11 hours ago, JohnH90 said:

Just trying out the missions. Not sure i'd call a pan pan on an engine failure! Its not too bad now i've messed around a bit. The sky colours are a bit disappointing but the ground stuff looks quite nice. Not bad for 20 quid, im going to keep this and see what happens in the next few months. Yea its not P3d with all of the add-ons etc but lets see.  

That's a MAYDAY event!

1 hour ago, Elvensmith said:

Well for £20 I have taken the plunge to satisfy my curiosity, currently downloading.

tl:dr on all the overnight comments but the consensus seems to still be the three way split.

My biggest misgiving continues to be, though, if this is indeed pimped FSX code with an ORBX scenery makeover - why no jets? The early access excuses and malarkey do't really cut it on the lack of provision. A sim which offers the whole world to fly around needs something faster than a 200kn turboprop to do it in. As a minimum we should have a bizzjet/RJ and something heavier - a 747 or 777. Is it because DTG couldn't be ar..d or is it worse than that, they don't have a coder or tech who can program in jet systems and performance with any degree of realism or fidelity? Not looking for PMDG or Level D standard, but something akin to FS default is needed. 

That'd a third party developer issue! And they are not keen on taking a 60% cut out of potential profits.

9 hours ago, Jimm said:

I'm still trying to figure out what part of "early Access" that people find hard to understand.

Many misunderstand that term.

It doesn't mean the game is a finished product, bug free and completely optimized, ready for public release.

It also doesn't mean the game will change radically during EA, especially since they only plan to be in EA for 4 months. There will be no major rendering engine rewrite, no revolutionary new systems modelling, no ground breaking optimizations. Even games that stay for several years in EA evolve very slowly. What you see is what you get, with a few possible smaller additions, optimizations and tweaks.

14 minutes ago, JimmiG said:

Many misunderstand that term.

It doesn't mean the game is a finished product, bug free and completely optimized, ready for public release.

It also doesn't mean the game will change radically during EA, especially since they only plan to be in EA for 4 months. There will be no major rendering engine rewrite, no revolutionary new systems modelling, no ground breaking optimizations. Even games that stay for several years in EA evolve very slowly. What you see is what you get, with a few possible smaller additions, optimizations and tweaks.

Hopefully, there will be a restoration of FSX features currently missing (being able to open the map during flight, instant replay, more configuration adjustments), a correction of the overexposed, oversaturated "look," and, most importantly, the tools for third-parties to develop complex add-ons (which are apparently not possible in the product's current form). I doubt they'll be able to accomplish all that -- especially the last item -- in four months, and hopefully will take more time to get things right. OTOH, if they decide to stick to that deadline, and, come September, release a product that differs little from what we see today…well, at least by then we should know more about P3D v4. 

@DTG_Cryss @DTG_Aimee 

Have to say, takes considerable self control to endure the storm that comes with a new product release.

1 hour ago, vololiberista said:

That'd a third party developer issue! And they are not keen on taking a 60% cut out of potential profits.

In your opinion... :)

I bet if a straw poll was taken of who thinks a global sim should have some sort of jet airliner included by default, the ayes would have it.

Anyhow installed and running, only looked at the first tutorial so far. In full daylight the graphics are okay though I see what is meant by the LOD. It's almost as if they have applied train sim parameters, forgetting that if you're 5000ft asl you can see much further. Perhaps that's why they haven't included high altitude jets... :)

Will have a look in more detail later, so far no real opinion one way or another. At worst it's £20 to get a slightly updated and potentially more stable version of FSX. At best it could be the next flight sim classic.

8 hours ago, Raven9000 said:

What would that accomplish? You still have to download the whole thing... I don't need to work for any company to have common sense...

Sure, they can set-up a download package where the installer itself is downloaded so at the very least we can take a laptop or something to a place with much better speed and download the installer.  The way it appears to be downloading is file by file which is horrendously slow for some of us.  They might be using some compression, then expanding the file after it is downloaded.  Nevertheless, there can always be alternatives to the way things are done.

