Jump to content

Flight Sim World - Initial reaction to the new flight simulator from Dovetail!


DrawyahGames

Recommended Posts

Dovetail Games have released their new simulator onto the Steam store as an Early Access product, but by owning a copy of Flight School previously, I was able to receive this game for free! Flying around for 3 hours now, I've been able to form an opinion based on what I've seen thus far with each aircraft and scenery from around the world.

 

I did also livestream my initial reaction to the simulator, is this is something you guys may be interested in!

First of all with any flight simulator, the aircraft themselves is the first thing you will want to ensure is as good as can be. Compared to FSX? They do feel nice! Accufeel does do its work in terms of flight dynamics and the first signs of simulation in the airflow of the aircraft, especially in the case of stalling and high speed flying. On the ground, they will also react to the ground surface, so dirt runways the aircraft bounces while on tarmac it's a lot smoother.

 

2c0955fb15133775dafebc419b4155b6.jpg

 

It's not perfect however. Flying in certain conditions feel too smooth compared to what aircraft should feel like in the real world. While Accufeel integration does take the simulator a long way, it's still got some work that needs to be done which hopefully will be continued on during the early access development of this simulator!

 

I do like the seven aircraft the simulator has as default, the Piper Malibu probably being my favourite based on how it flies and also it's looks! The flagship aircraft for this title will be the Piper Seneca V which Dovetail Games have put the most effort in and the end result does look fantastic. The developers have put a lot of work behind this and I'm glad as this does set a standard for what we are hopefully​ going to see in the future, whether that be standard or third party aircraft in the simulator.

 

00b5876eb6513b2a73a93e8cccef1671.jpg

 

In order to change the aircraft livery, it's a little more hidden than I would have liked, but it's easy to access via the aircraft configuration panel, in one of the tabs towards the top of the screen.

 

Minor details such as 3D gauges on all aircraft and the feedback on dials in vibrations and over stress do also add more realism to the aircraft, as well as simulated icing which does effect gauges as I found out with a frozen set of pitot tubes mid-fight! Although as a company they may get some stick, Dovetail Games are really trying to push for as much of a strong simulator as they can with this as they know that there is a market out there, they just need to pick up a good share of it!

 

c02fac4d003933a81a2cf22144e55fcd.jpg

 

One other feature making a return that deserves its own paragraph is the return of rain drops on the virtual cockpit window! As I keep on saying, this is something that was broken during the development of FSX as FS2004 had it previously, but there was no time before release to repair this. By fixing this feature, it does add life to each aircraft, and really brings the weather to life! As it stands, there is only a rain effect. Snow is something we may see in the future, we can only wait and see.

 

c23ee3e77dc82a73c9de4991b3f6b376.jpg

 

As well as aircraft, the world scenery is also something that's worth talking about. There is definitely a mix in different locations around the world, places you should visit and places you should stay clear of.

 

The Hawaiian islands are actually very well made! The scenery matches the world, airports look good and places such as Honolulu and Lanai City kind of look realistic, at least as good as you can get with ground class.

 

Dovetail Games also spent a lot of time in Europe, meaning locations such as Spain and some parts of the UK do also look spot-on with custom buildings and landmarks in accurate locations. Sceneries such as that around Degali, Norway is also surprisingly pleasant to fly in! While the original FSX ground mesh distorted the land around this airport to a mess, the new ground mesh attempts to fix this and the end result does produce and nice and relaxing strip to fly from, I recommend the Piper Super Cub here.

 

3285847a3a80f35b11f164d4607e3b79.jpg

 

Not everything looks good however. STAY AWAY FROM PRINCESS JULIANA!!! I'm not sure what happened there, but it looks as if Dovetail attempted as proper VFR Scenery around this airport and let me tell you, it only disappoints. Low quality ground imagery does take away from this iconic airport, and unfortunately does ruin it for most users. Cristiano Ronaldo Madeira Funchal Airport is also poorly created during to the default airport database in action, and Lukla is not worth your time.

 

81b93adeea51e87f931abb9fb3b6d6ef.jpg

 

There is also one MAJOR feature of airports I also find missing, something that actually slightly annoyed me. WHY CAN'T I START FROM GATE?! Selecting an airport will spawn you on the active runway, but why no ability to start elsewhere? Also, what happened to the start in cold and dark feature? Maybe I'm just blind and couldn't see them, but this should be obvious for someone to find!

