No that's not the reason for this poll, we were just wondering why after all those posts on all forums nobody seems to discuss it anymore.

....

It really is a a great sim, but clearly right now not for our customers.

I was curious as anybody else and invested a couple of hours to find out what's possibly in for me. The only substantial progress (compared to "legacy"-FSX) I could identify is the smooth operation without fiddling around wiht cryptic setting deep in configuration files, all the time running the risk to get unwanted side effects with 3rd party addons.

Alas, meanwhile my FSX is running smoothly as well, on a much higher content level and degree of realism, and I dare to say, that even the detail quality of the visuals is better then in MSF.

So eventually, my conclusion is that there is nothing in for me and so after the mentioned couple of hours I was through with it. No reason to bother furhter. It's still on my HD but it was already several times close to removal.

Edit: Detail quality includes a couple of add-ons for FSX. MSF looks great on a first glance, however, if you look sharply, then you will find out that the visual depiction in MSF quickly looses fine details in the distance and the actual number of details seems to be less, than in FSX, regardless of installed add-ons. It reminds me in a way to a too-much compressed JPEG picture, which in a first glance also looks great, but after a closer look you find yourself unable to identify smaller details (like persons in the back, car license plates and so on). MS does certainly a good job here as this deficiency is really subtle.

Having had a bit of a rant at Flight in my previous post, I think that maybe I shouldn't judge too harshly. Yes, I still wouldn't get Flight for the reasons I've already stated, but maybe being more arcade like isn't such a bad thing.

I've seen this mentioned either in this forum, or over at avsim (can't remember now!), but if being more like an arcade game attracts a wider audience, how can that be a bad thing? Sure it doesn't benefit us 'seasoned simmers', but if Flight can take a group of people who have never flown a sim before to the point where say 10 out of 100, or 100 out of 1000 people decide that they would like to take simming further into a more involved program such as FSX, X Plane or P3D, then surely that's a good thing right? Something that would spur continued development into this hobby of ours?

So I think that we can continue to have a go at Flight because to us as 'seasoned simmers', it does seem to be a step backwards, but at the same time it could also be that this sim is the one that could carry our hobby through into the next generation of simulators. This is something I think I will be keeping in mind, every time I see a new rant about Flight.

I'm one of the currently 6 people who voted "Yes, at least once a week" and also Yes for DLC purchases. While I am dissappointed that we did not get an FS11 from MS just like everyone else, I was determined to see if Flight could still add something to my hobby of PC flying. It turns out that for me, it does ONE thing VERY well. And it is something that I didn't know I would value before Flight showed it to me.

It is: just hopping in for a short multiplayer session, flying with random people. Usually, I will find people who agree to just go hopping from field to field. Some formation flying on the way, some chatting about random stuff. I also have a bunch of multiplayer "friends" that I meet if I see they're online.

Flight, for me, is good to do some flying.

FSX, for me, is good to do a proper flight.

In FSX, I need ages to set everything up. Before each FSX session, I adjust controller profile, TrackIR profile (wearing a silly hat for TrackIR), in-game graphics profile. I make a flight plan, adjust fuel etc. By the time I am actually sitting in the cold and dark pit ready to start the flight, I could have done a short flight in Flight and landed on another nearby airfield.

After posting this, I will only have about 2 hours time left in this day. I will jump into Flight, hope to meet a buddy and if not will fly with random people. On sunday, I will probably have a lot more time. It will be the Airbus X then. Or maybe something else in FSX because I had a very, very nice flight with the Bus just yesterday.

I have not bought planes without cockpit. I got the P-51 for free for the beta, it's installed and I have not flown it even once. I will buy Alaska, but will also buy the Extended Airbus X and more FSX things in the future.

No that's not the reason for this poll, we were just wondering why after all those posts on all forums nobody seems to discuss it anymore. Of course as we do not aim at FLIGHT at this moment it was to be expected that we would not see a massive amount of people using that sim on our forums, but I find the results so far to be rather surprising. It seems to point to the fact that even people who invested in add-ons are not using it much/often. It would be very useful for us to fully understand why.

It really is a a great sim, but clearly right now not for our customers.

Well Mathijs... I can only speak for myself...

