tranglos

No, technically they could not. Flight is not FSXI, it is MS Flight 1.0. You never get all the features in version 1.0 of any product, and not because of marketing. In fact, the marketing morons you speak of are those that push developers to release unfinished, buggy features. Here's what I don't get: since there already is the (much superior) FSX and the (much superior) XPlane, why all the ruckus and bad blood about Flight? Flight caters to a different audience. It caters to me, for one, with the beautiful environment and with the smooth performance. (No, I don't like the hoops either, so I just ignore them, like the planes with no cockpit.) Now, bash MS for ditching Flight all you want, and I'll join you, But designing Flight was a good thing. It is the by far best, most entertaining game-ish time-waster I've ever installed.

This depends somewhat on what your definition of "step up" is :-) Seriously. Me, what do I care about cars moving on the roads, if this means less detail of the environment and significantly worse FPS? I admit the world in Flight looks deserted, but I could not care less. I'm not playing a road traffic simulator! Same for many other FSX features that were absent from Flight. The ATC interaction gets repetitive after 20 minutes, and don't even get me started on the loss of immersion when you have to press the numbers on the keyboard. (If it had voice recognition and you could actually talk to the ATC, it's be another thing entirely.) Real-time weather - nice, but only if you want to fly in the same weather that you see outside your window. To me, the power of a simulated environment is that I can choose the weather, and the time, and the place. I have enough of real-time weather whenever I walk outside, thank you :) The whole world and 20k+ airports - fine, if only they did not all look the same. I am not particularly interested in flying over my home country (Poland), because to me, the sim is more about seeing the sights of the world I will likely not see in person. But when I did fly over Poland in FSX, there is not a single landmark to be seen. Generic terrain from the mountains in the south to the sea in the north. When I am told by some FSX fans that this is somehow better than the limited area of Hawaii in pretty much unprecedented detail and realism, I don't take that seriously, to say the least. (I guess if you live in Hawaii, then Flight may have been more on the mundane side for you, in which case you have my condolences with envy mixed in.) Plenty of aircraft models - sure, no contest, but personally I'd rather have Flight with its limited (and growing) collection of planes but a much superior flight model. Not to say that FSX had no advantages over Flight - I did miss the GPS and the AP and I did want somewhat faster aircraft, just so that I could see more of Flight's wondrous environment per unit of time. But to me, FSX is not a step UP from Flight; it's quite the opposite. I may be MS's mythical "target audience" for Flight that supposedly does not exist. Except for the sad cockpitless aircraft, I am / was their target audience. I am over 40 and before Flight I had never spent 200 hours in a single game. Or bought an expensive controller just so that I could get more fun out of playing. Maybe I'm the odd weirdo this way, don't know. But FSX... not a step up, sorry! :)

So, how many of these approach or exceed the quality of either Flight or FSX (whatever tickles your fancy more)? More specifically, when you think of all the features wanted by those who hated Flight so vehemently, how many of these have all of those features? Such as, dozens of aircraft models of all kinds and configurations? The whole world and thousands of airports in (photo-)realistic detail? A flight model more true to life than Flight? ATC? Full instrument navigation? Fully functional cockpits on all planes? Air, road and sea traffic? Could it be that the amount and the force of hatred Flight received was more a frustration at the state of flight simming in general? The complaints and demands were wholly unrealistic: you can hardly expect version 1.0 of any software to have all the features you'd want, past, present and future. And the realities of the market are such that you release the first build as soon as you can. Nor would your potential customers wish to wait five or ten years for a Perfection Out of the Box.

Rant warning! The video game industry is in a slump as a result of having produced awfully bad games. I'm partial to FPS (guilty pleasure, I know), and it's been going downhill so badly I haven't bought a game I liked in two years. Where's the next Half-Life, the next Far Cry (the original, since the sequel was awful), the next Dead Space (ditto), or the next Bioshock (likewise)? The only game that was really awesome to me in recent years has been Portal, with a surprisingly good sequel too. Have a look at Metacritic, where latest games get top ratings from paid reviewers and all thumbs down from actual players / fans. Compare the original Mafia to the sequel. Compare anything to the sequel. I've bought at least four or five expensive games which were wholly predictable, had no original ideas whatsoever and sucked badly on story, design, dialogs, interaction, characters, everything - but were big on multiplayer, which I have no interest in, but which provides a cheap excuse to limit the expenses on story, level design and artwork, and equally big on intrusive copy protection. No more. If I don't see a game get consistently high ratings from gamers on Metacritic, the game industry will not see a cent from me. Now, Flight... Flight was awesome. So sorry to see it bit the dust.

