Hmmm.....I wonder......

[skywatch]

I was thinking about this last night and a thought occured to me......

What if 'flight' is really just a beta of FS11?

Could it be that they are not ready to release a full sim now, but will in the future based on this engine?

From what I have seen they would have some way to go with this but maybe that's why they are saying so little about the future reoad map of the product (if such a road map exists).

What do you think?

Skywatch

PS - Tried 3 times to install and use flight and still just get errors, so uninstalling.

[benEggleston16]

It certainly is a promising engine but I think it will take as long as it took the original FS series for the whole world to be covered.

[raimondo2]

It certainly is a promising engine but I think it will take as long as it took the original FS series for the whole world to be covered.

You will never get the whole world covered in flight !
that is not what the target is.
You will only get restricted areas coverages dlc with very likely new planes and new missions.

to give an idea - xplane 10 to cover the whole world with default scenery require 80 gb -

and that is with default data - if we work on it using the best and higher resolution data available we can easly bring it up to 240 gb - at least !

the aim of flight is to make you fly smallish areas - with some new planes and mission.
That is exactly why hardcore simmers who are used to a proper simulator - using high res data - terrains - hydrography etc etc - call flight a game - as with dlc system in place - and close architecture - it never reach its true potential to have a mature world scenery - with the higher and best data available these days - that also include ai traffic - real wather - etc etc.

[benEggleston16]

You will never get the whole world covered in flight !
that is not what the target is.


I meant the first MSFSs didn't have the whole world, or third party addons, and look where they are now (FSX, not FLIGHT)
perhaps by FLIGHT 4 we will have the whole world: but I agree, in its current state, it would be impossible to make the whole world

[kevhead]

I wonder what engine they are using?

[alaskancrab]

Engine? I guess the the Flight 1.0.0 engine. ;)

[Paxx]

Engine? I guess the the Flight 1.0.0 engine. ;)
Pfft!

[kevhead]

Graphics engine in case you don't understand. yep theirs one in every crowd. :p

[ricardo_NY1]

I wonder what engine they are using?
"ESP"? It wouldn't take more than 8-10 gigabytes if they decided to do the rest of the world in default with FSX data in terms of mesh LOD and textures. That would pretty much resolve that issue and keep most happier.

[JSkorna]

Graphics engine in case you don't understand. yep theirs one in every crowd. :p

DX9c

[Nels_Anderson]

It's an interesting thought that this is a beta for FS11, but Microsoft has made it pretty clear that they have a different vision for this product and fully intend to break with how things were done in the past.

[skywatch]

Thanks for all the replies.

Now I feel sad.

Skywatch

[kevhead]

That's just the thing I just wanna fly. That is the only thing I use a simulator for. I want it to be as realistic as possible.

[Semjase]

I tried Flight for about 15 minutes then it shut me off because I just wanted to explore. Guess what? There was no way out of the program except to kill the computer with a hard reboot. This thing is really bad
Beta NO! Maybe Alpha 1 but that would be a gift to them. I uninstalled that thing and spent about a half hour cleaning up the mess it left behind. Never again in this incarnation.

[stufer]

Pushing Esc would have given you a menu to exit the game. I have been using an xbox controller (it is a game after all) and I push the start button to exit. The program seems to run well on most machines.

[jomni]

I tried Flight for about 15 minutes then it shut me off because I just wanted to explore. Guess what? There was no way out of the program except to kill the computer with a hard reboot.

Huh? There's the ESC key.

[Semjase]

Escape option would not work. Message was program not responding. No control over whatever it was doing at all. By any method.

[stufer]

Thats your computer. You should run an anti virus scan. Spybot and Malware bytes together. Check CTL-Alt-Delete, push them all at the same time and release. If you have more than 20 processes at idol your running too many programs. Some may be virus related. Flight works on my windows tablet with no problems, it should work on all computers that can run FSX.

[Semjase]

Know about all that stuff. If you ever need something good try Windows Defender Offline from Microsoft. Good that it works for you but then you didn't try to be free and that is what it didn't like.
Anyway I'm out of that little game for good. Got stuff that really works fine and no need for something like that.

[lefu]

You will never get the whole world covered in flight !
that is not what the target is.
You will only get restricted areas coverages dlc with very likely new planes and new missions.

to give an idea - xplane 10 to cover the whole world with default scenery require 80 gb -

and that is with default data - if we work on it using the best and higher resolution data available we can easly bring it up to 240 gb - at least !

the aim of flight is to make you fly smallish areas - with some new planes and mission.
That is exactly why hardcore simmers who are used to a proper simulator - using high res data - terrains - hydrography etc etc - call flight a game - as with dlc system in place - and close architecture - it never reach its true potential to have a mature world scenery - with the higher and best data available these days - that also include ai traffic - real wather - etc etc.

