A flight sim with activities that will appeal to newcomers can get people interested in real world aviation.  People who would never consider a Simulator would still try a flight game.  This is why Microsoft Flight did not have the word simulator in the title, although you could fly it as seriously as you wished, which is what I did.  Or just have fun with it, which is something I also did.

Imagine what would happen to the hobby if Flight had been included in every Windows install.  Sort of a super Minesweeper.  A free flight game with inexpensive DLC for those who wished to pursue it further.  The rest of Hawaii was $7.50 and included a new aircraft.

Without the activities, which some people consider to be "gaming elements" those newcomers would lose interest quickly unless they were already aviation enthusiasts in some manner.

You CAN NOT start the newcomer off in something like PMDG and expect to hold his interest unless he is extremely dedicated.

And Flight did not fail.  Microsoft pulled the plug because they decided to take their operating system in a different direction and "... it would take a year or more to convert Flight to RT."  A direct quote from a Microsoft employee on the Flight beta forum.

My question for everyone still hating on Flight:  "How did you do on the landing challenges?"  Just because these included scoring didn't make them games.  Every time ATC directs you to an IRC landing you're flying a hoops course, although the hoops are invisible.

Hook

Differently from pracines, I'm not a gamer. I do not play pretending to be an airline captain, settling for 25 fps or so in an old graphic engine, while having fun with switchology in a Boeing. I used to be a gamer like him, when I was a young boy. For this reason, I don't care about SIDs, STARS, and things like that. Heck, at the limit I couldn't even care so much about 3rd party aircrafts.

No, nowadays I'm at a higher level, I'm a more hardcore, serious simmer than him. I want to really simulate and recreate the most important aspects and feelings of flying. For hardcore simmers like me, what some call "eye candy" is one of the most important aspects. I want to see a realistic scenery underneath, without immersion breaking bugs like blurries etc, and smooth at 60+ FPS like smooth is real life. And good in VR, the most realistic and serious way one can sim. And equally important, I want realistic lighting and atmosphere. Just after that, realistic sounds, hopefully a realistic and improved flight model, and a weather that is realistic to look out and fly through. Oh, and of course essential for us hardcore simmers is a living world: not only ground and air traffic, but also natural features like animals and the likes.

Fortunately, looks like the new MFS is looking at us hardcore simmers as their primary target. It would have been a wrong choice by them not doing that, and instead primarily targeting the "pretend-I-m-an-airline-captain" gamer types.

Edited June 16, 20196 yr by Murmur

I don't mind what you guys want to call yourselves hardcore or serious or whatever, to me it is just a hobby, something you do for fun, for entertainment, for relaxation or whatever. It is like people are trying to justify what they are doing or something when really it is a hobby. Not sure why you would want it to be anything more then that, take the hardcore or serious out of it maybe you would be a more relaxed individual in general

Matthew, I've been wondering that ever since I first started reading Avsim. 🙂

Hook

53 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

I don't mind what you guys want to call yourselves hardcore or serious or whatever, to me it is just a hobby, something you do for fun, for entertainment, for relaxation or whatever. It is like people are trying to justify what they are doing or something when really it is a hobby. Not sure why you would want it to be anything more then that, take the hardcore or serious out of it maybe you would be a more relaxed individual in general

And that's exactly what was to be read between the lines in my post, although it might not have been clear to everyone. ☺️

53 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

I don't mind what you guys want to call yourselves hardcore or serious or whatever, to me it is just a hobby, something you do for fun, for entertainment, for relaxation or whatever. It is like people are trying to justify what they are doing or something when really it is a hobby. Not sure why you would want it to be anything more then that, take the hardcore or serious out of it maybe you would be a more relaxed individual in general

Finally an assessment I can completely share. Now we're two of us. I find, the old MSFS series got this pretty good in providing a joyful beginning and providing those more amitious the means to step up. I don't see why MS should not hit the mark again just because there was one (1) missed approach by them inbetween.

Thanks and happy flying, Michael

1 hour ago, Matthew Kane said:

I don't mind what you guys want to call yourselves hardcore or serious or whatever, to me it is just a hobby, something you do for fun, for entertainment, for relaxation or whatever. It is like people are trying to justify what they are doing or something when really it is a hobby. Not sure why you would want it to be anything more then that, take the hardcore or serious out of it maybe you would be a more relaxed individual in general

Exactly, or more commonly expressed:

"Get a life!" 

I love flight simulation for fun and relaxation, not to meet some deep need for another alternate identity,  or do I?

Hope not!  

Kind regards,

Spirit Flyer

Stephen

6 minutes ago, SpiritFlyer said:

"Get a life!"

I love it!  And it's a lot nicer than how I might have expressed it. 😄

I sim because I can't fly in real life. I have always known I was playing a video game.  While I try to make my simming as close to reality as I can, I'm not fanatical about it.

