Gibbage

This is true. Overall, ACES and the Flight Sim franchise has had a stellar reputation for almost 30 years. To think people would forget all that over 1 error is unreasonable.Again, MS didnt release this Flight image as a screenshot, so dont take it as one. Just like the 737 photo image is not an XP10 screenshot.http://iblueyonder.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/the-final-word-on-fsx-and-dx10/That has a general overview of the "magic screenshot" drama plus Phil's blog post about it. Lets move on.

Something is fishy with this screenshot. Hummmm. I just cant place it.Hummmm.. On the tip of my tongue.. If I can just figure out what it is....I GOT IT!!! ITS NOT HAWAII!!!!!!!! I call shenanigans!

If thats your default settings, shows how much you have used it ;) Or do you just fly the trike out of Friday Harbor that often?

It took me 4 years before paid for my first FSX add-on (OrbX PNW). The rest was stuff I made and free stuff. IL2 never paid for a 3rd party add-on.

So what your saying is, we need to spend MORE money after the $80 to make it a good flight sim?

Dont assume anything. Working at ACES required a very spacific skill set, and one that not in high demand. Took me over a year to find another job and I know many others like me.

Ashrons call was open beta. A long time ago, but it was. Age of Empires Online was in open beta. Windows 7 had an open beta anyone could download and install. It just had a time bomb. Windows 8 developer preview is already out there free to download. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/previewMS has a long history of both open and closed beta. I dont know what your rambling on about.

This is a closed beta. By definition, a "public" beta means there are no restrictions on who gets in. MMO's go "public" just before release to stress test the servers. A "closed" beta is were the publisher is selective on who gets in. Also, "public" has no NDA and no restrictions on what you can and cant talk about, a "closed" beta does.Microsoft is being selective on who gets in, and also makes people sign an NDA. So by definition, its a "closed" beta. I hope JSkorna is hungry.

Did you miss this part? "We’re thrilled to announce that the Microsoft Flight Beta is scheduled to kick-off in January 2012"Or do you need an exact date and time?

Unless it was posted by MS, its not official. I wouldent trust this screenshot as it looks all sorts of hinkey, and thats coming from an artist.

You mean all the people who dont have a PHD in advanced UI logic understanding?

I see the maturity level in this thread is really high.

Thats a rather bold statement considering that I have been flying flight sims since DOS days, and worked on flight sims on teams like Oleg Maddox/1C and ACES, yet your telling me im too stupid for flight sims? Careful when your sling insults. You dont know who your talking with. Im just saying most flight sims welcome new users with an easy to use UI, that has more advanced features for those who want to go beyond the basics. There is no such welcoming layer in XP, so the learning curve for new users is more like a brick wall. Not all of us are willing to climb it.This is the thing that gets me the most. After XP10 "BETA DEMO" is out, the forums light up with complaints about the bad UI from new users. Not just AVSIM, but many other forums. Even Austin himself seems to understand that the UI is not the most friendly. Yet the XP fans bitterly defend the UI and even go so far as insulting new users. I would understand there position if it was just 1 or 2 FSX die hards crying about the UI, but my god people! Open your eyes! Almost every complaint I have seen so far is about the UI. Maybe, just maybe, they may be onto something?

Understanding your flaws is a start, but DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THEM is another. The UI has been the same for so long I dont feel that even though he understands the problem, he wont do anything about it.

This thread was not needed. I gave XP10 a good try, even woth GoranM on Skype to walk me though it for an hour. The moment they fix that horrid and overly complex UI, Aurstin will get another customer. Maybe in XP11 next year?

When has context really mattered around here?

