FS2004 was based on fs2002,fs2000,fs98 and fs95 and people didnt seem to mind one bit!

and FSX was based on....

One of the reasons i was initially turned off by the whole MSFS series was the terrain. I mean really? Blurry as hell terrain!! The only reason i started on it was because of all the addon aircraft that you don't get to play in other simulations. Hundreds of dollars and a 90GB install later only certain areas of the world are worth flying in that i have addons to.

Exactly, I took screenies of my local airport in FSX and then took the same pic in Google Earth and the only simularity is the shape of the coastline and the location of the airport other than that it really doesn't look "real" and I have a scenery pack that looks better but still not realistic. IL-2 looks better and actually "feels" more like flying.

What really irks me is that my FSX doesn't look anything like those videos, and it should. When FSX came out they made it sound like if you didn't run it in Vista or 7 you were really missing something, now that I have Win 7 it doesn't look any better. A few of you will say well if you put so and so's scenery pack in it will but why should I pay someone else an additional 30-40 bucks to make better what MS didn't. So I have to wonder if the Stearman video is refecting what we can expect the Game to look like out of the box? Is it going to be a "real world" simulation or a Generic World? I could enjoy it if it looks like anywhere providing different Terrains, Seasons and Weather without having it be a real location.

It takes a special kind of stupid, when marketing a game, to design a website that forces a potential customer into installing some other product of your company (Silverlight). So they only want to sell to people who install everything from Microsoft without fail? Fine by me...

In other words: Can't see the screens at all. But if that's their attitude about the product, I don't want to either.

My take on the new Sim....

...I just freaking got a machine powerful enough to run FSX!!!

Not planning on upgrading anytime soon.

Anyone remember when FSX ran like a slideshow unless you cranked the graphics ALLLLL the way down?

Well quite simply for me, if Micor$oft want to redeem themselves after the shambles that is FSX the following improvements need to be made.

1. Don't lie about minimum sepcs. Hell even recommended specs fell short of what was really needed to run the game with any satisfaction.
2. If you are going to advertise features.... Make sure those features are actually implemented, not just placeholders that do nothing (e.g. G100O system), that for me really was disgusting.
3. Microsofts marketing was all about the magnificent multiplayer aspect. Well lets list some faults.
(a) One of the worst multiplayer connection / hosting service i have ever encountered. Why they chose gamespy i will never know. Upon initial release it was just utterly diabolical
(b) ATC - well there is none. Unless you get a guy to be ATC. Wow how $hit. OK, i can do circuits, but i have no ATC at any other airports, so what the point. Basically if you want to do a flight from A to B you won't get any decent ATC service (unless you are lucky and have more than one ATC on). There really should have been AI traffic controllers in multiplayer which can be replaced by a player. Hell there is ATC in single player, why is wasn't brought accross to multiplayer, i have no idea.
(c) Lonely skies....... When we play multiplayer, we want to interact with other traffic. So why is there no AI traffic with the players? So you go for a fly, take off, and wow - there is absolutely nothing near you for (unless you are doing circuits at that one airport with the only air traffic controller.
4. ATC in single player is utter $hit. That is basically it. Very dissapointing. ATC should have been compliant with major countries and not just USA standards world wide.
5. Default planes. Every single default plane that shipped with FSX had something wrong with them. Just the fact they were ported from FS9 goes to show how f*cking lazy and $hit the microsoft / aces team was. Not to mention the glaring faults between 3d and 2d pits. Really really crap.
6. Optimisation, really was there any - no, a lot of the bits i have discussed about above IMO was most likely dropped due to the fact the game would not run with all this on without having the sun running the universes most powerful computer.
7. No support for the product. Aces was contracted IIRC 1 or 2 patches. And lets face it, optimisation and bug fixes that should have been rectified in before first release was given to us as ------ wait for it ---- a paid add on.
8. Lets talk about the paid add on - acceleration. Hmmmm yep, we get a very crappy F-18 and a nice price tag to a product which is nothing but a patch for optimisation and bug fixes. Thanks for bending us over MicroShaft.


So really - am i happy with FSX - no.

IF it wasn't for 3rd party add ons that improves the crap underlying product FSX would have been returned to microsoft with a nice bit of excrement inside the jewel case. Why not ship back the contenet they shipped to us.

Guess you don't use netflix then either. You need Silverlight for them too (when streaming in a PC environment). It's actually a pretty slick alternative to Flash in those regards. Also makes a decent platform for making/deploying business apps. And you do know it's free right?

Wouldn't it be just as foolish to not give a game a chance, especially one that's become a corner stone of the community, just because they want you to download a plugin (one that will work at lots of other websites no less)?

I don't think I am asking a lot. I just wanted fixes for the poor game they teleased. It was supposed to be aflight simulator by the biggest recreational flight sin manufacturer in the world, and that was all they come up with. Honestly !!

