EagleSkinner

You are right of course Arwen - individual opinions. I'll reply in the Flight Beta forum...

I must admit that the Flight designers really make me laugh with those charters. To tell the truth, m yfavourite jobs are the biplane tours and landing out in the sticks for the girls to go behind a bush...

Sound? The FSX Maule sounds good too. Comparison in motion? FSX wins hands down if you tune it right and even if you only use the Jeppeson FSX real weather. If you have payware - and I do have a LOT agreed, then Flight simply cannot compare - fair enough.But even without the eye- candy (the Flight default aircraft textures are definitely BETTER than the FSX pendants and Flight has better cliff face textures and definitely better eye candy) FSX is a whole different animal. I was on the Flight beta and I really did check the systems. I also used to beta test FSX aircraft agains real world test schedules and as an aircraft engineer specialising in real world flight testing airframes and engines I know how to read performance data and I know piston engines. The Flight Maule EGT / CHT does not react accurately to Mixture changes. And everyone knows now, that differential braking in Flight is still being worked on.I regret that no matter how nice Flight is - and it really is - it is not a game that we can use for simulation purposes. It is great for fly ins. It is great for multiplayer events. But there are just too many inaccuracies and lacking functions still for Flight to be a serious contender for FS9 and FSX.But I don't want that in Flight. Oh dear... do I need to teach maths too - both screens have a 0.25 millimetre dot mesh so the left monitor has 4 pixels per millimetre and so does the right one. Both monitors have been color calibrated this week. Both are showing the same temperature and tone.Oh, and I am running Flight MAXED out in options

Arwen, Flight images above are not lower resolution. I am just operating FSX on the left monitor 1920 x 1024 and Flight on the right monitor 1280 x 1024. The pictures are not stitched, they are a single screenshot taken at the same moment using Snagit to catch both screens in one jpg.I shut out UT, FEX, REX and everything except the Oahu Phototerrain in FSX ($10 special offer with Las Vegas and Reno) So for comparison, the FSX side is costing the same or less than Flight (you can get FSX for 10 dollars now as well)

I didn't buy Megascenery Oahu until it turned into a $10 special offer. I am not comparing directly as such. I am trying to remind those who are saying Flight is so wonderfully real that this is not the case. I keep seeing threads where folk are saying Flight has used Google Earth as scenery. This is simply not true. Flight is pretty - I like Flight - but I look at it very realistically. There are many many features in Flight that prevent it being called a full simulator. Close? Possibly. But it remains an eye-candy flying game ideal for people who don't plan to build simulated cockpits. Yoiu cannot, yet, use any external software to feed separate addon hardware gauges.Even MS emphasize that there is more game about Flight.Now... I must get back to Flight - I want to get my 25000 XP points back, that I had earned in beta ;)

When you fly in a real plane above 70 knots, you don't see huge raindrops drippling along the canopy either. Even in a Bell 47 helicopter (and I have many real world hours passenger and gaining technician's hands on time in then) fly fast enough to blow the rain off the canopy. Most perspexes are cleaned with a water repellant polish so even when standing on the ground, water will just tend to pearl off. At speed you see the rain streaks, but usually there is enough laminar airflow and water repellant action for the canopies to stay clear.You aren't really missing much.Oh - and if your car wipers fail - yes, you will have problems. You just can't keep 70+ MPH up unless you are on the Gernan Autobahns. Yes - I have turned my wipers of in rain at 130 MPH. (don't do this unless you have great faith in the road ahead! because unfortunately the laminar flow over cars is not as smooth as over aeroplanes...