Honestly, what I have in FSX (bought it three days after I bought Hawaii) is an incredibly boring environment, with not s single landmark in all of my home country, and an inferior flight model. As a complete greenhorn, I took a month of flying every day before I could feel somewhat confident about performing a smooth landing in the Maule - while in FSX I could put down the same Maule in (what seemed like) a perfect landing on day one. That immediately tells me there's something wrong with FSX, at least in how it translates the "feel" of the aircraft to sounds and sight. I flew some of the lessons and missions in FSX, very useful all, but flying itself was really bland. At the same time, I totally fell in love with Flight. I sure hope MS sells the code to some capable developers. I think comparing price points is not fair until you include hundreds of dollars you must spend on ORBX or such to make FSX at least minimally interesting to those who prefer the raw thrill and beauty of flight to computing fuel and load balances. I did buy ORBX Australia, only to find out I'd have to buy individual airports as well at something like $20 a pop before I would get anywhere near the detail of Hawaii. I understand there's a market for that and I'm not bashing them - just saying Flight was an entirely different idea, and for many people it worked wonderfully.

It's not the pax's question, it's more the like game is asking. However, mouse clicking does not work for answering the query, so it's not a mouse issue. You can only hit the 1 or 2 key. And, it's entirely possible that I hit the wrong key (2 instead of 1) twice in a row :-) I'll recheck.

Here's another (new to me) landing-related bug that does affect your ability to complete a job. Fly a job, and land on any airport other than your destination. (I discovered it when I accidentally landed on a taxi area of one of those generic, small Alaskan airports, instead of the runway proper.) When you do that, Flight asks if you are going to take off again and complete the mission, or if you're stuck there. Immediately after you select the option to take off, Flight pops up the "Mission Failed" message and kills the mission. It did not do this in Hawaii, before the recent title update. Back then you could pick the option to take off and continue the mission as intended.

Here's something else tree-wise. Last night I was in a similar situation to the OP, flying the Red Tail in what would otherwise be a good approach, if not for the tall trees in the path. In the external view, I lowered the eyepoint so that I could see the landing gear from behind the tail. Passing over a particularly tall tree, I could see for certain that my P-51 cleared it, and there were no more trees right in front. A split second later, as my viewpoint (not the plane) was about to meet the tree - crash! I could not repeat this in three or four tries, but it seemed very clear: what hit the tree was not my plane, but the position of my virtual eyepoint. I don't suppose things should work this way. An observation that may corroborate this: when using the external view, the VASI lights often change as you move the eyepoint up and down. It seems the state of the VASI lights reflects the altitude of your "eyes" rather than the aircraft's. When inside the pit, the difference is negligible, but in the outside view it is not. Perhaps this is also why the eyepoint may crash into a tree.

The one at Kamohio Bay showed up today. The expiration time was still more than 24 hours.

Same here on Kamohio Bay yesterday. Indicator says yay, but no aerocache in sight. Also, the aerocache screen said Kamohio Bay would expire in 47 hours and some minutes, which was weird. Haven't tried today yet.

My system was strongly spec'ed when I built it almost 5 years ago; today - not so much. But Flight used to be perfectly smooth for me, with all visuals set to High. (Pushing textures and terrain up to max did introduce occasional stutter.) Now, after the update which you can't refuse, I'm seeing a slide-show :-( I don't know how I can measure the actual frame rate (the game engine does not display it, does it?), and I could not compare to the frame rate I had previously, but the difference is unmistakable. I can see the terrain move in little increments, so I'm guessing 10 fps max? Not only that, but now there's a significant flicker around some finer objects in the distance, like bridge supports or the little silver square thingies on rooftops of some houses. They're kind of shimmering now, and I'm certain they did not before. Insult to injury (and no idea if this is connected to the drop in fps), I no longer seem to be able to land softly! Now, I started my simming adventure with the release of Flight, so my skills are far from expert, but I did manage gold on most of the challenges that came with Hawaii, and after nearly 200 hours in flight I could grease any landing in the Maule and RV-6 except in some nasty weather. I don't remember the last time my passengers weren't happy; my happiness score is at 75%. Well - no more! I've tried the RV-6, the Maule and the new Cub in Hawaii, airports I know well, in fair weather, and in some 10 touchdowns I did not get a single soft one! The RV feels much heavier now, the Maule hits the ground hard with its tail wheel when I flare, and the cub just plops down. The Cub is new to me, so that's OK, but it looks like MS just flushed all my experience down the drain. It's not even about Alaska. The update killed Hawaii for me. What happened here?

