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Microsoft Flight Simulator X Release Date Announced


Tom Eagles

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It's coming !!

The official release of Microsoft Flight Simulator is October 17th 2006.

however before buying this I will wait to see what the production version reviews are like. Because so far the Demo reviews have not been so good.

If it fails to match where we are now at with fs2004 COF then i most probably will not make the switch.

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I would be inclined to agree Tom. I have tried the demo on my system and it was awful :vv:

We also tried it on a friends "beast" of a system and I can't report much improvement :confused2:

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I have been following the blogs of the development team and have been flying the demo. So far I am in agreement...nice eye candy, interesting for gen aviation and the airline folks and attractive for the newbie but I dont see any reason to switch yet for soaring or my Golden Wings interests.

With 3rd party development over the next year Im sure that eventually I will switch but Im more interested in Condor as something new to try right now.

Lets keep this thread going...I am very interested in what everyone else thinks about FSX.

Harry

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Unless Eric Cardin updates CCS to work in FSX ( I don't think it is a priority right now) soaring in the new sim is mute (at least as far as ridge soaring is concerned), as I could find no sign of it in the demo. Then there is the problem of getting the recorder/viewer, and the Cambridge GPS to work. Who knows when or if that will happen. I hope the developers will update the required software but who really knows? And then there is the problem of dealing with a new operating system (Vista) which FSX has to have if you are going to get everything out of FSX. Most people will also have to update their computers. I suspect it will take a year to get things up to speed. Anyway, I don't see any urgency to rush out and buy it if soaring is your objective.

I think Condor would be a good way to go for online competition. Silent Wings is also a possibility but I don't know much about it.

I am also investigating X-Plane. Austin is going to update the ridge lift in the sim and it has scenery for most of the world. The lift (thermals, and ridge lift) is world wide. The required flight recording and navagation instrumentation is also being looked at.

Cheers, :smiles:

Don

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First I was actually surprised, that the demo ran pretty smooth (usually 20 fps in medium high setting) on my two years old rig with a general purpose graphics card (AMD 2400+/768MB/GF4MX440). Then I found a lot of minor bugs, e.g. the control bar in the ultralight moving in the opposite direction in virtual cockpit view :???: .

Then it became worse when I saw, that most weather conditions (except fair weather and clear sky) rendered the virtual cockpit useless because of some advanced graphics modes that my card doesn't support. The beaver VC is not useable at all :cry: . Well there is something in the readme, though... When you press "G" at holding point, the Baron retracts the landing gear automatically after take-off :lol:.

The active-camera-like cockpit movement appears quite nice, but makes orientation more diffcult than in reality when the g-forces and rotation is missing (saw this with active camera already before). The visual quality of the VC's is better than ever. The new view controls have to be trained first. Whichs is the key that lets you look straightforward again. It's no longer space-bar. The moving ground objects are nice. Cloud rendering seems to be improved. Weather engine still has no controls for thermal conditions. After some playing around with weather conditions and seasons, the hills behind Princess Julienne Int. were covered with carribean sea water (textures) all of a sudden. Video recording and replay is as crappy as usual. In instant replay aircraft configurations (gear, flaps) are still not replayed as they were in previous flight. Force feedback is useless as before.

Seems that old thermal scenery (like Thermiek) still works! Cumulus! timings however doen't work properly anymore because minutes are not considered, just hrs. :vv: Could be that just the minute of day variable has moved but I'm afraid, that there will be no BGL SDK anymore since MS has already announced to stop support with the previous release. When I load my home airport (self made with FSC) I crash to something in mid-air in its proximity. So older BGL scenery might not work flawlessly.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed, the improvements are pretty subtle (which of course may be an indicative for the high level already achived by fs9), while substantial deficies are still exisiting. Might be that most improvements are in visual effects, which require at least an up-to-date graphics card.

Cheers,

Peter

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well to be honest the last few weeks i have been flying almost constantly in condor, in fact the only reason i use MSFS now is to test anything we are developing for it. The 22 has gone on temporary hold while a few rush jobs for new aircraft for condor are being developed.

There is a shake up of the board and restructuring of the forums that i have been asked to do. This will give us an opportunity to explore all avenues.

anyway enough of this...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi all

man has it been a while since i last talked here...

Anyway, i have preordered FSX about 3 months ago and it originally said that they thought 2 November would be release, so i am glad to here that it is sooner!!!

About the comments on the demo, i am also with www.hovercontrol.com and over there some of the members are actually with the beta testing team and apparently the demo is very poor compared to the real thing... a main point from all of their comments (apart from comments about helicopters) is that the real thing is MUCH better on FPS that the demo is, which for most of us will be good news.

As soon as i have received my copy of FSX i will inform you guys how releastic the soaring is... what i will do is i will go out (on a saturday, thats my gliding day) and go gliding the whole day out at my gliding club in drury (near auckland, NZ) and as soon as i get home, i will play FSX and see how releastic it is. Now, if only someone can have a PW-6 or PW-5 made for FSX i will be able to compare flight dynamics as well (yes, im still in training)...

Untill then, just keep going with FS9

Cheers, :cheers2:

Paul

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Since it seems to have been out several weeks in the US. Anybody done any soaring in FSX yet? What's the aerotow mode like?

Reading around the forums I get the general impression that's it's probably worth sticking with MSFS9 for a year or two -as you really need a high end machine (expensive) to run FSX in all it's glory.

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well from what i hear, unless u are into general aviation forget FSX aerotow tug takes off flies in straight line u decide on release it flys off into the distance, the rope is as stupid as in the demo.

i for one WILL NOT be upgrading to FSX i have a system more than capable of running it, but will not be buying FSX.

Condor is for me by far the best sim out there for virtual gliding, anyone seriously interested in virtual soaring should take a look at it.

condor home page

Then have a look through the forums there are plenty of videos made by condor owners themselves not the development team.

from ask13's to fox aeros std class 15m class 18m class open class, lots of new scenery, wave, ridge, no need for file downloads such as slope files or bgl's just simply set the weather thermal types cloud base wind speed and off ya go.

I am taking part in serveral of many online competitions and have never come across any bad behaviour, yes its competitive but to be in the same thermal with as many as 20 other gliders is amazing.

i will be posting some screenshots in the condor forums.

as for the asw22 and nimbus they are on hold while we do a rush job getting some new aircraft ready for condor.

:excl:

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  • 2 weeks later...

FSX is a bloody lemon , NONE of the stuff that was promised has occurred in FSX . they reinvent the wheel with their pathetic attempt at ATC where they can't begin to come close to VATSIM.

The Glider towing is an absolute joke ( I'm close to a breakthrough ) I hope in that department.

The so called wing flex looks like the damn things will fall off, There is NO WAY I'll be spending upwards of $2000 to upgrade my hardware to run it properly.

There is at least 2-3 Years left in FS 9 especially when I'm part of a team producing scenery like this IPB Image

and this

IPB Image

IPB Image

FSX can kiss my furry little behind.

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