Anyone see the FlyingIron Spitfire on the Microsoft store is 'v1.0.4' yet what's officially released on FI's website is 'v1.0.2'?  The Microsoft store version has a graphic issue around the edges of the forward window in the cockpit and the guns on the wings are missing.  The flight model seems to be updated but the visual model is off.

5 hours ago, Dillon said:

Anyone see the FlyingIron Spitfire on the Microsoft store is 'v1.0.4' yet what's officially released on FI's website is 'v1.0.2'?  The Microsoft store version has a graphic issue around the edges of the forward window in the cockpit and the guns on the wings are missing.  The flight model seems to be updated but the visual model is off.

I got my copy direct from FlyingIron so I can’t really comment on the store version but the guns - or rather the gun fairings - are missing from the store version intentionally to comply with the store’s requirements to not display weapons.

Yes, really.....

 

So Given the above the Store version could well be a diffrent version number.

Also as normal IMHO why you should always by direct. No Guns! l O Dear, snowflake world.

Here is a piece of history, the snowflakes will get very upset....a bomber with lots of guns....😬💥🙃🤪🙄🙂

Can Asobo/MS see how silly it is for a spitfire to not have guns, working guns I can understand its a civ sim not IL or DCS, but come on WW2 aircraft are WW2 aircraft. If they offend you, dont buy.

 

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Nyxx

It just goes to further underline that MS/Asobo think it's a computer GAME and not a SIM :-(((((

 

1 hour ago, DD_Arthur said:

the guns - or rather the gun fairings - are missing from the store version intentionally to comply with the store’s requirements to not display weapons.

Yes, really.....

Whilst common sense would tend to agree that it is a bit on the overly-PC side to make a developer take a couple of tubes off the front of a toy aeroplane, we have to look at it from the perspective of the preposterously litigious world we live in these days, where cups of hot coffee sold in fast food outlets have to have 'caution, contents may be hot' warnings on them and bags of peanuts have to have 'may contain nuts' printed on them, or my personal favourite, a music CD I bought once which had a 'do not microwave' sticker on it (and no, I'm not making that up).

  

37 minutes ago, Adamski_NZ said:

It just goes to further underline that MS/Asobo think it's a computer GAME and not a SIM :-(((((

Not true. It's all to do with litigation, and ease of marketing, as explained below.

Looks like what Flying Iron have done is make the Mark IX appear like it has an A wing type fitted (i.e. four machine guns in each wing as opposed to the mix of cannons and MGs which the vast majority of Spitfires produced after 1941 had). Whilst this is not historically accurate, nor would it really have been exactly compatible with the Mark IX airframe without a bit of modification since the C wing found on Mark Vs and most Mark IXs were somewhat altered including changing the rake angle of the undercarriage forward a bit more to make the thing more stable when taxying, it is a good solution to comply with the 'no weapons' rules for stuff on the MSFS market.

I guess if one was being really picky, the doped-on red canvas shoot-through gun port fairings and the bulge for the Hispano 20 mm cannon drum magazines on the wings of the Spitfire could be regarded as 'implied violence', but then again, if there is no actual 3D model of a gun inside the 3D model of the wing - and the developer can prove it - they can argue that it is a depiction of a disarmed historical airshow display aeroplane in modern times and no longer a warplane other than in the historical past sense.

With regard to those rules, MSFS has a PEGI (Pan European Game Information) rating of '3', which means it is judged as 'suitable for all age groups', and it also has an ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) - which is the US equivalent of Europe's PEGI - rating of 'E', which is 'suitable for everyone'. Although broadly similar to the PEGI rating, the ESRB rating for something which has 'intense/realistic portrayals of violence', would mean MSFS would have an ESRB rating of at least 'M' (mature, i.e. 17 years of age), but would potentially be at risk of gaining an A rating (adults only, i.e. 18+), since a portrayal of aeroplanes with missiles, guns, bombs etc could be viewed as 'extreme portrayals of violence'. After all, it is hard to suggest that a 400 mph warplane painted in military camouflage and armed with several .303 MGs and several 20 mm cannons, and which was developed specifically to counter the threat from the N@zis, is not implying violence in at least some way, although historically, neither the PEGI or ESRB boards have tended to throw a very high rating at games purely for violence, it's usually more to do with sexual content, extremely coarse language or gambling, but it's not unknown, so you can understand MS wanting to avoid that.

