Thanks for the heads-up.

 

Who knows yet whether it will be good or bad news. Flight had it's strengths. With the right developer it could be a good sim.

There's bound to be a certain amount of wishful thinking about any new version. :smile:  But I couldn't imagine any new version wouldn't be 64-bit.

 

I'm glass half empty on this whole development to be honest.  I think the term 'wishful thinking' is key here, because I just cannot see that the end result is going to be a 'FS11'esque product in a 64 bit variation to satisfy the like of us.  Reading some of  the assumptions of what this will end up being, is at this stage hilarious.

 

Edit:  I've just read the latest simflight.com news.  This is interesting.  I know Aerosoft were discussing the possibility of producing a new sim platform a few years back, and at the time 'Flight' was announced they were pretty positive about it from what I recall - until everything went pear-shaped with MS.  My guess is that Aerosoft have bought it, although I would have thought they would qualify as a 'logical' purchaser

The devil is in the detail:

 

Lockheed Martin and Microsoft Corp. entered into an intellectual property (IP) licensing agreement that ... provides Lockheed Martin with access to the ESP technology...

Read the words cafefully.

I've disabled AA in FSX and set 8xAA in Nvidia settings. But still FSX looks like AA is broken on Win8.- Also those flickering textures etc. would need to be taken care of. The new owner probably would do best to port it to OpenGL and support all major OS. Well the whole scenery looks way outdated. P3D is a joke as it still looks the very same.-

So bring on the news, I'm curious but won't bother to buy another P3D. :unsure:

That's the news that Simflight are announcing on their front page. http://www.simflight.com/

 

Doesn't sound like the news we wanted to hear. :(

I have no problem with that!  If it is open to third party and remains on the PC . Flight is a superior model.

Sincerely whoever has got MSFS license I hope the new FS11 will be a rock solid platform to develop from. IMHO is mandatory that the new sim will be 64bit (I hope in no retrocompatibilty) and has a complete new graphic engine (outerra or similar). Addons will come...as always.

Well, hmph, it appears that simflight.com is saying that the licensee is one who is no stranger to the simulation market. 

 

 

Strengthens my belief that it's either Dovetail or Aerosoft. Either way, a new sim with the "Flight" engine with the scale of FSX would be immense. 

It would make sense that the new licensee only purchased Microsoft Flight as from the start of this conversation Microsoft wanted an arm and a leg to purchase the rights to the whole FS series.

But if frame rates doubled with the new version I think many would happily accept that as the price you pay for progress.

 

I completely agree with you.  

 

My point was that if a new version of FSX was released which was actually deserving of the FS11 title, that it would have enough core changes that most FSX addons wouldn't work for it. The poster I was replying to was stating that he wasn't going to buy P3D "until I can use all my addons for free in it."  Too many users here are hoping for an vastly improved/updated version of FSX, while expecting that all their FSX addons will be fully compatible with it.  That's just not going to happen.

 

I'd much rather that the developer focus on making the best flightsim possible, without being held back by FSX compatibly.

simflight had said Microsoft would reveal who the licensee is yesterday, so I would take anything they say with a huge grain of salt.

 

"We just received the tip that Microsoft will announce today during the E3 event in Los Angeles, California, the future owner of the Flight Simulator licence. This news is from extreme importance to the fs community regarding the future of flight simulation. Be ready for the future!"

 

 

I'm glass half empty on this whole development to be honest. I think the term 'wishful thinking' is key here, because I just cannot see that the end result is going to be a 'FS11'esque product in a 64 bit variation to satisfy the like of us.

 

Knowing that it is now Flight rather than FSX that is being bought doesn't seem like a good result for me. Flight only had small areas of the world scenery and additional areas cost extra. For a whole world solution the price could be prohibitive. If the whole world scenery is not included I simply wouldn't buy it.

 

The other thing to consider is FSUIPC. I doubt very much that Pete Dowson would want to write a completely new version and that could also be a show-stopper for many. But it's early days and I'm just speculating. :wink:

In the MS Flight forum there has been a lot of hope for a FLIGHT revival, and efforts by Stonlance and his "Flight Toolkit" in particular helped keep the flame burning. Recently there was an effort to get MS to just go ahead and release the code if they were going to simply abandon Flight altogether anyway, and the request was apparently declined.

Things looked dark, and we were bracing for the end of multiplayer support in July.  http://forum.avsim.net/topic/441171-no-sdk-release-for-flight/

This would be a remarkable save, if true.

 

 

I'd much rather that the developer focus on making the best flightsim possible, without being held back by FSX compatibly.

 

We now know that any new version will be based on Flight rather than FSX so backward compatibility is out of the window. It will be very interesting to hear from the new owners on how they intend to develop Flight and whether there will be a SDK for developers.

If it rehash of flight then off to Xplane or P3d to use investment thousands of dollars no need start over with another flight sim. Flight will be good 5 to 10 years time but newer not always better. The improvements at this point will be incremental anyways.

I don't know who might buy and what it might mean.

 

But the economics of FS were not bad, just not "Microsoft scale" which is a billion dollar business.

 

FSX sold on the order of 2 million units. Deluxe was $60, Standard was, I think, 40. With discounts, let's take $30 as the average. That's a 60 million dollar business. With a staff of 50, at an average salary of 100k and a billed cost to the corporation of 2x or 200k, that's 10m salary. If it takes you 3 years to build the product, net profit is 30 million over 3 years, or 10 million per year.

 

Many people would see that as a viable economic model, but it is not "Microsoft scale".

 

 

Thanks for sharing this info...