I just don't think any flight sim should be written towards attracting people who aren't into it in the first place. Maybe I misunderstand the intentions stated to attract 'newbies'.

 

The idea, I think, is that if people have a spark of curiosity, that Flight School will give them an accessible and friendly way to go check out aviation without being overwhelmed and intimidated by all the complexity, jargon and concepts that need to be learned. At the same time, newbies have to be able to see the potential of what flightsim can be, so they will want to keep digging. But you are right, there has to be that spark to begin with. People who just aren't interested in flying or in using a simulation are not going to stay with it no matter what you do.

Just the same as the guys/girls that are not interested in Fishing, Train or combat sims, or even jet liner add-ons in flight sims..

It's just human nature really, to gravitate where our interest lies..

I just don't think any flight sim should be written towards attracting people who aren't into it in the first place. Maybe I misunderstand the intentions stated to attract 'newbies'. Who are these 'newbies' if they aren't people like us in the first place?

 

I keep seeing this as community myth-making. The underlying meme seems to be "Nobody else but us cares, so everything flight simulation related needs to be tailored to us true believers"

 

I think that's  a fundamentally selfish argument.

 

And to clear the record, Flight did indeed have working Nav radios. Its one of those things that people repeatedly correct and which repeatedly keeps popping up, along with other Flight myths.

 

At this point I see that also as part of that community myth-making, the subtext being "See!! Making sims for regular people will never work and it failed by not being complicated enough to attract true simmers. So only make stuff for us from now on, okay?"

 

The road to niche-city.

 

By the way: If anyone is remotely interested, here is a video of MS flights NAV radios in action. The video was made to address this recurring myth about them not working. (and against the massive pressure to see only flights negatives, it sank without a trace)

 

Interest doesn't emerge out of nowhere and it needs some 'fuel' to grow. That's exactly where flightsims come in. Me, for instance, I was half-interested in aviation before getting into flightsims - I became an aviation enthusiast mainly through using flightsims. And I didn't even care about trucks in any way before purchasing Euro Truck Simulator.

I seriously doubt that the apprentice simmer who doesn't have a sim, is stopping by at AVSIM to read about a new sim. They are not the ones evaluating and giving input to DTG.

 

The only percentage that matters is the number of people who will buy this new trainer, or the number of simmers that will buy the new sim. Then the numbers that matter after that, are the number of add-ons they can push on to the users.

 

I see lots of numbers. The fact is that most sim pilots are not real rw pilots or will ever get to the commercial level.

 

In my final analysis, the user will be a gamer or a dreamer (us) that wants to simulate a cool plane that we will never own or fly.  :smile:

 

Just having some fun.  :wub:

 

 

I seriously doubt that the apprentice simmer who doesn't have a sim, is stopping by at AVSIM to read about a new sim. They are not the ones evaluating and giving input to DTG.

 

Actually, the more vigorous threads up until recently were on Steam.

HiFlyer - the only aircraft in the original Flight release were the Icon A5 and the Boeing Stearman and neither had nav radios that I remember. If you bought the Hawaii package you got a plane with Nav radios and I thought both Hawaii and the plane were well done. but then they started selling planes without cockpits as I understand it. I bought the Alaska package and then very soon after that they cancelled the whole thing.

 

If they had started out with the Hawaii package, things may have been different. But MS wanted people chasing rings in a plane that had fewer controls than some cars. DTG is clearly not following that path and that's a very good thing. Do you agree?

Interest doesn't emerge out of nowhere and it needs some 'fuel' to grow... Me, for instance, I was half-interested in aviation before getting into flightsims - I became an aviation enthusiast

Well my interest grew out of 'nowhere'. I seemed to have been born with it. and you yourself say that you were 'half interested'. you had interest in flying and therefore you bought a flight sim.

 

I still really fail to see why anyone would argue that a flight sim shouldn't be just a really good flight sim. what kind of argument is that? "I have an interst in flying so Ill buy a simulator that doesn't really show too much about flying"? really!? of course the sim should be good so that it'll REALLY spark the interest of those who encounter it. Im not asking for PMDG planes by default or a sim so accurate that it drives me crazy like some car sims Ive encountered do...I just want a healthy dose of realism to make it challenging and rewarding.

 

The real rewards of flying should be surviving the journey and getting from point A to point B safely.

