I think MS Flight will have an audience. I think it will be sucessful. If MS markets it right, there is an audience of people out there who want to fly and not deal with the more mondane things of Flying.

I have the Beta, and I think the flight modeling is quite good in Flight. Graphics also look on par with Orbx type of scenery and frame rate is very good even at higest settings. I think most who try it will be impressed. Having said that, I got bored with it rather quickly, But then again, Im not part of the target audience. I dont know what type of missions the DLC will have. The ones that came with the beta need a little more imagination to keep people interested.

Right now, I have FSX (with tons of addons), Xplane 10 with a few addons and the flight Beta (not to mention IL2 COD & ROF), and they all offer a different experience. All good in their own way. If you love flight sims (like I do), get em all!!

Rob

For those thinking Flight is such a great idea. Pilot Wings was mentioned, wasn't that a console game? The primary market for casual games is the console. This is not being released on a console, what casual gamer is going to spend the money on a rig to run Flight? I'm assuming it has very complex calculations going on in the background if the flight model is so good as you suggest. There's also the graphics we have all seen.

Yes there are casual gamers out there with monster rigs that mummy and daddy bought them, but they are playing run and gun games and screaming at each other via comms.

But as people have said it will get millions of players. I agree and the reason is because it is free. So you are going to get lots of our happy little spoilt run and gunners downloading this great little multiplayer flight game in which they realise ther ate now guns and nothing to blow up. They'll get bored and subsequently they start flying into each other for fun.

Add-on packs will not be purchased by this audience because they're bored of the game already. A few may keep it and actually enjoy the free part but wont play because they will keep getting flown into.

The flight simmers that do try won't stick around for long for the reasons stated above.

Do you know why I know this will happen? It was all seen in multiplayer on FSX. All the people who actual enjoy flight sims witnesed the above when they joined multiplayer. So back to the massive free world that gave them what they wanted. There's a reason AI packs sell so well. We want lots of aircraft but not ones being flown into us by spoilt brats.

This is the reason people say there is no market and this is the reason flight simmers won't stick around.

Ah, screw the casual gamers. The only group who can save Flight is us, flightsimmers. It's good that FM is no problem. It realistic enough. And, of couse, graphics is more than good. I think I have to give up the world wide map, though. Even if there is addon scenery for every other airport, the cost won't justify the purchase. What important now is good, interesting missions. Like flying police chopper to help units on the ground. Or fly as an aerial tour pilot. No, it won't make Flight a worthy successor of MSFS, but it will be just another good flightsim we fly every now and then.

Hi all,

could we see military DLC which would make Flight also a combat flight simulator ?
Combat flight simulators are more regional focused so lack of whole world is less important.
And for a wide audience dogfights and bombing missions are attractive.

Any info about such feature ?

I think they fall for two huge miscalculations.

1st, having the choice between X-plane and FS, most flight simmers preferred FS due to the easiness by which to change and add content. The argument is the great modular structure that allows users to replace everything: local sceneries and airports, weather textures and clouds, whole continental design, 3D exterior models, flightdeck modules. Not only seems flight not to offer the technical ability to allow that, it would also violate their business model. And for quite some users, FS was more about experimenting and creating new planes and sceneries, than flying themselves. For them, it was what the small miniature railway in the cellar has been for our fathers - a work constantly going on,l never finished. The travel is the goal.

2nd, there have been occasional small little flight games focussing on for example rescue helicopters or traffic monitoring - and they all remained to stay as that: small little flight games, they were not any noticably successful, nor were taken note of by a wide public. They popped up, disappeared relatively quickly, and the speed by which they usually enter the smile price stage of their shelf lives, tells something on how popular they were - not very.

Flight's argument seems to be exclusively the eye fodder provided the landscape. But even that argument already is being rivalled by - Google. What Flight seems to offer in principle is the flight "simulator" included in Google Earth. Maybe a bit more polished and with better flight dynamics, weather engine, day-night-cycle, but in principle that's what Flight seems to be: a polished Google Earth/Flight. Just that Google Earth offers you the whole globe. How often do you use Google Earth-Flight Simulator? Where was the challenge in flying it? Right - there was none.