Not true. There are many plugins for 3DS Max that will render real volumetric clouds. DreamScape does great! It just takes hours to render... =)

For the people who are saying XP's UI is just different and not hard, your only fooling yourself. As someone who has works in some of the most complex UI's out there (3DS Max, Maya, Zbrush) I could tell right off the bat that XP's UI was way too complex.Here is my demo experience.Start the game, and your dropped into a 747 on KSEA. I try the hat on my stick, and nothing. I tried advancing my throttle, nothing. Now im randomly hitting keys to bring up a menu system.At this point, im already disenchanted with the experience. I have never once seen a flight sim that didn’t have some sort of joystick pre-configured!So, now im trying to find the UI by randomly hitting keys. First, FSX gives you a menu to start off with, and in game, you still have the menu bar above. There is nothing in XP10. I hit esc, alt, ctrl, tab, page up, page down, nothing. Im moving my mouse around the screen and to the top and bam, menu bar! Would of been nice to have some sort of pop-up telling you "To access the menu, move your mouse to the top of the screen" so new users are flailing for the VERY LIMITED time they have. So I find the menu, and click on joystick config, and im just staggered SPEECHLESS. The first tab is rather self-explanatory. You have your axis, and you assign each axis to its function. For some reason, this wasent done for my stick by default? I set my axis, and calibrate my stick by rotating it around all the axis. Then I jump to the tab of "buttons: basic". I don’t know about you, but my definition of "basic" must be different then XP's definition of the word. Your assaulted with a shier wall of commands. 5 rows of about 32 commands in each row, for around 160 commands. HOW IS THIS BASIC?So im trying to set up my HAT so I can pan around the cockpit in the "BASIC" window, and there is a view section. There is things like "glance left" and "backwards" but no "basic" was of saying "I want to use the hat to look around". Basically I need to set every direction to a view? I try a few, and it instantly snaps to that view, not panning. I see "3-D cockpit cmnmd-look" listed. #####? what is cmnmd-look?So I give up in "basic" and go into "advanced" screen. I nearly fainted! On the left is a grid of "joystick buttons". This grid is devided into I would estimate over 300 button's. 300!!!!!! My joystick only seems to use the first 20 or so. You click something on your stick, one of the boxes in the grid lights up for god knows why. A 2nd row brakes the commands down into category’s. Thats helpful. The 3rd row is the commands in the category. I still cant find out how to set my had!!!!!So I give up on the hat, and try to fly. I hop into the Cessna 172, and advance my throttle forward. The 172 starts down the runway, in reverse...... Hu? Must have the axis wrong. I reverse the throttle, and it goes forward. OK. So once it gets a little bit of speed, it starts veering left. A little right rudder corrects it. Im thinking "must be torque" and take off. The moment my wheels leave the runway, my aircraft starts banking left! No amount of right aileron or rudder can correct this, and my Cessna 172 finds its way into the lobby of KSEA. Start over.So I find the external view, and at rest, my control surfaces are all messed up. Thats my problem! So I go back into Joystick config, and calibrate the stick. Everything in the joystick menu looks fine, so I exit and my control surfaces are still messed up.At this point im complaining about the UI to a friend who is a big fan of XP and he hops into Skype with me to try and help. It took him well over 20 minutes, but we found out the problem with this button on the axis config that says something like "use this for center". Basically that tells XP that the current position of the stick is the center. That fixed me and I was able to fly.OK. First, again, never had a flight sim not be able to use a simple joystick by default. I can understand a complex HOTAS needing setup, but a basic stick? Also, this XP vet wasn’t even able to figure out A: How to use hat for panning and B: what the axis problem was, yet in the same breath he's telling me how simple and easy the UI really is "once you get to know it".At that point, I have been using XP10 for almost an hour, and only have experienced about 10 minutes of flight. 1 hour for 10 mins of VERY BASIC flight? And I still cant use my hat to pan the camera around! It would take me DAYS to config a full HOTAS system!This UI is horrible, and punishes new users to such an extend im really surprised XP picks up any new users at all! Here is how I see it. My FSX looks just as good, if not better. I love the FM on XP10, but im not going to spend 80$ and suffer though that UI for just a nice FM. What gets me are all the XP fans that ignore the MANY MANY MANY complaints about the UI and just say "well I guess its just different, because its easy for me!". I could understand ignoring 1 or 2 complaints, but so many? Its the #1 complaint in all the forums, yet its ignored.Right now, XP 10 is in a great position to gain a lot of new fans, but the UI will drive a great portion of those possible new fans away. The moment XP makes its UI more intuitive, it will no longer play 2nd fiddle too FSX. The problem with that is FSX is almost 6 years old, and Flight is (hopefully) just around the corner!Thats not even mentioning the massive amount of graphical glitches I found that are just too numerious to even count. XP fans say the bugs are because its in beta, but later they proudly proclaim that "XP is always in beta" as if its a good thing. So basically they are saying "it will never be fixed"?

