The End of Flight?

[Guest]

SEE YOU IN COURT MICROSOFT!

 

Let's not go that way. If you want to go that way, take it elsewhere. I don't want a flood of anti-MS and 'sue you' posts on this forum. That will lead to nothing.

[EastCoastGuy 0]

Pity, Flight has such potential. Not that big a surprise though, especially given their recent business losses.

 

Still, the existing content still runs, and we have large areas to play with. I still haven't done all the Alaska challenges yet, and there are endless permutations of missions/weather/group flying to enjoy for some time to come. It's not like they suddenly turned it off.

 

Curious though... it's been said before that MS develops DLC months in advance. Is it possible that there are a couple months' worth of DLC sitting in the ready room? Could there be another 1 or 2 aircraft still to be delivered? (Hey, I can dream can't I?)

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Guess our legacy will continue with our "ridiculous 25000 airports and world wide scenery". Long Live FSX.. and P3D.

.

 

At least these of flawed in deisgn could fly whole world. Overall it decent when it was tweaked well MS will go back to drawing board with flight sims. It will long time before MS makes another flight sim maybe 5 to 10 years.

[Faire 0]

Curious though... it's been said before that MS develops DLC months in advance. Is it possible that there are a couple months' worth of DLC sitting in the ready room? Could there be another 1 or 2 aircraft still to be delivered? (Hey, I can dream can't I?)

 

Now that would be nice...

[Fox-Bat 31]

Let's not go that way. If you want to go that way, take it elsewhere. I don't want a flood of anti-MS and 'sue you' posts on this forum. That will lead to nothing.

 

+1 - It's a game people, get a grip. Lets not be silly. You still have your game. No one has taken it away.

[jcomm 5,939]

I intend to continue using MS FLIGHT. I'm glad I have ELITE because otherwise I might feel tempted to spend my money on either Xplane10 or LM Prepa3d, or even DCS p-51. Not only do I have the money to spend on x-plane plus add-ons, I simply never felt well with it's FDM, period! I didn't give up experimenting successive betas, but never really found one worth the try, except when I decided to buy xplane8 long ago...

 

Prepar3d looks promissing but I think I should wait for v2.0 to see what it really brings. Presently it's just a flavour of FSX, where I could probably re-install a few add-ons I still can download from Flight1, Aerosoft, Simmarket, etc... but I would most certainly end buying more things, and investing on a platform whoose future I really can't yet understand very well....

 

DCS p-51 is certainly a good go for those who appreciate the military side of flying - not me. Not even the detailled FDMs can tempt me to invest on a simulator that is meant for simulating war scenarios...

 

I can't forget FlightGear 2.8 is about to be released, is multiplatform, and there are interesting new features, even in the simulation of an environment for soaring :-)

 

So.... I plan to explore Alaska and Hawaii to the limit and enjoy the 5 great Deluxe aircraft available for MS FLIGHT.

 

I wish the best for the devs team, and all of those who lost their jobs with this MS decision, and enforce my idea that with a guy like this at the controls of MS who can really believe in the future of that company? How I miss Bill Gates....

[RoboRay 126]

Its strange. Years of simming and I never once learned Vor or any of that in FSX. I did short hops and tweaked, short hops and tweaked, and brought tons of addons as a distraction to keep me interested enough to not give up. But I never once brought a yoke or track IR or foot peddles for FSX. It literally never even occurred to me.

 

With flight, I was actually about to do all of those things and probably would have done so by next month. My interest in simulation had never been higher. And now I think about all those new voices in multiplayer asking earnestly about should they get a joystick, and wondering how this or that worked, and I just dont think we will be seeing a lot of those people in FSX. The barriers to entry into this community have simply become too high and intricate for new entrants without a super-high degree of interest. The opportunity missed is enormous, and from the uncomprehending attitudes I see expressed, I don't think many people locked into the existing communities will ever really understand what was lost.

 

Its a shame.

 

QFT

 

Flying doesn't have to be work. I learned to fly because it's fun.

 

For the last decade, PC-based civil flight simulation has seemingly had the goal of removing the fun from flying to focus ever more strongly on the work of flying. It's become simulations of operating airplanes, rather than simulations of flying them. And the community has had little growth, in large part because of that.

 

Flight was an opportunity to actually capture the audience that is interested in aviation as an entertaining hobby rather than a test of systems knowledge. The audience exists, although MS managed to offend much of it by discarding it along with the hard-core. Even so, had it been better managed and given even mediocre support internally, Flight did have the potential to grow the population of simmers.

 

Oh, well. So much for that.

[xplanery 250]

I doubt the project was killed over too many complaints. I'm sure they just weren't making any money..

This. Complaints do not matter as long as you make enough money, obviously Flight didn't...

 

Well, now I am just glad that I happened to be in Greece while Flight had great sales. I would have bought it with that low price so I could have then flown in some area that interests me more than Alaska / Hawaii, but when I came back it had only -40% sale so I chose to wait for next huge -75 % sale...

 

I must say I was always a bit skeptical about Flights business model and total ignoring of all third party development and creativity which created whole FS community. Too bad that they couldn't just continue FS series :/. I guess that great masses of gamers outside FS community weren't that interested in Flight after all. Most of gaming community interested in flying games wants ones where you can shoot other planes down anyway...