Those ratings impact not just who can buy it - although good luck enforcing that one - but more seriously for MS, they impact where the product can be advertised, which is really what they are concerned with, given it is going to be on the X-Box, where many of the advertising sites for X-Box are targeting children and do not feature any kind of age check prior to viewing them. It would be a law suit waiting to happen if some kid did something violent and a parent could suggest they got the idea that violence was 'cool' because it was depicted in their flying game (or sim if you prefer) with a rating for everyone.

Incidentally, in other Spitfire news, and in case anyone missed the announcement from Aeroplane Heaven a few days ago, they have indefinitely postponed the release of their Mark 1 Spitfire for MSFS owing to the amount of criticism they were getting on social media sites from people having a pop at them for making 'the same plane' as the one already available from Flying Iron Simulations. Which just goes to show how stupid some people can be if they think a Mark I Spitfire is the same as a Mark IX Spitfire. The name of the thing is a bit of a clue, so I'm assuming for the people complaining about it, Roman Numerals, or history for that matter, are not their strong point. 🤣

Disappointing news for Spitfire fans, but on the plus side, the first MSFS aeroplane from Aeroplane Heaven is now going to be their DC-3/C-47, and they are ramping up the development of that for a release fairly soon. I just hope they sneak an AC-47 variant in there for a laugh. 🙂

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Chock

Guns ? They are guns 😲 ? I thought they were enlarged pitot tubes. Hmmm...  I should maybe ask for a refund. Or, in a next update, FI could replace them with feather-dusters ?  

Anyway I am glad that the woke crowd at Redmont takes the issue seriously and with courage. it is not like their catalogue was already overflowing with gore and firearms.

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

1 hour ago, Chock said:

 

Whilst common sense would tend to agree that it is a bit on the overly-PC side to make a developer take a couple of tubes off the front of a toy aeroplane, we have to look at it from the perspective of the preposterously litigious world we live in these days, where cups of hot coffee sold in fast food outlets have to have 'caution, contents may be hot' warnings on them and bags of peanuts have to have 'may contain nuts' printed on them, or my personal favourite, a music CD I bought once which had a 'do not microwave' sticker on it (and no, I'm not making that up).

 

Incidentally, in other Spitfire news, and in case anyone missed the announcement from Aeroplane Heaven a few days ago, they have indefinitely postponed the release of their Mark 1 Spitfire for MSFS owing to the amount of criticism they were getting on social media sites from people having a pop at them for making 'the same plane' as the one already available from Flying Iron Simulations. Which just goes to show how stupid some people can be if they think a Mark I Spitfire is the same as a Mark IX Spitfire. The name of the thing is a bit of a clue, so I'm assuming for the people complaining about it, Roman Numerals, or history for that matter, are not their strong point. 🤣

Disappointing news for Spitfire fans, but on the plus side, the first MSFS aeroplane from Aeroplane Heaven is now going to be their DC-3/C-47, and they are ramping up the development of that for a release fairly soon. I just hope they sneak an AC-47 variant in there for a laugh. 🙂

What! I was so looking forward to there MK1.

Not only do I find all what you say utterly depressing, its also very sad. All be it very true of how things are today. 

I swear in 10 years time we will not be able to say "hello" to someone becasue it will be deemed harassment, rude or inappropriate.

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Nyxx

 Deleted - No need for the post   after the following David's post                                        

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

On there Facebook page

Right. Some clarity.

We have made a decision not to release the Spitfire Mk1A for a short while.

This is our decision and ours alone to make. We will release when we want to and when we fell the product is ready.

This has nothing to do with "trolls"or negative comment. As we have stated, it is a timing issue.

For those who feel that we have wronged them in some way, think on that. Exactly how? Are you disadvantaged in some way? Have we taken any money?