Does it really matter 80 or 240 Gb when newer hard discs arent less then 1 Tb ? just asking :)

[azzaro]

The way I see it, most people don't fly the whole world, rather, small parts of it. The bulk of FSX's world is a pretty low rez generic affair.
Add-ons like FS Global mesh make it much more realistic, but it's still a barren, empty experience. A random sample of posts from the screen caps forum reveals the vast majority of flights take place in the US, pricipally the Orbx area and Alaska, then central Europe, with Australia and the Caribbean a distant third. In short, the most scenically dense areas. My FSX files take up about 115 Gb. Many people, especially those using photoscenery, have much more. Sim Savvy, for instance comes on it's own 1Tb drive. To me the fact that the whole world is not represented in some barely usable generic fashion is not an issue. And, once again, this is not an all or nothing proposition. You can have your FSX and Flight it too! :) — Bob

[loki]

Does it really matter 80 or 240 Gb when newer hard discs arent less then 1 Tb ?

SSDs are typically in the 128-256GB range, at least for the somewhat affordable models. :)

[stufer]

I agree azzaro. If I want to fly a long distance I will use FSX or FS2004. But a lot of what I enjoy is centrally located in the Pacific NW. I very rarely go beyond Oregon and Washington. Flight Zone, the columbia river scenery, Pac NW Mesh and the many other add on's that I have make the area seem as real as I need it to be. When you throw in traffic and Multi player it is even better. If flight add's traffic and some abiance to the area it will be just as good.

I'm really enjoying the missions. I hope the Alaska expansion includes an ATR type aircraft for transport flights around hawaii and Alaska. I see in the awards section they have an award for 50,000 passengers. I have taken 2, there must be a passenger aircraft in the works. Other wise I don't see how anybody will ever get that award. The second award is for rescue. I have rescued 1 person in my Icon, but I don't see anymore missions to undertake, but their is an award for 10,000 rescues. There has to be a dynamic rescue system coming soon as well.

[fxsttcb]

You can have your FSX and Flight it too! :)And FS9, ROF, LOMAC, CF2, COD, ..., ..., ...:p
I never understand why folks get the impression that once you install a new game, the others are gonna be shelved. I still fly my FS98 and CFS on occaision...Don

[Aarinu]

SSDs are typically in the 128-256GB range, at least for the somewhat affordable models. :)

Cause the world revolves around SSD's right? And to say they "typically are" is incorrect. It completely depends on the target market. I work on high end storage arrays and have the luxury of working with SSD's as large as 500 GB. most of those we have in house now are 400 GB and they aren't used for general storage. SSD's are used within storage pools. They are grouped together with SAS and nearline SAS drives (see also SATA) to create the pool. LUNs are then granted out. 90% of the data in those LUNs live on SATA disk with the 10% split between SAS and SSD. In one of the arrays (165 disks total), just 20 of those are SSD, 13 of those are used in storage pools, 5 are used as an extension to cache (AKA Memory, DDR3, and the like), and 2 are set as hot spares (if a drive encounters too many errors, a hot spare is invoked and all data from the failing drive moves to hot spare) yet we throw data to servers at a rate of 45,000 IOP's average with peaks of over 85,000. Response times never exceed 10 ms, and queue depth is never more than 4 or 5 (normal is 1 to 2, but when backups kick off, it can spike to 5).

That said, SSD's are great, but need to be used appropriately, and right now, in the desktop market, they are not. Until the technology matures far from where it is now, it is cost prohibitive to use them. Sure, load times from boot up or game start to playing is quicker, but once loaded, they grant almost no benefit. Not to mention, 80% of the data in FSX is stale data that is hardly ever touched, thus using SSD is pure waste. Once we get storage tiering in the desktop market place, then and only then will SSD's come into their own. Or, the cost of SSD gets well below .50 per GB. Hybrid drives are the start to this, but have a way to go before they work as well as they should.

[loki]

Cause the world revolves around SSD's right? And to say they "typically are" is incorrect. It completely depends on the target market.

I never said the world revolved around SSDs, and given this is a forum about desktop flight simulators, I also wasn't talking about high end enterprise level SSD setups. For the consumer market SSDs are still very expensive for the space they offer, and 256GB models are easily $300-400. Well above what most are willing to pay, let alone what a 400GB+ model costs.