What gets me is that there are people who are "seeing" Google Earth in Flight. Just those few photos above prove to the contrary. There are a few, very few places in Flight that look like they have been taken from Google, but most of the islands rely on landclass polygons and these are still to FS8 standards. As for plantations and orchards, MS are using autogen tiles and you can see the repetition. Also if you look at the airport aprons, you will see massively repeating checkerboard patterns.MS hove done this deliberately - the loudest screams against FS9 and FSX have been the (unfounded in 99% of cases) whining screams that FSX and FS9 suffered poor FPS rates. Well, MS listened and Flight runs fast and smooth now. But the cost is high - scenery detail and quality is not, repeat NOT as good as in FSX.Please do not put me in the "Flight slammer" category - I like Flight. But I am not blinded by the Emperor's New Clothes. Flight will improve - if enough Hawaiian Adventure packs are sold, but Flight still has a long way to go. All I wish for is that the newcomers enjoy Flight and that the old timers who have both (all three) recent flying programmes from MS refrain from unjustified comparison. A bare FSX is worse to look at than Flight, agreed, but FSX can look a lot better and has a lot lot more to offer a desk-pilot that Flight. Whether that changes will depend on how Flight is taken (and not compared or wrapped in false new clothes)Flying both at the same time allows you to compare just how good Flight really is (not) and just how good FSX (can be with payware addons)FSX on the left (1920 screen) Flight on the right (1280 screen)

Weeelll Flight does not match GE that well. The plantations tiles are repeated too often, the landclass polys are really sharp edged and the urban areas are standard FSX tiles. If you fly dusk and night, then I would also add that Flight is using dumbed down FSX tiles. Emperors New Clothes syndrome. Look closely. Fly with Flight and GE open on separate monitors. Better still, run Google on an iPad. Flight is pretty, yes, I wholeheartedly agree...BUT it is NOT up to GE over the whole scenery. FSX can match GE if you have mega scenery Oahu - and then you will see photo-scenery. At the moment even Flight is predominantly autogen textures. I am not trying to play your enthusiasm down, just trying to suggest a calmer look. For one thing - in the real world plantation fruit trees (macadamia nuts are popular on Hawaii) will be separated by 5 to 8 metres, which gives up to 16 to 40,000 trees per square kilometer - Not even Flight can manage that kind of tree density yet. What's more, in the forest areas it can be denser...Yes - Flight is pretty. I like it, but let us remain real please.

Apparently flying Flight with the mouse helps get much smoother landings if you want to aim for the gold landing awards...

On the other hand, you CAN (well, sort of) fly both programs at the same time - if you are aft enough... like me...See here and scroll down a bit

You can, of course, try running both FSX and Flight on the same PC. I just did...Not Possible? Try this:You need a two screen setupSet up a flight in the Maule from Honolulu international on runway 26R in FSX on the left monitor and Flight on the right.Uncheck the "Pause on task switch" options.Take off...OK, there is a lot of fine tuning still to go - the Maule in Flightflies totally different to the FSX Maule - they both very soon lost synch, But I managed to pause and catch up for the last shot...Masochistic fun all the way...

More fun - fly both FSX AND Flight at the same time... I am currently flying both at the same time - as long as you uncheck the "pause on change focus" in FSX, you can fly in Flight and your FSX model goes along with you. Crashes unavoidable

Incidentally - if you look at the Wikipedia references about the Maule... General characteristics Crew: One pilot Capacity: 4 passengers Length: 23 ft 6 in (7.16 m) Wingspan: 33 ft 6 in (10.21 m) Height: 6 ft 3 in (1.89 m) Wing area: 268 ft2 (15.6 m2) Empty weight: 1,500 lb (681 kg) Gross weight: 2,500 lb (1,134 kg) Powerplant: 1 × Lycoming IO-540-W, 235 hp (175 kW) One Thousand Pounds of useful load - and that includes pax and fuel. Pilot 100 Kilos (I am honest here, but I'd have to fly nude :LMAO: ) 100 Kilos of fuel and the best you could do is to add 200 to 250 Kilos freight or pax...