EDIT - I later found out that this is actually something implemented soon. I remember hearing it on the release stream, just not out yet!

 

Night scenery is also something worth talking about. You can see what DTG were trying to do here, but it just doesn't quite work out yet. The ground is definitely too dark, it's like flying over an abyss, a black hole taking away all the colour from the world. There is a new set of 3D lights in place, but non of these are dynamic and do just appear as dots in the world. They do look good, but nothing special, and need work done to them, at least similar to how Chris Bell had created lighting in his Night Environment packages. If these lights can emit more details through them or at least light up the world around them, this would really improve the night life of the simulator.

 

The water however in this new simulator is actually fantastic. Compared to the FSX water and really any other simulator, Dovetail have really created something beautiful. The sea looks amazing and with coastlines and mountain ranges, the reflections they produce is just stunning. This is one of the small extras that Dovetail have added, which just brings in new flavour to the simulator and will hopefully see more added to in the future - I'd love to see a sea plane!

 

6dd0b1fe4e8a1c0657bd63345eeebc35.jpg

 

Sky colours also do look good and in my eyes, better visually if a little too bright. The new sky colours do add flavour to the simulator, especially at night with a slight deep brown colour to it. This does look good to the eye and in my opinion does not need to be changed too much before release.

 

Lighting however? That needs adjusting. DTG created a new lighting and shadow rendering system for Flight Sim World which the result of is on the wall. The new shadows look amazing, and is something that the devs deserve praise on. The smooth lines that travel across the cockpit and body of the aircraft, just beautiful! The lighting itself however looks like its come from a really bad ENB job. Too bright in the day, too dark at night, I'd like to see more adjustments on this to make it appear more natural.

 

0fa64b1f4e7f7c0e8c88c505b97d8d39.jpg

 

The weather engine is nothing to shout for, if not a disappointment to say the least. There are a selection of pre-set themes which does look good, but there is no option for real world weather. The time and date has also been integrated into this same menu which just doesn't make any sense! I'm unsure on what decision was made to put the two together, but I personally am not a fan of it. Others may like it and I see where DTG were coming from in the one, but it just didn't suit me.

 

We also have multiplayer. Yeah. Multiplayer. It's pretty much the exact same system as in FSX Steam Edition, except I didn't see any menu for shared cockpits.

 

Now the User Interface itself. Actually, I like this one a lot. Much better than the original FSX system, it takes what we got in Flight School and improves on it. The UI is modern, smooth and feel nice to use. I do also like the new pause screen. Rather than before where a red flashing box appeared just stating 'Paused', a whole new menu opens up which allows to user to change some settings around. No way to change time, weather or location however, these were greyed out unfortunately.

 

c06ac306ca1dfeb29c04d918d56f56ac.jpg

 

The entire achievements system is also smart and for the more casual simmer does add more for them to do as opposed to standard flying from A to B. The menu for the pilots profile is also nice, and soon with full Dovetail Live integration, we can only see where this will take us.

 

Missions and Flight School next! These are nice. Clearly laid out on a world map, the user can select one of many missions worldwide, including those in the original DTG Flight School game. The learning centre is also the same as from Flight School, although I'd definitely question some of the margins of error this gives you! Co'mon, you are a trainee pilot! What's with the constant failure, especially at landing!

 

b4f872e5c8adfce2f291551c51e4e99c.jpg

 

I do also want to comment the simulators minimum specs. A Nvidia GTX 970? Seriously? I have a GTX 745 myself, and this ran the simulator perfectly fine at 20-25fps, which to be fair is what a lot of users are reporting anyway! Dovetail did move a lot of the simulator, allowing it to access all cores on the CPU, x64 bit giving it more than 4GB of RAM and more of a push to the GPU. Dovetail Games, you may want to reconsider the MINIMUM specifications.

