Well, back before Microsoft Flight came out, I did lots of comparison screenshots between it and FSX. I suppose it's only fitting that I do it again with Flight School:

 

Flight Simulator X

 

DTG Flight School

 

My FSX is mostly default besides DX10 Fixer and a tweak to the size of the airport lights. My camera angle/aircraft position isn't perfect, but it's pretty close.

 

I suspect they applied some sort of color correction in Photoshop. Really would look better without it IMO.

Same FSX engine, identical mesh, objects, rivers and airports 

Still, keep in mind that the screenshot is from the Flight School, which is not for us. As far as i know they could just offer the default scenery FSX as for the Flight School, since it's aimed at new people approaching flying sims for the first time.

 

Either way, i would listen to Jordan King a little guys, because from how he talks it seems like he knows more stuff and might be under NDA with Dovetail. He also makes some valid points

 

Flight School is certainly something I would pick up. The flying lessons with good old Rob in FSX are abysmal, and some even have bugs in them. I think it will be fun to earn a PPL or CFL in the sim, just for the challenge of it. My experience is that simmers don't know that much about flying as they think they do....

 

As for no chancge in the graphics library (textures, models, autogen, mesh, landclass etc.) I'd call that abysmal. I sure hope they've done more than just add volumetric fog and HDR lightng...

So, are DTG Flight School and DTG Flight Simulator for Windows 10 exclusively?

Sounds like good 'ol Microsoft will restrict the simulator's distribution to the W10 "Windows Store", which is garbage, full of useless "apps" for phones.

 

Just yesterday, the developers of Quantum Break announced the same thing. M$ must be paying some good $$$$ for that.

 

It's funny since Phil Spencer promised that MS is not interested in competing with Steam, yet here they are, restricting your choice.

We can't tell what the terrain textures look like from those screenshots. I sincerely hope that they have made significant improvements in this department, because the ones in FSX are not exactly realistic. It needs much better (and more convincing) blending between urban and rural textures, better roads, and vastly improved autogen buildings.

 

As for flight simmers not knowing as much as they think they do.......this flightsimmer knows about as much as next door's cat, so Flight School is of great interest to me. The only problem could be that Windows 10 exclusivity....

Same FSX engine, identical mesh, objects, rivers and airports 

 

Looks like built in atmospheric scattering to me. 

 

XPlane has this function built in -- http://www.avsim.com/topic/433908-experimenting-with-art-controls-raleigh-scattering/

Sounds like good 'ol Microsoft will restrict the simulator's distribution to the W10 "Windows Store", which is garbage, full of useless "apps" for phones.

 

Just yesterday, the developers of Quantum Break announced the same thing. Microsoft must be paying some good $$$$ for that.

 

It's funny since Phil Spencer promised that MS is not interested in competing with Steam, yet here they are, restricting your choice.

& where, pray tell, did you get this info from??

You DO realise how unrealistic that sounds?

 

Just because it's an Xbox news posting, that certainly does not indicate & is certainly not mentioned, that it will be an Xbox or Windows 10 only release.

Imagine the outcry if you had seen this iinfo release posted on a Linux forum by a Flight sim enthusiast!

Isn't 64-bit support enough to start with? This for one should kill most of the complaints seen on the FSX/P3D forums

Maybe an explanation about 64bit, the benefits & how it will effect us could be of interest?

 

64bit, DX11 words are all over the place. Cane we have an explanation of what it means to us & how it will effect our add-ons?

& where, pray tell, did you get this info from??

You DO realise how unrealistic that sounds?

 

Just because it's an Xbox news posting, that certainly does not indicate & is certainly not mentioned, that it will be an Xbox or Windows 10 only release.

Imagine the outcry if you had seen this iinfo release posted on a Linux forum by a Flight sim enthusiast!

How's it unrealistic?

 

Mickeysoft is heavily pushing their "app store" in W10. Even the default picture and video program is one of those "apps".

 

Recently they announced that other first party games would be exclusive to the "app store", such as Quantum Break, Fable Legends, GoW, etc.

 

Also, you might want to read the title of the blog post... It says "coming to W10" not "coming to PC". What else could/would that mean?