[Paxx]

Fortunately the world revolves, SSDs exist, and now we know all about high-end storage array SSD solutions.

I always wondered about that .... hmmm.
:)

[fxsttcb]

All I can say is I have Windows, Flight, and FSX on an SSD that works great for me. I will never go back to a spinner for my Primary or Game drives.
Granted, the SSD is very pricey, but IMO, I got what I paid for. With my large by huge FSX install, it reduced my loading time tenfold. Valuable to me...Don

BTW, I'm on a fixed income and am planning for the Samsung 830 512GB drive, FSX only. The existing 128GB unit will be used for Windows and utility apps.

[Ragtopjohnny]

No, there probably won't be an FSXI as it was stated by Microsoft.

Microsoft has decided, for what ever unholy reason, to go with this new format now.

At least I still have my FSX, and proud of it. So no worries there.

John Thuot II

[Aarinu]

Please allow me to apologize for my bad manners yesterday. It was uncalled for in this forum, I was having a very bad day and took it out in a very wrong way. But I still believe SSD's are way over priced for what they give. Even in enterprise it is a really tough sell. A small 200 GB SSD (SLC) goes for almost the same cost as 5 x 450 GB 15K SAS drives. That said, SSD's do have there place. To make this short and sweet, your typical SATA 7200 RPM drive can do 80 sequential IO per second, a 15K SAS Drive can do about 180 IO per second, and enterprice SSD's are rated at around 100,000 sequential IOPs. The drastic change for SSD's occurs in random loads, enterprise class are rated at just 2,400 IOps. Mind you this is for SLC SSD's which are much quicker than MLC drives, but are also much more expensive and much higher failure rate.

[Paxx]

Please allow me to apologize for my bad manners yesterday. ....

Not a problem. You're passionate about your work, nothing wrong with that.

[alaskancrab]

aarinu: over analyzing things will only get you in trouble in these here forums. Stick to your gut and not your brains. a statement like an SSD is awful thing to waste on something that lasts for a minute may have more sticking power :)

[Paxx]

aarinu: over analyzing things will only get you in trouble in these here forums. Stick to your gut and not your brains. a statement like an SSD is awful thing to waste on something that lasts for a minute may have more sticking power :)

Nope. Speaking the truth on these forums, on topic or not, is always appreciated. It is innuendo, spin, self-congratulating accolades, out right falsehoods, and trolling that don't have "sticking power". This should be obvious for those without an agenda.

[angels355]

I was wondering if they would give us the best of both worlds, free basing Flight on every computer, then the option of buying the rest of the world and 27,003 airports, and the entire simulator gamut, plus the SDK, for the open ended downloadable FSnext. One problem that people are exeriencing however is download corruption. I used to experience it often with dialup especially if it were a very long download. It's still not a perfect broadband world. Also, some companies I hear more and more have a cap on individuals' monthly download limit. This is because a few years ago they estimated the probability that individuals would use no more than X gb's/month, and if they use more than that they must of course be a crook downloading pirated software, video or music, etc, and their broadband would shut down or be limited for the rest of the month or they'd send someone out to talk to the person/crook. Now days, listening to streaming video for news, weather, youtube, internet TV, new generation episodes of Star Trek OS (new productions by amateur actors, it's fun), and plus freeware, opensource software, the legitimate list goes on and on. I could download in just one day 10 Linux distros totalling as much as 45 gb's! If we would have a cap put on the residents in our area, it would be class action suit time!

Any way, in an interview Howard has said that he doesn't like vast empty deserts and similar empty areas, he seems to be opposed to a whole Earth thing or concept. Astronomers and geologists alike however assure the public that there is a whole Earth and it is round. Just wondering if there could be the best of both worlds so to speak, free basing Hawaii area download or pre-installed on new computers, with the option of buying the entire FSnext PLUS of course the SDK?

Another question along the same lines as new MS flying software, do you guys think that we should have another SP for FSX for bugs and performance? Because they have neglected us with no FS11? The Synergies girl promised that they were committed to the FS community, since they haven't given us FS11 don't you think it's the least they could do to provide us with SP3? Perhaps even with an expansion pack included? MS agrees that Flight is no FS, and it is from the Game Studios, quick entertainment like checkers. We are chess customers and we've been neglected.

[mith]

We are chess customers and we've been neglected.

Chess customers? Learn to like Tiddly Winks because Flight has taken simmers to a new low level... though it's still kind of fun I have to admit... but it's not a sim.