What is the projected release date for Flight?

2012-ish

I would say probaly next christmas that 2012 not this year but knowing how fast microsoft can churn out products we mas see it this christmas but that is probly wishfull thinking however take alook at the new movie on the website it is looking SWEET

I'm sorry 'no' - not really. I was not challenging your understanding of MSFS' API/SDK or the nature of how it processes flight modelling. My point was purely that MSFS is considered credible (more credible) than the rest by a great number of people; that is inclusive of certain, specific flight models (forementioned and will check out A2A, thanks) that have been crafted to precision. MSFS cannot be written off because of what HAS been achieved with it regardless of how good or bad the experience of getting to such an achievement may be. In fact, where achievements ARE made, the overall experience is superior to anything else on the market. That's not my opinion, that's the collective opinion of 5 PPL's, 2 Thomas Cook 757 pilots (Captain and Co respectively) and a BA 747 Captain.

To challenge this credibility, I would need to know:
- your personal flight status/ability/rank in the real world
- your specific accomplishments as a developer and independent review of said work



That is not definitive, actually.
In fact, I could cite cases where the opposite is true based on personal experience as well as what I'm aware of in the market. Throwing programmers at something does very little to help a project. It's the quality of the team, not the size.

How can that be? Why so tardy? A company the size of MS should be able to turn it out in time for the Christmas season. 2011 Christmas season. Or will they pull a 1C and make it an Afghanistan like ordeal.

New video looks great!

1) I've spent the last years on my engineering drgree and am in one of the most hostile (regulated and expensive) countries to private aviation.

2) I do freeware, independent reviews do not matter at all. Happy hunting for the rest.



*Sigh*

I should have added "Assuming, of course, all of those teams are *working* together and not in an uncoordinated fashion."...





Flight got announced last year and according to RabbitC, it's still in the alpha stage. Throwing it out for christmas isn't going to end good for MS.

Ok - so essentially: 1. You're not a licensed pilot (UK??) and 2. You are unwilling to cite your work.
Heretic, I'm not attacking you. Please understand that. Am I only trying to qualify the perspective of your opinions as a developer and an aviation person and must conclude that you are highly inexperienced on both counts. (in the professional field)

Having said that, I do read your point on MSFS being a pig to program for and I do know for a fact that it took the LevelD team quite a while to sort out the descent profile issues due to an inherent problem with 2004's modelling (which I presume continued in FSX). I'd imagine it's far easier to get things right in X-Plane/Flightgear BUT I have tried X-plane again recently and was actually laughing out loud at some of the manoeuvres I was pulling of in the GA aircraft provided in the demo (not to mention the speed at which I was pulling them). Having been in the real thing on numerous occasions, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of X-Plane's flight modelling...at least, in certain respects. Air geometry is only one aspect of flight.



Well that is a very important point to leave out, yes. (more than you know) You should also know that I consider FSX a failure from a project management point of view. If not for the service pack 'rescue' it would be long forgotten by now. The issue with FSX was too much freedom given to a separate studio with very little experience in running a business and a project on the scale of MSFS. They tried to be everything for everyone and, further compounded by enormous pressure from Microsoft to complete in time for Vista release, they cut corners on many things including building any scalability into their work for impending hardware architecture changes.

All that aside, FSX (with service packs), on a solid machine, using a number of mentioned quality payware addons is the top experience of flight simulation one can get at home.




Agreed 100%.
At the very least, we can conclude that the bulk of the world modelling has not even started yet (although that will be monkeywork by comparison to the core engine)

They should team up with a third party scenery developer from the start instead of doing it themselves then letting us have to pay someone else to do a better job later.

If they concentrated on the core engine, flight model and base planes they could make it so much better as it would free up so much of their time. Third party developers could then build in the sort of superior scenery we will only end up buying later anyway.

As I've said: Happy hunting for my work. And this would include raiding my HDD for the stuff that's not available for outsiders.

Also, there's more to an aviation person than spending time in GA aircraft.



Both FSX and XPlane are FAA certified for low-level flight training (apparently equalling up to 2.5 real hours for FSX with the right hardware; probably similar for XPlane).
So XPlane's flight modeling most probably isn't as ridiculous as you describe.



That's the core point.
Had ACES programmed an entirely new engine from the ground up, they could have achieved that hardware scalability. But they didn't get the time to do so and didn't want thousands of angry FS9 users at their throats who wouldn't have been able to use their precious $10000 of payware in FSX.
Add in new engine capabilities (skinned mesh, bloom, bump and specular mapping, etc...) and more level of detail everywhere (high res textures, twenty times more more autogen at best) and you got the absolutely best CPU-FSB-RAM benchmark of 2006 and beyond (I got into overclocking just because of FSX).
FS9 was nothing more than FS8+. FS9 -> FSX was kind of a leap, at least in terms of graphics.

ACES did the right thing in my eyes though. They added in enough appeal for everyone and as long as you were willing to blow your cash on hardware instead ten new add-ons for FS9, you were in the green for FSX.

Also, have you ever seen a software project that got published absolutely bug free IN TIME?



I just repeated what you've said before.

Flight will not have my goodwill unless I see screenshots of a commercial jet taking off from a backwater airport. And get information about the SDK. And any ATC and AI improvements over FSX.