 

I may be wrong but so far it's not a bad assumption...

Edited February 12, 201610 yr by linux731

Me bad, so sorry, you are correct. I was a bit too quick with the fingers there.. Maybe Windows 8.1 & Windows 7 could not be fitted onto the line.

 

That would be a big problem for some.

 

64bit, DX11 words are all over the place. Cane we have an explanation of what it means to us & how it will effect our add-ons?

 

64 is bigger than 32. 'Nuff said :smile:

 

 

I may be wrong but so far it's not a bad assumption.....

 

....although it may be a bad decision.

Maybe an explanation about 64bit, the benefits & how it will effect us could be of interest?

 

64bit, DX11 words are all over the place. Cane we have an explanation of what it means to us & how it will effect our add-ons?

 

Well, to keep it extremely short all DLLs compiled for 32 bits need to be compiled again on 64bit. a 64bit program is able to use much more memory than a 32bit one, so that means no more out of memory errors, the program can load more assets in the memory and actually use all the RAM we have properly.

 

As for DX11, usual things, tesselation and some other graphical effects Prepar3d also has

Wonder if it will teach me how to strafe SimTrains....    

Here are a collection of quotes from DTG:

 

 

Both Flight Simulator and Flight School are based on upgraded FSX technology only. We found this to be a better starting point that using Flight.

 

Flight School is due out in April and Flight Simulator is due out towards the end of the year.

 

We will be confirming the system specs needed for DFS closer to release window. We are not sure yet because we are still making it!

 

Flight school is a standalone experience and is not compatible with add-ons or content released for other simulators. We will have more news about DTG Flight Simulator over the coming months

There are currently no plans to include third party content in Flight School. That will really be a standalone experience focused on learning to fly. DTG Flight Simulator is a different story, we will absolutely be looking to work with third party developers just like we have been doing with FSX: Steam Edition.

 

We want to make it clear that although Flight School is an accurate simulation of the experience of learning to fly, it is intended for entertainment purposes only and is not a real-life training tool.

How did we go about understanding what that experience felt like? We sent the development team for flight lessons is the simple answer.

How does this translate in Flight School? Well, in most existing flight simulators when you tackle the tutorials you are faced with a series of instructions or text boxes saying click this, do that and so forth. While these maybe functional they are very early 2000s in their approach. In flight school we have put an instructor in the cockpit with you and they will guide you through the various lessons just like a real instructor would. I guess the best way of describing it is that we wanted to put the human experience back into flight simulation. We want you to be the pilot not feel like you are the aircraft.

 

We are fully committed to supporting FSX: SE for the foreseeable future and we are focused on expanding the current choice of content available to simmers. This includes bringing new exclusive content to Steam. Currently, we have no further plans to update FSX: SE any further. However if issues do come up, we will, of course, look into them.

 

We have learned that flight simulation appeals to an incredible amount of people, but a lot of them find it too hard to get started. Flight School has been designed from the ground up to meet the needs of those players. We strongly believe that there is real desire out there for a simulator like this - one which breaks down the barriers of entry to simming and makes the genre accessible to anyone who wants to try it.

 

Because both Flight School and Flight Simulator are based on upgraded FSX: SE technology, expect both to utilise similar control schemes to those found in FSX. Our current plan is to offer support for mouse and keyboard, the xbox and Steam controllers and an API that third party peripheral developers can access for custom hardware. Basically, we will be following a similar approach to the current FSX landscape.

 

Basically, they're forking MS Flight Simulator X and not MS Flight as Lockheed Martin did. They're sprinkling in graphical enhancements as Lockheed Martin did. We'll probably be seeing the same world in Flight Simulator X as we do in Prepar3D. We'll be seeing DirectX 11 support like we do in Prepar3D. And they've confirmed that they are working on a 64-bit build, which P3D users have been pining for quite vocally for years now. And since this is a consumer-oriented product, unlike the enterprise and academic oriented nature of Prepar3D, licensing costs for addons will be cheaper.

 

So in the end, I'm guessing Prepar3D fans will be happy to see this development.