Hook

4 hours ago, Murmur said:

Fortunately, looks like the new MFS is looking at us hardcore simmers as their primary target. It would have been a wrong choice by them not doing that, and instead primarily targeting the "pretend-I-m-an-airline-captain" gamer types.

I have to completely disagree with this. If you think that MS is doing this to sell a couple of hundred thousand copies of MSFS @ $59.95 per PC annual subscription, you must not understand the present state of the video game industry. MS wants to sell XBoxs and maybe even a VR headset to go along with it. And they want to sell DLC, not abdicate and let any kid create competing add-ons. No game developer does this anymore. XBox is not the industry leader, the PS4 is the big dog. MS needs a blockbuster title to recapture the console leadership.

Is it now frowned upon to be passionate (care) about flight simming? 

Are we hear in this forum because flight simming is not a big deal to us? 

Is there a need for Avsim anymore? I mean since the next sim that gets announced is not really that important, then why bother typing a single sentence about it, or even giving it a single thought. Anybody can just buy FSX-SE totally bare (no add-ons) and fly around to relax, no need to come here to discuss relaxation techniques. There is not much to discuss when flying a simple game to relax.

Do screen shot posters make a scene as real as they can, or should they just relax a take a pic of whatever? Do screenshot contests pick the most bland/boring shots and why does it matter? Just relax.

Why are there realistic add-ons, and why is there such a big market for them? Could it be that they improve the realism, and why would realism matter? Just relax.

Imagine if MS (or any developer) decided to "relax" instead of continuing the push toward release (or fix) of this new MSFS (or any product). An announcement comes and says: 'we will get around to it when we are less relaxed but that will be a few years at the very least...we're relaxing'.

Lets tell the police and paramedics to relax too because that is the right thing to do....who cares....no big deal...relaxing is better.

Imagine a sporting event with tens of thousands of spectators relaxed, quiet, and unaffected by anything, sure, that would be so much better ...the sport may as well not exist at all. Even better, the players are so relaxed they don't bother to try...no big deal if they lose, its better to relax.

How can one try to match reality, in a flight sim that does not even come close to reality, yet they are not fanatical about it. May as well not even bother because unless you spend lot of money and take lots of time to learn, you will not even come close. One has to be somewhat fanatical about making our current sims closer to real and it is an unending task. New PC's, many different sims, new scenery, new planes, new utilities, over the course of years and decades in some cases...fanatical.

Think about it: I don't come here to talk about the birds and the bees or the flowers and the trees.😂

Of course everybody here would see me as fanatical about flight simming, since you hear from me only here. If you knew me outside of flight simming (Avsim), you would say I don't seem as fanatical about flight simming, because I have a good balance, but flight simming is extremely important to me, why are you all here?  

 

 

 

 

I don't get all of this conjecture. MS invented flight simulation. Why would we expect anything other from them than what they did in the past? The new product will be a flight simulator along the lines of what they released prior to Flight. I expect that we'll see a proper successor to FSX that continues the old traditions. Sure, there will be the Loopy Larry, Oil Rig Transport, etc. type of "missions" for the gamers, but the underpinnings will be flight simulation in the tradition of the prior MSFS releases. If you really think about it, only a small portion of FS is related to actual flight. 80% or more of FSX is recreating the world environment.

6 hours ago, MDFlier said:

MS invented flight simulation

I think Bruce Artwick might take issue with that 😁. It's remarkable really how many little hangovers from the original 1980s BAO Flight Simulator still linger even today - the most ubiquitous perhaps being the BGL file (BGL standing for "BAO Graphical Language") though I doubt Bruce ever imagined at the time that scenery would look like some of the incredible stuff we have today!

However, in answer to your point (and steering back on topic) I would say that I think people are cynical because of the MS Flight and, to some extent, FSW experience. That said, I do think there is plenty of room for optimism as well and I do think it is important for the long-term health of the hobby to have a modern successful, mainstream, consumer-targeted sim.

7 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I have to completely disagree with this. If you think that MS is doing this to sell a couple of hundred thousand copies of MSFS @ $59.95 per PC annual subscription, you must not understand the present state of the video game industry. MS wants to sell XBoxs and maybe even a VR headset to go along with it. And they want to sell DLC, not abdicate and let any kid create competing add-ons. No game developer does this anymore. XBox is not the industry leader, the PS4 is the big dog. MS needs a blockbuster title to recapture the console leadership.

I think you missed the deeper meaning of my (1/4 ironic, 3/4 truth) post.

Yes Bruce is the man behind it all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Artwick

And just in case you are wondering what he looks like:

 

Edited June 17, 20196 yr by Matthew Kane

1 hour ago, skelsey said:

I think Bruce Artwick might take issue with that 😁.

Obviously you are correct. MS was more of a publisher then an inventor. My point was that MS ran it all the way down the field. I meant no disrespect to Bruce.