I could never escape once spotted, which I why I gave up on clandestine jobs. The first time I tried one I had no problem at all, and every time after that I got busted. It seems there are two events that may be triggered: one is your copilot spotting a plane in the distance (which I could never see), quickly followed by them saying that plane is gone. The other trigger is when a patrol aircraft is much closer and can see you - the voice actor's lines are different in that case. They tell you to try to avoid the cops, but offer no hints as to how you might accomplish that. Flying low, in an aircraft that's much slower and less maneuverable than the cops' RV, you stand no chance. I've tried course changes, but no matter what I do, the cops get ever closer, and eventually it's "mission failed" every time. Really frustrating, you stand no chance once that trigger kicks in. I could see no difference between day and night, and trying to hide in valleys between high hills didn't help at all.

When should you start your descent from the 1000' AGL you maintain while in the pattern? I've read pattern instructions very similar to yours (thanks!), but making that last turn to final so close to the touchdown point seems to require a very steep descent. Or do you start descending while in the pattern? At what rate, approx? I've no idea what works IRL, but in Flight, reducing throttle to idle will kill a landing in Maule. I only managed to get soft, controlled touchdowns when I learned to keep the throttle at about 40% (depending on load). Any less, and Maule will just drop like a paperweight. You can still flare, but raising the nose will not arrest your VS, and the touchdown will never be soft enough, at least in terms of passenger status and soft landing bonus in challenges. OTOH, you totally need to kill the throttle to do a soft landing in RV-6. Otherwise that thing just won't descend or lose airpseed in time.

Trouble is, in Flight you have precious little else to know how good your landings are. There's the sound gear makes on touchdown, and possible vocal complaints from the passengers if you do badly, and that's about it. I am sorely missing instant replay, or even some simple diagram that would show me the horizontal and vertical speed, the touchdown point, pitch, etc. After many hours in Flight, most of it spent in the Maule, often I still cannot tell until the very last moment how good my touchdown is going to be. And when it is bumpy, I do not always understand why, since by now I *know* what it's supposed to be like. It's hard to learn if you are not given a clear feedback. So "happy passengers" is one of the few ways to tell, although when they aren't, the game won't tell you why. I've decided that some form of visual feedback after each landing is the one feature I am missing the most. More than a GPS, AP or new aircraft. All that said, I've also noticed that very often the voice actor comments ("Great landing!" etc.) seem to have no relation to whether you are awarded the Happy Passengers bonus. Likewise the "health" indicator. It may turn to the orange question mark, and you may still get the bonus (and a "Great landing!") Other times it stays green all the way, but no bonus. It seems inconsistent, could be a bug. Yeah, MS scriptwriters seem to have written only the happy good-byes. I suppose it's a marketing thing. Complaints during flight are a training device - they tell you you're doing something wrong, and they will even alert you if you fly too low at night (psx have night vision, I guess). But complaints at the end would be a downer, and gamers don't like that. MS wants to keep gamers happy, so...

Thanks for the replies and tips! The reason I asked is I'm often finding it hard to make precise turns. I think it's because of lack of true perspective on a flat 2D screen, and because it's hard to make turns without peripheral vision to establish points of reference. In a sim you can't just twist your neck to look right or left, and panning with a hat switch there and back takes plenty of time. So in the end I usually overshoot. On an proper, deliberately executed approach, there's enough time to correct, eg. when making a turn onto final. But in my VOR attempts so far, I've usually ended up a mile off the target point. This may be OK when flying VFR, but not much good in IFR, I've re-tried the RV-6 ILS challenge last night for the tenth time at least, and got this close to bronze (but not quite). I ended up about two runway widths to the right of the runway. Granted that crosswind adds to the difficulty there, but so far the hardest thing for me is making tiny, one- or two-degree course corrections, necessary for ILS. This difficulty carries over for me to VOR flying, though perhaps this kind of precision is not absolutely necessary there.

Thank you, Jeroen and others for these fantastic tutorials. I had tried the VOR lessons in FSX, but the CFI there is far too impatient. Tried reading the instructions at navfltsm too (server seems down at the moment), but Jeroen's approach is the first that has worked for me - the instructions, screenshots and all. Now, a question. What is a proper procedure for intercepting a radial? I mean in terms of airspeed, roll, or the time to complete the maneuver? It seems I always end up a few degrees off, enough to spoil the navigation. It doesn't help that on my 22" screen, at default zoom the 3D dials are too small to tell how well the needle is aligned. In FSX the 2D view makes it easier to get a more precise reading, but Flight does not have that. The principle of finding an intersection via VOR works fine for me, I just can't make my flying precise enough. I'll appreciate any hints!