Your "common sense" is certainly debatable, but it's your disparaging remarks that have no place here.  I'll leave it at that.  Good day.

Quote

forgetting that if you're 5000ft asl you can see much further.

Use the Weather - Details button (in instant flight) to set visibility to around 10-20 miles (more usual for Europe anyway :) )  and it fits together better :)

Cheers
Keith

Sometimes, not enough time is spent on creating the right environment before releasing a new product.

If someone is about to lose a leg, he or she may not be happy. But if the doctor asks, "which do you prefer, to lose your life or your leg", I think everyone can guess the answer.

The question that should have been asked more emphatically is, " are you willing to put up with growing pains in order to have a fully 64 bit sim"?

It is in this context that I welcome the introduction of a new,bold sim. That it may have fsx resemblance should not matter, since it's the going forward that matters. That people should forget what "early release" means is simply puzzling.

As they asked, for $20, it's a great opportunity to start a new chapter, with good feedback and good will.

All the other criticism, I fear, is due to lack of perspective and perhaps ignorance.

tony

So my thoughts, for what it's worth, after an hour or so's playing around yesterday:

I got good frame rates (50FPS) without having the minimum spec graphics card, and it was pretty smooth

It's a bit over saturated and bright

Accufeel adds quite a lot to the mix

The raindrops look great, as do the planes!

The controls (using Thrustmaster Hotas) were a total mishmash at the start and needed quite a bit of setting up (including needing to set up the rudder, throttle, hat switch for view, etc) which could be a bit offputting for a new user

Even though I knew it was coming, it's disappointing to see the old familiar airport ground textures overlayed on a flat putting green. I know the general Orbx ground textures are a step up, but in GA at around 1000' it is still weird looking colour splashes with buildings growing out of them.  

It needs more work, that much is clear, but to compare to P3D 3.4 (which has been in development for at least 7 years by LM) is a bit unfair. Also complaints re no jets - there are jets in FSX by default which are utterly unrealistic. Modelling a modern jet well is a serious enterprise and expecting them to be included in a £20 early access sim seems a little unrealistic to me, when you consider how much PMDG, Aerosoft et al charge for just a single add-on aircraft. 

Overall a good foundation, I think, and lets hope that there are plans to sort some of these things out. Remember all, if we don't tell Dovetail what needs fixing, they won't know what to fix. Look at how much P3D stuff is a direct result of reports in the forums. 

Cheers,

Paul

 

19 minutes ago, paulc111 said:

So my thoughts, for what it's worth, after an hour or so's playing around yesterday:

Paul

Exactly my point.

There's early access and early access! If it's your intention to produce a sim that out performs the existing stock then don't put up a half baked product. Loading time is more than sim time. Heathrow at night consists of barely visible runways only! No changes can be done on the fly. Cntrl E fires up the engines but all the switches are off including magnetos. No landing lights etc etc. Fake check lists.

DTG will have to make fundemental changes to get close to FS9 even. And this is the point. A game in early access beta will/should already have to key functions built in. Compare FSW with Sailaway. No comparison. Sailaway works as expected immediately. FSW is more like very early Alpha. Whereas P3D is already there.

Perhaps the best way to see this is that there are currently three 64 bit sims:

xplane

aerofly

dtw

Of the three, xplane can be considered to be the most complete---after many years.

So, from a time perspective, dtw needs a good year before it can be considered a failure.

 

To compare this sim to existing 32bit sims is a waste of time.

If folks don't get the fact that most sims have been evolutionary, then I am afraid that we're not going to make progress. Developers will seek greener pastures.

tony

1 minute ago, flyforever said:

If folks don't get the fact that most sims have been evolutionary, then I am afraid that we're not going to make progress. Developers will seek greener pastures.

tony

From what I have seen PMDG are right to give FSW a miss. And they succeed in both 32 and 64bit.

One bug I noticed during an abortive attempt to take off at Skardu (stalled and crashed).

Although my Flightmaster stick is set as the controller the game is still seeing the Xbox 360 controller and applying force feedback making an unholy racket rattling the desk. However, I can't see anything in the options to disable force feedback, clues anyone?