The Spitfires will be here. Just not right now.

A little patience is all that is required.

Thanks and stay safe everyone.

 

I left my normal kind of PC reply for the trolls.

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Nyxx

3 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

On there Facebook page

Right. Some clarity.

We have made a decision not to release the Spitfire Mk1A for a short while.

This is our decision and ours alone to make. We will release when we want to and when we fell the product is ready.

This has nothing to do with "trolls"or negative comment. As we have stated, it is a timing issue.

For those who feel that we have wronged them in some way, think on that. Exactly how? Are you disadvantaged in some way? Have we taken any money?

The Spitfires will be here. Just not right now.

A little patience is all that is required.

Thanks and stay safe everyone.

Thanks David, it puts AH on a better light

1 hour ago, Nyxx said:

What! I was so looking forward to there MK1.

Not only do I find all what you say utterly depressing, its also very sad. All be it very true of how things are today. 

AH have not said they won't ever release it, just that when people are perceiving it as the 'same' aeroplane, it would impact on its sales at present, although unless the Flying Iron Spit ceases to exist, it's hard to justify that position really, since the situation won't change.

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Alternatively, it would show how  <put the adjective of your choice> some developers can be, shifting  the responsibility to be unable to complete a product  to the bad, baaad customers. If memory serves me well, this dev has been complaining about the difficulties to work with the SDK all over the place in the recent months.                                            

The product was completed and was ready to go; they even released that freebie cardboard Spit as a promo for it, so it's not like they are unable to make something which works in the sim as that little fun freebie demonstrated. I suspect what AH were mostly complaining about was the demand to use WWise Audiokinetic for sound design, which adds a considerable demand on a developer which is self-contained in terms of expense.

It's doubtful that AH really struggle with development itself, they've made I think sixty sim aeroplanes over a twenty-year period, including many under contract for publishers including Just Flight and Wilco, their complaint also alludes to the frequent updates breaking stuff and altering workaround solutions, which does appear to have at least some credence to it. A similar thing plagued XPlane for a long time, with the goalposts frequently shifting. Nevertheless, it does smack at least a little bit of sour grapes that another developer beat them to the draw and in spite of what they said about their decision to delay being nothing to do with complaints on social media, their Facebook page tells a bit of a different story if you look at some of the responses they made to people, some of which were perhaps not as well thought out as they could have been, so it definitely had an impact on their thinking.

It's disappointing that their Spit is delayed, but the Flying Iron one is a fine add-on and so even if we're going to have to wait for an earlier Spit variant, it's not like we don't have a Spitfire at all. It'll be interesting to see if they are still gonna bang out their P-51 which they showed some early development pics of, although if I were them, I'd go for a P-51 B or C, rather than the D which every developer typically goes for. The earlier razorback Mustang is more aesthetically pleasing than the blister canopy version too, which also helps, and they could also make an A36 Apache version of it too from the model with the addition of some dive brakes, which as far as I'm aware, has never been done as a payware add-on for any recent sim.

In the interim, the AH Spit Mark 1 for P3D works just fine, and whilst P3D isn't as shiny as MSFS, it still has a lot to offer, not the least of which is their Mark 1 Spit of course, and their DC-3 for that matter. 🙂

Back with the should a warplane have warlike things on it subject, I must admit, I do find the notion of politically correct warplanes kind of funny (but most definitely not in a funny ha-ha way). I even had some pillock accuse me of being a n@zi for having reviewed AH's Heinkel He111 on my youtube channel, where I discussed the inclusion/deletion of a Swastika on its markings. Not being a fan of revisionist history, I said that (barring the regulations not allowing the depiction of this in Germany unless for historical, artistic, or educational reasons) it should have the Swastika on its tailplane, as this was what it looked like in real life and it's therefore not offensive, merely historically accurate, plus the fact that you don't have to buy it if it offends you anyway. And even when you do buy it, it actually comes without a Swastika on it, but gives you a utility where you can install that marking if you would choose to do so, and I go on about this at great length at the start of the review and expressly point out that me showing this in the review is in no way indicative of my opinions regarding the n@zis and the terrible things they indulged in.

