The Free and Optional Dune Expansion is Out

[Lord Farringdon 503]

10 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

Ugliest flying machine I have ever seen.

You've jinxed it now Bob. You obviously haven't seen the M-15 Belphegor - jet cropduster!!   Let's hope this doesn't end up being Asobo's next Local Legend😦!!! If it does, it's on you 😆.

Cheers

 

Terry

 

 

 

 

[GaryK 201]

On 2/13/2024 at 4:53 PM, cianpars said:

Not something I am the slightest bit interested in.  As real as it gets flight simulator, but certainly not this.  I suppose the kids will love it though.

I just love this forum🥱

MSFS is a game, get over it.

[rocketlaunch 617]

Once upon a time our hobby was dying, now look at it! Collaborations with major Hollywood movies! How times have changed.  

[keithb77 308]

12 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

It is listed as a free add on in Market Place. 

Free but you still have to explicitly download it so you won't have it unless you want it.

[G-RFRY 1,714]

1 hour ago, GaryK said:

I just love this forum🥱

MSFS is a game, get over it.

Yes and MS making the game catalogue available to the PS5 and Nintendo Switch in the near future. More users on the streaming services.

[Farlis 2,296]

I jumped in and flew the Ornithopter over Slovenia.

It should be illegal. It's too much fun. Especially in VR.

 

Mapped the important controls like Dive, Wing Break and Sail mode onto my hardware and zoomed from POI to POI, scaring the residents and tourists at various castles as I hovered around them to take a closer look at the architecture.

 

It's a pure VFR flyer, though. No instrumentation whatsover, you have to visually gauge how high and fast you fly. Of course I could take a moving map with me into the virtual world, but where is the fun in that? This being a military aircraft, I don't have to care about airspace restrictions. ;=)

 

Now I feel like doing some Multiplayer flying against the F-18 and look how you can outmaneuver a jet in this thing. Jets have a much better turn rate than this thing, but they can't stop on a dime.

 

Only downside, while this lands like a Heli, a standard helipad is much too small for it. That thing is as big as a 737-600 and the Wingspan is insane.

Edited February 15 by Farlis

[peloto 213]

+1, totally recommended this Expansion in VR and after try it two days, good landscapes and a funny game inside of the Simulator, and the Ornithopter really fun, even in the Planet Earth, for those that love helis and hand control, the Ornithopter is for you too.

[Lord Farringdon 503]

On 2/14/2024 at 5:53 AM, cianpars said:

Not something I am the slightest bit interested in.  As real as it gets flight simulator, but certainly not this.  I suppose the kids will love it though.

You are absolutely right @cianpars . Peoples interests can be broad and shallow,  specific and deep...and everything in between. Dune is not for everyone.  

 

TLDR: The combination of gaming activities such as Dune and immersive flight simulation technologies such as VR, AI,  graphics, global mapping etc, have broadened the scope of MSFS and this should be seen as a positive since it may allow us to explore other worlds. We can use the application for fun and we can use it to experiment, design and prepare our expectations for the future, a future that may include living on Mars.  

 

There are a number on this forum who certainly feel that Reno Air Races, Top Gun and now Dune are all just flights of fantasy that insert a 'game/ non-serious' element which plays to Xbox users and feel that this takes away from the core flight simulator. I certainly felt this way too prior to making a decision to buy MSFS. Like many on here, I have a long history with the MS Flight Simulator and this helped to reinforce a certain stereotype for the product in my mind. In particular, I could do what I wanted to and importantly was not constrained by having to reach 'levels' and 'gates' before you could go to the next stage.  In other words, this meant to me that Flight Simulator was not in the 'game' genre in the way we understood a game to be! 

So after Aces Studio got the "Don't come Monday" memo, there was quite a bit of community speculation about what MS's future in this genre was, including (correctly as it happens) that future versions could be released as an Internet-based version, or on Microsoft's Xbox platform. Now that sent shivers up a lot of us old timers that any future version could possibly be a simple levels based game.