As for Cartier landings being better than any paid add on. Don't make me laungh. Microsofts poor flight model and verly limited system modelling. Bah,you are surely uanking my chain.

Silverlight is proprietary. Last I checked Google Chrome isn't even officially supported. And I don't use Google Gears either, or any other propieritary browser extension.

My point simple is that I find it laughable when a company tries to get me to install their proprietary product (and thus expand their market share, even if the product is free...) by forcing that on me as a tradeoff to be able to view their advertisement for a product they want to sell me.

It's like me trying to sell you a car from my factory, but first you have to accept and carry around my corporate brand keychain on your house door keys. Only then will I reveal to you specifics about the car I want to sell you.

Ain't that a tad stupid?

Silverlight is proprietary. Last I checked Google Chrome isn't even officially supported. And I don't use Google Gears either, or any other propieritary browser extension.

My point simple is that I find it laughable when a company tries to get me to install their proprietary product (and thus expand their market share, even if the product is free...) by forcing that on me as a tradeoff to be able to view their advertisement for a product they want to sell me.

It's like me trying to sell you a car from my factory, but first you have to accept and carry around my corporate brand keychain on your house door keys. Only then will I reveal to you specifics about the car I want to sell you.

Ain't that a tad stupid?

Alright. Show me a better flight sim then.

For flight modelling you have x plane, IL2, DCS, basically anything that remotely modells departed flight characteristics

For quality of planes on release falcon, IL2, DCS, BOB

For support of their product X plane, IL2, ETC

Now don't get me wrong, FSX has a lot of great potential in it now that moddern computers can overcome the deficiencies of its optimisation. 3rd party developers are now creating planes using the abilities hidden within fsx to which the aces team should have showed of first..

But the points still lie that
1 very poor optimisation and loads of bugs on releasemp.
2 lied about minimum specs
3 lied about features
4 all original aircraft are FS9 ports and low quality and fidelity
5 absolutely atrocious multiplayer
6 no support for their product.
The list can go on and on and on.

Now don't get me wrong. It has an good deal of right in it (so this statement should appease the fanboy).
But it should not have been released, marketed and depicted as it was especially in its state

This is true because if FSX was a groundbreaking new life to flight sims, then why were aces team fired and MS already advertising a new one..

FSX was dumped and aces fired for a reason.

Well, if your not gonna buy the game because they want you to install silverlight, that's your loss, not mine.

I said a better sim

You can fly buses around the sky (why?) and military planes from A to B (why?) but its all a bit sterile.

The point is that I don't need this Microsoft Product - except to see the Advertising for another Microsoft Product.

I don't install just anything that comes my way just because Microsoft, Apple, Google or whoever else thinks they must enrich my life with it (and enhance their market share).

It's like Amazon telling you to install the Amazon Browser (TM) just so you can order something from their webshop. No sane marketing person forces a customer to jump trough company-specific hoops to make the offer visible.

It's simple telling about the attitude behind this game. Just as GFWL will certainly be required, just as signing in to Microsoft will certainly be required. I don't let companies dictate to me what other "services" of them I have to use for their entertainment delivery. They can either market/sell me a plain game with no extra fuzz, or leave it be.

You can fly buses around the sky (why?) and military planes from A to B (why?) but its all a bit sterile.

That said, I'm trying to give FS9 or FSX another go ... :-)

Cheers,
Keith

If FS9 or FSX don't turn you on, then why bother giving them another try. You sound reluctant or bored already. But tens of millions of people around the world would disagree with you.

Although I am seriously considering getting that AC10 combat sim because it finally looks like something with an actual systems/flight model on it.

Apologies, didn't mean to offend
I was hoping for people to leap in with some good reasons...
FWIW I have bought FS5, FS95, FS98, FS2004 and FSX. And CFS, CFS 2, and CFS 3.

Since posting the above in February, I have bought the Just Flight Rescue Pilot add-on, and have been trying out the ORBX Demo of their Pacific North West scenery. Both very good in their own way. I've also succesfully imported the Just Flight UK VFR scenery I bought for FS2004 into FSX and have found a good freeware Vampire to fly around it. Sadly the FS2004 JF Flying Club won't work in FSX, though the planes do.

The problem I have with FSX is that you need to buy so much extra stuff. For instance the force-feedback is dreadfull, but you can buy an add-on that does what Microsoft should have done out of the box. You can buy amazing sceneries, and really detailed aircraft. It's a slippery slope.
For dedicated single-simmers thats OK, they will get value, but I know that next week I'll be back into DCS:A-10 or IL-2:CLoD or something else.
And by the time I'm back into FSX, Flight will have arrived and all those add-ons will be useless.