 

If I was more interested in Alaska and Hawaii I would still buy it when next sale comes, but I really want to have some other areas.

 

Of course probably general downfall of gaming industry because of bad economical situation could have contributed to shutting down Flight, but surely they would have still continued Flight if it had made enough money.

[Jucasim 0]

I am a lawyer in Europe and I do not think you are right in this case. MS was never promising years of development - they offered a sim, completed two sceneries and number of aircraft, and stopped developing. I see that as perfectly legal. It is shame that people invested money in that, but that is the risk they are taking.

 

Yes, that is another way of looking at this and respect an think your argument is a valid one, and even might be successfully used in their defense. I still think that when they said that they would release a new scenery every 3 months, nobody in Microsoft meant or any of the costumers understood "we maybe do that, or just shut down in the next 4 months". The result is right here, with hundreds of people caught off guard.

I think that a huge amount of people would never have bought the game if MS said that they might just release 1 or 2 dlcs and than shut down.

 

Let's not go that way. If you want to go that way, take it elsewhere. I don't want a flood of anti-MS and 'sue you' posts on this forum. That will lead to nothing.

 

Sorry J van E, i meant no harm, and i´m not a anti-microsoft guy...really! I just think that this particular decision was wrong and created a lot of false expectations...but again, sorry...i´m out!

 

 

Edited again!

 

It is not a "sue you" campaign. It is not a threat, that will happen...

I like your posts and opinions, i just think that people and companies both have rights. And I´m really really done in this thread!

 

See ya guys!

Edited July 26, 2012 by Jucasim

[Torg Smith 31]

The job posting above says the location is in Redmond. Do we know if the game studio was really in Vancouver? Wasn’t Aces Studio in Redmond? They had a number or employees from Aces Studio on Flight and I wonder if they would have really relocated to Vancouver. Now it is only 100+ miles northwest of Seattle.

[Christopher Low 5,359]

For the last decade, PC-based flight simulation has been focused ever more heavily on removing the fun from flying to focus ever more strongly on the work of flying. It's become a simulation of operating an airplane, rather than a simulation of flying.

 

That is exactly why I prefer to fly all of my FSX planes "low and slow" (including airliners). I am not interested in all of the complex systems and checklists associated with real world airliner flight. I just want to get up in the air in a plane that I like flying, and enjoy the scenery and ATC interaction along the way. That being the case, I can appreciate that many of you enjoyed MS Flight, and it saddens me that you have all been let down. I have not tried Flight myself, although I have been thinking about downloading the Free starter pack for a while now (particularly because I rather like the look of that Icon A5)......

[Bobsk8 12,754]

There were many, myself included, that really liked Flight due to this reason. But apparently it was not enough either.

I just loved the fact I could just launch Flight at a whim, without going through a process, and be off and flying somewhere with beautiful graphics at a moments notice. Then exit and be back to my desktop as it was when I launched the program.

 

Yes the global economy is really struggling right now, and is evidenced by many very large successful corporations reporting bad news - even Apple, did not live up to full expecations this last quarter. While I am surprised and saddened by this news, I am not totally shocked.

 

First of all Microsoft did not lose money this year. They took a 6 billion dollar write off for an acquisition that made 3 years ago for aQauntive , a digital advertising company, and it was done for tax purposes only. Their revenue this years so far is up 4% and considering the write off, they made more money this year than last, so blaming the demise of Flight on MS's financial condition is not valid. I blame it totally on all the negative feedback they got from the simming community along with the complaining about the pricing of the few things they charged for, This is even when the pricing was the lowest I have seen, since I have been involved in flight sims. Coupled with popular games of today that are up to date like Diablo 3, there just wasn't the consumer demand for a flight sim .

[3-2-1-Now 126]

Why are people surprised at its demise?

 

They bas-tardize (forum censor needs a new dictionary) MSFS and called it "Flight", release several aircraft that are external model only, amongst many other very bizarre design decisions, and as a result they are a commercial failure.

 

Good bye Flight! Time to make room for real flight simulators. Your time was over 3 years ago.

 

Best regards,

Robin.

[HiFlyer 9,363]

It's unfortunate that it came to this, but I hope that the outspoken proponents of Flight will able to handle this with the grace, poise, and most importantly - silence, that was demanded of those members of our community who felt abandoned by Flight.

 

Too bad we couldn't get any of that except in this forum.

[bakka 2]

That is exactly why I prefer to fly all of my FSX planes "low and slow" (including airliners). I am not interested in all of the complex systems and checklists associated with real world airliner flight. I just want to get up in the air in a plane that I like flying, and enjoy the scenery and ATC interaction along the way. That being the case, I can appreciate that many of you enjoyed MS Flight, and it saddens me that you have all been let down. I have not tried Flight myself, although I have been thinking about downloading the Free starter pack for a while now (particularly because I rather like the look of that Icon A5)......

 

 

I agree and I feel ms flight brought me back to basics somewhat, I am now taking this back to fsx, I appreciate the effort and extra work put into fsx so much more now after seeing the direction flight took.

 

Flight was great fun and I was really looking forward to see it develop more, the flgiht sim market is very thin now, lets hope a brave dev come to fill the void