Yep, there are a few really amazing moments in Flight... and yet there is still way too much that needs fixing or even adding. I really think Flight has a place for all of us, BUT it is very much an "Emperor's New Clothes" kind of story. If you look a little closer you will see that the beauty is only skin-deep (yet? still?). There's still a lot of unsatisfactory features - not all switches work, Ps and Ts don't respond accurately as in real world, differential braking is unreal, there's no pause or replay... OK, thes can all be suffixed with the word "YET". For now...I notice no one appears to find the "tiling" of the terrain textures annoying. Or the sharp edged landclass polygons. Or many other scenery distractions. People are indeed seeing the new clothes and not what is beneath... YET ;)My biggest concern is that with a staff of 50 working on Flight in Redmond, we won't see progress as fast as would really be satisfying. One "Wow" moment I had was seeing trees wave in the wind. I see FTX now has trees that loose their leaves as well as sway in the wind.And YET... I had a really gob-smacking WOW moment while beta testing Flight. Sun low behind me, flying low level, collecting leaves in the landing gear (very "One-Eye" of me) and suddenly it dawned on me - I was sweating buckets, I was ducking and jinking on my chair, and I was really beginning to get an adrenaline rush. Why? I realised my plane's shadow was rushing up the trees, hills, cliff faces and hangar walls as I approached them. The fact that my joy-riding passenger was rather unwell didn't matter a jot. The eye-candy rocks!

Whilst Flight does give some great looking scenery and good looking planes (Very well modelled and painted - even if I do say so myself), one does question the developers connections with the real world... Take a look at this:Now what's what's wrong with this picture?378 Kilos of jellyfish antivenom? That sounds to me like the world supply of antivenom... :help:269 Kilos of chemistry sets? If I remember my childhood, I would recall that my first chem-set probably weighed a pound. We're talking five hundred chemistry sets for Kahului! What are the kids planning?! =@ 852 Kilos of live pigs? An adult pot-bellied pig weighs in at 125 pounds so... we could be talking 14 pigs. In a Maule? :Pig:909 Kilos of live ducks? A fully grown fighting duck (oh yes, them Aylesbury ducks make good watchdogs ) is what, 5 Kilos. 180 Live Ducks In A Maule? C'mon...and apart from the realism, who's going to clean the mess? :bad:And don't get me wrong... I like Flight enough to rag it and have a good belly laugh at the mission planner's sense of humour. I am guessing they want to make us laugh... Signed:- a Kitchen Cynic :Hug:

I liked this video. Despite my critical simulationist stance on Flight, I still have the game installed and I like it very much whenever I just want to get my daily dose of flying in such a manner as to lose any imagined PPL in minutes...Flight is good, even for us simmers - like a coffee break.As a simulator the game still has gaping holes, chasms even. AP functionality, ATC, AI traffic, limited (16 players only atm) multiplayer functionality, many systems not functional or only "lightly" so.I refer to Flight as my blonde flying package - pretty, but not many brain cells (Oh yes, I do realise that is very condescending - and if my blonde wife sees this I am in for a serious talking at) Flight has nothing much to offer, that FSX can't give you.Except for the price... My FSX Megascenery Oahu is heartstoppingly prettier than the Flight version - but it cost me all in all some 4 or even 500 USD more... And as for the NW corner of the USA and the SW corner of Canada - I have spent several hundred USD on scenery for that region already and I need a $3000 PC to run it all... plus other bits and bobs...FLIGHT is great for a quick blast around the skies, if I am short on time. FSX is great when I want to go through a flight plan (even if it is just for an aero-sequence). There is room for both games in my heart and on my PC.A nice, sound and fair film Gibbage! A bit long winded, a bit loud, but full of good, honest information and even a few new tricks that I as a Beta Tester hadn't even caught on to.

fbassAnother factor - the beta forum is still running and some beta testers still frequent the place - me too, for instance. I didn't have any troubles installing the beta, either on my 6 year old AMD FX62 running Win7 64 bit, nor on my Intel I3 Win7 32 bit laptop.When I downloaded and installed the release version I did have problems on my new PC - Intel I7 3930K Sandybridge. OK, I had a different problem, but what I am coming to is the fact that MS staffers are aware of the install problems because testers are still hard at work giving feedback.A little patience might be necessary, but MS is working on it.