I really REALLY like XP10's FM. It feels like your flying! If its accurate or not, I dont know since I dont have any real stick time in anything other then the SportStar. I would say I like the "feel" of XP's flight model more then FSX. The biggest problem is that nice FM is wrapped in the most complex UI system I have ever seen. It truly seems they HATE new users. Even so far as making the "buy now" link almost the same color as the background. Its like they dont want new users? If the UI was better, and the price was not 80$, I would totally get XP10.I love the XP fans. "Once you get use to the UI, its really easy!". Im sure it would, but I want to fly, not learn a fricking UI system!

I downloaded GE for fun, and it has its own Flight Sim! For comparison, I took off in an SR-22 from KSEA, but was stuck behind ground traffic for 3 hours. Then I realized the guy in front of me was just painted on the ground......

Google Earth? You cant compare the two since GE uses terabytes of data housed on massive servers and slowly streams it to the users in bite-sized chunks. It would be interesting to build a flight sim based on this, but who's going to pay for the bandwidth?

I think a lot of grief would of been avoided if Laminar listed this as "BETA" and not "DEMO". To me, a "DEMO" implies an example of a finished product. I get the fact that "XP is never finished and is always beta" but new users wont. As I said to GoranM, XP is like a diamond, encased in a hard crust. If you have the will power to dig, youll be pleasently suprised at what you find. The problem is, new users dont always know of the diamond in the middle, or are simply not willing to put the effort in diging though the UI to find it. Its also a rather big leap of faith Laminar is asking new users. First, they are given a rough beta with a 10 min limit, and a limited area of flight and an extreamly complex and unfriendly UI with no instructions what-so-ever. Then they must be willing to part with $80 on a promis the rest will be just fine. I know a lot of the faithfull and long time followers of the XP series have faith, but not everyone will. For me, im not willing to part with my money yet with what I saw from the "demo", and it would take a MASSIVE overhaul of the UI for me to even consider it. If im spending more time in the UI then I am flying, im not having fun!

I want to like XP10, I really do. The technologoy behind it is amazing! But its hamstrung by its overly complex UI that a lot of people just throw there hands up and walk away. Its not a game you can just hop in and fly. It takes a lot of time just to set up a joystick for the most basic flight! Even then, I still had to have a XP guy Skype me and walk me though just setting up my joystick. Im in no way new to flight sims. I have been flying since Air Warrior and SWOTL and going back to DOS, but XP's UI just baffles me. If im like this, I fear for any new user that gives is a try and get lost. For a long time I didnt even know there was any aircraft to fly other then the 747 just due to the bad UI!!!I would say 90% of my problem with XP in general is pure UI gripes. Other then that, performance is good (AMD 6x CPU, ATI 4950), the flight feels good (when I can get my joystick to work) and the visuals are crisp. Its amazing what the XP team has done, but they really need someone to make the UI more user friendly.

You can see in this video, there is a big slope at the north end of KSEA in XP10. Its not there in real life. A burn was built up to keep the runway flat. You can see this clearly in Bing maps.

Wow. Um. So I tried the demo. I couldent even get the joystick set up within the 10 minute timer!!! By default, this thing does not come with joystick enabled. So I enable it, and there is NOTHING SET by default on any of the joystick keys. Even the axis are all messed up. Its not like I have a super complex stick. Just a Saitek Av8R, but no matter what I did, I could not get it to work. So I try and load up a few aircraft. What a task! The UI is basically a copy of File Explorer with everything changed and hidden. You need to brows folders to load an aircraft, and select an aircraft file to load it. Not very friendly at all. I could not fly yet because I took too long trying to set up my joystick and out of fustration I just closed it. Not worth my time if it takes me 15 minutes just to set up a standard fing joystick!!!!!!!!!!!I want to like it, I really do. I wouldent mind developing for it! But if they cant make it more accessable then forget it. Im not going to spend a day trolling forums and hashing out config files just to set up a friggen joystick.