Only $15! Includes the whole state of Alaska with different seasons. I barely had time to fire it up this morning so I didn't get much of a chance to look around and don't have any screenshots yet. It looked pretty good (IMHO better than what I have for FSX right now). Rivers and lakes freeze over automatically in the winter making for lots of "off airport" landing opportunities!

This post at AVSIM has some pretty good shots:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/377934-alaska-released/page__st__75#entry2404249

Cool thanks for the heads up, the price is nice, checking out how widespread the detail is (i.e. hopefully all the airports got at least a bit of detail like a tower and parked aircraft).

I hear it comes with a Basic Cub which means no Cockpit (and a Cub cockpit is soo difficult), which means I'll not support them with another dime.

Yeah but it's $15 bucks for all of Alaska (600,000 square miles of new scenery, 565 airports and 137 seaplane bases) at that price even without a new plane it seems like a great deal.

I confirmed that the airports are modeled with hangars and planes etc, as an example here is a quick shot of PATK Talkeetna for any Don Sheldon fans, which will be one of my bases for flights:


For me I don't plan to touch the cub until they have a version with a cockpit, but the scenery in itself is worth $15 compared to FSX prices.

Are there any static aircraft at any airports..? And are there new (more creative) challenges/missions included..?

Sorry I mispoke on the static aircraft in my quick 5min check during lunch I was not able to confirm whether there were static aircraft but I did see buildings and hangars, will check tonight.

Purchased today and had a quick peek before getting to work (I was almost late). The install process was pain in the a$$, I had to reinstall one package (some Land Class scenery pack) because although it was already installed via Marketplace the game itself was not aware of that. I've picked some remote dirt airfield (don't remember which one) with the Cub as the plane and I got instant plane crash when entering the game - seems like some aircraft positioning error? Selected fly again from the screen with ambulance and appeared again above the crash site. The terrain seems detailed, although the new Cub without cockpit is useless - I probably wont fly it again (maybe I will if they force me to fly it in some mission). For 1200 M$ points it's well worth it even with the $hitty plane. I hope they release some good bush flyer in Deluxe version soon.

Edit: Also check this out

I hope there are some deluxe aircraft on the way soon. A while back, one of the MS folks said there were both kinds (basic and deluxe) in the works, so I'm confident there will be one eventually. The question is how long do we have to wait...

As to missions and such, my guess is that they'll follow at some point. They just recently added the "drop payload" command to the options area, so they must have something planned for it... Of course, they also just added the "Experience Packs" section to the in-game market place, but I don't see anything there yet. I wonder if we'll be paying for missions... (which isn't the end of the world as long as they're good and fairly priced)

In looking at some of those pictures in the thread - it looks like a mixed bag. For sure, the quantity of airports is great. Also..the default lighting and atmospheric effects in Flight are second to none (shadows, lighting, ambiance). The water effects are still really horrible when you see large ocean type waves in inlets and rivers.



As someone else noted..the mountains look a little "melted".. I guess the terrain mesh isn't that tight..which leads to the mountains looking a bit more like dripping than the jagged prominences they are.

Also as noted, the "kiddie" map appears to be totally non-functional for the vastness of the region. They could really stand to utilize a more aviation-like map (or an actual sectional chart would be even better).

The lack of a Cub cockpit is almost unbelievable. I mean..how hard would that be (really???)..?

The lack of any (any??) missions, new challenges, adventures with the pack is really unbelievable. Again..the game with no game to it. Really odd decision.

The price is right though.

This thread has some nice pics of the long shadows and nice atmospheric/lighting effects.

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/377989-alaska-winter-morning/

Oh..Microsoft Flight - would you please drop your egos and invite Aerosoft, Level-D, and Orbx to the party and all of you mutually benefit from the nice core engine you have?? Please..!!

BeachAV8R