As for flying military planes from A-B, that's OK, it's what the military do most of the time. I was hoping someone would post a set of missions to simulate a full FA-18 training syllabus or similar. I still remember Captain Sim's Combat Pilot for FS2000, still got the box. And their Mig21.

OTOH I'm not certain that the pending add-on's to add pyro-technics into FSX will be of value, FSX will never be a proper miltary sim, there is just so much extra it would need.

Happy to be wrong on all counts!

Cheers,
Keith

Having flown FSX since the first public launch of the demo at the Denver Flightsim Convention, I can tell you that FSX has been a real disappointment to me, some of the most bloated coding of any one game I've ever played. I still fly FS9 for one simple reason, the damned thing works.

Worst case: A locally limited GA simulator. Just like Flight Unlimited. Back in 1995. *Shudder*

Flight Unlimited and Flight Unlimited 2 were brilliant - they had purpose, a focus, there was actually a game in there!
I still remember trying to taxi around an airfield and being told off by atc for not following directions along the correct taxiway...

Everything I've seen so far about Flight is disappointing.

Worst case: A locally limited GA simulator. Just like Flight Unlimited. Back in 1995. *Shudder*

I'm getting a bit of a bad feeling about what Flight will be; based on sim experience and a bit of logical guesswork.

Some of the current screenshots of Flight look quite good; although they seem to have shown very little variation
so far in the world locations. Added to this, the rumours that it will be a web based sim, and M$ wanting to move
more and more towards cloud computing, what I see is this:

The Flight WILL be a re-vamped sim, in every single way, but it will be very limited with the amount of scenery. I
believe that we will be forced into buying extra scenery areas; we will not have a great number of detailed airports
available to us "out of the box". I think that Flight will incorporate FSX/ORBX scenery to create all of it's add on
areas, and we will have to buy, country by country so to speak.

My logic follows seeing some screenshots over on the AVSIM.com forums, where comparison screenshots show
beaches, and scenery methods identical to what ORBX appears to be making now.

This is all speculation on my part of course, but I'm happy to bet that I am partly right. M$ knows they
screwed up with FSX performance, and they have promised much improved performance in Flight. Maybe it's
because it has much less scenery and will not be so bloated now?

Food for thought anyway.

AJ.

Ok - first off, GA is very important to flight 'sims' so I would always expect to see an equal focus to that vs commercial or Redbull air racing (gag).
Much of the fundamentals of flight can be (and should be) taught in the cockpit of a Cessna 172 (not the Garmin 1000).

For the record, I though Flight Unlimited was brilliant. It still stands in my mind as the most immersive and realistic soaring simulator I have ever played.

As for Flight being locally limited, what in god's name would ever make you think that they would do that?

Screenshot of Hawaii.
Screenshot of Hawaii.
Screenshot of Hawaii.
Screenshot of Hawaii.
Screenshot of Hawaii.
Screenshot of Hawaii.
Screenshot of Hawaii.
Screenshot of Hawaii.

LOL - have you ever heard of a pre-alpha build?
Hawaii is probably the only area they've modelled to date (to get the fundamentals down).

It's knee-jerk reactions like yours that make me wonder why Microsoft even bothers making new versions of Flight Simulator.
That's the problem with catering to fanboys; they're never happy.

Reading your other comments...well, perhaps flight simulator isn't for you?

Doesn't look very alpha to me.

After the shutdown of ACES, my personal bar for any new version of a flight simulator from MS is HIGH. After all, they've perfectly denied me a SP3 for FSX, which could have fixed annoyances in the default aircraft or made DX10 a viable alternative to DX9.

My plan B is FlightGear, should Flight not be for me.

Are you a software developer? ...because I am. When you build things, you start with one 'area' and build your product. Then you expand out. What you think it 'looks' like has nothing to do with it. This product is still at least a year away. Assuming that it's only going to have one area purely because that's all that's been shown is...well...lol!

Too bad. Aces code was junk and it probably cost a fortune just to make SP1 possible. I cannot blame nor expect Microsoft to do any more with FSX. They made it playable which is enough imo. (and you can bet your sweet cookies it wasn't core ACES programmers that wrote SP1) Microsoft made the only sensible decision: Scrap it, rethink and start again. It will be better for everyone ultimately.

I will remain sceptical until being proven otherwise by MS.

But they could have at least thrown out a treat at the end, like the source models for the default planes or anything else that could be built upon/improved.
Now I'd have to rebuild the entire effin' VCs to fix one or two faulty switches!

What? It's open source, it's free and still more of a hobby than an industry.

Have they ever done that? Even then - the default planes are nothing to judge (or cry) over in my opinion. It's the platform that should be sound. At any rate, I didn't find much wrong with the default planes personally. If I want the experience, I spend the money and get better stuff (i.e. Real Air simulations)

You get what you pay for.

