New MS Flight screenshots posted

[ETomlin]

Microsoft Flight has had a handful of new screenshots up at their Flight webpage. Im happy to post that there are 4 brand new screenshots that are gorgeous and make me believe that this sim may possibly be something worth flying considering eye candy alone.

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

Some observations:

The autogen looks much better and seems like its scale may be improved. Maybe it's just sharper/higher res. Not sure.

The autogen foliage is much more widely destributed, meaning that I can now see autogen trees as far as the screenshot spreads to the horizon. Yes, finally we seem to be getting rid of the localized autogen trees just in the area we're flying in.

The sky/atmosphere appears to be much more realistic in tone and ambience.

The ground textures are high res and the color is finally something to be proud of. I HATE FSX's color pallette. Let's hope that the cartoon look of FSX is replaced with more subdued colors like that of the screenshots shown or, why not just hire Orbx ? :-) They know how to nail the colors just right!

[XOrionFE]

Hmmm, doesnt look that much different to me.   And the trees still look dreadful.   Your right,  Orbx is doing it right!

Scott

[Kennair]

Well I can't tell much difference either however reading the latest spiel I'm feeling a bit more confident that "MS Flight" will continue the FS experience as we know it but with updated hardware capabilities.  We may yet get the FSX we all hoped for???  Hopefully similar to the Vista to Win7 leap?

Ken.

[ETomlin]

Seriously, you guys dont see the improvements that I listed? I think that may be because you could possibly be so used to flying a pig dressed up for prom-aka, FSX all dressed up with GEX, REX, Orbx, etc. and forgot how dreadful FSX looks out of the box.

Why do I hate FSX? Let's see. The colors are horrible. The autogen having no alpha fade and popping into view visibly as I approach an airport's runway. Autogen trees way too big and horribly placed. A visible area of autogen out a few miles from my current position (again, autogen popping into view). Lack of proper engine start logic that ignors hardware input logic. Oh yeah, performance for anything less than an i7.....on and on and the horse begs for me to lay the whip down as he's tired of being beaten.

From what I see in the latest screenshots, Flight will be a very nice improvment over FSX. If you havent seen it, take a look at the "Flight Vs. FSX" comparison thread over at Avsim. There's also a video on Youtube. It will illustrate some of the changes that have been made as an Avsim member took the time to find the screen shot locations and then recreate the same scenes in FSX, to compare to Flight. No contest here, Flight takes the cake (for me).

[NeoMorph]

I don't mind the colour pallete... mind you I'm partially colour blind heh.

What needs to be done is fix this texture pop-in... I hate having a nice clear approach and the someone flicks a switch and I'm in fog that comes out of nowhere. Why they can't fade it in I have no clue.

Oh and I'm sorry Eric but there is no cake... The cake is a lie! 

[matta757]

Any idea what the expected ETA of Flight will be?

Matt

[jskibo]

Flight?  Or the second or third patch that will make it useful? 

Remember, at Microsoft Quality is Job 1.4

[jackpilot]

The later the better ..we have enough on our plate now and I am not eager to start back to square two or three to run the never ending rat race.
My humble opinion as a Flyer first, builder second.

Sorry I'm grumpy...Big Snow storm outside!

[NeoMorph]

Doubt it will be released tbh... Remember the world ends in 2012 according to the Mayans. Then again it might mean that we screw up the Olympics in the UK that year heh.

But it's right that Microshaft release stuff way before it is ready most of the time... We are just beta testers that have to pay for the privilege. Windows 98 anyone? W98 Second Edition worked OK. Vista anyone? Windows 7 (Vista Second Edition) works fine.

Problem with MS is if a project is running late they throw more programmers at it... Too many cooks spoil the broth.

[ETomlin]

Finally got a chance to find the YT video comparing FSX with Flight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK0z5ISTyew

[XOrionFE]

That definitely puts a better perspective on it Eric.   Thank you for posting this.   

Scott

[ETomlin]

Yeah, thanks Scott. One thing that I thought was interesting is that over at the Avsim forum, someone familiar with the area that the Maule is flying in (one of the last shots with it over the coast in a gentle right bank), made the comment that the new Flight screen shot shows much more what it's really like. The comparison? The fact that the FSX shot shows a town there, but in reality its pretty sparse. I think it's in the same thread that this video was posted in. FSX vs. Flight, at Avsim.com.

Now, since there's some folks that in all fairness dont believe it will be much better than FSX, I say that we should all try to support this project. There's no one forcing us to switch from FSX to this new sim. Heck, I use FS9/2004 to this day and all but hate FSX for so many reasons. However, I have been around the block a time or two on FS releases for a period of over 12 years now and it always seems that, as others have pointed out, every other release is much better than the one before it. Meaning, FS98 was a Gold-Standard sim for its time. Then 2000 was crap, much like FSX as it introduced tons of new things but it just didnt work well. Pig in a dress so to speak. Then FS2002 came out and it improved on the FS2000 and was easier to run. FS9- well to me it is the current gold standard for add-ons and performance although some are now getting great performance. However, the bugs are still there. I believe that Flight will be a massive improvement over FSX. Besides, the fact that Flight is coming has put pressure on XPlane and hopefully Aerosoft will push forward with their sim too, although to be honest I lost interest after not seeing any progress at all at their forum over the last year. This could be a simmer's fantasy come true guys. Think about FS98 and the transition to FS2000. At the same time we had Looking Glass Studio's Flight Unlimited and FI 2, as well as Fly! and although they both eventually went away, it was great to have different sims to push the devs into better products. Did you guys know that Fly! was the platform that PMDG started on? Think about if it had never come along, we may not have those great MSFS PMDG products.

