There is still hope for MS flight

I got the beta today and they improved alot of things, the planes handle pretty good, better then fsx anyway. The interface is also pretty awesome much better then any other flight sim. If Microsoft is serious and put effort and has a lot of DLC for cheap then I think it will be good in the long run.


I cant wait until they add Track ir support its a must for any flight game.

Will MS Flight have an offline, single player mode, or is it going to be something that you have to be connected to the Internet all the time?

If it's the latter, they can kiss pretty much all rural customers goodbye. Rural Internet in the USA sucks and usually has upload/download/streaming limits.

Cheers!

Rick...

Yes there is alot of offline stuff you can take jobs and stuff, as well as do the free flight. I didn't think I would like the missions but I kind of due because it gives you structure.

I also got the beta yesterday. It is not all doom and gloom like some have guessed...

If it makes anyone feel better a lot of the beta testers are fighting hard to get Microsoft to add features like ATC and Real world weather in just to name a few.

It is if you're a third-party dev...


IF MS bring's back third party content, I'll agree with the title of this thread.

Depends how you qualify "planes handles better than fsx...", ifyou refer to the default fsx planes, maybe, but its nowhere near any serious payware addon in fsx.

It was demoed using an xbox gamepad at CES 2012, enough said! That should give you an idea of their target public...

My hopes are with P3D!!!

If they have to try to convince MS, that doesn't make me feel better at all. This is a crucial feature if they want to attract anyone from their old customer base.

After playing around with the beta,I can say this. Its not FSX. But it a good airplane game.

I have issues but seems Microsoft is fixing some of them like more controller options. I still think there are issues with the flight model though especially the bi-plane. Fsx will be here for a long to come though that's for sure.

Edit the game does have Radio nav vor and ndb on the maps with morse code identifier.

Well said.

And as far as the beta goes. Microsoft is asking us for bugsissues, not feature requests...

Anyways, when you turn down a company like ORBX from your platform, you shouldn't be taken seriously.

In my opinion the team thats building flight,is looking for a stable job,by doing it themselves. I think the only way flight will become a successor to FSX is if the addons are real cheap in price.I'm thinking $5 bucks for aircraft and $10 bucks for large areas of land.

Obviously I can't be specific about my experience so far, so how do I expand on my earlier post....? How about like this. Just the facts...

I'm a real life pilot so I know what flying an airplane should feel like.
I mostly prefer military flight sims when I have time for simming. When I do play FSX, I prefer low level, VFR flights in light GA aircraft, often at lower altitudes than what you would fly in real life. Sometimes I like to just practice landings. I have no interest in simulating a 747 flight from New York to London (not that there's anything wrong with doing that).
I prefer smaller scenery areas with much higher levels of detail and accuracy rather than a generic looking larger area.
I find the amount of money you need to spend on add-ons for FSX to get it to "look good" to be unacceptable. I know lots of companies make money providing those add-ons and they've done a great job, but ultimately I get those add-ons because I feel FSX fell short in those areas.
I don't ever simulate flight planning or any of that stuff (not that there's anything wrong with doing that).

At thia point, I could see myself uninstalling FSX after Flight is released. The cost and availability of addon aircraft and scenery still may affect that, though.

And since MS is in charge of the addon's, without any competition, how do you think that pricing/quality will turn out?

It's also worth mentioning the terabytes upon terabytes of FREE third party content across the web. Kiss all that goodbye

First of all, their decision to not allow 3rd party content is one I can't really defend. Openness to 3rd party content certainly seems to play a big role in a games longevity. Certainly M$ can't compete with the quantity and variety of 3rd party content that exists for FSX.

Regarding cost, I think this is one area where M$'s decision to target a broader audience actually helps. Hard core simmers are willing to pay $50 for an addon that improves accuracy of roads and rivers, another $50 for better ground textures, and then another $40 for better looking weather. And then another $25 for a high quality addon aircraft. And then another $30 a pop for a high quality airports/sceneries. If M$ really wants to appeal to a broader audience, they're going to have to be a lot cheaper than what 3rd party devs have done for FSX. Aircraft addons probably won't be A2A quality, but I think they can compete for quality of scenery addons.

