alepro

I know what you mean :) Have you tried some flights across the Tasman? If you have the Oz package(s) that makes for some great return flights. That is how I have kept myself busy over the last few weeks.

Just by the way, the RAAS tool that is available in the Avsim file library spits out a nice little summary of your landing, including the vertical speed at the moment of touchdown. I find it quite interesting to see how I fared. Another thing to point out is that the vertical touchdown speed is a function of aircraft type/weight/stoping distance, runway length/surface condition, wind speed, and sometimes the taxiway the crew is aiming for (to avoid costly backtracking). I.e. a long flare is the wrong maneuver if the aircrafts anticipated stopping distance given the prevailing conditions is approaching that of the runway length. Hence it's pretty unrealistic of your VA to suggest you touch down very gently wherever you land. I think it's primarily about safety margins, then about minimizing wear and tear on the aircraft, getting a short taxi to the gate/parking position and finally about passenger comfort, in that order. JFK has unusually long runways, owing largely to the 707 era, and the hot summer NY can get so I'm not surprised that most aircraft touch down very softly there, but I wouldn't expect the same pilot in the same plane to land in that fashion if their next port of call is KMDW and it's raining.

Sale over. Price is back up to $13.

I can actually. Sell FB: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-16/facebook-freeing-60-percent-more-shares-seen-weighing-on-stock ;-)

Hi, Just came across this offer: http://shop.ubi.com/store/ubiemea/en_AU/pd/ThemeID.29373500/productID.250743000/Tom-Clancys-HAWX-2-Deluxe-Edition.html Not much of a flight sim, but who can complain at that price :-) The catch: it's today (Thursday 16th of August) only!

Agreed. That's why I ended up buying GSX. It's nice to heave in ORBX-land since the ORBX developers didn't let Oliver do his AES magic.

Think about it this way: If people didn't care about model variation within a single family of aircraft would PMDG have released the 737-600/700 extension? Do you think they sold a few of those at $30 a pop? I reckon they sold a lot! Which is why they will do the same with the 777 (200/ER vs 300/ER), and are considering future updates to the 737 series (BBJ and military versions). I care and am happy to pay for an extension like that, as I have done with the PMDG 737.

I don't think AES is a dying product. It just got an update a few days ago, and I for one am happy to buy credits next time I run out even though I own GSX. Fact is that AES is a custom tailored approach whereas GSX is automated. My main beef with GSX is that the automation isn't very good at times (pretty much every time I use it I have vehicles driving through buildings/planes/each other), and you are stuck with FSX's flawed jetway system. I own every FSDT airport and even there I get some pretty messed up docking unless I leave it to AES. For airports that I use a lot I prefer AES, and I think there are a fair few who do too. Just my 2c.

I bought a copy of FSUIPC (due to the recommendation in this thread) and it in combination with running windowed mode only has cured about 90% of my FSX crashes. Thanks Word Not Allowed for pointing me in the right direction and thanks heaps to Peter Dowson for offering us a way out of g3d.dll hell!

Thanks for posting that features list. I'm positively surprised by the low price and the fairly extensive feature set. Great idea to have the MCDU include a webserver for remote access. Quite innovative that. Personally I'm good with the "normal operations" approach to system modelling, as long as everything works as it should, although I of course prefer the "PMDG" approach when I can get it. Chances are good that I'll buy this Bus and the FSLabs one when it comes out and the reviews give it a clear bill of health. The one thing I don't get is the omission of the A319 and A318. Wouldn't it be very easy to "cut a few meters" out of the virtual fuselage, adjust the model files and a few details in the MCDU and be done with it? Let's just hope that Aerosoft can deliver a bug free product, and they will have won themselves one more customer.

The X-Plane night lighting looks pretty good indeed. Thanks for posting that video. X-Plane is becoming more and more interesting.

Thanks Ben. Looks like I have to upgrade to REX Essentials then :-)

Very nice, thanks for the shots. I flew this airline recently and saw some of their special liveries in action. I have to say that I much preferred the old Hapag Lloyd days and livery though.

Wow, what cloud package are you using? I never get that kind of cloud cover. Great shot, Thanks!

I agree wholeheartedly with the above. I bought YMML and YBBN and while I like them and I'm glad to have some nice looking payware for Oz, I feel that the performance and especially the the quality of the ground textures are not up to the standard that FSDreamteam/FlyTampa/Flightbeam and a few others have set. For ORBX staff to say that they don't want to "compromise" their standards to the level of those excellent competitors is a little arrogant in my view. I live in Sydney and know the airport well. While the terminal buildings are pretty complex in layout I really don't thing they are as complex as airports such as KLAX or EGLL, both of which have multiple payware representations, one of which was done by a single developer (Gary Summons)! It's one thing to make a business decision to not tackle an airport (after originally stating that it would be done by ORBX) and another to claim that it is too complex, too costly and too unprofitable to develop. The former I have no issue with, although I do regret their choice, but the latter annoys me as I worry that it might turn other developers off YSSY, especially as the reasoning seems utterly flawed. I really hope someone steps up to the task. I have my credit card ready, and I bet many others do too.

Nice find! I had a feeling I was missing some news. Now I know I have :-)

Thanks for the reply Rob. I think I will have to buy myself a license :-)

I added my vote to the yay's but the I think the rather leading phrasing ("No, I don't like saving money on FS addons...") might have skewed the results a little unfairly. A simple yes/no would have done the trick.

