Noodle

Bob, I started simming at the age of 9 when FS4 came out in 1989. I've stayed with it through FSX and Flight, and spent ungodly amounts of money and time in a hobby that I can now say I am/was addicted to. I can't tell you how many times I felt as you did, wishing we could cancel planned events so that I could screw around with Flight Sim, or more recently, DCS. While out and about with my wife and daughter, I'd be on my iPhone checking the forums and answering questions. I'd lay in bed at night, surfing the websites looking for news on my phone. This week, my wife decided to end our relationship; in no small part due to the amount of time I spend on the computer. I just got back from the post office where I dropped my rudders and stick in the mail to their new owners. I uninstalled 220Gb of FSX and DCS related programs, and I'm in the process of deleting all of the websites from my favorites. I decided to take one last peek at the forum before I deleted the Avsim link, and lo and behold, I found your post. What are the chances of that? Anyway, I'm done too; flight simulation has been far too great of an influence in my life. It's not going to bring my family back together, but I'm done sitting in front of a computer screen while my life passes me by. So long, friends. Regards, Nick PS - I used to be "BlueRidgeDx" until I got banned for having unpopular views about Flight.

Wait, what? After the whole Flight forum closure bruhaha, the bans, the locked threads, the "poison dwarf" speech from Tom himself, and the obvious and well documented discontent from a substantial portion of the community, you honestly can't think of anyone who you might consider to be upset? Really? I'd say he's absolutely right. I'm a sim instructor "IRL", so I know all about atrophied airmanship among those who only hand fly the airplane from takeoff to 400ft, and from 200ft to touchdown. Just have a look-see at what happened when I asked an experienced crew to fly a raw data (no FD) ILS, then failed the glideslope: How that relates to being a serious vs casual simmer, I'm not sure...

He said, "...for example...", implying that his vision is but one possibility. The overarching theme being, realistic operation an aircraft in a realistic environment. If you're able to fully simulate your real-life habit of flying a cub between uncontrolled airfields in the Hawaiin archipalego, then yes, I'd call that serious simming. But if someone were writing a newspaper article about two locals who enjoyed flight simming, and one liked to sight-see the Hawaiin shoreline in a J-3 Cub, and the other liked to plan and fly transatlantic airline flights, which one do you think the layperson would describe as "serious", and which one would be described as "casual"? It's been stated on numerous occasions that Flight adds tangible features that ALL simmers want - why do you think those of us who stuck with FSX are so b**chy? But the number of things that Flight allows the user to realistically simulate is exceedingly small. FSX was everything to everyone - unless you're a balloon pilot - whereas Flight forces you into a box. I would think than any fan of the MSFS franchise would be able to agree that what made it truly great was that you weren't boxed in by artificial limits.

I would have said it directly to the poster I quoted in my response, but doing so would be immediately labeled as an "attack" and would likely result in getting banned. I learned the hard way that you're not allowed to have an honest-to-goodness disagreement around here. And no, making a innocuous generalization about how certain segments of the community view flight is NOT the same as labeling someone's reasoned, coherent, and valid position as "hate". Just because I have a negative view of something does not mean I am "hateful", or that my words represent "hate". The implication is that my (and other's) words are not worthy of consideration, and should be dismissed out-of-hand. That's not right. It's possible to disagree with something without "hating" it.

Using the word "hate" to marginalize an opposing viewpoint is pretty common these days, but not very honest. I was on the "beta" team from day one (I put it in quotes because it wasn't a beta test in any sense of the word), and I spent significantly more time with it than "27 seconds". You only reinforce my point: It seems that you're ready to accept that a very significant portion of users were completely turned off after a mere 27 seconds with the program. I think that's a problem; don't you?

What's getting old is people who continue to pretend that Flight was a serious sim, when in fact it had a severe identity crisis. The advances that Flight offered were significant - performance, flight modeling, lighting, terrain mesh, coastlines, autogen, etc. - but they were WASTED on a crippled and unsupported title. Can you imagine the success that Flight would have been if only they had built upon the basic functionality of FSX? Instead, Flight greeted us with mandatory arcade games that required users to slalom an amphibian ultralight between hot air balloons before we were allowed to do anything else. Its insulting to have to "unlock" the sandbox by participating in arcade games. In FSX, that stuff was optional and by all accounts, widely chagrined and disused. Flight made that stuff the centerpiece of the experience. It's intellectully dishonest to imply that FSX is as "arcady" as Flight, or that Flight is just as "simmy" as FSX. It's not, and everyone knows it's not; that's why it failed.

I always love it when those who preach tolerance are so intolerant. Good show, old chap!

It's unfortunate that it came to this, but I hope that the outspoken proponents of Flight will able to handle this with the grace, poise, and most importantly - silence, that was demanded of those members of our community who felt abandoned by Flight.

I've got a nice vid from the jumpseat during a landing in MEM where the IOE F/O nearly drove the nose gear through the runway. Thankfully, the CA ######ed a lap full of yoke at the "TEN" callout and prevented what would have been a gnarly bounce a la the FedEX MD-11 in Narita. Edit: Good lord...when did that become a bad word? Okay..."The CA grabbed..."