Project Airbus – Talk

Today at Gamecon in Colgone, Germany Microsoft announced the next version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, dubbed "Microsoft Flight."

Press Release:

Introducing “Microsoft Flight”

Twenty-eight years after the debut of “Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0,” Microsoft Game Studios also announced the internal development of “Microsoft Flight,” a new Windows exclusive. “Microsoft Flight” will bring a new perspective to the long-standing genre, welcoming everyone, including long-time fans, to experience the magic of flight.

A teaser of the future of Flight on the Windows-based PC is available at http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight.

Just saw this on posky forums.... hopefully it will be a good fs and aircraft backward compatible...which I doubt it, but will see.

I was just about to start a topic on this, but sure. This works too. I cannot beleive Microsoft is coming back again after a long time of people saying that FSX is their last in the line of simulators. This could be a very interesting simulator. It would be deadly if it required the frames or more than FSX does. But if they make a frame-rate friendly game like FS2004, then I'm sure this is going to be the next "thing".

The Best Of Luck Microsoft!

The real problem with FSX is that is was originally not designed to work for a multi-core system. They tried to patch that with SP1, but a patch will never be as good as starting from scratch. With "Microsoft Flight" being made from the start to run a multi-core system things should improve a lot. Also I would hope that "Microsoft Flight" will be able to take advantage of graphics acceleration that could offload tasks being done by the CPU to the GPU, which now days have up to 3200 Stream Processing Units (ATI 5970). Though I guess we will just need to wait and see...

ATI Radeon 5970, is one of the best affordable graphics cards in the world. My comp is nothing close to that. I still hope I can handle it. I get like 7FPS at JKF with settings on ULTRA HIGH, but thats only if im looking directly at the centre of the airport from the ground, if I just took off and im at say 1000ft and look right at the airport the frames go way up .

Hopefully Microsoft Flight will be designed in respect for people with not as good computers, like me Im even planning to build my own desktop with the Ati Radeon 4770 HD. It is a very good graphics card under $150, and by very good I mean VERY (FSX on high settings most likely without lag) good. However it must be accompanied by a good processor and RAM. As I said, hoping Microsoft Flight is designed for those of slower computer but can still look nice.

Microsoft needs to find a balance of realism in terms of scenery that can still run without petaflops of processing power. Also the ATI 5970 is rated for 4.64 TFLOPS for single precession calculations and 928 GFLOPS for double precision calculations. The Intel Core i7 980 XE runs only at 107.55 GFLOPS for double precision and costs $989.99 one and a half times as much as a single ATI 5970.

the problem with this game is that it may be of a more mission-based game, rather than just a fly around simulator.

Mike74722 wrote:the problem with this game is that it may be of a more mission-based game, rather than just a fly around simulator.

We, nobody, knows this yet.

Is it a virus? Everybody is saying the same thing.

If it will be I won't buy it. If it won't, I might buy it.

GaryG wrote:Is it a virus? Everybody is saying the same thing.

No, it is only a very great desire to have the only purebred, the familiar and best Flightsim on us tray.

NB: Aerosoft was already inform on public, or started to create a flightsim like FSX. Would also be promising.
The competition will be hard and difficult. Not a good sign for the designers. This means a distributed sales, less sales by oversupply by several designers of flight sims.
Only the best will survive.

Grts Timo

I have a feeling that Microsoft is just feeling if there is interest out there for a new flightsim as I heard they were not happy with the amount of sales of FSX, and the expectations were never met. Maybe a hype for a new version will help the sales of a new edition ?

I don't know if we have a lot of rail simmers around here, but I really hope Flight! does not become like Railworks. For those who don't know, (just like flight sim) you get a select few trains then you have to go out and buy all the rest for $30-70+ a piece (unlike flight sim)!!! In Railworks, there is very little to no freeware around as they intended to have it as a payware "only" kind of deal.

I have heard rumors about Microsoft wanting to privatize the flight sim community by only allowing Microsoft to make the aircraft. A monopoly would then be made on the game (only if people bought those add-ons). Also Microsoft had a pretty lengthy survey for Flight Simmers about what they would like to see from the simulator in the future. I remember several questions asking about the want to pay for individual airplanes rather than starting off with a selection. They did this garbage with FS 4.0 where you had to buy your sim in separate parts (stuff like scenery, static airplanes, and others). Anyone old enough to remember it? I really hope that Microsoft was not really serious about wanting to continue with that. It really makes me wonder especially when they send things out in their press releases with statements like this, "You even receive automatic game updates and the ability to extend the experience with Game Add-ons only found on the Games for Windows – LIVE Marketplace". Well? What does that mean? Does it mean that we can ONLY buy our airplanes and scenery through LIVE? That will really grind my gears.

I am quite interested to see what kind of quality Microsoft will present considering they fired the ACES team that has made this fantastic product for over 20 years. We will all have to wait and see if Microsoft screws the pooch on this one, or, stuns the world with the next best thing. Let’s all pray that Microsoft gets it right the first time. But then again, when have they? :lol:

sknepper wrote:I have a feeling that Microsoft is just feeling if there is interest out there for a new flightsim as I heard they were not happy with the amount of sales of FSX, and the expectations were never met. Maybe a hype for a new version will help the sales of a new edition ?

