GeekWire Flight Article

[loki]

Sounds like some have taken notice of the discontent in the flight sim community.

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/microso...evious-efforts

Interesting comments about a new engine and better flight modelling too.

[angels355]

That's interesting. There's been alot of talk in the past about cutting off backward compatibility, so that the product can become much more advanced. Do you know what they are referring to, what advancements have they made by cutting off backward compatibility? They should have continued with that idea and used DX11. While on the topic of advanced technology, why am I more excited about Battlefield 3?

They mention a more robust flight simulator engine, they probably reworked the FSX engine, but it's still 32 bit and has gone backwards to DX9, old school like Call of Duty MW. Then mention the extreme lengths they go to to make the I5 flight model accurate. And they say that Flight is a more accurate flight simulation than anything in the past. With FS9 and FSX you can buy PMDG or Level D addon aircraft, how can you surpass that? Especially if they intend to keep Flight a closed community where addons are only available through Games Live or the MS DLC. Do they still intend to not release the SDK?

There is something about their methods in general that bother a lot of people. They seem to express a lot of joy with regards to all the sales they will make online for addons etc. Perhaps they see us as addon junkies and we'll do anything, pay any price to get the flight experience we crave. And they will be there to sell it to us piecemeal. They were mentioning that before they would simply produce and ship a ("boring") software product in a box (yeah with the whole world, many planes and jets and a full simulator experience, everything we wanted), now they are an online business (that means we keep on paying them every time we turn around), and they are thinking ahead one or two expansion packs at a time (which they will charge us for which should have been included at no additional cost shipped in a boring software product box).

One thing I would like is once Flight is released, is a real critical evaluation of Flight and what they have to offer, and whether they are charging us through the nose for a lesser arcade game. They've given us a lot of videos and interviews saying how great Flight is, I'd like to know if it is all bologna in comparison to FSX and FS9, and the whole experience we already have with all the addons available to us. Flight has a lot of hype and promises coming from an arcade game department, I'd like to know how much is bologna.

Hello arcade people, "better simulation experience than ever before", do you have ATC, SID STAR, ILS, radio navigation, GPS navigation, JETS any JETS(?), or are they not PC? I guess it's going to take a long time to figure out all these things.

[loki]

Do you know what they are referring to, what advancements have they made by cutting off backward compatibility?

One of the big problems with the FS series is that to maintain compatibility with add-ons for previous versions, you can't make many changes, especially drastic ones. For example, many add-ons converted from FS9 and earlier don't work properly with the DX10 preview option enabled in FSX. Games like Battlefield 3 don't have this problem as no one expects to be able to run anything developed for the previous versions. This allows the developers to either upgrade or start from scratch with each new game in the series as they see fit. ACES had already planned on FSX being a bridge between the earlier sims and the updated FS engine they were working on.

Of course there is also the added bonus (for Microsoft) in this case that breaking compatibility also means one must go through their Marketplace for add-ons...

[angels355]

Of course there is also the added bonus (for Microsoft) in this case that breaking compatibility also means one must go through their Marketplace for add-ons...

The developers seemed to be especially joyful on this point, they are thinking two expansion packs ahead at a time, things that came with FSX already.

They indicated in the video that Flight is a far better simulation than any previous Flight Simulator. So that means it must have everything Flight Simulators had in the past and more and it's all improved. So, where is it all? Do we have to wait for each component and pay for each, and eventually have an old fashioned simulator far down the road and at great cost on their a la carte menu?

It was sure nice of them to relieve us of that burden of having our own development studio catering to our every whim, boy were we stupid to put up with that!

[Paxx]

The marketing malarkey is very professional. I would almost think the P-51 has a VC.

[benEggleston16]

MS DLC/any MS addons don't have to be that bad, if they want you to pay for them, really seriously can you prove to me they really will be awful? Look at the default FSX planes compared to FS9. At least FS9 best-payware quality there (visually at least) in the FSX default planes. I imagine everyone's putting it aside in favour of a good angry rant (FLIGHT now) but I think the screenshots and footage, especially the higher quality examples such as in the youTube videos like the one I linked to in this forum, look pretty good, factors such as the lighting and water; FSX pretty much mastered the 3D cockpit. Look at MS's acceleration pack, that wasn't that bad was it? The P-51 had an engine that blew up (some management required there), the EH101 had some challanging SAR and slingload missions and the F/A-18 the most realisic carrier ops ever seen in MSFS, AND was developed by prolific 'Captain Sim'. Rolling updates would be good if it required internet connection.

As for backward compatabitlity, I think MS said in an interview once that it really was holding them back, that to develop state-of-the-art sims again (that could run on the computer of a mere mortal), they would have to start from scratch. This is why I'm holding out the hope that FLIGHT's performance might not be that bad.