I don't fly as nuch as I use to (getting old)lol. But you hit on a good point that very few real or sim pilots see. A sim/game will never be as acurate as the real thing,as weather,thermal and a dozen other situations make a real flight diffrent every time.

I have spent hundreds of dollars on FSX. At the end its better but not worth the money I have invested. The free stuff is almost and even better than the payware.

Thats the million dollar question,about the price. But knowing MS and their prices on software its no going to be cheap.

Sounds like Flight is perfect for your needs Malibu.

Personally I'm looking forward to trying it and it sounds like a fun diversion I will enjoy at times, but I am not a real life pilot and part of what I want in a sim is being able to do more indepth sim situations, and in real world locations where I have been or close to my home.

So as you can see it doesn't meet my needs to replace FSX, but then again it doesn't have to since I don't need to pick just one or the other, I plan to enjoy flight for the cheap simlite diversion VFR flying around Hawaii, and I will continue to enjoy FSX for more detailed sim situations and still hold hope for MS to come out with some more hardcore sim options to add to it in the future (atc, more global locations, jets etc.)

We all come at the civil sim from different perspectives and different goals, I've spent lots of money on FSX and addons but I love it, with the right add-ons FSX approaches the level of study sim with amazing scenery, I get to fly some awesome planes out of some very detailed scenery that closely models my local real world region, yes it costs some money but in the end I would spend much more on a real pilot's license, nevermind the cost of the awesome aircraft in my virtual hangar.

Still waiting for my MS Flight beta invite and looking forward to it, hopefully in the long run MS will cater to both the simlite and hardcore needs, I think the potential is there, especially once they've gotten a bunch of new gamers to try this new "airplane game" and some catch the sim bug and want more.

I was really wanting to check out this beta and so far nary a peep after applying, but I see people who have it have no problem discussing it and I don't know how much of that is in violation of the NDA. I will say I agree with the post about FSX being unacceptable out of the box and I won't spend a dollar on add-ons for it and if Flight proves to be as disappointing when the add-on content appears I probably won't spend any on it either, even if it is free to begin with. This seems to be the new model for PC/console gaming; to create a title and then sell DLC to nickle and dime the consumer constantly until they have hundreds of dollars invested in it and all this without a real disc in their hands and coupled with some limited activation clause to prevent you from ever uninstalling and building a new PC to run it etc.. Might be how the future is shaping up for Gaming but I ain't buying into it, maybe when they release this it will be more appealing but I'm not betting on it.

Glad to hear positive comments. I got the beta too and It's amazing how so many people making negative comments about Flight without even trying it. I agree with you MS FLIGHT has many good features including better Flight model better weather and many other things. True is it can be played as an arcade but also as simulator.

I am looking forward for it to be released soon enough.

I think MS has seen the potential of selling their own addons because they'll make more money and keep improving the sim as when they sold FSX it could only be improved by third party developers so no money for MS.

It's the trend right now. 777 studios and Eagle Dynamics are doing it because it's the only way to make money while improving the sim over the time.

That's true and I believe that RoF did it very well, DLC is not expensive and the base game looks great, in fact I flew a night mission last night and it was awesome, Flight can only hope to do as well.

I think if you are judging FSX by the default scenery and planes compared to MS Flight or ROF then you are not seeing the FSX I experience when I fly and what I compare most other flight sims to.

You owe it to yourself to at least try FSX with the free ORBX PNW demo and fly out of KHQM airport, and you will see what the FSX looks like for many current FSX flyers.
http://fullterrain.com/product_demos.html

I own and enjoy ROF and DCS LB2 and DCS A10C but even when flying those excellent sims I wish their scenery ground looked as good as the FSX+ORBX scenery I am used to nowadays in FSX.

Anyone that uses 5 year old base FSX as a comparison to any modern flight sim is not really giving it a reasonable comparison IMHO, and we're not talking spending hundreds of dollars for that FSX scenery either $45 for Orbx PNW which includes a huge real modeled area with hundreds of Orbx lib hand modeled airports (not unlike the DCS or ROF regions).

