If you have any thoughts or rantings on the recent MS Flight announcement, put em here. The biggest issue I have with the game is the lack of an SDK and locking out addon developers and hobbyists. I really don't care about all the coins and crap made to appeal to the casual crowd (in fact, that could be a good thing long term). Given they've spent time on eye candy and the VFR crowd, I'm OK with that too. Releasing sections of the world at time... hmph, fine... as long as I can get them from ORBX, which I won't be able to. Every major developer that has stated comments on Flight all has said basically the same thing: John Venema of ORBX had this to say in a thread on the FTX forums:
Robert Randazzo of PMDG had this to say on the PMDG forums: So far, every developer that's comment has echoed the same thoughts in one form or another. Tom Allensworth of AVSIM had this to say in response to a post: In my mind, it reminds me a lot of when Sony unleashed the New Game Enhancements (NGE) on Star Wars Galaxies, an MMO that I was playing at the time. They took an "Open World" game and tried to chase the success of World of Warcraft by completely revamping and simplifying the game, knowing full well they would upset their core community of players. If you were a subscriber at the time NGE wasn't made for you and they knew they would piss you off... kind of like what MS is doing with Flight (they are expecting the reaction). SWG is now closed. Sometime after the NGE was implemented, the president of SOE had this to say: May Microsoft one day say the same.
Yeah there has been a little bit of a stir up regarding what the genre really is, but at the end of the day It is going to cost nothing for one to find out for them selves. So I can not understand one little bit why the entire community is up in arms over it, yes I can understand the after market houses being upset that they cant get their hands into the cookie jar but lets face it, it has been a free ride on the back of a Commercial product with no royalties up until now. For me I will download Flight I will try it and only then will I reserve judgement. at the end of the day if it is a bomb it cost me some bandwidth nothing more. Cant loose.
Yeah. I'll give it a spin myself. The more I've thought about it, the only thing I'm really upset with is the locking down of the sim and the removal of the SDK. With no SDK, it means no automated pireps for Flight... no vatsim, no alot of things. Anything that we like that plugs into it is verboten. It also means no freeware. I think Microsoft could have accomplished their goals in other ways without doing that. Lots of games have addon/mod communities and most of those game designers realize that those aftermarket communities sell games. Look at Skyrim for a recent example: game came out in Nov with the mod tools set for a release in Q1 2012. Bethesda knows that the PC community likes to release mods for their games and they choose to support that. Microsoft wants to create an app store. Fine, I can deal with that. Do what Apple does with their app-store then... hell, do what Microsoft itself does for the indie games for xbox live: you have to pay for a dev license around $100 and then it still has to go through their store (even if it's free). Apple does this as well. Furthermore, you can jailbreak your iOS device, but you lose your support when you do. I think Flight probably still has some potential, but only if some of the community issues are addressed. I'm OK with them trying to appeal to the more casual crowd, but I don't think they need to do that at the expense of their hard-core community. It's a bit of cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Sims have always been a hard thing to sell, you're looking at a very small market. So, MS have decided to open up to a bigger 'instant point and shoot' market, I can't blame them. As for the community being up in arms with MS then I ask them to case their collective minds back to FSX. A lot of people didn't even purchase the product before making their minds up, instead sticking with FS2004. Now put whatever reasons you want for this, but if you don't give financial support (especially to a product with already a limited market) then the marketing men and simply going to change tack and put their money into something that will sell. I like the idea of everything going through an MS market place but I'm with Nick with the XBox idea. The current Flight marketing model cuts out a lot of solo devs which have given us decent payware. Freeware is just straight out of the window! The SDK and it's ability to allow community support is what has made MSFS and allow it's to be alive so long. Without it I doubt it would have gone past 3 or 4 versions. The LM sim looks to be the way to go, when I'm coming back from my flight sabatical then it's going to be what I'm looking at. What price are we looking at Nick?
