MichaelAwkward

Really? You use no addons for MSFS? You're probably in the minority.

Awesome to get a reply of that detail, Martin. Many thanks! All sounds very promising and I can't wait to try it. Regarding the idea about owning an airline, I assume you've heard of FSPassengers? If not, that's essentially what it does to FS9/FSX. http://www.fspassengers.com/ Would definitely be worth a look at whilst you're thinking of adding such a feature down the road to get ideas of what works and what doesn't.

But they've specifically improved the scenery in Flight School over what was already there in FSX. If they're using it as a base for the DTGFS then that's fine, but if not there is little point. How long are people going spend flying wherever they want in a game with just 3 aircraft and explicitly no addons? By the time they're into flight simming to that level they'll have already bought DTGFS because they want more planes, new airports, weather, etc. too. Nobody is bashing the developers. I certainly wasn't. Asking a valid question about where developers are spending their resources on a game series that I care about is perfectly reasonable to me. It all comes down to how closely the two games are related and being developed together, or not.

I think this is different though because Microsoft never specifically marketed Flight as an entry level product for people new to flight simulators. They tried to make the game appeal to everyone and didn't offer a real replacement for FSX. DTG however have been very clear that Flight School and DTGFS will be two very different products. Perhaps DTGFS has been developed on from Flight School as you say, but Martin suggested that Flight School would be a lot more similar to FSX:SE than to DTGFS which suggests they're being developed separately - hence my thought that it was odd to spend any more effort than strictly necessary on the simpler product.

That's not what I suggesting... no where did I mention rails. Within the confines of those routes you'd be free to fly however you like. The routes would be from ground to whatever altitude is the limit in FSX. The area surrounding the routes would be quite big, as airways are in real life. Think of it how most of us use flight simulator anyway. We have addons for our destination and departure airports, our addon aircraft. We fly between them. There is no need for the rest of the world to be modelled. For example: That would be the entire game world for that DLC, just as in Train Simulator maps are used. All the airports would be modelled. You get a selection of aircraft with the DLC. You can make any flight you want in that area. Any time. Any weather. There would also be scenarios were you're ranked with a score according to certain actions just like TS. But the point would be that the overall quality of every element would be higher than seen in MSFS games before, where the focus is on the entire world. Of course for some routes the area included would be quite large but then there's only so much detail to add to the oceans or the large expanses of deserts/forests/tundra/etc. Also, regarding Flight School, it seems odd that they would include improved scenery beyond FSX default for the whole world when there will be no addons beyond 3 planes and the two included airport/training areas. Why waste resources on the entry level game when it doesn't need it? I doubt many of the people who buy it will spend much time at all flying outside of those training missions.

Whilst unlikely, this is something that I actually think could work very well. Essentially you could have DLC for Flight Simulator that works the same way as for Train Simulator. You get say, a few different routes that go in the same direction (London, Southampton - Paris, Brussels, etc.), and a couple aircraft that would typically operate those routes (737, a320, E190, DHC8 etc.) but the entire package is polished to a high level and guaranteed to work. The areas surrounding the flight could be more detailed since the entire world need not be modelled. Extra sounds and effects and weather could be included too. Of course many users would not want such a thing and would want to still fly wherever they want. Fortunately for them it seems DTG aren't going down such a path and will offer a product more similar to MSFS games.

I think that's the point here, isn't it? We've all already learnt how to fly and that's why this isn't for us.

Numerous scenery addons for FSX have incompatible textures (particularly at night). The fact that the fixer is often taken off sale doesn't help either. It's not a real solution, but if it works for you and your specific add-ons that's great. It still isn't the same as natively up to date flight simulator.

You mean we have that with a third party fix for FSX's broken DX10 implementation that renders a number of addons incompatible? Great... That is not the same.

I think clarification is needed too. For instance, add-ons made for FS2002 work in FS2004 and often in FSX too. However that is not the same as official support. It's the same issue that occured when FSX:SE was first released, people were upset because their addons weren't supported but it turned out that it was just the installers that didn't support FSX:SE for the most part. People could easily use their existing addons by manually installing them. Since the underlying code is going to be the same as FSX (same file structure?), surely 'no backward compatibility' should be phrased better as I'm willing to bet that plenty of FSX content will still work when installed manually, regardless of the move to 64 bit. Scenery files for example. Surely it's just dlls and other such files that would need to be converted/rewritten? Cheers,

Has it? I'm pretty sure it's still a dog... just look at the amount of threads here and videos on youtube about tweaking FSX. The FSX:SE discussions boards on Steam are full of tweaking too. People just want FSX with the performance and stability of FS2004. If DTG can deliver that, I'm sure they'll have a winner.

This is the reason I'm still using FS2004. Every time I tried FSX, SP1, SP2, Accel and now SE I just got bored of the tedious tweaking... and it still never ran as smoothly nor as stably as FS2004, and there was never as much good freeware as there was for the previous game. I think to anyone who's played Dovetail's Train Simulator games it was clear that their new Flight Simulator products would follow in the same vein. The same game rereleased year after year with incremental improvements and a shedload of DLC. Not that I blame DTG of course. That's the most financially prudent path to take. Still, I'll wait and see how the new Flight Sim performs with the conversion to 64 bit, and if it is essentially FSX underneath I'm sure there will be means and ways to hack it so that freeware add ons can be used as they are today.

And all of them irrelevant because Microsoft doesn't care. A simple Google reveals many links to the crack on the first page. It could take them down if it wanted to. It hasn't. So nobody wins by sticking to the EULA a decade later and the only people who lose are those prevented from playing FS2004 on newer OS by sticking to the EULA. It's a complete non-issue. Just FYI for those wondering, I've been running FS2004 since the day Windows 10 was released with no issues. Install out of the default location, install the 9.1 update, install the crack. Done.

For what it's worth, I gave up on FS9 and moved to FSX:SE on Windows 7 because FS9 kept freezing. I figured it was something to do with FSUIPC at first. It would happen at an unpredictable time, so I could never finish a flight. I'd be intrigued to know if you sort this out.

Microsoft have stated that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows. They're now moving to a model like OS X, with a continually upgraded operating system instead.