As if to vindicate our view MS released Microsoft Flight in 2012 which was purposefully incompatible with the Microsoft Flight Simulator series it was designed to replace.  Its aim was to draw new users into flight gaming (read Xbox) and was "pay to play" with just Hawaii and one aircraft beyond which you could not proceed without buying downloadable content. Arrrrgh!!!!

And so it was with trepidation that I bought MSFS , while still being wary of all this Xbox stuff, the dumbing down for 'kids' and the games updates. To my surprise, I think MS/Asobo have struck a really good balance here recognizing that they need an increasing audience of new and younger players using the Xbox platform and games activities to get them hooked on the genre while also perhaps learning the lesson from their ill-fated Microsoft Flight foray, that players of all ages generally want a realistic sim and not one that you have to pass levels to proceed. For example, their development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is not something to be sneezed at and is well beyond what would reasonably be required for a mere 'game'. 

With this combo approach and converging technologies including graphics, cloud storage, VR,  AI and incredibly detailed world wide scenery coverage, we have a application with exceptional visuals and immersive flight sensations.  So many more people of all ages can now experience a realistic simulation of flight and can decide if they want go study level with a Fenix of PMDG or jump off cliffs in an insect like aircraft on the fictional planet of Dune. And it's not just 'kids' that want to do that!   

But I expect that the best is yet to come. The genre gives us the capability to explore, to experiment and to ultimately develop and design for the future. Dune may actually foretell of another much much bigger fantasy, one that may one day be our actual future. Living on Mars. With Mars mostly mapped in very high resolution, (25Sqft /pixel) (See this for more detail https://www.freethink.com/space/map-of-mars), it seems almost everything is in place to go there, in a virtual manner.  3rd party developers could have a field day developing vehicles that can fly in Mars' thin atmosphere and of course the very first aircraft (a Local Legend) will be Ingenuity, the little helicopter that flew an heroic 72 missions on Mars.

The possibilities are endless. MSFS can simulate historic flight (back to the Wright Bros) and of course current flight. But there seems absolutely no reason why it can't simulate future flight both here on Earth and on Mars.  That's why the Dune activity excites me, because it suggests MSFS is not saying no to beyond earth simulation if it is practical and economic to do so. 

I have now moved on from my old way of thinking and see a bigger picture than just the pure present time flight simulation stove pipe. I feel confident MS/Asobo will attend to the technicalities of this while also developing game activities/challenges that not only draw in new users but also showcase new technologies, environments etc. The next 4 years are going to be a heck of a ride!  

 

Cheers

Terry

 

 

[Paul K 1,356]

I'll install it for a while, like I did with that HALO transport thing. A couple of circuits round Duxford, and that'll probably be me done. I don't mind these fantasy/fictional aircraft at all, but the novelty soon wears off. Fun for those who like them, of course, and that's a good thing for MSFS.

[lwt1971 7,441]

Uh oh, 320 Sim Pilot being very UnSerious ™️
 

 

[Bobsk8 12,814]

14 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Uh oh, 320 Sim Pilot being very UnSerious ™️
 

 

Can't wait for some Avsim expert to post how the flight model is all wrong. 😉

[turbomax 3,296]

Just now, Bobsk8 said:

Can't wait for some Avsim expert to post how the flight model is all wrong

it is study level, trust me.

[Daube 354]

16 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Uh oh, 320 Sim Pilot being very UnSerious ™️
 

 

That emergency rescue mission is much cooler and exciting than I expected... might download that content, finally...

[Farlis 2,296]

Just now, turbomax said:

it is study level, trust me.

Too bad the checklists are all classified. 😉

[peloto 213]

I watched a minor misspellings in

16 minutes ago, turbomax said:

it is study level, trust me.

I watched a minor misspellings in the Ornithopter switches and buttons in the Arrakis language, hope they fix that in the next update.