The challenge provided by a civilian flight simulator is to operate the cockpit. That'S what it is about. Not to start at point A and get to point B. It either is successful in providing that challenge - or it is not.

Personally, I never made use of the missions in FSX. It'S not my taste and not my way of operating FS. I am with the PMDG flight deck stuff. People like me - and we are not few, Flight1 and Aerosoft still make a good living by our buys - are at a total loss with Flight.

The whole concept of Fight to me is just a business stunt, or better, an advertising campaign for the pushed concept of cloud computing. Users are hesitent about cloud computing, and rightly so, while Microsoft wants to almost impose it on everybody. I have big issues with such concepts, like I already am critical of data online storage and security and DRM regading Steam, needs to stay online all the time, Facebook and other (anti)social networks. There may be a bright, social future laying ahead, although I somewhat doubt that, but well, I could be wrong. However, these schemes above are it CERTAINLY NOT. Their success come at a massive human price. But i stray off here, so: full stop.

It has already been said that Flight seems to copy game models for consoles and handhelds. If that is the sim model young players get used to, there is good reason to worry about the future of quality simulations on PC. Even if quality sims would get provided by some enthusiastic developer, people and customers less and lesser would even be able to appreciate it - they have been trained to embrace concepot more simplicstic. That way, the economic failure of such software projects already gets preprogrammed today.

I still don't think Flight is such a big "miss" like a lot of people think. I still see a lot of misinformed posts (anything that calls flight a console/arcade game). Anyone who says that obviously hasn't spent much/any time with the beta.

Flight is FSX with the following differences:

*edit* - probably shouldn't/can't say what they are. Bottom line - Flight isn't all flying through rings using the mouse like the trailers show.

So, if you like flying 747's from one continent to another, Flight isn't for you. If you like GA flying in smaller, more detailed areas, then I think you will like Flight. And, based on the success of ORBX (and similar companies/sceneries that speicialize in highly detailed smaller areas), I think there's a market there. Obviously, Microsoft (who probably has a lot of people that get paid a lot to do market research) think there's a mareket there as well.

I have spent the last week or so looking for any and all Hawaii scenery addons for FSX (pay-ware and free-ware) and trying to compare the best FSX Hawaii experience possible to the Flight Hawaii experience. I am eagerly awaiting Feb 29th.*

* - Actually (and ironically), I will be in Maui on Feb 29th! So, I eagerly await March 5th.

Talking about Pilot Wings?.
Not meant to flame just as a reminder.

That is one of the challenges provided; not the only challenge provided. I think it would be a huge mistake to assume that that's the only reason someone fires up a flight simulator on their PC. I would even question the assumption that it is the reason the majority of folks fire up a flight simulator.

As a real life pilot*, I never use flight simulators for the challenge of cockpit systems management. I enjoy things like nailing a challenging landing, exploring, completing a mission or a task (whether it's combat or civillian oriented), or just pretending that I'm flying and enjoying myself. Often I like to try stuff that would be dangerous or illegal in real life. I think I am part of Flights targat market, and I would guess there a lots of people like me out there. Keep in mind they may not be the most vocal members at SimHQ or AVSIM.

* - The only reason I threw the pilot thing in there was to demonstrate that I appreciate the challenge (and fun) of cockpit systems management and the more tedious tasks associated with flying. I'm not just some "noob" who's idea of flying is launching a thousand missiles at a time while inverted pulling -25 g's in HAWX. I don't think that me being a pilot makes my opinion on Flight worth more than the opinion of any other flight sim veteran.

The thing that worries me most about MS Flight is the lack of a world wide map. That's the most disappointing thing of all.

Yeah. That's the one thing that will keep FSX on my hard drive for a while. But, after having the ORBX PNW Demo, PW Carribean Sceneries, and BlueSkyScenery stuff installed recently, I've found that the default FSX scenery in a lot of areas just doesn't look good enough. The defaul landclass and autogen can look really weird in places that didn't get some special attention. So, I'm only flying right now in areas I have addon scenery installed for. Therefore, the lack the entire world in Flight doesn't really bother me.