But this guy completely ignored all that and you would have thought I'd posted a video of me goosetepping past the Cenotaph making a Sieg Heil salute; in fact the guy who accused me of being a n@zi sympathiser actually claimed that I'd originally praised the n@zi leader on my video and subsequently edited this out, which is demonstrably not true when you look at the upload date for my review video of it and the lengths I go to to point out my feelings on the matter, not to mention the video actually has me taking the mickey out of old Adolf at timestamp 3:00, with a spoof of the Star Wars scrolling credits where I actually refer to him as 'the evil Fuhrer', and you can't make it much plainer than that. There's just no pleasing some people, is there?

But this brings up an interesting possibility, and that might be that the MSFS market warplanes could potentially come with a utility which might even be not hosted on the MSFS market, but on the original developer's website, which would allow you to patch your warplane to make it more historically accurate. I think this would be a pretty amenable solution, since it would only require the utility to have a PEGI/ESRB rating.

That's censorship for you though. We live in a world where they'll up the certificate for a movie because it has swearing in it, but still let it show people being shot, stabbed, garrotted, blown up etc, and one of the most popular films in recent years revels in depicting people stealing cars and doing illegal street races, yet it gets a PG-13 rating. Go figure.

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Chock

its a mad mad mad world hah, isnt it funny. best is to not take some things so seriously, but its exciting times now with all these aircraft.

3 days ago i had no paid addons, suddenly i have 5 aircraft now, love it.

Time to uninstall the Store version and get the real version from the developer, lesson learned (for combat aircraft in FS2020).  What a crock of word not allowed... 😖

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Dillon

4 hours ago, Chock said:

Incidentally, in other Spitfire news, and in case anyone missed the announcement from Aeroplane Heaven a few days ago, they have indefinitely postponed the release of their Mark 1 Spitfire for MSFS owing to the amount of criticism they were getting on social media sites from people having a pop at them for making 'the same plane' as the one already available from Flying Iron Simulations. Which just goes to show how stupid some people can be if they think a Mark I Spitfire is the same as a Mark IX Spitfire. The name of the thing is a bit of a clue, so I'm assuming for the people complaining about it, Roman Numerals, or history for that matter, are not their strong point. 🤣

Disappointing news for Spitfire fans, but on the plus side, the first MSFS aeroplane from Aeroplane Heaven is now going to be their DC-3/C-47, and they are ramping up the development of that for a release fairly soon. I just hope they sneak an AC-47 variant in there for a laugh. 🙂

This is terrible news especially when you look at Just Flight making the Arrow three times now.  I was put off by this at first but after having the Turbo I'm glade they did it.  I won't by slower one their about to release but the Turbo is amazing in areas like Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, Banff, and the California/Nevada desert.  So with the precedent set by Just Flight I find it odd Aeroplane Heaven would fold to pressure like this.  They put in allot of work and their bird is truly different than FlyingIron's version.  This is why I always say especially in this day and age you can't bend to the will of the mod.  These are misinformed people and at the end of the day ruin things for the rest of us.  We need to petition Aeroplane Heaven to release their SpitFire, we can't let this stand.

5 hours ago, Chock said:

 

That's censorship for you though.

I am no pacifist, some unkind souls would even call me your typical warmonger in some cases 🤣, and I love warbirds but I commend MS for its willingness to strictly keep the sim a civilian aviation environment. If it obviously means no active weaponry it doesn’t mean that one should emasculate the military aircraft from their guns. If true,this is ludicrous.

It raises a more general issue. I have always been dead against MS having a monopoly on 3PD addon distribution through their shop , something which was hotly requested by many simmers to  ease installations and bookkeeping of addons .  Corporate America is way too much under the influence of lawyers and wokies to be given any kind of monopoly on content. It is a credit to MS that they refused this monopoly.

So guns forbidden on the Spit’ in their shop? Okay with me because I can buy elsewhere. 

Edited June 12, 20214 yr by Dominique_K