That was the horriblest (?) flight in the whole of the beta...

It's extremely strange gents....The graphics card came with Assassins Creed - I had installed that at about the same time as my last (for now) FSX stuff on Thursday or Friday - and that was about the same time as my "troubles" surfaced.I removed AC and what do you know...? Problem solved. Don't ask me why, although I guess the game installer really goes to town on the graphics? Well, whatever, I am back to flying visible aircraft in FSX again. I am getting 25+ FPS steady over high urban areas such as the ORBX Portland freeware / 60/80/100+ over the countryside. Even stuff like Jon Patch's Vancouver, Aerosoft's VFR Germany and similar aren't really slowing my flight enjoyment any.More to the point, I am flying "Sliders Right" across the board (apart from cloud draw 0 (left), traffic 25% and water 1 left of top) on untweaked. Well - trees and buildings have been pushed to 6000 per cell and I have set the affinity mask to 4095 (six core tweak)My old system was pushed to give me 20+ over the countryside with the "******* Tweaks" - although that was good for the system.

Installed FSX then Acceleration then sceneries. The sceneries all work fine. It is just that some of the aircraft have transparent textures / black preview panels.When I last re-installed FSX I did it in the same order and didn't have this. But I have a vague memory that DX9 / DX10 had something to do with this. Thing is, my new graphics card is an nVidia GTX 580 with DX11 - I have no experience there. Are we supposed to remove "11" and install "9"?Thanks so far.

...since I set up my FSX on the old computer and now I am doing it on a new one.I can get FSX to run, but there are a few planes that don't show their textures (the A2A Piper's VC is mostly transparent for example). Oh and when I select aircraft, sometimes the previews are black. The complete preview window - not the paint. (That one I can remember)Can someone point out my forgotten memories please and suggest which settings need adjusting? Could it be the new Graphics card? It's a GTX 580 and I think it's running DX11 - despite FSX installing DX9.Oh - and I have forgotten where all the good tweaks for the FSX cfg are.Not that I 'need' the tweaks - I am getting very very high FPS. It's just that some of my addon planes don't seem to work as sold.Many thanks for reminders!

Yes, I know Flight! has set all our emotions at boiling. It was bad when FSX came out, although nowhere near as vociferous then. Let's all wait another two weks - and THEN we can rip MS to shreds (or not) ;)

Ramrunner - you could be right in a way - after all, that is exactly what I am saying. Just in different thoughts - I am VERY disappointed by the arguments from both sides of the fence. I have seen better behaviour in a kindergarten. At least children have a reason (however petty) when they squabble.As it os, NO ONE here has an official leg to stand on except those who have broken NDAs and those who have discussed the rejections made by or given to MS with respect to making DLC for MS under the MS rules. More to the point - NO ONE apart from the beta testers has officially seen Flight! in action on their own PC.And then I must be very blunt with some of the NDA breakers - even they have missed a clue along the way and are breaking the NDA with unfounded and unreasoning argument. I think a lot of the moans may be coming from NDA breakers who didn't get given certain "privileges" by MS for being part of the beta team.Or could it just be that a certain interest group has smuggled some fifth columnists to undermine the forum by posting anger-provoking statements? My my, my mind does work in devious ways... that's it! It is a vicious plot to destroy faith by the simmer community in the future of flight games. I can see it now... there are some people in black, red velvet lined cloaks and with widow's peak hair styles in Redmond who are plotting revenge on all those people who took the word "Franchise" too literally.The thot plickens! Muaahahaha....

No one who has invested thousands of dollars in FSX has actually lost anything, dear Jahman. You will still be able to fly your jets to the standard you are used to and for the product you bought them for.

