News - Microsoft Flight free to play this spring

[HEXUS]

Microsoft makes upcoming flight sim free-to-play with premium DLC available.

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[AlexKitch]

I was excited about this as a flight sim enthusiast, until I learned that there's no plan to release an SDK or open up the game to 3rd party devs as in previous iterations. The game will apparently ship with only Hawaii, with other locations available 'later' - everything created by Microsoft and sold on a Microsoft marketplace. A completely closed ecosystem.

With this in mind, I'm struggling to understand what market this game is actually aimed at any more. If you could take a snapshot of everyone playing Microsoft Flight Simulator X right now in the world, it'd be reasonable to suggest that >95% of those players are playing as hobbyists/enthusiasts with a keen interest in flight simming, using high-quality addons from the likes of PMDG and Aerosoft. If Microsoft are essentially shunning this market, then who exactly are they aiming this product at? Kids these days are too busy blowing eachother's faces off in COD and Battlefield 3 to think "hey, sitting at my PC flying through hoops over Hawaii with my buddies on Games For Windows Live (don't even get me started on that..) sounds like fun".

As a disappointed hardcore flight sim player, I think Microsoft are being either mighty brave or mighty stupid. Possibly even both.

[watercooled]

Thanks for brining it to my attention.
That invitation link doesn't work btw.

[OilSheikh]

I have never played Flight Simulator but would like to. Can anyone tell me a bit more about the game from their personal experience?

[watercooled]

If you some decent controls, it's about as close to flying a plane as you'll get at home. They go to great lengths to get the fine details correct to make it as realistic as possible - I played an older version quite a lot (it had a full suite of simulated flying lessons) before going for a real flying lesson and quite a lot of what I'd learned in the game applied to the real aircraft!

[Gerrard]

I was excited about this as a flight sim enthusiast, until I learned that there's no plan to release an SDK or open up the game to 3rd party devs as in previous iterations. The game will apparently ship with only Hawaii, with other locations available 'later' - everything created by Microsoft and sold on a Microsoft marketplace. A completely closed ecosystem.

Quite simple as to why they do this; if you can't create your own stuff, then you'll have to pay MS for its DLC. Seems to be the trend for a few games nowadays and, IMO, erodes one of the great advatages of a PC over a console for games.

[watercooled]

Looks like it's going to be GFWL anyway which destroys it before it's even released...

[snootyjim]

I have never played Flight Simulator but would like to. Can anyone tell me a bit more about the game from their personal experience?

I had a crack on it years ago, having really enjoyed some arcade-y flight games. Certainly didn't come across as a game in any manner. Learning curve like a brick wall, and actual fun is lacking. It is a simulator in every sense of the word, and I personally wouldn't describe it as a game at all. There's clearly a fantastic amount of depth in it, and it really was very well designed with a fantastic community behind it.

But imo unless you're very passionate it's a complete non-starter. Whether some of that will change with this new introduction, which seems to be taking a different stance, I'm not sure. It wouldn't surprise me, because FSX was definitely popular, but didn't have mass market appeal. Mind you, I'm not convinced you can really combine the two without making everybody miserable.

[watercooled]

Yeah I agree, it has to be sim or arcade, anything halfway will disappoint everyone.

And I agree about it not being a game, it isn't really - it's more of a hobby thing, if you're into aircraft you'll probably really enjoy it - it goes so far in depth you can use the entire aircraft control panel, including autopilot, navigation, radios and so on.

There are also flight scenarios involving, for instance, transatlantic flights but unless you plan to stare at the screen for hours on end, the 'speed up time' function is very welcome.

[Whiternoise]

From a pilot's perspective, they're all rubbish at simulating flight unless you have a few hundred grand to spend on a 3-axis rotating box to sit in.

However, what flight simulators are excellent for is navigation practice and instrument practice. Flying in terms of "fly in this direction, level" is easy once you've had a few lessons. What gets difficult is learning what to do when stuff hits the fan and learning about how to plan your trip without busting airspace, how to navigate when the vis is less than a foot, etc. Say you want to know what happens if you lose power 200ft past the threshold? Flight sim is your best bet

Almost all good flight simulators have things like radio-based navigation in them, so you can learn about how that all works.

X-Plane is my preference however, even more of a brick wall than Microsoft, but they it's designed for proper simulators (i.e. you can run it on 5 computers linked together connected up to a roll cage). Supposedly all the physical effects are modelled in real-time based on the shape of the airfoils and so on including things like jet/prop wash.


I don't really understand why people play it as a game though, I'd get bored very quickly...

[Tonka777]

Surprised i haven't seen X-Plane mentioned on Hexus before!

I built most of the airport layouts in the UK for the new version, and I'm developing a high fidelity Jaguar for it too, among other things!

It isn't a game though, there are no objectives, and no missions etc. Its a tool, used by professional people and casual simmers alike to simulate aircraft they enjoy.

The physical effects are modelled accurately, there's no supposition needed. It uses a system called Blade Element Theory. There's a detailed write up on the X-Plane website.

As a whole, the sim is a little odd, and hard to get used to. It is developed by a small team led by the eccentric Austin Meyer, and a new version is in an almost perpetual beta state with updates coming fast, until the next version is being thought of. It is worth the effort though, there are not many things it can't do!

[watercooled]

I'll give the demo a try!

[lainux]

Lets hope the flight sim is all good!