Stunning. I'm really impressed how sharp those photo real sceneries look.

Great shots but I' kinda confused. This looks like a cross of X-Plabe and FSX (autogen textures in 6 and 7, as well as the sceneries). Did you convert some FSX sceneries for use in X-Plane? And are the aircraft parked at the terminal static or AI? This makes X-Plane look a lot more interesting.Thanks!

777 and a 747 update? Both this year??? EFB for both and the 737? And the DC6? This will keep me happily swimming away for years to come. Thanks PMDG!!! I own both and although the CS is indeed beautifully modeled, I think the NGX is in a class of its own. No contest for me.

Frankly I'm only surprised that some of you are surprised. Did you really think Flight was a good "game" for the masses? I have had a much better time with some 99 cent games on my iPad, and that is despite the fact that I really wanted to like Flight and gave it a more thorough try then I would have with any other game.The fact is MS has chosen to go after the board market rather then the "simmer" niche with the (in my opinion) naive assumption that there is a very big market for a casual flying game. If you red some of the comments by John Venema (ORBX) regarding their earlier insolvent in Flight, then you know that MS was projecting massive demand for Flight add ons back in the day when they still wanted third party developers to develop for the platform. Back then John (ORBX) thought those figures highly unlikely, and he would have some idea of what market is out there.I think this reviewer hit the nail on the head with this sentence "Flight is, for the most part, a waste of your time. It matters not if you're a detail-oriented, accuracy-loving sim-head or a gunning-for-action "arcade" gamer. Flight is likely not the droid you're looking for."I.e. this game manages to alienate the loyal fans and fails to gain a new broader base with casual gamers - something it was designed to do, and without which it doesn't have a leg to stand on. And if you think that IGN is irrelevant you'd be quite wrong: http://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/ign.com - this review from this source is very bad news for MS indeed.I think most gamers will pass this one by - free demo or not (which is pretty standard in the game industry anyway). I don't reckon this little adventure is going to pay for MS, and I'd expect them to eventually pull the plug on it. Time will tell.

Interesting analogy, there is definitely a parallel there, but in my mind it is more like "Why Flight isn't like the iPad".Let's go back a year or two further to 2007, and the iPhones release. Apple had not yet finished the iOS SDK and there was no App store. People were up in arms about the lack of expandability (in terms of software), and had Google completed a decent release version of Android with an app store, iOS would have had a much harder time of it, I'm sure.But that's not what happened. Apple did create an excellent SDK (for free!), updated their very good development environment Xcode with device simulators and a host of new tools for the iOS platform (also free!) and let people join their developer network (free, only if you wanted to transfer your creations to an iOS device did you have to pay something like $80 - very reasonable in my mind. With that spend you also got access to some of the Apple iOS brains trust.). Finally the store: for a 70% cut developers got the store, hosting, app review and stability testing, and credit card/iTunes card transaction. And it created a whole new digital economy. Apple now reckons that in the US alone about 200.000 people make a living developing apps for iOS. No wonder that the rest of the industry is copying this model - it's been a runaway success!Entrance Microsoft Flight:I reckon (no facts to back that up though) that Flight Sim has the largest add-on market of any game out there. Just look at FS2Crew: It's an add-on to an add-on for a game that was released in 2003 and 2005 respectively. And Bryan seems to do ok for himself. Just look at Aerosoft and their team:http://forum.aerosof...aerosoft-staff/Look how many people they employ! That is surely a small fraction compared to the number of people that are freelancing for Aerosoft or publishing through them.How many "app stores" do we have in FS land? Flight1, Aerosoft, Simmarket, The Flightsim Store... And a lot of people sell from their own stores such as FSDT and PMDG.I can see why MS put two and two together and thought "how can we get some of that revenue that our sim is generating?". Not a big leap to think of MS's own app store (market place), and to take steps that ensure that all content had to be obtained from there. Not a very nice thing to do to all the aforementioned publishers, but I suppose this is the way the world goes these days.But here is where the crux lies, and the iPad analogy falls over:There is no SDK!There are no tools!There is no way for any third part developer to contribute to the platform!On March 7 Apple will announce the iPad 3. Image them saying "here is the new iPad. It's better/faster/prettier. Oh, but we are closing the app store to all 3rd party developers and we will take steps that ensure that none of the currently existing iPad/iPhone apps run on iPad 3. And finally: we have taken most of the functionality we have previously provided AWAY!. Enjoy". I reckon Apple wouldn't sell a lot. I wouldn't buy one, that's for sure!This is what is happening to Flightsim in my humble opinion, and to me the news is very bad indeed. The iPad had it's sure share of nay-sayers when it came out. I wasn't one of them. On launch day of the first iPad I queued half the night to get mine because I knew it would be great and I loved it.Flight on the other hand... I don't think it will work until MS opens access to third party developers.

I refer only to the opinion piece by Mathijs; can't vouch for other peoples comments.Personally I didn't notice any "untruths" or "outrageous claims". Mathijs has been around the FS scene for a very long time and is not really known for either. And since he addresses the question "why are people upset" I felt that it addressed the O.P.'s question well and is relevant to the discussion.

I have recently read a very nice opinion piece on flight written by Mathijs Kok (from Aerosoft, formerly Lago). Sums it up nicely for me:http://asn.aerosoft.com/?page_id=3585