As for the P-51, ah, I see what you mean, they seem to have shyed away from cockpit shots, nonetheless, I'm hoping one is planned and will be finished before the 29th (actually, I was wondering why the P-51 was less pricey than the less heard of Maule Orion). Or maybe I'm hopelessly optimistic. Optimism seems to be not the tone here; or, in fact; anywhere. Oh well.

I was interested to see that one of the developers seemed to have the same joystick as me: It was bought by my dad when he first introduced me to FS9 (probably the biggest mistake of his life) about seven years ago, and I assumed it was a bottom-of-the-range stopgap, certainly, it seems smaller than every joystick I've seen since then, which was good, because I was six or seven at the time. I imagine most of the MS haters would now burn their jotstick if it was the same one being used by the actual hated developers...

It's interesting how they go on about 'the experience of FLIGHT', which is what they've said from the biginning and I think their choice of aircraft reflects that. See my new thread

[angels355]

Thanks Ben. I think it is exciting that you started FS9 at age 7. It is my opinion that kids can just start in on the regular Flight SImulator, and I started in a real plane at age 7. I think the Flight "ease of use" was meant for busiiness and art majors!

Don't get upset by our ranting we rant for fun and entertainment, myself I am not really angry at anyone.

[alaskancrab]

one of the advancements are using purely directx guage. Ie offloading the work that used to be done by windows to draw the guages is now left up to the GPU. There's one area that would make an improvement and completely destroy most backwards compatibility including the aircraft that were included with FSX, it's not just a 3rd party issue. I've been harping about them for years now just because of the performance factor, and the ability to add real depth to the guages. Just that sometimes developers get a kind of tunnel vision and ignore any technology except the ones they work on directly, ie the ones that make them money. Carenado is the only FS company I can think of who knew that this sort of thing was going to happen, and started developing for X-plane in the meantime. Now they are in a unique position to be able to deliver a product in Flight without any compatibility issues, as all the legwork has been done crossing over to Xplane. Going from OpenGL to DX is a no brainer, but going from the cpu's GDI+ to DX requires a whole new way of building guages and hence why PMDG is in this exploratory phase. Then again that could be a complete lie and X-plane 737 is really secret project #2

That's just one example and I could get into the obvious improvements in the physics model, but that's somewhat subjective at best and we'll just have to wait and see. But as I've argued before higher frame rates does translate into a better simming experience. You don't get to be an FAA Level-D system without nailing down the frame rates. You would actually get physically sick if that wasn't the case, due to the motion aspect

Also with regards to the service model... it's not just Flight. You can even get Adobe "services" on a monthly basis now in fact the term is Software as a Service, or SaaS, or even sometimes simply "the cloud". Why pay for the whole Adobe package when you use it maybe 4 times a year when you have to publish new promotional material or quarterly reports. It's better just to pay for the software 4 months out of the year, and get all the updates than making a large upfront investment that needs to be upgraded every two years anyways. The only people that need the full version are full time designers and even then there's not much value in it anymore due to upgrade costs. It's the same with Flight you aren't paying for anything you don't want. So instead of wasting $90 dollars on a deluxe edition for a whole bunch of default airplanes you are never going to use or worse yet are outdated, you pay for what you actually consume. Which is precisely how I imagine most of you already use FSX, I know I do. I'm more about point a to point a. Point a to point b only happens once or twice a month on my VA flight.

[angels355]

Thanks that's interesting. I have always been point a to point a via all the way around the world, I've always flown like that from the beginning to get to know the world. So XP is OpenGl, is that much more advaned? I believe Fly Legacy is also Opensource or OpenGl not sure. Do they all offload their guage graphics to the GPU or is that unique to Flight?

I'm all for advancement. Are they desperate for sales going back to Win XP and DX9? Someone said you can just download and install FXAA, is that for XP users to get DX11 effects? But doesn't Flight have to be written for DX11 to get DX11 effects?

Just curious, anyone know if there is more advanced multithreading? There is light multithreading in FSX, when I run a cpu monitor watching my four cores there are regular 100% spikes on cores 2, 3, and 4. 64 bit and multiple cores are things that are taken for granted these days.

Any word on the full world, full flight simulator features, the ability to buy a PMDG from PMDG and fly round the world in a cutting edge 747?

Was thinking about the Carenado Cessna 340, is that a safe buy?

[loki]

So XP is OpenGl, is that much more advaned?

OpenGL is roughly equivalent to the Direct3D features of DirectX. However, OpenGL is a more open standard that is supported across multiple platforms, from cell phones to desktop computers.

I believe Fly Legacy is also Opensource or OpenGl not sure.

You are confusing two unrelated things. Open source has to do with the licence model used for the source code, while OpenGL is the graphics API used to render the image.