7 hours ago, ThrottleUp said:

I'm really excited for the NX-Cub and the Porter. No interest in any of the others and will choose to keep them out of the game (use Content Manager to remove them). 

I personally wish instead of an F-18 they had gone for something like a C-130 or C-17. Seeing as MSFS is a non-combat sim, its not like people can do missions in the Hornet with advanced weapons and fully functional weapon systems like in DCS. 

Instead, a transport-type of military plane I feel will gel much better with MSFS as its pretty much airliner-style flying.

However - I appreciate many gamers will enjoy just blasting around in the Hornet at low level and I can see it being a huge hit in multiplayer so I do see both sides! 

I have no interest in any 3rd party planes or airports for this game and likely never will. I find the default planes (and modded defaults from flightsim.to) just right. I fly mostly light GA props and bizzjets (CJ4 with WT mod is great). If I want a tubeliner experience theres there 320NEO mod but TBH I keep my tube flying to XP11 (Zibo).

But the visuals in MSFS are second to none and bush flying in the nosegear cub will be a fun compliment to the Caravan. 

Coming to your question - if let loose on the ramp with the GOTY planes in a line - I'd go for the cub!

If I'm flying it's either a multi-player flight,  or I'm doing a mission in NeoFly.

The Porter is perfect for jobs like cargo hauling,   passengers,  or doing SAR and Emergency missions with or without floats.

I too find the concept of a cub with a nose wheel interesting.

But NeoFly also has intercept missions,   so I just might find the F18 useful even if I'm not really interested in fighters being in msfs. 

The Velocopter doesn't interest me,   but keeping an open mind it's a real aircraft design,  it seems to be efficient (no need for a tail rotor),   safe,  convenient,  and comparatively quieter for the application its designed for.  They will be used for the Paris Olympics. Seems like a logical progression to me.

14 hours ago, Sethos said:

Maybe I'm just a snob simmer but I absolutely don't care about default planes, not even a tiny bit. Just boring, middle-of-the-road INOP fests.

I somewhat disagree here. I think some of the visual modelling and standard of cockpit design is often very impressive for default aircraft. I think it is one thing Asobo does rather well. There are a few things missing here and there, but they are mostly all tweakable. What I don't understand is why the "premium" aircraft are encrypted. I don't really believe the stuff about 3rd party copyright. FSX and Prepar 3d aircraft have always been open to tweaks and edits and such endeavours did nothing but actually sell more units of the sim.

I do agree with previous posters that fixing the glaring bugs is now a much higher priority than pumping out new features or new aircraft.

I think that the Volocopter will became the favorite plane to explore cities and landscapes. A lot of the "flights" simmers do with helicopters Will be easily done with that drone plane (the only problem Is battery time and range)

Also i'm interested how the controls of that aircraft behave, if they match the drone ones or an aircraft Hybrid thing

1 hour ago, robert young said:

 What I don't understand is why the "premium" aircraft are encrypted.

I may be mistaken but I think the reason for that is to prevent people uploading them so that people who did not get the Premium Deluxe could snag the 787 etc. Maybe someone else with better info can clarify. 

3 minutes ago, ThrottleUp said:

I may be mistaken but I think the reason for that is to prevent people uploading them so that people who did not get the Premium Deluxe could snag the 787 etc. Maybe someone else with better info can clarify. 

Think that is exactly the reason

2 hours ago, robert young said:

What I don't understand is why the "premium" aircraft are encrypted.

In the last couple developer updates, Jorg indicated that un-encrypting just the config files for the deluxe/premium aircraft might be a strong possibility and they were looking into it.

3 hours ago, robert young said:

What I don't understand is why the "premium" aircraft are encrypted. I don't really believe the stuff about 3rd party copyright.

It is to prevent piracy. If someone were to give you the encrypted files to install yourself, it wouldn't load.

Edited November 9, 20214 yr by Tuskin38

5 hours ago, robert young said:

What I don't understand is why the "premium" aircraft are encrypted.