If I want the experience, I'll get hours in real aircraft and don't blow all my cash on payware.

FSX became a good, stable sim after the two service packs. Sure, it still could be better and make full use of DX10, but it can take fair bit of abuse, especially when developing.



The "bang-buck" ratio for FG is through the roof.

I think it's an age thing. Although I am seriously considering getting that AC10 combat sim because it finally looks like something with an actual systems/flight model on it.

Personally, I have done everything in FS from stunt flying up to full-on LevelD 767 (including some of the more obscure FMS functions) but settle on spending evenings drawing up a VOR/NDB map and flying 'blind' from origin to destination. No GPS, no FMS, no moving maps - just charts and nav radios.

Far more intriguing trying to find an airport before landing rather than press 'CMD' and wait for the plane to get you with 1 mile of it before you actually decide to do a bit of flying.

The 'hard science' part is purely because of the way MSFS is designed which is to interpret the flight model as programmed rather than calculate it according to geometry. This doesn't make MSFS any less credible as a sim (provided the model is programmed correctly) - it just means that it can only be used as a sim, not a research platform. As far as 'smack the red button and get a food pellet' - there was a great article written by a 767 pilot that pitched the LevelD against the real thing and LevelD flew bang on the numbers, accounting for weather, etc. Hardly 'smack the red button.'

It's funny how everyone tries to sell an alternative sim by trash-talking MSFS. One thing that puts me off Austin Meyer and X-Plane (because trashing the competition is extremely unprofessional).

I agree with RabbitC how competition fails time and again to supplant MSFS. They can't.

I can't vouch for FG or XPlane, but MSFS' system of preprogrammed curves and factors, combined with e.g. weird interpretations of speed vs altitude vs N1 makes .cfg and .air file editing a trial & error party.

As a developer, you either just don't bother with the whole flight dynamics deal and just deliver a very rough equivalent of the real thing's performance or you have a team member who spends months fiddling here and there to make the aircraft fly right on the numbers.
(That's what LDS did.)

I'd rather just have a FEM model of the airplane and its systems and let the sim engine do the rest than messing around with n+1 coefficients and curves.

It's also funny how, after 5 years on the market, you can still start an outright flamewar with "LoL, FS9 (or FSX) sucks, lol."

Well, FS has the advantage of a larger team of programmers and generally more funding than the competition.

I'd come up with this rather long and much-hand-waving-required reply and then it dawned on me that it didn't really matter. People will use what they enjoy and that's that.

You're doing yourself a great dis-service if you dismiss FlightGear based on the quality of its scene generator.

Austin is a brilliant programmer that just happens to have a personality that will have you reaching for a crowbar inside of 5 minutes if you ever find yourself on the opposite side of an issue with him. That's often a flaw in genius programmer types. Ignore him as best you can.

The best flight dynamics model in FlightGear (there are two others, YaSIM and LARCSim), is JSBSim - you can read more about it here: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/

g.

No one said MSFS was perfect - but the point is sound: you can achieve accurate flight simulation with it.

That's assuming the physics model is correct - it's a big ask in my opinion. I'm not saying it's not, but I WOULD argue that an aircraft such as PMDG or LevelD or Real Air that has been tweaked to fly just like the real thing (regardless of what is required) is more soundly accurate than a virtual airframe that has been dropped into a flight model and 'interpreted.' I'm not saying the latter isn't valid, but it has its own potential failings. To date, nothing compares to LevelD's add-on in any wave, shape or form (if you know of another please tell me) so MSFS trumps on that alone. As I've said, I have spoken with both PPL and Commercial captains (one was a BA 747 driver, in fact) and they all swear by MSFS.

You call it 'starting a flamewar.' I call it 'acting in an ignorant fashion'. There have been a number of very silly comments made against MSFS in this thread. That's not being fanboyish - that's stating fact. If one is to be taken seriously in critique, they must acknowledge strengths as well as weaknesses. All competing products have their relative 'good' and 'bad'

That's a interesting excuse.

I develop for FSX. Is that acknowledgement enough?

It ain't an excuse. Twenty paid full time programmers can do more than five paid full time programmers and fourty spare time, unpaid programmers.

2012-ish

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 Xmas season. 2011 Xmas season. Or will they pull a 1C and make it an Afghanistan like ordeal.

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)

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

Both XP and FSX can be certified as a PC-ATD, good only for IFR work (I think 10 hours), and only with a specific hardware configuration. You just can't throw a PC on a desk and call it a PC-ATD.
It can only be logged as "Simulated flight time" and not regular flight time.

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.

Sorry, why would I wish to 'hunt' for your work??

You've asked for it for reference puurposes or something like that...

As for the rest: Fair enough. I have no interest in continuing this.

hasta la vista actually but what does it matter anyway.