I was just going to reply to a post in a separate thread, but the more I look through this forum, the more I am saddened by our own community, so I shall start a new thread and open myself to personal commentary from my peers...Hey... I have just realised... technically I am a 3PD too. OK, I don't make models and I have only done a couple of sceneryettes for Misty Moorings, but in my "EagleSkinner" life I have painted a couple of hundred different aircraft. Apparently some people think my lavatory even smells nice (sic). I did spend a lot of time with the SDKs for both FS9 and FSX - even though I really dislike html books (I much prefer paper - it's great for post.its). So I think I do qualify for the epithet "Third Party Developer" in that I have developed a fair few painting techniques of my own.So... am I a pi##ed off 3PD? Nope! I can already see ways of adding paints into the pak files and I am sure other 3PDs out there have looked at the pak tools on the market. It won't take long for people to figure out ways of inserting their own paints and even airplanes. The main question is will they want to? From the available leaks I really would say Flight! makes a start in the right direction. At the moment MS are dedicating a very small budget into developing it - sort of "Lick your finger and hold it to the wind" affair. I don't believe that all is yet lost.My real worry is that all this internecine squabbling within the flight simulation community is really letting the side down. The average age of a dedicated flight simmer is upper forties I believe, and having attended a few flightsim shows and fairs I would judge even older (the last symposium had more grey hair than a Schwarzkopf advert and more hairless pates than an egg farm). To be brutally honest (even if it does mean I include myself) I think that this austere community has well and truly shot itself in its own feet! Talk about childish behaviour! I see nothing but petulance in far too many posts with comments along these lines:"I can't fly jets in Flight! so I am going to sulk and stamp my tiny feet in rage until Microsoft do what I want them to do.""Flight only wants me to fly through hoops! that is sooooo silly! I want to fly from Boston to Atlanta in a "boebus. MS doesn't care what we think.""Only Hawaii is free, after that we have to buy the world in slices. MS is a money sucking leech!""Third party developers will lose business.""Third party developers are such boors."I feel a growing shame that I find myself in the midst of such a community. There are more flames here now than in many a "game" forum I have visited. Granted - many of the flamethrowers are at least polite about it, but having been at the end of some pretty vile four-lettered personal attacks by some anal retentive moronic twerp who can't even spell simple English words (that person is, by the way, a "native speaker" and most likely even British, to judge by his use of the vernacular) I really have begun to question the current sanity of what has otherwise been a very solid community over the years.If I were a teenager, just embarking on a game career of the flying kind, I would be thinking twice and thrice about sticking it out amongst such hate. I would even venture a return to WoW and Skyrim and even PONG! I may even return to Microsoft online backgammon rather than play with this infantile crowd of geriatric dementia.Yes, seriously folks! These threads are beginning to read like a day in an old age pensioner's home. There's old so-and-so sitting in his bath chair, drooling into his lap and muttering about the good old days. Oh, and look over there! There you see mister angry, lying in his soiled bed, enjoying it. Oh yes - the old colonel is there too, threatening to shoot "those damned natives" if they dare trespass on his farm.I could go on, but what I am really hoping for is a spark of optimism and seeing people look upon Flight! as an opportunity and not an enema take-over bid (deliberate typo!) Very soon there could be hundreds of new people interested in flight (lower case) and wanting to know more. Instead of frightening them off with tales of horror and woe, we should welcome them with open arms and show them just how much fun flight really is.As a footnote, I will also add that in real life I have been to real world flying clubs and also met this kind of hostility towards newcomers - it does happen and groupings like that do exist. All I can say is that not all clubs are full of po-faced sticklers who think that change is bad. I am glad that I can chose to go to other clubs and find a more pleasant community. ...And in the current case I sincerely hope that we can turn the tide here at Avsim and remain the pleasant, open, helpful and informative community I have enjoyed for the past 7 years.