 

 

Well my interest grew out of 'nowhere'. I seemed to have been born with it. and you yourself say that you were 'half interested'. you had interest in flying and therefore you bought a flight sim.

 

"Half-interested" means something along the lines of "How do planes actually fly?" and "How does it feel to fly a plane?" That's a very basic level of interest which a lot of people share, I believe. The point being: Flightsims should be made for people who have a basic curiosity about flying, not exclusively for those who are already into flightsimming. And that of course doesn't mean they should be bad flight sims.

 

 

HiFlyer - the only aircraft in the original Flight release were the Icon A5 and the Boeing Stearman and neither had nav radios that I remember. If you bought the Hawaii package you got a plane with Nav radios and I thought both Hawaii and the plane were well done. but then they started selling planes without cockpits as I understand it. I bought the Alaska package and then very soon after that they cancelled the whole thing.

If they had started out with the Hawaii package, things may have been different. But MS wanted people chasing rings in a plane that had fewer controls than some cars. DTG is clearly not following that path and that's a very good thing. Do you agree?

 

Absolutely. Microsoft never backed up their own product or gave it a fair chance, apparently not seeing enough profit in the venture to make it worthwhile. A smaller company like DTG apparently finds those margins acceptable, and their history shows a corporate focus that exceeds Microsofts toddler-like attention span.

 

On the other hand, DTG's train-sim past shows other tendencies that we can only hope we don't see in DTG Sim.

 

Absolutely. Microsoft never backed up their own product or gave it a fair chance, apparently not seeing enough profit in the venture to make it worthwhile. A smaller company like DTG apparently finds those margins acceptable, and their history shows a corporate focus that exceeds Microsofts toddler-like attention span.

 

On the other hand, DTG's train-sim past shows other tendencies that we can only hope we don't see in DTG Sim.

 

Very true

Like any very large corporation, Microsoft is profit oriented & responsible to it's shareholders, & if they see that one of their non core products is no performing, it needs to be culled.

 

Obviously flight simming was certainly not a core product of their, no matter what we thought, so it went.

 

DTG, on the other hand, has a corporate focus specialising in games. So, it's probably there to stay.

I'm sure that if they can keep the trains moving on track, planes should fly nicely.

There is a feeling of inevitability to some of this. I suspect that as long as we keep struggling with decade old technology that we seem to be locked into and unwilling to give up, true innovation will have to come from other places.

 

 

I'm another who agrees whole-heartedly with Josh's very thoughtful post. We keep faith with a very old program that has ultimately bred a very distinctive kind of user.  It is, oddly, the very same user that DCS and P3D have gone after--the committed "specialist" pursuing the strange rabbit of realism in an illusion generated by thousands upon thousands of lines of code. We define ourselves by the "expertise" that has come to be required in order to a experience FSX "fully." (Even that's weird qualifier; the community even argues about what an authentically "full" experience of FSX actually is; the layers of meta-ness are wonderfully deep.)

 

But what has been gradually draining away all the while from the experience is simple delight, and kudos to DTG for looking for a way of introducing that again.

 

 

Tim

I'm another who agrees whole-heartedly with Josh's very thoughtful post. We keep faith with a very old program that has ultimately bred a very distinctive kind of user.  It is, oddly, the very same user that DCS and P3D have gone after--the committed "specialist" pursuing the strange rabbit of realism in an illusion generated by thousands upon thousands of lines of code. We define ourselves by the "expertise" that has come to be required in order to a experience FSX "fully." (Even that's weird qualifier; the community even argues about what an authentically "full" experience of FSX actually is; the layers of meta-ness are wonderfully deep.)

 

But what has been gradually draining away all the while from the experience is simple delight, and kudos to DTG for looking for a way of introducing that again.

 

 

Tim

 

I think the focus of DTG Flight sim  will be more on the gaming aspect rather than simulation. Many in the Railroad sim community feel the same way about their train sim. If you want a more realistic train sim you get Run 8. If you want more of an entertainment sim without a great deal of realism, then TS 2016 Sim is the way to go.I suspect by the end of the year,  DTG will be releasing their  new Train Sim with the new engine, which is suppose to be 64 bit. Of course, none of the present DLC  will work with the newer version. 

My expectations were probably out of line. Hoping for more. My first flight, out of the box, was a graphical mess. When they delayed it from an April to a May release, I knew they had problems.  Not pleased.

I'm going back to the beautiful game, MS Flight.