noffa

You moderated with a steady hand, but I must especially thank you once again for your tutorials. Understanding VOR navigation really changed my Flight experience, and really boosted my interest in flying. I have now bought the PPL textbooks!

MSFT has to make more money on Flight than they did on FS, and they way to do that is to "tax" 3rd party stuff somehow. It seems pretty clear that Flight addons will only be served through the Live games marketplace. We've seen this for planes and sceneries already, only they have all been created by MSFT so far. When MSFT are ready they will release some kind of platform that third parties can develop against, presumably more sandboxed than what I understand was the case with FS. This is pretty standard stuff, and not much different from the Android and Apple appstores. I don't think MSFT would consider for a minute trusting the entire future of the product to third parties like that. I am sure MSFT has the infrastructure to allow devs to test their code without risking copromising everything.

Wonder if that means that there actually is a model of icing conditions, or if that just relates to how (high) clouds form... Edit: jcomm beat me to it :-)

Maybe they are through with the rerun of the Hawaii aerocaches, and that we must now wait for new Alaska ones becomes available (or a second rerun?).

Thanks for the tip, I was just struggling with that one! Good thing they don't script these challenges too strictly.

Save early, save often. I think that was in the manual of an early Kings Quest.

Well, they must move sometimes! This was the view from my office for most of last year's spring:

I fly with a mouse, never set my foot in a cockpit in RL. Like you I am amazed at how well it works, except for aerobatics. Planning to buy a yoke and some pedals eventually, but I fear the fun will just be too much, I spend way too much time in Flight as it is .

It might be that MS in the end needs to open the platform to some degree, if nothing else to keep interest from dwindling. They already have a nice delivery mechanism in the Live marketplace, and they'll be able to tax the contributed content to make some income on it. On the other hand, there's always the technology problems of sandboxes and interfaces, which I understand didn't work great in the FS days, and these are essentially no easier today than with earlier versions of Windows/FS (Maybe Win8 has some stuff that could be used).

I won't be surprised if Flight is never opened. I think MS never made any money to speak of off Flight Simulator, but kept it for sentimental reasons or whatever. A pretty sizable 3rd party ecosystem was created around it, but virtually nothing trickled back to MS. In fact, people invested so heavily in 3rd party stuff that they probably did not want to upgrade when new releases came. Eventually, when the 2009 layoffs came, they killed Flight Simulator and took the opportunity to move to a closed platform. Now, MS controls the platform and the content, and I imagine is quite happy with that.

I kind of was hoping there would be an instrument section, where a Maule auto pilot would become available.

Don't ever stop. +1. It's a good thing that we can share excitement, I read all your posts with interest and joy.

I've flown literally in the treetops, maybe 30 ft agl, and yet have them catch me. Seems the AI is quite indeterministic, I guess that's a good thing...

I wonder if they will model icing for Alaska!

I've flown 30-40 something clandestine missions, and FWIW here's my guess on how the cop AI generally works: If the heading is too close to a direct heading towards destination, the cops will arrive. They first arrive briefly and go away after a few seconds as a kind of a warning. This gives you a chance to quickly pick a heading that deviates further from the destination. If you don't do this, they will reappear, this time for good. Radios and lights might matter, but I'm not sure. I usually fly with them set normally. Also, I always stay low, so I don't know how altitude plays into the mix. Mind you, I have had experiences that does not fit this model. Once I was caught running through the pre-takeoff checklists, not even having left the ground. When the cops appear the second time, you are usually out of luck, but I was able to outrun them once. I think it's a matter of speed and/or being able to break the line of sight between you and the cops. In my case I was flying along a small ridge a mile or two from the shore, so when they appeared I could throw the Maule into a steep dive over the cliff towards the shore, reaching nearly 200 kph. Then, as I reached the shore, there was a 100-200 ft cliff straight up from the water that I could fly behind, thus breaking the line of sight between me and the cops. The cops stopped their circling pattern and continued on a direct heading towards the destination, and continued on that heading when passing it. I stayed low during the approach, but other than that the landing was normal.