Response from Joshua Howard

[Glynn 405]

I may make the transition over to my combat sims and start the training process on them sooner than I thought.

 

Hello

Just in time for you.

Training - Combat - Multiplayer + FSX

http://combatpilotseries.com/flight-training-operations/

Another missed opportunity for MS

[Guest]

EDIT

Never mind...

[HiFlyer 9,369]

Yeah, me too that kind of says it all. Such a sad day, after all the excitement up to and the release of the VC Carbon Cub. I have not even bought it yet, and now may not.

I may make the transition over to my combat sims and start the training process on them sooner than I thought. One thing I know though irregardless, I plan on hanging out here on this forum as long as it is around and there are folks in here participating. It had some bumps in the road early on, but for the most part turned out to be one fantastic forum for us.

 

I will hang around a bit here as well, but FSX..... does not attract anymore. Once you have seen what could be, its hard to go back to what was. I have it on a separate drive of its own, with over 250gigs of payware from 3pd's......... (How the heck did that happen!?) But at this point, I really am a heartbeat away from just deleting it all. It feels like relics from another time.

 

I don't even want to think of how much money and time that collection represents, but I was on a spending spree for years.

[Glynn 405]

Hello Devon

You make it sound like MS Flight! was some huge graphical advance, In truth it was not.

 

I have used it since the start of the Beta and in truth some of the tiling issues would never have got out of the door with the FS2004 dev team.

Somewhere lost on the internet is a paper detailing the methods used for the FS2004 textures, describing in great detail the techniques used to ensure that adjacent tiles could never repeat.

A really interesting read , I cannot find it anywhere now or I would post you a link.

It is obvious that the Flight! team could also not find it, as if they had some of the badly matched up tiles in Flight! might never have been allowed.

Hawaii showed promise but in truth Alaska in parts looked very poor, mesh in particular let it down badly.

[styckx 1,872]

Flight wasn't all that much of a performance power house as it was made out to be. Alaska proved that.. Add some cloudly weather and max out the graphics and Flight came to a stuttering mess, add in a dense autogen area and it was annoying to even play.

 

The default LOD was 3.5.. That's below FSX default.. Then once you yank all AI, Road, Boat and Ferry traffic you essentially have a completely naked FSX and it still performed badly in many crowded areas or in heavy cloud cover..

[HiFlyer 9,369]

Flight wasn't all that much of a performance power house as it was made out to be. Alaska proved that.. Add some cloudly weather and max out the graphics and Flight came to a stuttering mess, add in a dense autogen area and it was annoying to even play.

 

The default LOD was 3.5.. That's below FSX default.. Then once you yank all AI, Road, Boat and Ferry traffic you essentially have a completely naked FSX and it still performed badly in many crowded areas or in heavy cloud cover..

 

We disagree, it seems. Especially as I played extensively and my experience was otherwise.

[188AHC 2,138]

Flight wasn't all that much of a performance power house as it was made out to be. Alaska proved that.. Add some cloudly weather and max out the graphics and Flight came to a stuttering mess, add in a dense autogen area and it was annoying to even play.

 

The default LOD was 3.5.. That's below FSX default.. Then once you yank all AI, Road, Boat and Ferry traffic you essentially have a completely naked FSX and it still performed badly in many crowded areas or in heavy cloud cover..

 

I totally disagree with this also. Flight was extremely smooth for me both on my laptop and desktop. The graphics even with some anomolies were fine as far as I am concerned. It was different than FSX and shined in its' own right. I own and fly both for different purposes. I for one am sad to see this come to pass as I was looking forward to greater things to come from Flight. Alas, I still have FSX which runs fine also for me.

 

I just wish all the employees of the studios the very best and hope their job status changes for the better soon.

[Glynn 405]

Hello Devon

So did we.

Are you telling me that Alaska was a technology leap ?

Come on now, it was a bit ropey in parts,

Devon, admit it, your among friends here :drinks:

[RoboRay 126]

I flew maxed-out graphics over dense forests as well as Anchorage and Honolulu for urban areas, in all manner of weather conditions and had smooth frame-rates.

 

Flight initially had some very minor stuttering for me in those conditions, but the last title update fixed that.

[HiFlyer 9,369]

Hello Devon

You make it sound like MS Flight! was some huge graphical advance, In truth it was not.

 

I have used it since the start of the Beta and in truth some of the tiling issues would never have got out of the door with the FS2004 dev team.

