First off, sorry for the long post! It's been a while for me, so I'm making up for lost time!Well, its been a number of years, but I'm back in the virtual cockpit. FLIGHT has re-energized my interest in simming, and I wanted to share my experience. I was an active Avsim member years ago, but no longer remember my login or email I used at the time.A little FS background on me: I saw my first flight sim (FS 1.0 maybe) on a Apple II in the mid 80's complete with barely discernable blips on an amber monochromatic screen. I was all of about 9 or 10, and completely fascinated. As soon as I had my own home computer, the first thing I wanted was a flight sim. I had an Amiga 500, and flew with Amiga Flight Simulator II, SubLogic's JET, and F/A-18 Interceptor. The latter was more of a game, but I had more fun doing carrier take-offs and landings than the combat missions. Eventually I also had an IBM PC, and spent many hours tweaking my autoconfig.bat and config.sys files to free up enough memory to run Falcon 4.0.Through my teens my FS interest waned, with girls and other teenaged pursuits taking precedence. When I was 16 I got hooked on the idea of getting my ppl, and was allowed an introductory flight, however there were no means available to pay for such a "flight" of fancy.Fast forward a number of years to my early 20's, when I had more means available to me, I bought a smoking fast 486DX100 with 1MB of RAM and I rediscovered MSFS 95 and I was hooked again. FS98, 2000, 2002, all came and went, each version eagerly anticipated and purchased on release day (I STILL have all the original boxes). FS 2004 got me into the add-on game, and I got heavily into the hobby, investing in computer upgrades, CH products pedals, throttle, yoke along with various add-ons, Project Airbus, Scenery, Captian Sim 727, with my ultimate favorite being Level-D 767. I joined and eventually helped run a VA, also spent many, many hours flying online with VATSIM, and following real world flight planning procedures and navigation. I attempted a TRW trip in the 172, doing 1 - 2 hour legs at a time. I made it from Vancouver, across Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Europe and into Africa.I continued with the release of FSX, but life got in the way and FS fell by the wayside. Initially my computer never ran FSX very well, then I developed an interest in motorcycles and my priorities shifted again. I always had FSX installed, and a couple of times a year (and a few hardware upgrades later) I might fire up the Level-D 767 and do a hop down the coast to KSFO or KLASEnter FLIGHT. I had no idea anything was being worked on past FSX, but I stumbled on an announcement for the beta and a spark went off, I signed up and eventually received an invite. Initially I was impressed with the quality, but like many others felt MS was screwing the user base. What? Hawaii only? No Jets? No AI? No ATC? #####?? Who would want this? Alas the FS world is dead. And what's are these game elements? If I want achievements, I'll go fire up Call of Duty. I toyed with the Beta for all of an hour or so before uninstalling it in disgust.However... I downloaded the release version and spent a bit more time with it. Suddenly I "got it". Within a couple hours I was downloading the Hawaii pack, and the Maule. I've had A LOT of fun with the missions, achievements, challenges, aerocaches etc. Now I don't want to enter the is it a sim or game debate, but I wanted to voice my thoughts on what it is.Flight is: Incredibly immersive - right out of the box. Just stop and listen to the sounds. The squeaky brakes, the water, the wheels on the ground. Try opening the cockpit door at 150kts with the volume turned up. The voices during missions are unique, and while unnecessary, just add that little extra wow factor. (is there a way to ask the astronomer out? She keeps saying "If there is anything I can do....") Doing a passenger carrying job, you can hear the odd sound from the cabin - coughing, camera clicking, etc. The kayaker mission was very rewarding as well, when I found that smoke rising from the beach I actually called out "There he is!". My wife answered from upstairs, "There WHO is?" The lighting is impressive as well at all times of the day and night. The attention to detail at even small airports is incredible. All the taxiway signs, runway signs are there so you can actually navigate the airport without having to use a top down view.Flight is: very challenging. some of the missions and challenges are incredibly difficult, and not "gamey" at all. Take the RV6 IFR approaches for example - unless you've done it before you have no chance, and there is no tutorial explaining it. It's been a while since I did an IFR approach with steam gauges, that was a white knuckle, sweaty palm experience to say the least. That's the type of reaction you would get from a simulation, not a game. The Maule landing challenges were also very difficult, I hadn't crashed a plane yet until I started these - lets just say I'm keeping the Maule factory busy! The ring challenges, while obviously gamey, are not "arcadey" ie, with dumbed down controls. You have to keep your speed up to avoid stalling low to the ground, but too fast an you can't make the turns quick enough. Obviously not something that would be done IRL, but if it was, its "simulated" very realistically. I've also failed miserably in the aerobatic challenge at Dillingham.Flight is: fun and easy. Easy in the sense that I have an excellent experience without any fuss. It takes a long time to get those FSX add-ons installed and working correctly. Remember having to hunt down the right version of an add-on DLL becuase the last add-on you installed overwrote the one you had? There's always "issues", and the sense that your experience is being hampered by an addon. I'm pretty sure I spent almost as much time tweaking and making FSX work as I did flying. Maybe for some this is fine, but now, I just want to jump in and fly with minimal fuss. I still have FSX with LD 767 for the times I want to do long haul, which as of now I have little interest.Flight does this to a tee. Realistic enough to be a challenge, loads of fun without sacrificing the realism. I've discovered parts of Hawaii that I knew nothing about, and thanks to Aerocaches, I'm thinking a trip back to HI to see Kauai (Na Pali coast) and the Big Island is in the works. I'm eagerly awaiting the Alaska DLC, and anything else that is released. Paying for the game, then all the addons can't be any worse than not paying for a basic game then the DLCs. If the model eventually works like the Apple App store, the dev's (and users) will eventually come around, and we will end up with a solid product that will provide years of enjoyment with perphaps vastly more options for DLC.Thats all for now!Peter