The more I think about Flight, the less hostile I am to it. That it potentially opens up the sim to more casual folks isn't a bad thing. I can understand Microsoft wanting to generate more revenue with the product, but I don't know that they ever took a loss on Flight Sim. The biggest issue for me by far is the lack of an SDK and closing out/off the aftermarket community. Without addons, I don't play FS. Nobody wants to use FSX default. We want to use it as a sim platform and extend it... and not all of that for commercial purposes. There has to be an SDK for Flight, but the question is will it be available publically? Right now the answer seems to be no. That's their biggest problem that I see. Even if there is an SDK, then the question is what about freeware and our ability to mod the product. I'm fine with them having a store, but what if I develop something and want to give it away? Let me buy into a developer program at not too much of a fee, get access to the SDK & publish on an MS store and I think Flight will do OK. Without that, I'm a little less confident. The LM version of ESP is available right now for $10 US per month. The commercial license is $500, but you don't need that as an individual not engaged in commercial purposes. The $10/month is a "developer" license and by far the largest questions surrounding Prepar3D are licensing. The posts I've seen from LM state that they are happy for ANYONE to use the product at the $10/month. Rumor is that when Flight is released, LM will be able to license their product for "home" use... but if you are using the sim for simulation & not as a "game" then it's all good right now basically. The performance issues with XP10 and lack of content (ie, airports!) take it out of the running for me. There is AeroFly, but while it looks pretty isn't enough of a Sim yet and doesn't cover much of the world. For me, that leaves two major contenders... Flight and Prepar3D. Of the two, right now Prepar3D is the more interesting product and seems to fit more with how I sim. Might change in the future when Flight is actually released, but I'm definitely wait and see. Of course FSX isn't going anywhere... but its not being actively developed either. Prepar3D is like the next service pack for FSX... and with what's on their roadmap, should really improve on it in the future. BTW, great to hear from you again Mark. Hope life is treating you well.
Life is good Nick, hope the same can be said for you Work has me coding on a semi-regular basis now and added me to the MSDN subscription which is cool. Still busy working away though, booked up until mid March already! Free time is tied up with Wurm Online, terrible grahpics and strangely additive game. I must admit when it was first described to me I thought it sounded boring but ended up hooked on the trial.
Microsoft has published the release date of FLIGHT: February 29th. You can read the full announcement on the Flight website at: ww.microsoft.com/games/flight I guess those of us not in beta (and I'm not), will finally get to take it for a spin. At least its free. Dunno about you lot, but I can't say I'm real interested in puttering around the Hawaiian skies myself. If they had a south east AK expansion pack for purchase, I'd think about it... but that's probably about it right at the moment.
I will be D/l'ing it to give it a run just for the testing of it, see if the flight model is ok. In the last web vid there was a quote that flight is more about the focus of the experience of flight more than the act of operating an aeroplane.. ???? Does that mean it will be a full on pilot/visual experience or just eye candy wow... But in saying that FSX has gone the same way, seems as long as it all looks awesome, planes are HiDef it dont matter if that big multi engined rig has the cessna default flight file, it just has to look great.
Yeah. I'm going to DL it, just to see what it looks & feels like. Not planning on buying any of their DLC for it though... and I can't believe they're charging $10 US for a P51 that has no cockpit. I mean, seriously? We haven't seen an addon plane in years that came without a VC... its pretty much standard now. And $20 US for the rest of the Hawaiian islands? meh! Look at what we pay for the ORBX stuff and what area it covers. At least the demo is free.. *shrug*
The wait is over. Download at http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/# I'm going to start my DL when I get home 2night. Been reading the avsim forum this afternoon on my laptop though... opinions have stayed pretty much the same... time to go formulate my own.
This seems to be a really fair and balanced review of Flight: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/microsoft-flight/1219653p1.html
Oh, if you download Flight and want to add me, my gamertag is: eyeIIeye (the two II are capital i's).
Haven't got it yet, my broadband is crap atm... Still keen to give it go though. Dunno why everyone is upset about flight? not one did MS say it was a Flight Sim. Looks nice with all the utoobs coming out.
I've found it reasonably enjoyable thus far. It's missing things like AI aircraft and ATC and the like. It's not as big of an improvement in the graphics department as I was expecting, but it's certainly a slight step up from FSX where that's concerned. My biggest gripe is what I said before it came out: lack of an sdk & being a completely closed platform. I think the DLC prices are a bit high and I'm still not keen on flying around Hawaii... but, it's still kinda fun. As a side note, I have some friends that have a passing interest in flight sims.... and I haven't been able to get them interested in Flight at all.
So the next expansion for Flight is something a little closer to home. Color me happy! https://news.microsoftflight.com/blogs/news/archive/2012/03/05/dlc-sneak-peek-journey-to-alaska.aspx
Just as an FYI, Lockheed Martin has lowered the price of Prepar3D. It is now $200 for a commercial license (instead of $500) and they've added an academic license at $50. Here is their forum announcement that helps to detail the news if you're interested: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=830 Here is an avsim thread discussing the changes: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/367274-prepar3d-49-what-weve-been-asking-for/
Microsoft Flight is now available on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/203850/ The DLC is also available on Steam, with a nice bundle discount. The bundle includes the cockpitless P51 (which I would NEVER buy), but ends up knocking 5 bucks off the Maule & Hawaiian Islands deal. Get all that for $30... That I might consider picking up. They just had Age of Empires Online (which I alpha tested) and I picked up all the DLC for that real cheap... so hopefully Steam continues to have discounts on Flight DLC in the future. That would be nice... even though I'm pretty well set on moving to Prepar3D at this point, no reason I can't have two sims.