 

 

Otherwise, I think that wraps up what I have to say about this simulator thus far! I see a lot of potential in it right now, and I hope to see Dovetail do well as time goes on and feature progress. For an early access title, what we got is pretty much what we should have expected from Dovetail Games, and hopefully this will be a learning experience for both user and developer as ideas are thrown around features that we want are added to the simulator! Hopefully this should also start to show us a new golden age of flight simulation, with new competition coming from the ever growing X-Plane 11 community, DCS World and their combat inclined users, and even Aerofly FS appearing more prominent with its abilities starting to be shown - 2017 will be an interesting year for the Flight Simulator community!

 

My PC Specs:

- Dovetail Games Flight Sim World

- Windows 10 Professional

- 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor

- 16 GB RAM

- NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 745

Check out my YouTube Channel for FSX, X-Plane and other simulator content!

https://www.youtube.com/c/Drawyah/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Draw,

Per your "For an early access title, what we got is pretty much what we should have expected from Dovetail Games". I'm not certain as to what I should have expected but I was hoping for a simulator with graphics equal to those of MS Flight. It seems that they've focused on the aircraft while offering scenery that looks very much like that of FS9.

Jim F.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Draw,

Per your "For an early access title, what we got is pretty much what we should have expected from Dovetail Games". I'm not certain as to what I should have expected but I was hoping for a simulator with graphics equal to those of MS Flight. It seems that they've focused on the aircraft while offering scenery that looks very much like that of FS9.

Jim F.

If you watched their previous videos and announcements, they were talking only really about aircraft for well, all of it. Only once was scenery really talked about and that was revealing ORBX FTX Global was included in the simulator. The aircraft got all the love.

 

And I assume nothing but 3D cockpits, I hate them! lol

Yup! Only 3D cockpits with this one. I personally like them, but I do know the reasons why people stay clear of them as I used to be the same on my old Dell Vostro 200 on FS2004! :D

Check out my YouTube Channel for FSX, X-Plane and other simulator content!

https://www.youtube.com/c/Drawyah/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Currently downloading now but, as noted previously, if this is as it now seems to be - pimped FSX code with an ORBX makeover, why no jets? It's ludicrous to have a sim that covers the whole world but no means of travelling across it other than a 200kn puddle jumper.
Vern.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey, you leave us puddle-jumpers out of this :-)
i5-10600K @ 5.0 GHz, Gigabyte Z490M motherboard, RTX 2080 Super 8GB, 64GB DDR4 3200MHz, ASUS ROG PG278Q 1440p monitor, CH Products Fighterstick, Pro Throttle and Pro Pedals, Track IR 5, Oculus Quest 2, Windows 10 64-bit
Link to comment
Share on other sites

... but I was hoping for a simulator with graphics equal to those of MS Flight. It seems that they've focused on the aircraft while offering scenery that looks very much like that of FS9.

Jim F.

 

I dropped all my hopes for this simulator when I learned they weren't going to use the MS Flight engine, with its superior scenery engine and improved flight models (the latter overlooked by many).

 

Scenery does look like a souped up FS9/FSX, and I am certainly not abandoning XP11 for DTG FSW !

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great to see some early video/screenshots of FSW, thanks Drawyah - could you add your system specs to the review please?

My first thoughts were that FSW looks like a serious challenger to P3D, which is very good news. (I wonder if the add-ons could be migrated or converted between FSX, P3D and FSW?) I agree that the lack of airliners (so far) is puzzling, maybe a big announcement will be made closer to launch? I think the major selling point to the Steam gamers out there would be a default A380, which would surely do for FSW what the default 747 did for MSFS.

Tim Wright "The older I get, the better I was..."

Xbox Series X, Asus Prime H510M-K, Intel Core i5-11400F 4.40GHz, 16Gb DDR4 3200, 2TB WD Black NVME SSD, 1TB Samsung SATA SSD

NVidia RTX3060 Ti 8Gb, Logitech Flight Yoke System, CH Pro Pedals, Acer K272HL 27", Windows 11 Home x64

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great to see some early video/screenshots of FSW, thanks Drawyah - could you add your system specs to the review please?

My first thoughts were that FSW looks like a serious challenger to P3D, which is very good news. (I wonder if the add-ons could be migrated or converted between FSX, P3D and FSW?) I agree that the lack of airliners (so far) is puzzling, maybe a big announcement will be made closer to launch? I think the major selling point to the Steam gamers out there would be a default A380, which would surely do for FSW what the default 747 did for MSFS.