Somewhere lost on the internet is a paper detailing the methods used for the FS2004 textures, describing in great detail the techniques used to ensure that adjacent tiles could never repeat.

A really interesting read , I cannot find it anywhere now or I would post you a link.

It is obvious that the Flight! team could also not find it, as if they had some of the badly matched up tiles in Flight! might never have been allowed.

Hawaii showed promise but in truth Alaska in parts looked very poor, mesh in particular let it down badly.

 

I didn't and nobody I know of has said that flight was perfect. I will say that its potential over its predecessor was very very apparent to many, even if not to yourself. How that potential was used or miss-used doesn't negate that technical achievement and advancement, just as writing bad prose occasionally is not the fault of the paper.

 

I believe it was an advance and a significant one.

 

Hello Devon

So did we.

Are you telling me that Alaska was a technology leap ?

Come on now, it was a bit ropey in parts,

Devon, admit it, your among friends here :drinks:

 

Over FSX? yes. Add a few hundred in 3PD and things change, but I will not equate poor scenery design or underutilized resources with poor engine design, even for convenience. A quick trip to Mcgrath or several other spots showed that Flight could easily match current 3PD standards while still using lighting and shadowing that would not be possible in its predecessor; all while displaying superior weather effects and what many felt was a better flight model, at better frame rates.

 

Again, I will call that an advance. and a recent interview spelled some of it out:

• Autogen system: We completely rewrote this to provide significant improvements in mesh and texture variation and resolution, while simultaneously improving system performance so that we could place many more autogen objects without dragging down frames per second.
  

• Shadow system: We rewrote the code to use cascading shadow maps for both terrain and 3D objects. This provides a more uniform look and allows the terrain to cast shadows onto 3D objects.
  

• Landclass detail system: This system applies high-resolution textures such as grass, dirt and asphalt when the player is at or near ground level. The maximum resolution of the system used in FSX was one meter per pixel, resulting in very blurry textures. The new system has a resolution of approximately one inch per pixel. It’s active at “Medium” or higher graphics settings.
  

And there was more. Again, all improvements.

[n4gix 4,949]

_{**ring**ring** "Thank you for calling Fundermotz Airlines' reservation desk, how can we help you today?"}

 

_{"I need to make a reservation for a flight to Phoenix, Airizona."}

 

_{"Im terribly sorry sir, but there's no airport there."}

 

_{"Say what! What do you mean there's no airport there! I flew there last year!"}

 

_{"Well sir, after reading your response where you thought over 25,000 airports was silly, the entire world-wide airline industry decided that you must be right. After all, you are from Microsoft!}

 

_{It sure made our job a lot easier, since there are only flights intra-island in Hawaii now, and only a very few destinations in Alaska. Of course, there are no flights at all between Hawaii and Alaska, and you can't get to either place by air from anywhere else now, but that's alright!"}

 

_{**click** "Oh my heavens! What have I done!"}

[Glynn 405]

all while displaying superior weather effects

 

Hello

Except the weather effects were just themes, hardly an advance or superior to realtime weather..

I have just dropped back into the forum after having a last goodbye spin around in Unalakleet before I reclaim some disk space.

What I found:

It looks like FS9 with FSX water and that's being kind.

Compared to the Realair Legacy in FSX, The VANS does not compare all that well, where can I find this mythical flight model that is so superior to FSX ?

Help me out here.

[xplanery 250]

Over FSX? yes. Add a few hundred in 3PD and things change, but I will not equate poor scenery design or underutilized resources with poor engine design, even for convenience. A quick trip to Mcgrath or several other spots showed that Flight could easily match current 3PD standards while still using lighting and shadowing that would not be possible in its predecessor; all while displaying superior weather effects and what many felt was a better flight model, at better frame rates.

 

Again, I will call that an advance.

True, but still that is just an advancement from 6 year old software. Overall I would say that Flights graphical improvements from FSX were about half as big as FSX improvements from FS9, which isn't too much especially if we remember that there has been 2x more time beetween FSX release and Flight release than with FS9 - FSX release.

[dburne 2]

Compared to the Realair Legacy in FSX, The VANS does not compare all that well, where can I find this mythical flight model that is so superior to FSX ?

Help me out here.

 

There really is no need, you won't find it - I doubt you would be much open to finding it.

But it really is a moot point now.

[Glynn 405]

Hello Don

I am open to finding it, if in fact it exists.

To my mind Flight! just feels similar to FSX + EZdok with the advantage going to the much more advanced payware aircraft available to the FSX user, Realair stuff being an obvious example but not the only one.