Microsoft FLIGHT Archive

Like many here, I am deeply, deeply disappointed with the the recent announcement from Microsoft. I had pinned many a hope on Flight being the way forward but it seems fairly evident that this is not yet the case. M$ are now targeting Joey Mainstream. Just a shame they don't appear to have done their homework too well in this regard. I frequent many forums, and do enjoy regular "gaming" aside from simming. Interestingly, one of the forums I visit often has a very active PC gaming section. Two Flight threads have appeared there in the last few day - one positive along the lines of "Ooh look, it's free", and one negative expressing recent news (Guilty as charged). BO…

Did anyone ask them questions about the game and confront them? About why it isn't a simulator? About why they shunned 3rd party developers, and so on?

Hi,Just pondering about the landclass for Flight and I wonder if different methods will be used to create a more diverse landscape. I see in one or two of the screenshots that cliffs are now depicted much better and appears to blend much better than the FSX textures. This will be an interesting advancement with even more use of different landclass elements i.e farm paddocks, hills, marsh, cliff faces, beach/sand areas, concrete, bush, residential and industrial areas etc... as well as how all these connect together. FSX seems to just cut straight to a seperate area i.e bush to hill without any blending, seems by the screenshots that Flight blends more evenly.What do you a…

Are the 3rd third party developers to be blamed for the way Flight has ended up?At the moment do third party developers pay MS flight any fees from the profit they make on addons for FSX?I ask as I have paid MS £20 for FSX & that's all, but I have paid third party developers over £150 some of you have paid £500+So why should MS only get £20 but third party developers get £150 from me?If it was not for FSX the third party developers would not get any money they are only able to make money off the back of MS.If I started a new business & my business model showed that I am going to be making less money then the third party developers using MY software I would be call…

The whole concept of an APP STORE evolved when smart phones first come on the market (namely the iPhone back in 2007) because it was an inherently simplistic and efficient way for the mass consumer to discover, install and use applications to extend and enhance the functionality of their newer more capable phones. The App store was a way to overcome the computational, form factor size, and bandwidth limitations of a smart phone and other tablet devics, it is totally unnecessary on the PC platform.. Because of the carrier's traditional control and tight grip of phones, and partially because of the phones small form factor, there had to be a more dumbed down way to install…

In light of the recent news about FLIGHT being aimed at gamers, rather than simmers, I thought I'd ask if and what other games the good folks at AVSIM play?Myself? Not much of a gamer. I used to play more computer games when I had an Amiga 20 years ago. The golden age of gaming for me was the early 1990s when I wasted time on Civilization, Railroad Tycoon and Sim City.Probably the only games I've played over the last ten years has been F1 2001, Call of Duty or Medal of Honor (can't remeber which) and Grand Theft Auto Vice City. I've had a few others installed, but they got boring pretty quick. Never owned a console and haven't found any good games for phones or the iPad e…

There is a lot of vitriol being spread around concerning Flight - Good or Bad.My question is "Who really stands to lose most, if MS decide to take the role of exclusive shop for addons? Especially if MS can convince that the GAME is worth having?"Think....I respectfully suggest that it could be the Aerosofts, FSAddons, Flightsimstores et al. They will no longer be able to charge their cut for selling addons.Developers may well actually WIN if this comes about and FS invite the community to provide good quality addons...FIRST - the average developer already pays an online shop a percentage of the addon price. Paying MS will not be much different...SECOND - the products wil…

I wonder how the shadows are in MS Flight. Not only in the VC, but also on the ground from buildings! I've seen screenshots that made me go WOW but I wonder if those shadows come at a high cost or not.... Shadows are one of the big things missing in FSX. Shadows make the sun shine and I've been longing for sunshine since I started flying on the pc.

Yes, gameplayhttp://youtu.be/fJ1CHHIh5A0

Hello fellow simmers,there were nearly 2 shocking days of sadness and disappointment to most of us according to the latest news. As the dust slowly slowly settles down now, and I want to believe I see things a little bit clearer, I come here to discuss with you some thoughts of mine. First off, it seems that we are facing a new reality and approach of how MS will sell this simulation/game. To me there is no problem because that is how marketing is going. Everything is online and we do this anyway already. In the near future, I hardly believe that there will be any CD drives on computers and for sure this is something that we cannot change. Laminar didn't do the change for…

What if MS were to seek PCATD (PC Approved Training Device) status from the FAA for FSXI (a "serious version of Flight", plus approved hardware)? Would development be justified? There are 600,000 pilots in the U.S. alone!!! What does the Elite PCATD software have over FSX? Just the expensive price? Why not sell a terriffic FSXI for $500 to 1,000,000 pilots world-wide? Is half a billion not enough revenue to justify FSXI? (Not including sales of non-PCATD'd FSXI to teenager, middle-aged and over-aged pilot wannabes?) Cheers,- jahman.

http://www.examiner.com/general-aviation-in-national/microsoft-flight-announcement-leads-to-backlash-by-flight-simulator-fansIt's one thing to get slammed in the community forums. Its another thing when the bloggers and ezines start running with it. Between the forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and now ezines, I am gonna wager that the Monday morning Flight Status meeting is going to be....let's just say....uncomfortable.