In the end, Im just saying let's do what we can to support Flight. If it is horrible, then keep using what you have now.

[astron]

Hey Eric,my old friend,im sorry but im going to have to disagree with you on some of this subject,fsx does not really have any problems,but you have to have the machine to run it, atleast a jacked up i7 920, or an i7 965 extreme such as im using,and some good ram,and it will fly beautifully. but you also have to find all the right settings to make it work, but in my opinion,there is no comparsion between fs9 and fsx, fsx is truly the better program,and offers much more then fs9, for instance water that looks real,curvature of the earth at altitude and many other things. im no software designer by any means,but i would have to assume that the more things you incorporate in to a program the more computer resources its going to take to run that program. but im with you on the new ms flight i hope it truly is even better than fsx and maybe they can find a way to make it run without over taxing the computer, who knows i guess we will wait and see.

take care for now,Tom

[ETomlin]

Hey Tom

No, I agree that over-all FSX brings much more to the table- absolutely. But it's the things that it does WRONG that make me hate it (almost, not quite). Just for clarification, my list of things that make FSX unpalletable are:

1) The Engine Start Logic is hosed when using hardware to start the LJ45 correctly. No problem doing this in FS9
2) The color pallete is way wrong for my part of the country, in fact, all of the South East USA. We DONT have yellow and orange trees, grass, and fields here. Anywhere :-)
3) The alpha fade (or lack of) for Autogen. It drives me crazy to be approaching a runway for landing and see stuff contstanly popping into view between me and a few miles out, with no autogen past that area. The circle effect is what I call it.
4) The way the aircraft slides on the pavement when landing (sideways). For some reason, this doesnt happen in FS9.


But again, I agree that when ran on a great system (which by the way, the MOST  impressive FSX rig Ive seen is John Venema's of Orbx).

Bring on Flight! and fix these issues. I really think they have- if the rest of the world has the same nice overhalls as what's being shown in Hawaii (just watch the FSX vs. Flight comparison video above) then I think we finally have a sim that's come of age and I will gladly pay to upgrade for it :-)

[jskibo]

2) We DONT have yellow and orange trees, grass, and fields here. Anywhere :-)

Florida has Orange trees.....


.....oh wait, you were talking color not flavor

[astron]

Hey Eric, you are no doubt,right about the stock scenery and the auto gen that come with fsx it really does suck no matter how hard you try to make it look good, the auto gen has been the most annoying thing when flying over it. im using the utx and also some photo scenery in certain places it all looks better then what you get stock, but im waiting for the day when one of these super smart guys in the scenery field,can come up with some type of 3D scenery,that looks good all the way to the ground, who knows maybe some day.

talk to ya later,Tom

[NeoMorph]

Texture pop-in has to be the worst thing I have seen in FSX... It's soooooo offputting to say the least... I had that fog thing happen again tonight (where I come into land and it is all clear and then WHAM!... everything is whited out).

Have to say that Flight scenery looks the business in the video. That bit with the plane over the flood plain looks so darned sweet.

One thing though... are they using FSX code as a base or is this coded from scratch?

[Garys]

Thats the big discsussion over at avsim right now but no one knows for sure. All I know is, if they can do too fsx as they did to Vista then this should be a very nice sim. Personally I think they are using enhancements based on the ESP engine and as long as we dont have to spend a fortune on hardware to run it, I believe I will finally make the leap from fs9 because like Eric I like what Im seeing so far.

[Emesis]

Here's the way to avoid those pesky autogen popups.

http://www.youtube.com/user/EmesiS?feature=mhum

Practice your ILS approaches 

[NeoMorph]

Hehe.. I sacked one of the AI ATC peeps yesterday. Nearly put me into a mid-air incident as a Cessna flew right across the front of my ATR 72.

I think the ATC guy needs to practice his ILS approaches as well... either that or the Cessna pilot does. Considering it was IFR rules he shouldn't have been around anyway.

[Kennair]

Well while we're all anguishing over whether MS Flight is going to do the business or not lets keep a close eye on Lockheed's Prepar3d.  Really this has more potential to fulfill the expert simmers environment than MS.  Already has multi-channel support out of the box along with continued engineering upgrades.  I'll still keep a close eye on Flight but Prepar3d is already supported and already here.

Ken.

[Bob Reed]

Well while we're all anguishing over whether MS Flight is going to do the business or not lets keep a close eye on Lockheed's Prepar3d.  Really this has more potential to fulfill the expert simmers environment than MS.  Already has multi-channel support out of the box along with continued engineering upgrades.  I'll still keep a close eye on Flight but Prepar3d is already supported and already here.

Ken.

Links? Price?

[jskibo]

Isn't that the product Lockheed bought from Microsoft (the industrial version of MSFS)?  Don't think the LMT product is a retail product Bob.......

[Emesis]

Bob,

The link is in his post.

http://www.prepar3d.com/

[Kennair]

As Emesis mentioned the link is in my post (the word "prepar3d" is the link).  Yes it is a re-engineered ESP which was the commercial version of FSX however it is available as a full retail product to any and all users.  The price however is aimed at commercial users at $499 USD, however given the cost of other high end sim software like PM and Sim-A this is minuscule.

Let me just clarify that I have no affiliations with Lockheed-Martin or Prepar3d, just an interested sim user constantly on the lookout for better products.

Ken.