One word: "Licensing"

As above this was mentioned in a recent Q&A and steps are being made to possibly open up certain files, but unlikely everything.

Edited November 9, 20214 yr by MarcG

This GOTY makes me perplex.

Why, in Heavens, Microsoft gives away two aircraft they could sell to the kids ? Out of their good heart to trigger pilot vocations 😅  ? When you add the recent 20%  sale of the main product, does that mean they really need to inject some pep into the sim sagging sales  ?

And why do they release the same day a payware the sales of which may suffer from the freebie aircraft ? Strange.

Another question, just for the fun, will there be a Black Friday sale ? 

13 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

This GOTY makes me perplex.

Why, in Heavens, Microsoft gives away two aircraft they could sell to the kids ? Out of their good heart to trigger pilot vocations 😅  ? When you add the recent 20%  sale of the main product, does that mean they really need to inject some pep into the sim sagging sales  ?

And why do they release the same day a payware the sales of which may suffer from the freebie aircraft ? Strange.

Another question, just for the fun, will there be a Black Friday sale ? 

It may be new in the Flight Sim world (afaik at least!), but in the car racing sim world developers are regularly releasing Free content to the racers. It's just a marketing tactic, of which we benefit!

10 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

This GOTY makes me perplex.

Why, in Heavens, Microsoft gives away two aircraft they could sell to the kids ? Out of their good heart to trigger pilot vocations 😅  ? When you add the recent 20%  sale of the main product, does that mean they really need to inject some pep into the sim sagging sales  ?

 

I think Asobo has said the PC-6 was originally payware, but someone probably decided that having it competing with three other payware Porters (one of which has now been scrapped) wasn't a great idea, so they just released it for free. 

As for the F-18, I assume that Paramount paid for the Top Gun expansion pack to be developed as a promo for the movie (which then got delayed another 9 months), so that airplane coming out may be a case of Paramount trying to maintain interest in the movie, or Asobo deciding that there was enough interest in military aircraft now to release the F-18 to highlight things like afterburners and supersonic flight being supported by the sim.

 I'd assume the logic is that the Reno expansion can't cannibalize MSFS sales (since MSFS is required for it to work), and adding free content to MSFS may serve as a way to push more sales of the Reno pack, so that timing actually makes sense. Plus, putting those out now will also help bump MSFS/Xbox sales (assuming anyone can find an Xbox) going into the holidays, and there's probably some financial incentives if Asobo sells X number of copies by the end of the calendar year.

16 hours ago, MadDog said:

In the last couple developer updates, Jorg indicated that un-encrypting just the config files for the deluxe/premium aircraft might be a strong possibility and they were looking into it.

Yes but not the whole file. So it can't be stolen. Just the flight model said Jorg. Which I would guess is a couple more files than just flight_model.cfg, but not all the files.

12 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

This GOTY makes me perplex.

Another question, just for the fun, will there be a Black Friday sale ? 

I hope there's a Buick Friday sale! 😁

2 hours ago, ndts said:

I think 

Interesting thoughts. After the second big wave sales (Xbox last summer) it is only natural that they would face a prolonged low water period hence the discount, freebies , the Reno DLC. The MS marketing juggernaut is no dummy in general but I am still curious with their way to articulate them in the months before the holidays. The MSFS project has not clearly shown a rigorous management so far... 

Two other remarks.

Concerning the Paramount deal, I wonder who pays whom. I’d say (intuition) that MS has licensed the Top Gun franchise rather than the other way around. 

Asobo is not the commercial operator just the sub contracted designer. The Porter, at least, is known to be externally developed. 

That would be a good idea if they decrypted just the config files because then skilled modders can get going on them 🙂

I hope the rest of the files stay heavily encrypted permanently though. There will be an almighty (and justified) uproar from those who paid full whack for Premium Deluxe and then see the modded planes from it appear online.