Not trying to sell anyone on FSX or ORBX, I'm not a shill for ORBX but just a happy customer especially of their PNW region, and I just hate to see people comparing 5 year old base FSX to the current sims unfairly IMHO, and also assuming it takes hundreds of dollars/euros to make it look good it doesn't unless you want to extend the add-on quality all over the world.

It's like comparing base Falcon 4.0 to current sims.

I have Falcon AF and it wasn't too bad but it is old and I've seen Free Falcon and it's only a little better but that's been a while ago. Maybe I should re-install FSX and try the scenery but the link you gave I couldn't find that file on their server, I used to have several freeware planes but I found it kind of boring to just shoot TnG's all the time and the base game activities didn't impress me much, probably because of the scenery.
edit: the first US server doesn't work but the Aussie Server does.

I'm re-installing FSX ugh, already 40 mins and I'm not even halfway through the first disc and have 2 more to go, I'm regretting this already. I hope that scenery looks good.

Sorry KRT_Bong, I didn't know you didn't have FSX installed already... indeed FSX reinstall is always such a pain.

Hope it is worth it to you, but worst case if not you will be able to call people like me on it when we say FSX with Orbx is so great :P

I always prefer to get first hand experience especially if there is a free demo.

Well long story short it took an hour and then the real fun began, tried to install Acceleration it informed me I needed to register FSX first so I did then it told me I had to wait till the other install was finished, this after I had been at work all day, wouldn't go. Reboot PC, locked up after about 5 min. Icons went white, Desktop went white, wtf couldn't do anything. Tried everything, safe mode worked so I started deleting things no joy, thought I was going to have to reinstall Windows so I started preparing for using anytime upgrade as a repair and moving files (while in safe mode) rebooted and thankfully it worked and no reformat was necessary, whew. Nope, I don't think I'll reinstall that again not worth the 4 hours I spent fixing my PC. Maybe I'll get the beta to Flight but that other Pig can sit in the box with all the other old software.

hm,

strange. I had to reinstall FSX after X-Mas `cause my SSD with the OS died. Installing basic FSX was done in around 20 minutes IIRC, plus another 20 minutes downloading and installing the service packs. Never expierienced the installation lasting that long. Maybe something wrong with your optical drive or the CDs? Anti-Virus or something similar messing with the install?



Sounds to me, like the install never finished properly and in fact was still hanging when you tried to install acceleration.

maybe, it was unusual to say the least but I won't try it again I'm done with it that was just a nightmare.

Yeah I've never had that happen in my FSX+Acceleration installs and activations, but I don't blame you it is a good amount of install work to try out a demo.

Hopefully MS Flight install will work better for you whenever it comes out, it seems Microsoft has gotten much better with the installs on their products IMHO, Windows 7 install is a breeze especially if you have a SSD though it still takes another hour or two for the rounds of windows updates and reboots etc to get it all up to snuff.

I'm taking back the section in bold. After posting that, I started playing around with FSX again. Using only free add-ons, I am very happy with the quality and variety (in terms of functionality and eye candy) that I have.

I know all about rural Internet. I've got WildBlue sattellite. 1300 ms ping times.

Surprisingly enough, Flight with online players was quite good. I'm surprised it worked at all. Even voice chat was good.

You can fly without an Internet connection, but your accumulated stats won't be uploaded until the next time you connect. Flight doesn't use any perceptable bandwidth at all if you're flying solo. If you're flying with friends, especially using voice chat constantly, the bandwidth goes up, a few meg per hour, under 10 for sure.

Hook

Good to hear malibu43, you know most people in the pro/anti Flight discussions overlook the fact that there's no reason you can't still fly *both* after it comes out.

Personally I plan to try Flight and am open to liking it, while still flying FSX a ton like I do now, lots of people still fly FS9 (and there's still lots of add-ons that come out for it) even though FSX has been out for 5 years.

Yep. Been getting a lot of free scenery for FSX lately that's pretty good and covers areas other than Hawaii. Plus, ORBX Nor Cal will come out at some point, which will cover where I live and fly out of, so I'll probably spring for that as well.