I was one of the ones who said that I dont use Flight anymore, but yes to buying an addon (Rest of Hawaii)

I did it because I was curious, and because I actually like the way the planes handle when you fly them. I also like the weather in Flight, but the limitations speak for themselves. You cannot fly everywhere, and I like to fly everywhere - from Lord Howe Island, over Andras Field to Anchorage - and even Dillingham, Hawaii - and from Iceland to Antarctica...

So Flight wont do. And I must admit that after Lockheed Martin downpriced P3D Academic - to a very fair price (after buying X-Plane 10 for 70 Euros...) I have seen the light. P3D is the future - if you ask me.

So Please make an "Aerosoft Migrating tool" like the Orbx one Mathijs... and all is well. Microsoft will take care of Flight, for the customers wanting it, and we can hope that some of them will drift over to "us" when they want the "real deal".

No for both questions. The problem is that it's all about Hawaii.

I have never downloaded FLIGHT!. I have researched it a little and concluded that it is not worth the used hard drive space.

Personally, I feel that a flight sim that covers a small geographical area and has few aircraft could have potential, but not in this case. A sim of this type would need to have several characteristics in order to appeal to the hardcore simmer. The few included aircraft would need to fly and operate as close as possible to their real-world counterparts. The graphics would have to be superb, the weather complex and realistic, the immersion superior to what may be feasible in a large-scale sim. In short, the sim would need to compensate for its limited content by rivaling its large-scale counterparts in virtually every other area.

IMHO, FLIGHT! has failed at this. I, of course, cannot speak from experience, but I know what I've heard. What a missed opportunity! I have thought for a long time that a well-executed small-scale flight sim could be very successful, especially among hardcore GA pilots like me. FLIGHT!, however, has missed the mark. As I understand it, no ATC, simplistic aircraft physics, limited content—and, IMHO, graphics that just look like FSX on steroids.

I think this poses a serious question: What does FLIGHT! offer that is not available to us in FSX? Hmmm. . .unrealistic flight physics? Limited scenery coverage? No ATC? Few aircraft? An add-on market under the iron fist of MS? Don't misunderstand me. FSX is not that spectacular by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a whole lot better than FLIGHT!. MS has completely missed the mark here. They've alienated their potential long-term customers—the hardcore simmers—and embraced the market that is least likely to come back for more. As far as I can tell, FLIGHT! will most likely appeal to a younger crowd that will not be dedicated enough to purchase add-ons or future iterations of the platform. I'm certainly not bashing young simmers; I started about nine years ago at the age of ten. But I'm referring to young people who really have no passion for aviation or simming. These are the kids who will buy this game and forget about it in a year. If the people at MS are trying to increase profits through this new strategy, I'm not so sure they're going about it the right way.

FSX is decent, but definitely showing its age. FLIGHT! is—well—see above. X-Plane is good but not great, and the XP10 demo left me quite unimpressed. (But that's another story.) The FS community is in need of a new sim. Aerosoft. . . .

So Please make an "Aerosoft Migrating tool" like the Orbx one Mathijs... and all is well. Microsoft will take care of Flight, for the customers wanting it, and we can hope that some of them will drift over to "us" when they want the "real deal".

That's just not so easy as we do aircraft that have to be seriously tested and we have AESLite used in most scenery and at this moment that will not run in P3D. The simple scenery (small GA airports) is easy, can be moved without any problems, but the bigger projects all need some work.

Hi!

I never downloaded it, to be honest, it never caught my attention that much because of its limitations. It is sure a fun game to play, but for me, FSX is the way to go for the next years. Especially with all the addons (and money spent) that are on my HDD. By the way, a nice Aerosoft aircraft over a stunning ORBX scenery, using some REX textures for the weather and there is absolutely no need at all for me to look for something different.

Just my oppinion.

Greets,

Michael

After reading what nbz and other posters said I just wanted to point out one thing.

I understand that a "hardcore" sim is not going to attract new blood to our hobby (apart from the people we can "convert") and perhaps Flight! is the way to "create" new potential serious simmers.

The problem is that on its way to making money Microsoft forgot about us, old serious simmers, and they left us with a software which still needed a lot of polishing. (Thank P3D which, I hope will be our future)

I am sure almost all of you know an A-10 Warthog sim of a company I won't be naming because I don't know if that's proper.

In that sim you have the option to play arcade or simulation style. And that's great!. You can attract new people allowing them to play the way they want and advance at their pace. On the other hand you make serious simmers happy with the more complex part.

I thought that was what Microsoft had in mind when developing Flight!. But it turned out that, apparently, it was not.

