Your whole argument is based on false premises. That's my point.

 

Got it...  Mis-read your post.

 

Nice meeting you... 

 

RJ

15$ aside ... if DTG wants to attract new people into the world of flight simming they need to deliver a GAME that people enjoy PLAYING (not simming).I seriously doubt that this can be achieved with "flight lessons" only. IMO there needs to be some sort of game-mission or call it "movie-missions" or something. From a simming point of view these missions will be plain wrong and stupid, like chasing an UFO or landing on a train (FSX missions anyone?). These mission need to be also presented in a more immersive way than only with some text and voice over. 

 

I think with these sort of missions you can attract people to try a flight simulator. And with these missions you can hook these people up and maybe some of them then want to do these missions just a bit more realistic und switch over to the "real sim".

 

Heck just look at what FSX offered years ago: http://www.simhq.com/_air14/air_527a.html

 

Sadly MS never promoted this aspect very much in FSX.

Indeed, to attract people for the long term you need a "mission". Just flying in a dead world is just for hardcore simmers to train procedures.

Years ago i mostly did missions in FSX. I think i did all of them available here on AVSIM or elsewhere. I also developed 3 missions together with other people.

Of course i did them in FLIGHT, they were very well, but few. Just hated loop flying. But the "jobboard" feature was also nice. Loved the daily aerocache hunt.

In todays games you also get missions, sometime it`s a story mode, or achievements to hunt for. Some even change on a daily basis.

 

But as you can see in this video, DTG is planning something similar:

 

its about the most blatant hype I have ever seen

 

Mate, nobody is hyping this. Most of the people here try to give it a chance (instead of writing it off before it even launches) and want it to be judged upon what it wants to do (and not being compared to P3D). Nobody here says: "Flight School is the most awesomest thing ever. And their full flight sim will be even more awesomer!" (That's only what you did with regard to P3D). When you look at this thread, you'll clearly see that many of us are also critical/sceptical about certain aspects of flight school, for instance performance. (Because you do have a point there: I do get 60fps in the A2A approaching medium complex airfields myself in FSX and do expect Flight School to deliver the same performance.)

What I see in this thread is people trying to come to a balanced opinion. You seem to be adamant at concinving people of your pretty one-sided opinion. Which is legit: We got it, that you don't and won't like it, because you can't imagine something that could at some time in the future be better or good in a different way than P3D. That's okay. We got you. Some might even share some of your concerns. There's just no need to repeat them over and over again.

 

EDIT: By the way: the P3D V2.5 you're showing lists over 150€ worth of addons in its description.

 

 

if DTG wants to attract new people into the world of flight simming they need to deliver a GAME that people enjoy PLAYING (not simming).

 

I think, some basic economical mode that would reward free play might also be a step in that direction. Euro Truck does that brilliantly: You set up a base and then you get so many contracts that you can basically drive anywhere you want and you get (in-game) cash for it if you don't crash it. That way you can enjoy 'free play' and still have a game-related purpose doing it. (That's basically what I do in FSX already by tracking my flights with FSCaptain.)

I still think that one of the main pluses of DTG, starting with Flight School, is what most simmers had been asking for quite so long - a 64bit DX11 version of MSFS.

 

Now we will have it, it will come with richer default scenery than what we were used to -ORBX - for $15,00. I can't expect much more from such an offer and price, but I already know it will include missions replicating a flight school "career" so... what more can I ask for ?

 

The Flight Sim tittle available probably latter this year will be yet another important achievement, and future will tell how the major players in the add-on industry are going to adhere to it.

 

I will not be interested in buying any additional add-ons for FSX or P3D while I wait for DTG Flight Sim and the 64bit.ready offers start being announced. Will A2A, PMDG, Aerosoft, and so on make their products available for the new platform for a marginal upgrade price?  Will they even be interested in developing for this platform ? I really don't know, and I couldn't care less - for the time being I am up to enjoying whatever Flight School brings...

 

Will A2A, PMDG, Aerosoft, and so on make their products available for the new platform for a marginal upgrade price?

 

I doubt that very much, particularly in the case of PMDG.

 

 

Here's a 2.4 sample and it 100% vanilla.

 

Thanks! That's a much better comparison! Just remember that at that point LM already had the code for maybe 4 years, DTG now have worked on it for a year or so. I do btw see some stutters in that video and FPS is only around 30 with dips into the 20s, so certainly not great. Other things (autogen) certainly look better than in Flight School, overall I wouldn't say its "far ahead".

 

 

Here's a 2.4 sample and it 100% vanilla. Its ridiculous by how far ahead the performance and visuals are in this video compared to the flight school beta videos:

 

Not really ridiculous, you are comparing a product that has had multiple updates over four years to a beta version of a $15 software.

Who can say what DTG full sim will look like four years down the track but given that they beat LM in improving the VAS usage and the dumping of scenery from memory along with moving the codebase to 64bit, I would say they have some pretty smart coders working for them.

