samtx

Thank you, stonelance!

Thanks again for all your work keeping Flight alive!

Thanks for the the update!

Glad to hear this positive news about a potential future for Flight. Looking forward to hearing more details.

Thanks, good to know.

Is everyone using REX cloud textures with ASN? Has anyone tried ASN with HDEv2, Oscar Clouds v4 or other texture sets with good results? I thought I read that ASN no longer includes its own textures.

Thank you for the reply. That's great news either way. I'm very glad to hear you have a backup plan for us to keep flying if MS doesn't come through. I sure would miss Alaska and my Cub. Hawaii too. I was talking about the third type of Offline Profile that I've started using with a few other games. It allows you to play offline and save game progress, but there are no achivements or other features. I did create the new offline profile on a machine with my existing old online profile, so the machine has a fully working version of GFWL which previously connected online. I asked about converting saves becuase I could try converting them now to see if I could reload my save games with the offline profile, but I'm not sure there is a way to do that. I'm glad you've been planning ahead and it's always better to research while the official servers are still live so you can observe the traffic. I've seen various solutions which range from completely bypassing GWFL to offering a replacement GWFL .dll. I really hope MS will release something official that will give the right authorization signals to at least allow local offline play of all purchased content.

Thanks for that. I do miss the scenic distant mountains.

Thanks for the comparison shots. Looking below the golf course area, there seem to be less structures and trees closer in on P3Dv2, but many more trees further out. As for the far background, why are the distant mountains not visible in P3Dv2 (especially on the left side horizon)? Is that a lower draw distance or a thicker/more reflective/washed out fog/haze effect?

I've been looking into the GFWL shutdown a bit more lately and have started using a GFWL Offline Profile for a few other games, which theoretically may allow me to save and continue playing offline after the final complete shutdown (when the GFWL login server no longer responds). However, my many hours of Flight saved game progress (challenges, unlocked paints, aerocaches) is tied to my main GFWL Online profile. For other games, I have read the the saved progress is tied to the online profile, so if you simply copy the saved game/progress files into a new profile folder it won't work. Has anyone tried converting their Flight Online Profile to an offline profile and been able to reload the saved game progress for offline play?

I said the same thing myself a couple weeks ago. That card can still handle almost anything out there if you don't mind turning down the settings and lower framerates. ...But then last week I gave in and ordered a new card. Including P3D, there are now 3 titles I'll own that either don't run at all on my old card or aren't supported on older hardware. I was hoping to hold off on an upgrade until next year, but I didn't quite make it. I think developers are finally starting to leave those of us with classic hardware behind, so it's probably worth it to pick up a modern card if you can swing it.

I haven't played Flight as much lately, but have been seeing stories about the shutdown of GFWL. I own one Steam version of Hawaii+Alaska and a few planes. I also own a second copy of Hawaii on a purely GFWL version on another pc. I suppose I will backup all the files from both machines and hope our community developers come up with a solution to transfer and restore all purchased content to a new pc the future. I've never played without logging into GFWL. Will I be able to continue my progress on the same profile offline without logging in? I suppose the shutdown of GFWL means no more online multiplayer servers. Is there any possibilty of private servers or LAN play without GFWL? I have two copies so two of us can fly together on the LAN. Logging into GFWL always seemed like an unnecessary extra step for LAN play.

Yes, I've been playing and enjoying this one too. Definitely recommended if you like WWII planes and combat sims. War Thunder is by the same developer that released Birds of Steel for consoles and it shares a lot of the planes with that game. You might enjoy that one too if you have a console and can find it for a good price.

Seems like a good deal. I was thinking about picking up a spare copy. Flight Simulator X Gold Edition PC Game $9.99 (Microsoft Store)

Nothing here either. Maybe we've reached the end of what they had done before the shutdown.

I had that error the other day and just switching from Alaska to Hawaii fixed it.

Same problem here. I guess we shouldn't expect it to be fixed.

Yes, and they were immediately hooked and loved flying around for hours and are still playing regularly. The simplicity of mouse flight made it accessible to a complete non-gamer. Instead of stressing over all the controls, the reaction was, "Wow, I can do this and it's great fun. Let's see what else I can make the plane do."

Thanks for the photos. I completely missed the Icon display there. A couple shots: Some other photos that I posted earlier: http://imgur.com/a/fJw8x/layout/blog

Steam has a strict no refund policy (as I found out first hand), unless you can somehow escalate the issue considering the circumstances. I know I'm not the only one who is extremely disappointed to have been sold a product less than two weeks before the project was cancelled. I made the purchase assuming there was a future for the platform, with content updates, new features and bug fixes on the way. Now that's obviously not the case and we're all stuck with a dead platform and a game that will slowly turn into a ghost town as people move on to other alternatives with active development. I'm not sure about Live Marketplace, but I would guess they have a similar policy.

Well, for me Flight lowered the barrier of entry into sim flying. I enjoyed the free island, but I ended up trying the FSX demo and picking up FSX first because of the depth, variety of aircraft and the whole world was there. Before Flight I had spent a few minutes with older versions of Flight Simulator over the years and never really got past all the commands to get off the ground. With Flight, it got me in the air and hooked. After that I wanted more, but looking at the limitations of Flight, I decided I would print out the FSX command list and see if I could get off the ground and enjoy the demo. Flight was the push I needed to get into FSX and sim flying. After picking up FSX, I eventually bought the Flight collection on sale and I enjoy playing both as long as the servers are still running. It's a sad turn of events for those of us who enjoy Flight, but I always had a nagging feeling that it was a bit of a paid beta with so many missing features. It also felt like someone (or a certain camp) at MS was setting it up to fail from the beginning. If that was the case, I'm not sure why they bothered to release it at all. Anyway, there is a positive side that a few more of us are here in the community enjoying FSX and other flight sims thanks to Flight.

I wonder if FSX has outsold Flight since Flight was released. I know that I played the free Flight for a while and then decided to pick up FSX before buying into Flight (which I did later during the Steam sale). Seeing comments here and on other forums, I know others have made the same choice. Maybe Microsoft was looking at a huge jump in sales of the old FSX and asking themselves why they are developing a new product when they could just keep pressing and shipping new copies of the the old game at a marginal cost. They also sell the old game for digital download on the Live Marketplace.

I didn't know that, but I was looking at the weather and trying to beat the weekend crowds by going early in the week (and also thinking I could make it back again after a few days downtime). I did hear about a mid-week reset, when the early crowd starts to fly out on Wednesday or Thursday. I guess I was there at the right time. I really have Flight to thank for rekindling my interest in aviation. If I hadn't give Flight a try a couple months ago, I never would have made it out to Oshkosh. It's too bad that Flight did reach it's target audience in part, but I guess they're aren't enough of us to keep it going.

Well, this is sad news. I guess we did see a lot of signs, but I didn't expect it to happen this soon. Honestly, it feels like there was at least one camp in the company that wanted this to fail from the beginning. They seem to have been pulling in two directions and wanted mega-blockbuster hit sales without spending much money on a larger development team or a coherent marketing strategy. Why did they bother in the first place? I will still enjoy flying Flight as long as they keep the servers going. I also have Flight to thank for getting me interested in sim flying and leading me to purchase FSX recently. Between Flight and FSX I should have plenty of years of clear skies ahead of me.

Well, around the price of a new Deluxe plane minus the price of a plane without VC. I'm still flying more outside of the plane than inside, unlike most of the experienced sim flyers. Another thing that would have tipped the value scales upward for me is snow ski and float options.