I just don't see your point sorry. You are happy to have a whole Windows operating system on your pc but you are not happy to install free Silverlight which allows you to watch enhanced webisite code for a better browsing experiece?

I don't buy into Apple either but that's because I don't have any Apple software. If I did I would keep it patched up to get the most out of it. Silverlight is just code that developers can use to make better websites!

"Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline."

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.

I'm saying that it would be stupid to not buy the game because of silverlight. If you meant you'll pass on the website, but not necessarily the game, that's a different story. And yes, there are way too many pointless plug-ins out there. The point myself and a few others are trying to make is that silverlight's not that bad. I think the MS mentality is more present in the decision to push out Office 2010 when they haven't fixed 2007. Also, if MS was really being MS, they wold force you to use Silverlight in IE, and say f**k you to Firefox users. The fact that it works in FF is one of the signs that MS realizes that they have to play nice now.

Also, what's this about an amazon browser? I shop from them all the time, I've never been asked to do that.

Hopefully they'll start from scratch with an all new game-engine, instead of using bits of older software from ten years ago. That may sound cheap, but it doesn't sound efficient (or desirable) to me.

I also hope they include flight models to support various forms of "non-conventional" aircraft like jump-jets, tilt-rotors, gyrocopters, etc. I know there were some pretty good third-party add-ons that were able to fudge these pretty decently. But for crying out loud, it's the second decade of the 21st century, conventional airplanes and helicopters aren't the only players in town anymore! Heck, the helicopters that came with FSX weren't even that realistic.

And when you get above 5000 feet, it would be nice for the autogen terrain not to be so obvious. When flying low it's fine, but once you start flying high on those air routes, the repeating nature of the autogen textures are painfully obvious, especially over rural farmlands of the midwest at night. I'm not a programmer, so I have no idea how to avoid that, I'm just saying it would be a nice improvement.

There is a new set of screens at http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

cliffs and waves on the beach look nice

No doubt it is looking very promising. Just hope the sim part of it is up to scratch but if it is this could wipe FSX off our hard drives very quickly.

looks awesome for a alpha build, people complain that it does not look much different then fsx but you have to remember where its at in the development cycle.

It looks similar to fsx with addons, though they will still have to pry my a2a planes from my cold dead hands.

The best thing flight can do is run well while looking that good.

Guys who whine 'IT'S A SIM! IT'S A SIM!' and go into a temper tantrum when you suggest that it IS a game - they grill every version that has come out in the last 15 years with rumours of being 'dumbed down' (which has never happened.) Better 'wrappers' perhaps with beginner-level tutorials/missions - but that's about it. The so-called purists should sit down and relax. The best move they ever made was getting rid of Aces Studios imo.

Personally, I'm looking forward to MSF as it is being created, from the ground up, to take advantage of 64-bit, DX11, multi-core architecture.
When they say it will run well on pretty much anything - I believe them and this is why.


USER EDIT: To Mod: Is that better? I hope my comments didn't make anyone wet themselves.

For me, the whole point of MSFS is flight. It's not about looking for something to blow up. Most fans WANT to fly buses around the sky. You get to simulate something you'll never do in real life: be an airline pilot. Or a corporate pilot. Or a helicopter pilot. Or the owner of a private plane like a Cessna. If they wanted combat, they would've purchased a combat sim. I've purchased almost every combat flight sim released for various computer platforms, from Commodore 64 to multicore i7, since Microprose' Strike Eagle. But sometimes I feel like getting behind the yoke of a 737, or a Learjet, or a Cessna, and just taxiing around a "real" world airport, experiencing takeoff, and flying from point A to point B, sometimes in real time, just to see if I can do it (navigate) successfully, during the day or the night, or amidst storm clouds, lightening and rain, while enjoying the enhanced by add-ons scenery of the "real" world. MSFS fans often spend hours doing exactly those things because it's fun. We don't all like the same flavor of ice cream. What's sterile to some is a delight to others, and vice versa. If that weren't true, MSFS would not have been around for more than a quarter of a century. How many combat flight sims from the same publishing house have been profitable (popular) enough to see a series of releases over more than twenty-five years, and are supported by an army of third-party payware add-on development houses? No combat flight sim has ever seen or ever will see that level of support in the marketplace.

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.

People who think a combat flight sim is the only way to go and don't quite "get" flying from point A to point B are in the minority of flight simulation fans. I guess I'm a switch-hitter. I happen to enjoy both equally.

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.

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

It's very good, the systems modelling matches anything I've seen in FSX, though I haven't tried the complex payware aircraft. More than I need
The flight model (IMHO) is better than FSX (but again see above).
And the scenery, whilst very good and very consistent (which FSX isn't) is a bit boring, I've spent too long in that bit of Russia. But Nevada is coming.
Cheers,
keith

That's quite the claim, Keith. I will seriously consider it if you believe the flight model is THAT good.
Scenery is usually the failing point with such things - but from what I read in PCpilot, they intend to upgrade the heck out of this package.

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.

Ha you sound like me! I play loads of games and keep coming back to FSX on occasion (like now) and it isnt worth me buying major addons as I know I will be playing another game in a few weeks/days time (probably RoF). I like FSX but I do find the scenery a put off except for the mission areas which are great - the UK is particularly bad but its never been worth my buying some addon scenery so I never get to fly around the UK. I certainly hope Flight will address some of the more lousy scenery in FSX but I very much doubt it - they have their detailed areas that they keep working on - mainly in the USA - and very little else ever seems to get improved. I mean how difficult would it be to get the overall textures relatively accurate for the various environmental zomes of the world plus a semblence of the domestic buildings and rough roads/railways and cities? Its never been managed in any flight sim so far extensively.

And yes Flight should definitely keep away from military planes as they are just pointless in an overall nonmilitary sim. If I want to bomb or shoot something I play a different game. They need to stay at what theyir strangth is and improve vastly on FSXs terrain - pretty much everything else isnt too bad the way it is for me.

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*





It got better with the service packs and more capable hardware.

FS9 was a sandbox in the backyard for developers, FSX is a desert.
I doubt that even Accusim and ORBX exploit all the possibilities FSX offers.

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...
Cheers
Keith

Yes, but this was 1995.
The 3D FBO was an awesome feature. With that ninja video game machine. :lol:

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).

Therefore, I have no issue with Flight showcasing GA as that is where it could fall apart the most. The commercial end will carry forward as it always has with great add-ons.
As long as the modelled environment is there and the coding is sound, everything else will fall into place.

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?
It has no basis on common sense, let alone business sense.