 

Rob - I was actually talking about everything above the ground (minus the plane).

 

The splash screen appears to be a late afternoon shot and that look is entirely possible if sim makers would stop trying to make black or green grey clouds. FSX looked better.

 

and Im not sure why most of your post is about first person shooter games. Im not a fan of those and I don't play any. Im a flightsim and driving sim fan. and I have no driving sim because all I really want is an updated version of Test Drive Unlimited (the first one). I had a blast with that.

LM has had the code for some time now . im staying positive and giving DTG a chance see what they can do when the full Sim comes out instead of trying to knockout every other effort they make .the good thing about DTG is that they are trying to make a product thats for simmers and not charging an arm and a leg to test a product get feedback and later turn around and sell a better version to bigger customers ....  im sure if they keep working on it after 4 years they can improve alot hell they are already at 64bit ........

The Prepar3D product was announced over 6 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Prepar3D), so they've had the code at least that long. I understand that they were able to recruit some former Aces team members so they already would have had a bit of a running start. It takes a about year for a developer to start to get really proficient working with a large complex code base when starting from scratch (the time varies with the individual developer but a year's a good rule of thumb).

 

Progress is bound to be slow. It was 2 years for a 50 member Aces team that understood the code inside and out to get from FS9 to FSX. Was that a revolutionary change? There were some big changes between FS9 and FSX but a lot of things stayed basically the same too. And that was 2 years for an unoptimized FSX that people could barely run, it took over a year for the service packs and for users to be able to get FSX to run half decent.

 

The point being that MSFS progress was slow, P3D progress has been slow, and DTFS progress will be slow. Why not let DTG ship a couple of releases and then dump all over them for not getting the clouds looking perfect or popping autogen or  whatever?

But as you can see in this video, DTG is planning something similar:

Thanks for the video! Yes, icluding something like FS Captain, AirHauler, FSEconomy etc. would be also very nice  :smile:

Look I am sure there are plenty off newbie interested parties here who might not be that familiar with their options. I'll make sure they are aware of just how inferior Flight School appears to be compared to already older version of P3D

 

 

Maybe for most newbies Flight School would be the better introduction to flight simming than P3D. £12 GBP for a whole world sim with Orbx Global and what looks some nice ac's seems like a far better introduction to the world of FS that LM's far more expensive (and licensed challenged) option.

 

You can go on a crusade if you like, but I don't think you'll really be helping anyone, in fact its more likely to turn them off.

The point being that MSFS progress was slow, P3D progress has been slow, and DTFS progress will be slow. Why not let DTG ship a couple of releases and then dump all over them for not getting the clouds looking perfect or popping autogen or  whatever?

 

With regard to the upcoming DTG flight sim, why should anyone accept flaws like ugly clouds, blurred textures, and popping autogen when 1) there are other sims we can fly now that don't have that problem, and 2) they're calling it a "next generation flight sim"?

 

"Dovetail Games Presents the Flight Simulators of the Future" -- That's what it says on their web site news page. If they're going to call it that, then they have to deliver something better than what we already have, and on day one. 

 

As a side note, that page also says "Flight simulation has always been important in the world of gaming but it hasn’t kept up - the core experience hasn’t progressed since the launch of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X back in 2006." Kind of a knock on P3D and X-Plane there, eh? 

 

I don't think the community is having unreasonable expectations when they're hyping it like this. I'm rooting for DTG to pull this off, but they'll have to do better than what they're showing (so far) with Flight School. 

Rob - I was actually talking about everything above the ground (minus the plane).

 

I understand that, those pre-rendered above ground clouds have true volume and hand crafted in a 3D render program like Cinema4D or 3DSMax,  etc., nothing as good as that could be rendered real time any time soon on very high end hardware and still have processing power left over to manage the rest of flight sim world.  This is where many seem to be in a state of denial, I think primarily because many don't understand the relationship between distance and it's exponential  impact on performance.  There is a reason why all these games (3D shooter, racers, etc.) all have carefully controlled distances.  Add HDR, shadows, dynamic reflections, volumetric effects, lighting, etc. and the render calcs are staggering.

 

The reference to 3D shooters/games or racing games is often done by FS users, it's the same issue, carefully managed distances.

 

64bit allows higher resolution LODs at further distances, but that does NOT improve performance, it increases system load and reduces performance - this applies to any 3D sim/game.  Again, 64bit will NOT speed anything up, all it will do is allow for better distance visuals at the cost of performance - meaning better hardware will be required.  Not sure why there was an XPlane reference?  Anyone running Xplane knows that 64bit didn't make it "faster".

 

What I find a little concerning is that many of these DTG potential user debates seem to be around money/cost ... DTG can't flourish if they have a community of users that don't want to spend money.

 

Cheers, Rob