jhefner

Not to mention if and when the day comes when you are running systems that are no longer 32-bit Windows compatible; someone is bound to come up with an emulator. So, for example, I could also run Sublogic Flight Simulator for the Commdore 64 on my Windows machine. :(-James

Really; I was in Staples just last weekend, and they are still selling FS2002....

I appreciate the humor with which this post was made.But seriously; do people really think that Flight will be like this? Go too far from the Hawaiian islands and bam you hit a wall; like the WWI game that came with Sublogic Flight Simulator?CF1 and CF2 were both based on MSFS; CF1 was the European theater, while CFS2 was the Pacific theater. But, in both cases, you could still fly to other parts of the world; the continents are all still there; just no scenery or airports on them. And, of course, you could still add scenery to those areas, which is what most folks did.I think the main question is how much scenery will there be outside of Hawaii; based only on what we have seen so far. Will the rest of the world be like CFS; or the same level of detail we have seen in the past in FS. I still think it will more like the latter than the former. And, you can add still more scenery if you want to; it will be through the online store rather than hunting the web for what you are looking for.-James

That "old tractor" (a steam tractor or traction engine) cost way more these days than any new tractor, and 99.99% of the world wouldn't know how to operate it.If your comparision held true, I would be honored to run FS2002. And I actually do, on my daughter's laptop computer; where it's footprint is small, and it runs very smoothly, and looks good with converted FS2004 aircraft.James Hefner (http://www.survivingworldsteam.org)

Fair and well; but now they have to compete with Prepar3d with whatever they decide to come up with that is on the commercial/professional side of the house; which was my point. And, LM also have most of the old ACES team as well. Which is why I agree with Mathjis, and think they are more likely to come up with something that runs on low end hardware like phones, tablets, and handhelds that can also happen to run on PCs (or anything running Windows 8), with more features or expandability in the PC version. -James

In which case, Flight Simulation in general should seem to have to go two ways: 1. As a more serious platform for commerical and serious users, requiring high end PC hardware to run (Prepar3d)2. A more game oriented platform that will run on smartphones, tablets, and consoles. My guess is that the one-plane, Hawaii only "Flight" mentioned in the rumors is a slimmed down and recomplied version of FSX that will run on non-Intel tables and phones running Windows 8 and on Xbox consoles; just as Xplane can run on ipads. A version more like the FSX we know that includes more than one plane and has landclasses for use worldwide will also be available for Wintel PCs. As has been pointed out, XPlane runs the gaunlet from high priced FAA versions to one on the ipad; Microsoft could possibly take that same route; though they already ceded the high ground to Lockheed Martin when they sold them ESD. -James

When it's ready; preferably not before.

I have been thinking; it also sounds like a product that would run on any device running Windows 8; including touch pads and maybe smartphones. PC users with more firepower could download or purchase a slew of addons. -James

The direction that MS is going in the overall scheme of things to make the operating system you run on your phone, tablet, and PC the same version of Windows. While I have not heard Xbox 360 mentioned; I would imagine the same is true for it as well. That would mean games and other applications that run on all four; provided they have the CPU power, memory and storage to handle it. (My brother was showing me XPlane running on his ipad last week, Trainz is available for the ipad as well.) I think that the release of Flight will be timed with that of Windows 8 because I think many of the changes outside of the scenery ones we have seen will have to do with integrating it with the Windows 8; the interface changes, app store, and multi-device support. if the rumor mentioned in another thread is true that Flight will be released with just Hawaii and a few planes (and I am not saying it is); that may be so that it will work on tablet PCs and lower powered hardware. More serious hardware may be able to have the entire world and other addons included. -James

FS2002 simulated overcast; it just didn't do individual clouds..... -James

First of all, Microsoft has already stated in their press releases that Flight will run well on today's hardware. They are already ahead of you in that respect. As long as there has been a MSFS franchise, a new version of FS would be released just when it seemed that hardware had finally caught up with the software. And Jeff is spot on; the same has been true with Windows and Office since the very beginning. The usual grumbling about having to tweak a new version when they just got the old version optimized also goes back to early days of FS; if you are happy with your current version; hold off on buying Flight for now; ditto for Windows and Office. At some point the new features and offerings will intice you to upgrade. And of course; this is not going to be a total rewrite. Like Windows and Office, there are lots of pieces and parts that work just fine and will continue to remain in there. A perfect example of what Jeff is talking about is the Font applet that was in the Windows Control Panel; it continued to look like the Windows 3.0 version until it went away with Windows XP. Finally, in regards to whether this will be a new version of FS or "FSX SP3"; what you are really taking about is version control. And yes, I am certain there will be enough revisions and new features in Flight to renumber it as a new version; you don't have to totally rewrite something to give it a new version number. Some may say that MS is implying that Flight is a whole new simulator because they dropped the word "Simulator"; but I think they read way too much into that. The name change had more to do with marketing and approach than it did with code itself. Same thing as when Microsoft went from Windows x.x (Windows 1.0) to Windows yyyy (Windows 95), to version names ("Vista"), and now back to Windows x.x again (Windows 7). Same for Office; in all three cases; they start with Windows, Office, and now Flight. No big deal; the change in names did imply major changes to Windows and nearly every time they delivered. (Should Windows 7 have been Vista 1.1? It looks and basically works the same as Vista, but in fact the core code was drastically rewritten to deliver a smaller footprint and better speed. Sounds familiar....) -James