PC specs have been included - My graphics card is supposedly below spec, but worked with no problems averaging 20-25 FPS worldwide, something most people have reported anyway via Steam.

 

I'm also a little disappointed nobody told me about my audio levels being a mess on the stream! I even asked in the first flight if it all sounded okay, nobody said that they couldn't hear the aircraft and some static from a loose connection. [emoji14]

Check out my YouTube Channel for FSX, X-Plane and other simulator content!

https://www.youtube.com/c/Drawyah/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dont see it. That was true for Flight School.

 

Only going by what others have reported and certainly on initialising the "unpacking" boxes very similar to FS9 and FSX.

 

Anyhow, did the first tutorial flight and I certainly don't dislike what I see. Will explore later on a bit more. One thing I do agree with other views is the LOD needs work. Almost as if they've applied train sim draw distance forgetting you can see much further at 5000 feet! Could also be why no high altitude jets included...

 

Still at worst seems like £20 for a better and more stable GA version of FSX, at best it could become a classic.

Vern.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Founder

I got in a few hours flying FSW and so far it looks promising. Unfortunately, my PC is below spec but FSW was smart enough to automatically put my graphics settings low enough that the sim stills runs very smoothly with good frame rates. I just know I'm not seeing it in its fully glory.

 

Do remember that this is an early access release, not a completed product. Comments like "needs work" don't help much; comments on a specific issue are going to be more useful to the developer. You don't have to give up your current favorite sim to also use FSW and competition is a good thing for everyone so let's hope FSW is successful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the nature of "early access" is a subject being debated at length over at Avsim - just how far along the development trail is the product? Would probably have cleared up confusion and expectations if DTG had made it clear what's pretty much set in stone and what's up for further improvement and community input.

 

One oddity I observed earlier, having both a Thrustmaster flight stick and Xbox 360 controller connected to the PC but the former in use by FSW. On attempting to take off from Skardu I stalled and crashed which sent the Xbox controller on the desk into force feedback meltdown. Startled the cat and induced severe chiding from the wife.

 

However, in the options I can see no line to enable or disable force feedback on any of the connected devices, or well, at least it isn't obvious.

Vern.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah yes, whenever I feel like watching some drama, I go to Avsim :D

 

Other than that, they do have a point.

 

Well, not getting into the whole "them and us" nonsense but there seems to be several degrees more of discussion (mostly rational) over at Avsim as opposed to here. In fact it's so quiet on this board, either everybody is playing FSW with nothing to report (good or bad) or the FS dot com crowd ain't bothering with it... :)

Vern.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, not getting into the whole "them and us" nonsense but there seems to be several degrees more of discussion (mostly rational) over at Avsim as opposed to here. In fact it's so quiet on this board, either everybody is playing FSW with nothing to report (good or bad) or the FS dot com crowd ain't bothering with it... :)

 

Regrettably the whole of flightsim.com has become very quiet in recent times, not just this forum.

 

One explanatory factor might be that many developers seem to adopt Avsim as their preferred platform to interact with "the community". It appears to be a self-reinforcing mechanism: they choose Avsim because it is more popular and because of their presence it becomes even more popular.

 

I'm a member of Avsim too (just don't participate that much), but honestly, some Avsimmers really take this flightsimming business far too seriously. Not to mention names, a certain Boomer a.k.a. Heavy Metal Driver comes to mind :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One explanatory factor might be that many developers seem to adopt Avsim as their preferred platform to interact with "the community". It appears to be a self-reinforcing mechanism: they choose Avsim because it is more popular and because of their presence it becomes even more popular.

 

Yes I noticed DTG are quite active over there albeit in a controlled manner but would appear to have elected to have no involvement here.

Vern.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

After a CTD trying to play last night and other aspects which don't gel quite right, I'm seriously starting to think "refund" now.

 

Yes I know all the arguments about early access and if it was a company other than DTG I'd tough it out to see if things improve. However the cynic in me can't help but feel the timing of the FSW release in its current state wasn't just a quick cash grab to balance the books, after the relative flop TSW was for the company.

Vern.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...