Important Update about Flight School

[DTG_Cryss 244]

Our goals with Flight School were twofold: to create an entry level sim for people new to the hobby and to implement technical functionality to build upon in the future. Now, we have expanded our goals for our upcoming simulator, a platform we plan to expand upon and support for years to come. 

We will still retain the ethos of introducing beginners to the hobby, but without compromising on the depth and complexity demanded by more experienced flyers by implementing a much clearer curve to mastery in our upcoming sim. With this in mind, we have made the decision to retire Flight School. The sim and all of your saved data will remain in your Steam library, however it will no longer be available for purchase. 

We will have more announcements about our upcoming sim in the following weeks as well as something special for existing Flight School owners to thank you for your continuous support and feedback 

-Cryss + the Dovetail Games Flight Team

[Chock 17,769]

Hmmm, sounds interesting. I bought Flight School for two reasons really; curiosity and to support a new sim because I tend to buy any new sim just to encourage development of them.

[fs4fun 366]

Seems like a reasonable action at this point. The concept didn't strike me as all that bad, but FSc seemed to miss the mark. I thought it was OK considering it was DTG's first original flightsim title, and given it cost about the same as seeing a movie, I felt I received my money's worth in entertainment (and anyway my reasons for buying were the same as Alan's). Hopefully it provided a lot of good inputs to DTG for the new flightsim product.

[pracines 823]

If DTG Flight School was a success there would be no need for an announcement such as this. Since it was essentially a still birth, this is no surprise, just like MS Flight. I truly believe that the new Aerosoft "ready for takeoff" will suffer the same fate, because there is simply no way that a "beginner" type of flight simulator can succeed.....gamers will never stick around long enough. Flight simulation is essentially boring unless its getting/feeling close to real life.

My last flight in P3D from EPWA to EDDT, planned with Navigraph Ultimate & PFPX, in the Majestic Q400 with FS2Crew, Orbx, Active Sky Next, UT live traffic, GSX, RC4 ATC, Super Traffic Board, Accu-feel, FS-Captain etc. was most awesome. Along with flight control hardware, a quiet dark room, 40" and 27" monitors, I actually get fooled into thinking I'm really there. I seriously get nervous on take-off, landing, heavy WX, and busy airspace. This is what flight simulators are all about, no matter what kind of flying one does- whether flying a trike in the bush or an airliner at KATL.

Flight simmers will fully support new flight sims with advanced features that are greater than what we already have- anything less will simply die every time....sad but true.

So with this latest example maybe companies will finally learn - either make it real for a reasonable price or don't bother.

DTG Flight Sim is going to have to be exceedingly excellent or at least be extremely friendly to 3rd parties in order to survive. 

[pmb 5,137]

I agree to Paul, including the prospective fate of "Ready for Takeoff". 

Paul (and most of the others around here) are clearly at the upper end of flight simulation. No one starts or started at this level. One crucial element of the whole MSFS franchise was scalability. After getting hooked, you could extend it in several directions up to a complete immersion, All the titles like Flight School, Flight!, Ready for Takeoff just lack that scalability. At a point people get bored and that's it.

Prepar3d - as fascinating as it is - has the issue the other way round. It runs and looks indeed superb - for most of us with a longer FSX history where we got hooked. However, with CC only payment via the LM site, virtually no promotion, the EULA restrictions (no discussion here, please), the language barrier in countries like Germany, a forum which is very technically oriented etc. it certainly lacks the lower end of the spectrum. (And, yes, I know who the actual adressees of Prepar3d are.)

In view of this there may be room for another sim - but only if it spans the gaps and is at least in certain respects ahead of the competition. As Paul states.

Kind regards, Michael

[Silicus 850]

Well, I hope DTG made some major changes in creative personal over the last year, because now it is offical, Flight School was a dud.

I also hope they learned their lesson, that 'a quickly thrown together product' will not 'fly' and that quality matters. That depth matters and that if they want to be successful with their new flightsim, they really have to produce quality.

I have my doubts, since DTG does not seem to go for quality, at least I have not seen anything, but maybe they will surprise us. Competition is good!

[Novation 534]

On 4/7/2017 at 11:10 PM, Silicus said:

Flight School was a dud.

It was, and the fact they didn't bother to fix some of the awful visual errors was shameful. I bought it in good faith, but removed it long ago as it looked grim and seemed abandoned long before this announcement. The chance of me buying their next flight sim is next to nil, unless they offer the mugs that bought FS a decent discount, which I'm sure will not happen.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

7 hours ago, Novation said:

It was, and the fact they didn't bother to fix some of the awful visual errors was shameful.

That was the tell, for me. Yup, I considered Flight School a preliminary glimpse of their full product, but more importantly, especially as the reviews came in and my own impressions after purchasing it began to solidify, the primary question became how would they support the product? Would they address outstanding issues and validate the trust of the people like me who gave them a chance and purchased in good faith?