I know people that would be interested in simming but they fear the complexity of serious sims. There are a lot of concepts they don't understand (if you are not a pilot you don't have to know certain things) and, generally, they don't even know where to start searching for questions to ask.

Perhaps sims should be designed with a much more user friendly UI, with new simmers in mind. I really liked the School part of FSX, with the interactive lessons but... I think the lessons were not as user friendly or as graphic as they should be when you want to teach something as specific as this to a person new to flying.

So I am OK with an easy sim for people to get interested in out hobby but, please, don't forget about the rest. And they have forgotten about us.

That's why I don't want even to acknowledge the existence of Flight and why I don't want MS to count me among the users of its... game.

I've never used it. I think FSX and modern hardware is all we need. As a previous poster already mentioned, if you're flying with the NGX or some nice GA-aircraft over ORBX scenerys or Flytampa airports with rex and maybe a good traffic tool, you have all you need.

I downloaded it on release day, curious to see what it offered. I had a little fun for a couple of hours but after that I found myself quite bored, especially due to the vast number of features and options that are locked unless you purchase an add-on or two. I have no qualms with the free area or free aircraft selection, but I do feel they could have given away a few more job/mission types with the free version. I simply couldn't find much to DO in the game besides free flight, which quickly became dull.

When my son is a few years older, I look forward to introducing him to Flight. I think he will love it. It's accessible, friendly and so on - everything a game (or even sim) should be to the newcomer or younger gamer. The performance improvements and some of the new graphical features are welcome too. As is being able to do a walkaround of the aircraft.

However, in its current state, it's not for me. The add-ons don't look like good value in comparison to what you can get with a complex FSX add-on of a similar price. The lack of TrackIR support is a showstopper, almost requiring you to use the HUD. So it has a long way to go to offer me any real alternative to FSX. I do understand Microsoft's approach to Flight from what I've read in interviews. I can't say as I blame them for trying this approach either. In many ways it makes sense, just not for the core FSX audience...

So I will keep Flight installed on my hard drive, but don't expect it to see any action for a long time.

Martyn

It's Really Crap!

I waited for it for a Year and a bit and I was totally disappointed, Arrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhh!

Have not yet tried it yet, as I fear to loose the joy of FSX. When I tried the FSX demo, flying with the head latency, the nice water, finer textures, bump maps, I tried to enjoy some nice FS9 addons, but it wasn´t anywhere the same it was before. I could no longer enjoy it.

And since I won´t pay the kind of money MS will ask for addons, and guessing it won´t include Catalina or OV-10 or Accusim style systems modeling, I´ll pass.

I'm afraid to say it's just a game and not a sim, I will be sticking with FSX till the aces team get together covertly and produce a stunner that we can't resist

For me I was waiting on FS11, not a cutdown xbox game. Probably same reason i havnt bought ROF. Its nice, have the freeware , but iw owuld like to buy it on CD with a lot more planes. As for flight, it does look nice, but the world doesnt revolve around Hawai, even though most of my carrier ops in FSX are there becasue of the scenery, secondly leaving out other plane makers is the end of it for me, makes it tottaly a waste of time and money. I woulsd like to purchase MS productl because I like them not because I have no choice.

Downloaded, and tried it once,and did not appeal to me,sorry will stick with fsx,at least you do proper procedures in that.

Had it installed for a couple of days and tried several flights/missions.

It might be better in graphical way and in performance , but to have Flight built up like I have FSX now will never happen.

I had some interest in Flight and applied for the beta programme before it became known it was not a full simulator, but as soon as that news broke I knew Flight wasn't for me. A tiny coverage area, planes without cockpits and arcade gameplay rather than simulation holds no interest at all from my point of view. It shows MS are trying to keep gamers interested with basic addons rather than catering for us, the hardcore simmers. Also, for me, MS Flight Simulator IS the third party developers and the community around them. A flightsim (sorry, flight game) without quality addons seems pointless. I haven't downloaded Flight. I saw some screenshots and while the graphics look nice, I don't think it's worth the hard drive space even for free. I fly a lot of simulators (FS9, FSX, CFS2, CFS3, IL-2 1946 and ROF) and would choose any of those over playing a flying game. I have subscribed to PREPAR3D instead of using Flight.

Regards,

Ade

After reading what nbz and other posters said I just wanted to point out one thing.

