trevorbee

No, I am not using UT - but the good news is I flew down to the Hollywood Hills from Burbank just now and spotted the sign on top of the first hill. And so the mystery is solved. Many thanks for your help. Cheers Trevor

Hi Sascha Thank you for that tip. I downloaded and installed the flatten bgl per the instructions but still no luck in spotting the sign so far. I have searched the area using the coordinates included in the read me file and so should be in the right location. I am using the default mesh for this area. But thanks anyway. I will keep looking and report back if there is a breakthrough. Cheers Trevor

Hi All I seem to remember spotting the famous Hollywood sign a long time ago while flying low and slow around the Hollywood Hills. Just recently I have been trying to find it again (after checking it's location via Google Maps) but no luck so far. Does it actually exist in the default FS9 or was it my imagination? Trevor

Well, we now know who will be doing it and we also know what tools they have in their toolbox. But what will it look like? Will it be FS11 or something completely different? Should we just wait until 2015 to find out or start speculating now? I suggest we just wait………… Trevor

I am with those who think that the next flight sim will be based on a re-branded MS Flight. Perhaps, rather than whole world, it might be developed along the same lines as the train simulator i.e. by adding route packages for commercial airliners. Whereas GA could be catered for by developing additional detailed areas for adventure flights and missions. Lots of potential for lucrative DLC. Trevor

Nobody mentioned it is possible to have two Christmases in the Southern hemisphere. Here in New Zealand, many restaurants offer a mid winter Christmas meal in June as well as the traditional Christmas fare in December.

Whoever has bought this, I think that the big question is why have they bought it? If we knew the answer to that then we might have some idea of what we can look forward to. In the meantime, it seems to me that FLIGHT currently offers the most potential for an advanced flight simulation experience if someone is prepared to fill in all of the gaps (lots of them) at an acceptable price.

Could this perhaps be an alaborate subterfuge on behalf of MS to sponsor the development of FLIGHT/FSX into a mind boggling FS11 without losing face? Hmmmmm

Actually, I suspect that the two airports I mentioned in my orginal post (Revelstoke BC and St Stephan Switzerland) are not as challenging as they seem. It is just that their elevations are not represented correctly in FS9. Lots of interesting responses though - thanks.

Revelstoke airport (CYRV) in British Columbia is apparently located at the bottom of a chasm in the Columbia River - which makes for tricky landings. Likewise, St Stephan airport (LSTS) situated at the bottom of a canyon in the Swiss Alps. These are just two which I came across by chance. No doubt there are others. Any suggestions?

Revelstoke airport (CYRV) in British Columbia is apparently located at the bottom of a chasm in the Columbia River - which makes for tricky landings. Likewise, St Stephan airport (LSTS) situated at the bottom of a canyon in the Swiss Alps. These are just two which I came across by chance. No doubt there are others. Any suggestions? My apologies for this double post. Would our mod please delete this second one. Thanks.

Agree, this all sounds quite encouraging - but it could take a while as you say.

Let's hope. My gut feeling is that this is not the end of the road.

Jeroen, thank you for your tutorials - especially the VOR. I had tried to get my head around this subject a number of times, via the FS9 flying lessons, but never could get it. Well, now I do and I have printed off your documentation in case I ever need a refresher.

I agree, all of the above made Flight a huge improvement on what has gone before. I just hope that any future new sim will encompass these enhancements.

Well for me it was back to FS9. I would say I am getting about the same level of performance with FS9 as I was getting with Flight. The main benefits for me are being able to fly in New Zealand again and with a much wider choice of aircraft to choose from. I just installed Godzone Real New Zealand Auckland City, which recently changed from payware to freeware, Yet another benefit of using an older sim. I will pop back to Flight now and then just to do a spin in the Maule which is so much better than the Maule I have in FS9. Like many I am dissapointed that Flight did not last but, there again, at the rate they were going it was going to take for ever to provide all of the content we are used to having. And we don't even know if that was their intention.

That would be nice. But somehow I do not think it is going to happen in our lifetime.

No doubt it will be fixed in the next update.

I actually doubt that this was their intention in the long run. But they obviously failed to get the third party devs on board (not really surprising) and they could not do it on their own.

My impression is that the majority of people who have invested in Flight believe that it is superior to all other PC flight simulators in at least three respects. I.e. best graphics, best flight dynamics, best performance ‘out of the box’. Therefore, although it has had a very short lifespan, I think it remains a valuable commodity, which at some stage needs to be dusted off and developed into a next generation sim, including all the bells and whistles that flight simulation enthusiasts want. OK, so we are not the target audience that Microsoft had in mind. Nevertheless, we are customers prepared to pay real money for a flightsim that meets our requirements. I personally find it hard to believe that Microsoft cannot make a whole lot more revenue out of a sim built up of pay-as-you-go DLC, as compared to the one off price of a boxed game that they have sold to us in the past. Perhaps we just need to give MS time to get over their current difficulties. However, if they really have washed their hands of flight simulation then I would suggest that other developers should regard Flight as the standard to be met or exceeded when considering the development of the next generation Flightsim.

Me too.Never went looking for them but sometimes they just turned up. Like that word 'happenstance'.

Not much to disagree with here. It is really hard to understand why they launched this game when they did with so little quality product to follow up with. I actually wonder if they had already decided to 'can' it before the launch but wanted to try and recover some of their losses. If we ever get to hear what went on behind the scenes I am sure it would be an interesting story.

Indeed - there should be room for all kinds of discussion here otherwise it will all get very tedious. But personal attacks we do not need.

To be honest, at this stage who really cares? Microsoft did not follow through on what looked to be a very promising platform. They took around NZ $50 off me for the bare bones of a game (the boxed FS9 only cost me around NZ $90) and tnen pulled the plug with no warning. I am not a happy chappie and will not drool at the mouth over some extra tid bits they may or may not throw at me. My last word on this subject.

The answer is simple enough. I had no idea where Flight was going when it was under development. The developers were not saying. I have no idea why the developers abandoned Flight.The developers are saying "this decision was the result of the natural ebb and flow of our portfolio management" - whatever that means. I personally do not believe that either FS11 or Flight were not commecially viable. To me, the indications are that the cancellations are due to internal problems within Microsoft. They were the leaders but now they appear to be really struggling against the competition.