Or........... 

I waited, and waited some more, for the issues to be aggressively addressed.

And, now.....

Poof!!

 

 

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I have different take on DTG Flight School. DTG only released it to create marketing  buzz, with the intent of slowing down migration from FSX to XP11 and P3d. And every time those sims (and probably Aerofly 2 FS) looked like they were making headway  in the market, DTG temporarily dropped the price of FSX-SE on Steam. In the tech industry,  this is known as sowing FUD.

Actually  FUD might be a good moniker for a new flight sim product. But back to DTG, I believe that the demise of DTG Flight School  could also be a positive  sign that DTG  is getting close to at least an alpha version of their full fledged flight simulator. Or maybe as others have said, they have just assigned the project  to a more casual time frame.

 

[hypercide 97]

12 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I have different take on DTG Flight School. DTG only released it to create marketing  buzz, with the intent of slowing down migration from FSX to XP11 and P3d. And every time those sims (and probably Aerofly 2 FS) looked like they were making headway  in the market, DTG temporarily dropped the price of FSX-SE on Steam. In the tech industry,  this is known as sowing FUD.

Actually  FUD might be a good moniker for a new flight sim product. But back to DTG, I believe that the demise of DTG Flight School  could also be a positive  sign that DTG  is getting close to at least an alpha version of their full fledged flight simulator. Or maybe as others have said, they have just assigned the project  to a more casual time frame.

 

I agree.

Moreover, I suspect that DTG isn't going to Flightsimcon simply to ride FSX's very tired horse. They went last year with the freshly released Flight School. If DTG does, as Cryss says it will, start releasing info on the new sim in the next few weeks or so, they will be doing so for the purpose of creating buzz for whatever they bring to Flightsimcon.

[mabe54 17]

We are going nowhere,

Cheers,

[G-RFRY 1,708]

It may well be DTG`s partnership with ORBX on the development of the new sim would give ORBX a new platform for future customer`s.

 

Ray Fry.

[Alphafoxsierra 166]

On 4/11/2017 at 1:29 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

I have different take on DTG Flight School. DTG only released it to create marketing  buzz, with the intent of slowing down migration from FSX to XP11 and P3d. And every time those sims (and probably Aerofly 2 FS) looked like they were making headway  in the market, DTG temporarily dropped the price of FSX-SE on Steam. In the tech industry,  this is known as sowing FUD.

To clarify, that is absolutely not why we released Flight School. We know better than to think that we can distract you lot with marketing buzz alone!

Regarding Steam pricing, we operate as many others on platform do in terms of regular sales activities (some Steam driven, some not). To be honest, you're giving us way more credit on that front than we deserve  Also, FSX has been around ages, and if I know one thing about this community, it's that sale prices won't distract from you from investing in your sim of choice. 

Flight School does what it says on the tin, and as Cryss stated previously, it has fulfilled its purpose as an entry level simulator. Now onward and upward!

[Chock 17,769]

I guess we'll never hear DTG say it, but it's fairly apparent that Flight School was a dual purpose undertaking:  A demo/experiment to see what they could do with the simulation engine in 64 bit, whilst combining that exploratory undertaking with producing a product fairly quickly which could give people an easy intro to flying via a base platform which is more realistic than most other such attempts at a flying school sim have been. As such, it was inexpensive to buy and purposely limited in scope. And it absolutely does indeed do what it says on the tin because of that, so I don't know why anyone beats on it so much, after all, it's not as if DTG withdrew FSX-SE when Flight School came out; that in itself indicates that it was in no way intended to be some kind of replacement for it.

I'm pretty sure DTG are just as capable of researching flight simming trends and desires as the rest of us, and will therefore be well aware that MS's last gasp in simming - Flight - was a massive flop in its aim of trying to make a flight sim into a game. We all said that at the time when MS put out that questionnaire with many hints at their intention to try to make it more game-like, which many of us filled out with expressions of disapproval, so everyone knows our opinions matter when it comes to stating what we know will and will not be a success. And of course DTG will be well aware that a sim with expansion possibilities is one which has ongoing profit capabilities via licensing, one look at FSX will confirm that; how many other pieces of software do you know of which came out over ten years ago, yet are still being sold, and still having companies creating - and people buying -  add-ons for it on a daily basis? So why wouldn't they want a piece of that action when they know it is what we want and can make them a ton of cash for absolutely years?

[HiFlyer 9,343]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

how many other pieces of software do you know of which came out over ten years ago, yet are still being sold, and still having companies creating - and people buying -  add-ons for it on a daily basis?

My thought has always been that since there was so little profit to be found in building a new wheel, everyone was just endlessly refurbishing the old one........