I understand that a "hardcore" sim is not going to attract new blood to our hobby (apart from the people we can "convert") and perhaps Flight! is the way to "create" new potential serious simmers.

The problem is that on its way to making money Microsoft forgot about us, old serious simmers, and they left us with a software which still needed a lot of polishing.

As I said, I would have greatly preferred a real FS11 over Flight. I also agree with you that just having way less options and functions as FSX had is not required to make the software more accessible and easy to learn. I could bore everyone here to death by writing half a book about the ideas I have on that. Like, make the user interface itself very easy (and yes, limited) but optionally more complex. (Like switching Window's standard calculator between "standard" and "scientific"). Or think about how much easier for newbies FSX would be, if it incorporated the checklist feature from Flight.

I'm not debating that Flight could, and should, have been something better. I'm simply looking at what it happens to be, and if there's anything in it that for me, adds to the hobby of simming. For me, that's the case, for many other not, and that' fine with me. But of course it won't replace FSX for me either. I like, for example, flying the Airbus X between european airports. Every european airport I have ever been to in real life (except 2), is represented in my FSX installation in Aerosoft quality. Between those airports, scenery consists of UTX + GEX. I guess that the sun will turn into a supernova before the same coverage plus a semi-complex jet, is available for Flight.

It is my impression (from AVSIM, and from Flight multiplayer) that Flight is indeed getting a lot of new people interested in PC flying. Of course I have no clue about how many, and if they will stick around for longer.

And they have forgotten about us.

Come on.... you know it's even worse. They have not forgotten us, but deliberately left us out.

Have not yet tried it yet, as I fear to loose the joy of FSX. When I tried the FSX demo, flying with the head latency, the nice water, finer textures, bump maps, I tried to enjoy some nice FS9 addons, but it wasn´t anywhere the same it was before. I could no longer enjoy it.

That is a valid concern. A village in a deep valley, the sun is low and the valley deep in the shadows of mountains.... but the houses are brightly lit by the sun. This already annoyed me a lot before I ever saw Flight. Same with haze layers hitting terrain, with a Z-fighting hard edge. Once you see this done right, combined with more goodies (complex shadowing, glass glare), it's hard to accept the older engine's shortcomings. My personal solution is to not use Flight if I plan to use FSX the same day.

I installed it and tried it several times. But somehow it did not appeal to me. I would not remove it right now as I am just curious of new developments.

If someone could re-engineer FSX with DX11, that would be fine for me......

It would be a sim for the next decade and a reasonable extension of the life of NGX and Airbus X.

If someone could re-engineer FSX with DX11, that would be fine for me......

It would be a sim for the next decade and a reasonable extension of the life of NGX and Airbus X.

Your wish will be done by Lockheed Martin's team with the new P3D V2. Follow their forum for more news.

Microsoft Flight inspired me to go out and buy X-Plane 10 and Microsoft Flight Sim X. Until then I was mostly using the DCS flight sims. I didn't buy any addons for Flight as they were so poor value for money, not to mention that half the aircraft available had no cockpits.

I weighed up my options, and thought that buying X-Plane or Microsoft Flight SIm X would be far better value for money given the 3rd parrty support and general better value for the other sims. In short, it was great for Microsoft's competitors at X-Plane, but not so good for Microsoft.

On the plus side, I did like the missions in Flight - they gave the game a sense of structure that is often lacking in larger-scoped flight sims. I would add that sims such as X-Plane have a 'bleh' factor on first play - what are you supposed to do? What's going on? What is the point? are all questions you ask on first playing some of the larger sims. Flight had a nice introduction that encouraged exploration and sticking with the first few hours, as these first moments are often the most disappointing and confusing in flight sim software. On the other hand, after realising that I liked flying in civilian aircraft rather than my usual military sims, I asked myself some hard questons about what civilian sim was the best for my money. Flight was not a contender, despite initially inspiring me. It was painfully expensive and a bit too 'lite' for my taste.

Shame, because it could have been great. Worst of all, without support for 3rd party developers its unlikely to get any better.

Avoid.

I was in two minds about this when it came out, I wanted it to be good but I could not get on with it as there was just not enough user controllability for my liking. However the easy controls and user friendly interface would make it a good way to get into FS and will hopefully bring more people to the hobby.

Never been interested or inclined to get it/use it. To me it just seems like an xbox game, never bought anything for that but play on it now and again with the lad.....