Start up the Stearman and load up "Inclement weather", take off, follow the coast, and fly around the island at 400 feet......and then ask yourself if that does not beat the FSX demo over St. Maarten when it first came out.. :(

Where did MS DIRECTLY state there would be NO SDK. If it is not on the FLIGHT website, I do not consider it factual information.

I know Microsoft probably won't do this... but in a perfect world here is what it could do before the final release to fix FLIGHT:1. Instead of just giving the game away for free and then charging for subsequent DLC to make up for it (with is the same old same old model of xbox being subsidized by the console game sales and smartphones subsidized by monthly subscription and contracts, etc) Microsoft should OPEN SOURCE the FLIGHT like Google open sources Chrome browser, Chromium OS and the Android operating system. Then the "hardcore" community can fork off the main code and create its own variant of flight that is streamlines for realistic flight dynamics, weather, ATC, …

http://www.shacknews.com/article/71813/microsoft-flight-is-free-to-play-launching-in-springScroll to the bottom of the article. Much better quality and shows a lot more of Flight.Cheers,Dave.

I was heart broken when I heard that Microsoft canned the ACES team back during the last recession / crash of 2008. While I'm happy that FLIGHT is basically more or less a reincarnation and successor... I have mixed feelings about this. It seems that the general bigger picture trend is that PC gaming is dying and giving way to consoles (xbox, ps3, wii, etc), and casual gaming on the tablet (ipad, kindle fire, etc) and small form factor gaming on mobiles and smart phones (what the heck is X-Plane doing making an ipad / iphone/ apple version of their supposedly ultra-realistic flight simulator? ) ... its just a shame really... I've always been a desktop type of guy and neve…

Because John Nicol and Lockheed Martin say you can!"Just to be clear (and trying not to sound defensive!). Anyone can purchase Prepar3D. We do not sell it as an entertainment product and the EULA talks about that, which means that it will not be appearing on the shelves of Best Buy next to Call of Duty any time soon..... I am not sure where the rumour started that we sell only to certain people, but anyone can buy it. It isn't about consumers, but end-use. If you are a pilot, simulation user, student, whatever and want to use it for familiarization, training, taxiing over bugs then go for it. If you are 10 or 110 it doesn't matter. If you want to use it at an arcade game,…

Folks,The best chance we have today for MS releasing FSXI is for the hard-core sim-community to pledge to contribute $1 per flight hour to BillG's Foundation to Fight Malaria.Remember, 99% of the code would be shared with Flight (minus the golden donuts in the sky) so this idea is not as crazy as it sounds.And malaria is the Wolrd's worst scourge, affecting millions of people, so it's close to BillG's heart (as fligh simming once was.)Anyone up for starting the Fabook page for it? :Big Grin:Cheers,- jahman.

Considering that one would purchase a monthly licence to use P3D(because for most the full license would not really be an option), would we not, in theory anyway, be at subject to LM's continued use of this application ? What would happen, theoretically, if we started to purchase more and more FSX converted addons for P3D and LM decided to stop developing/supporting it, or just changed direction totally. Where would those with monthly licenses be left? Would your PC still run P3D if the monthly licence has timed out?I know there is no indication whatsoever that this is about to happen, and on balance probably won't, but neither did I think Flight would actually beco…

Bill Was Actually Good For YouIn trying to trace the path from the demise of ACES until the recent travesty, I came across the article that originally told us to expect "flying games." True to their word, we are how faced with a flying game. However, I thought further about how MS FS went from a point of pride for Microsoft to the circus sideshow that we have.According to this source, Bill Gates had a degree of personal interest/affinity for Flight Simulator.Of course, I'll never be able to prove this or decipher causality, but I do find it strange that Bill Gates leaves all executive duties in June of 2008, and then just over 6 months later they can Flight Sim and Trai…

How long do you guys think we will wait until we get the entire U.S.A. and big jets like the a380 or the 747?

You could say these are good times for customers. A lot is happening in the flightsim/game market! However, it's already becoming quite clear the community is getting divided more and more. While we had FSX (and some FS9 die hards) and Xplane in the past, now we also have or get P3D, MS Flight and (maybe) Aerofly FS.Apart from a few big companies most FSX developers are barely earning enough to keep going. Now no matter what happens, one things is for sure: the FSX addon market will become divided and hence smaller... I don't believe that new MS Flight customers will get FSX later on. Some people will move to P3D and some devs won't, so... they will lose a bit of the mark…

So MS comes out with flight saying it is a way to introduce more people to the world of flying. What if they take the best of FSX and Flight and make it into FS11 for the more serious flight sim audience? Flight could still be there to bring in the casual flyer who is looking for for fun missions and what not, and as those people learn and want more out of it, they can them move onto FS11. You could have the two products side by side, one as a free download and the other as a download or boxed store version like FSX was.It could happen, I dont know if it would or not, but it could.Kyle

Didn't want to start yet another new thread,but would like to know what the next few years of flight simulation holds for members of this community.Having started with MS Flight Sim back in 1997(only a kid compared to the elder statesmen of this forum)I have had countless hours of fun andentertainment.Built a new PC about 8 months ago and decided not to install FSX and all my addons which i have spent a small fortune on over the past few years.Even with all the great addons from the likes of ORBX,Aerosoft I started to feel FSX was getting old(no matter what hardware I threw at it I could never feelreally happy with performance).So with new PC built I started to pin my ho…