Can I also point out that we learn nothing on Windows 8 for quite awhile since D9; but more news is coming out at last, but Windows 8 was in no danger of being cancelled. http://www.winsupersite.com/windows-7/windows-8 Sometimes; no news is good news. Wouldn't surprise me if the next thing we hear is about a test build or a release date. -James

:) I hardly ever get to fly, but last year my wife and I flew to San Francisco. At several points during the flight while looking out the window, I thought to myself "this looks just like Flight Simulator." -James

Noticed MS in general has been very mum lately. Nothing new on Windows 8; either. Have no idea why. -James

Whether default MSFS, Megascenery-X or Orbx; I think what you will find in urban areas will always be a mixture of custom autogen and photoscenery, with maybe some regular autogen thrown in. The only urban add-on I can think of that modeled every single building was LAGO's Venice scenery for FS2004. -James

Not to mention I found copies of FS2002 Standard edition on the discount software shelves even after FSX was released. -James

I was reading on their website yesterday, and they also use photo scenery in the mountains above the treeline.

How good photo scenery looks depends alot on the aerial photography itself. Photographs with clear sharp shadows tend to project more of a 3-D look then photographs taken on an overcast day with little or no shadows. When using Tileproxy to pull aerial photographs from services like Bing Maps, the quality can vary widely, with some much better than others. Megascenery is definitely top shelf. This is MegasceneryX for the Dallas/Fort Worth area: If you are not familiar with an area, then default scenery may do just fine. But, i commute past this spot nearly every weekday, and to look down and see not only the Texas shaped rock garden, but the trees planted in front of it just made me go "Wow!" My computer can barely, barely, handle FSX. But this flight, complete with traffic on the highways below and a pair of falcons or eagles riding the thermals below when I flew over Joe Pool lake was an amazing and immersive experience. I can only imagine what Flight will be like if you hardware can handle it. -James EDIT: If you look at the screenshots closely, Megascenery also adds just enough default scenery objects so that everything doesn't look flat when you are flying low or at the airport. That helps maintain the 3-D feel; wish Tileproxy could do the same, but it can't.

Really? MSFS has never been able to cover the entire world with scenery at the level of say what you see in St. Maartin in FSX, Seattle or New York in FS2004, or Chicago in Sublogic Flight Siimulator for the C=64. It would be impossible to do, and it has never been done in the past, that was why the add-on market was and still is such an intergral part of the franchise; it is impossible for Microsoft to provide that level of detail in our lifetime. (Not to mention the fact that the world is changing even as it is being modeled.) For years Europe, Africa and the Far East was poorly covered, and is still not covered to the level detail of North America in the default sim. When you pick up a brochure for a new car, do they picture the baseline model with no frills, or one with all the extra options piled on? The world is full of similiar marketing examples; it is natural to present your best. I am ready for a new press release too.... -James

Herodium; a fortress and palace which King Herold the Great built on top of a man-made hill. Herodium is located roughly 2.5 miles SE of Bethlehem. I believe it is part of some Jersuleum scenery I have installed in FS2004.-James

It's too late for you....-James

What stunt -- they post a job posting, and you immediately go negative into consperacy theories.What makes your point of view any better than someone you accuse of always rooting for MS. It really gets old....-James

It is also hard to find decent aerial photographs for some parts of the world. Some areas are not covered with high resolution photographs; while photographs from the equatorial region suffer from a constant cloud cover.I also encountered the following while flying around Isreal; the lighter color tiles are high resolution images while the fuzzier tiles are low resolution. But notice the disjoin as well. Changing image providers for different parts of the world helps.In the packaged sceneries they fix things like this and color correct when needed as well; along with adding the seasonal, weather, and night textures.-James

Since they put lessons into the "game" on how to fly, included charts (stamped not for actual flight use, mind you), and had former team members write books on how to use MSFS to log simulator time. While they never actively encouraged it's use as a simulator, they never discouraged it, either. And ESP was geared towards writing simulators, not games; or why would Lockheed Martin had purchased it?-James Hefner

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