Skip Talbot

I have fond memories hanging out at the Microsoft booth, playing their alpha or betas of the latest Flight Simulator that had yet to be released. I've made it up to Oshkosh every year since I was born (that's 27 years now), my dad flying his Long-EZ up there to hang out with the experimental aviation folks. I was just a kid when Microsoft first starting showing off flight sim there, and I'd wait in line to play it while the real pilots watched from the back and scoffed. Microsoft hasn't been there the last couple years obviously, but I was looking forward to seeing if they had a presense there this year with Flight. It looks like the news of coming down over the wire that they're closing development of Flight might have had something to do with their absense. I'm planning on heading up there Saturday. I'll bug the xplane and third party developer guys that do have booths there and see if they have the skinny on what's going on. Just an aside, I don't like the dates they're using for Oshkosh now days. Years ago it used to be Wednesday to Wednesday for a week, and now it's Monday through Sunday. The problem is, everyone packs up and leaves starting Friday. The place is half empty by Saturday and a ghost town on Sunday, even though it's the weekend when most people have off from work. I guess I'll just have to take off some time from work to catch the highlights during the week.

Flight Simulator helped during my flight training as well. I still don't think Microsoft really owes us anything though. They make a product, we buy it or we don't. Flight didn't really destroy flight simulator. It was destroyed when the ACES team was disbanded. This is a new game. I'll have fun tooling around in the Stearman in Hawaii, but I'll still use FSX when I want to practice maneuvers and running through the checklists in in a 172. I mean, I'm disappointed Flight isn't more than what it could be, but flight simulator remains in the same state it has been for the past several years now.

My reputation and experience with the flight simulating world should be irrelevant in most of these conversations. However, if you must know, I've been using Flight Simulator since the FS4 days, have been developing my own add-ons since FS98, and have my private pilot's certificate. I don't recall what the first add-on I purchased was, it was either an aircraft or the MS Hawaii expansion scenery. That doesn't make me king of flight simulator land, but I'm no stranger to it either. I'm a new member because I was interested in following the news on Flight and P3D. Lots of chaff to get that kernel of wheat in this forum though. So yes, judge me solely by my post count. My observations and criticisms are blunt, but were not intended to be condescending.

I didn't know better. I sat tight until the beta was released, shrugged, and went back to playing FSX.

Your lofty expectations and misunderstanding of Microsoft's vague media hype misled you.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/11/world/asia/china-microsoft-factory/index.html?hpt=hp_t3I read that headline and thought it was about you guys fretting over Flight at first.

Because you can't slew or set a high tailwind in the demo/beta, does not mean there will not be jets added at a future time as an add-on. Again, there are hints in the interface that there will be jets and distant scenery locations added in the future.

I speculate MS will add jets before other third parties can if they can. They'll simply see a lower resolution version of the sceneries they don't have. They'll see some sort of placeholder.

There is no unlimited fuel option. There's no slewing, and you can't give yourself a 150 knot tailwind either. So you will indeed run out of fuel long before you reach the mainland.I'll elaborate on the details in a more humorous post, but from what I can gather, the entire globe is in the game, and the rest of the landmasses are represented as an extremely low resolution, crude place holder. I'm sure that will probably change as the user is not intended to be able to make it that far.

There are hints if you look carefully.The Stearman and A5 have radios with clickable tuner knobs and display frequencies in certain missions. A hint that there may be ATC added in the future.There are achievements you can earn for carrying more than 10,000 passengers a certain distance, exceeding an altitude of 60,000 feet, and going supersonic. That's going to be tough to do in the A5. Hints that there will be airliners, other jets, and worldwide flight.They can add anything they want to Flight, especially since its built from FSX. Of course you angrily demand everything from this game up front, forgetting that Microsoft owes you nothing and has the right to develop whatever they want to try and be profitable. They don't have to bend over backwards for the niche market of whiney, uber geeks, while suffering losses at the same time.

I suspect this is an issue with the beta, or perhaps a hardware limitation of that user. Textures in remote areas render to pretty decent detail, but in the busier areas such as Hilo, the ground starts to get fairly blurry. I suspect the memory is being exhausted on the graphics card, forcing the use of smaller mips, or there some kinks yet in the beta.

Let's ask productive questions. Ask what kind of third party development support there will be, and if there is any, what the revenue sharing between Microsoft and third parties is going to be.

Ha! We're the 1% cult ###### demographic Microsoft is not targeting with this game. We're the 1% flight sim elitists. Microsoft is trying to spread the wealth of and joy of flying with the non geek masses! This is simulator socialism! I propose a virtual fly-in at Redmond within FSX to stage our protest.

Yeah, random or maybe first come first serve. Those who signed up a month ago might be in the first batch, and those who got on later will probably be in a later batch. Microsoft is still advertising that the beta is open. If all the candidates were picked, they probably wouldn't bother with that. Well, much of that is the core of the game and aircraft.

True. Its just over 1GB ;)