as Flight never offered the style of flying I like, but I was certainly keeping my eye on the forums waiting for the day that something I liked would appear. I guess that was their downfall. FS9 and FSX offered a wide variety of things to do and therefore attracted a wider variety of simmers. Flight only offered GA and although it was pretty and worked well, that wasn't enough for the majority in this hobby.

I will likely be abandoning simming after this. Not only Elvis will be leaving the building.

 

Hey Hiflyer, you dont have to abandon simming, there is always X-plane, Check it out.

Come to think of it, if they dont sort the ATC interaction out, I may abandon that too.

I have to say I'm not surprised. Its sad, as it could have gotten more and more people into the great hobby that is Flight Simulation. Shame it never really worked out. The problem is they kinda went for a mixed bag, tried to appeal to both, and failed.

 

Feel bad for all of those who were enjoying flight, I was never personally all that bothered with it, but I know a few who loved it so not a great day.

Well crap, horrible news to wake up to this morning. I have gotten many hours of fun with Flight and hate to see this happen to it.

I will still enjoy what I have, but if true knowing there will be no more coming is very sad indeed.

I will likely be abandoning simming after this. Not only Elvis will be leaving the building.

 

...and that my friend, losing fellow flight simming enthusiasts, is the greatest loss of all!

Bummer news. I really like Flight for just jumping into the game and fooling around a bit with landing on ice flows or flying through hangars.

I'm just pulling this out my back side but........

Alaska seemed a tad unfinished which many attributed to it being rushed out the door.

We got a bunch of VC less planes which kind of confused everyone.

 

Maybe that wasn't the plan. It was strange that Alaska got released with a partial cub. Maybe the devs knew for a long time that the project was on the cutting table and did what they could to get what they had out before the plug was pulled. Maybe all the planes were going to have cockpits and they just were not ready yet like the cub was not ready when they released Alaska which was not ready.

The deluxe cub could very well be the teams departing gift to the fans. Perhaps there are partially completed cockpits, floats, skis and details for Alaska just sitting on the cutting room floor so to speak.

BTW Flight had one thing that was amazing for me: the prices of airplanes and sceneries were so low that I could have afforded them. Now saving for OrbX sceneries will be much more painful... samoe for airplanes. Well, what can I do :) the brighter side is that the South Island of NZ is one of my most favorite places.

There should be no losses of simmers due to loss of Flight!

 

While it is of course a bad thing to lose a sim, no matter how liked or not (many liked it), and I would hope Microsoft would rethink the strategy, whatever it is for the benefit of us, but... in the meantime, there are many alternatives out there which everyone can explore!

 

Look into the future guys!

I think it was inevitable. MS tried to manipulate an already established market. That of the base platform FSX and the addon market around it. The funny thing is that they tried to achieve that with an inferior product. What in the world persuaded them, that they could compete with all the hundred's of people who create amazing products for enhancing, and sometimes completely changing the user experience? Flight simulation is not to be taken lightly, and this is now proven.

 

EDITED FOR FONT SIZE. PLEASE KEEP AT DEFAULT FOR NORMAL POSTING. MOD.