I don't know where you are getting your information from about FSX, but before you complain about FSX, please view some data first (See link below). FSX was very successful and its sales well exceeded FS2004's. FSX was also in the Top 10 Sold for two years straight. FS2004 never came close. If you want to read that article, alot of good info is on the bottom of that page too. The whole thing is not comprised of numbers!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive ... chise.aspx

i agree with iheart707.
MS FLIGHT dear fellows is a GAME.
A GAME for Widows Live.
Are you a PMDG fan? Or a [of course] Project Airbus fan? Are you having fun with the realism IVAO and others bring to your SIM? Forget it. After the almost vulgar disposal of the ACES team [the worlds crisis was just beginning remember? they took their change to sack people with a crisis for a reason] The always arrogant MS has decided that they will own the Internet, and that every game played, will be played on Windows Live.
Flight is a game not a sim and we will have to bleed for every pieces of landscape we want to fly over, every new plane we want to own, every new airport we want to visit.
Forget it making your own aircraft they will not have it!
Forget it buying a nice piece of scenery by Aerosoft, Wilco, Flight1, Alphasim and all the others.
They will have to sell their planes to MS and MS will sell it you. That will increase prices for us, and decrease liberty for developers.
My hope still lies with Aerosoft in constructing a new simulator with the four freedoms:
1 freedom of making a plane
2 freedom of making an airport
3 freedom of adjusting the program as it suites you.
4 and above all freedom to fly where ever your heart desires to go.

Remember MS isn't faulty free, look at Vista for instance, supposedly the best OS ever, yet it turned out to be rubbish [ooh yes they've corrected that over the years, but still it felt like buying a race car with a moped motor in it] Now we have Windows 7 not faulty free either [look at what happens when you want to select a different scenery in FSX, look at the menu-crash thing, those things didn't occur in VISTA or XP] W7 is Vista with a new jacked on. :mrgreen:
MS isn't always best in making good marketing choices, they are to arrogant for that. I hope I'm wrong. I hope FLIGHT will be a simulator not a game. I hope that this sim allows us to use our beloved addons. But I fear it will be completely the opposite.
I always was one of the people who would stay in line and wait to get the first new copy of FS. This time I will wait a couple of months to hear and read about FLIGHT before I'll buy. :?

jostytosty wrote: This time I will wait a couple of months to hear and read about FLIGHT before I'll buy. :?

If you wrote only that, it would have been more than sufficient to express your idea....better than all that you've wrote.

This also means that what you've wrote is nothing more than trash talk, for if you know how things will be, you would not decide months to choose whether to buy or not to buy FLIGHT

Besides, we only strive to have a good lookin' bus with a couple of XML features to make the next flight more than desirable.

Thanks for your 2 cents

Yes -will see, but I'm still affraid i'm right.
I like to put down things hard and that's probably annoying you.

And you may call it any thing you like, yet the only trash commes from Redmond:

Some compannies stopped G4WL
Relic for one.

--

The in-game marketplace allows users to purchase items for a game from within game, which wasn't possible before. It's part of Microsoft's effort to streamline digital distribution on gaming PCs, which could potentially attract more sales-generating clicks.

[=you are urgently requested to "play"Flight on the X-box + buy landscapes, buy planes, buy whatever]

to read:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/09/14/how-g ... unch-hour/
to read:
http://www.next-gen.biz/features/should ... s-live-die
to read:
http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2010/03 ... -a-blight/

this one is funny:
This program allows you to do the following to Games for Windows LIVE in Fallout 3:

* Stop Games for Windows LIVE from running in Fallout 3 and prevent its dll files from loading which reduces the time it takes for Fallout 3 to startup.
* Remove the "LIVE" button at the main menu.
* Allow you to bind the "Home" key to whatever action you want.
* Allow you to move all of your DLC's out of their "hidden" G4WL folder and into your Fallout 3 folder.

Important Notes\Issues

* This will work with Fallout 3 v1.1 or higher.
* If you disable Games for Windows LIVE and actually use it then all your saves will disappear, you can find them in your <b>\My Documents\My Games\Fallout3\Saves\[name]</b> simply move them to the Saves folder.
* When G4WL is disabled any DLC's you have will cease to function so use the "Move DLC's" button to get your DLC's working again.

[This means a company has created a way out of the G4WL situation, why?]

So are you looking foward in staring at your PC waiting for Windows live to start FLIGHT , which might or might not come up at all.
Are you also looking forward to got to the G4WL marketplace to buy addons, only MS approved addons- so no freeware addons?
[because that's what the marked place is for]

But to look at the bright side of things: it is apparently even possible to play pirated games on G4WL according to a youtube video :lol:

Games for Windows - Live is an important piece to the puzzle in Microsoft's effort to keep up with the evolving digital distribution landscape. The system, which also has community features, is up against other platforms such as Steam, Direct2Drive, and Impulse. But Microsoft hopes to leverage its position as the owner of Windows and its ability to tap into the Xbox Live community to separate itself from competitors.

So what do I need to say more to express my serious doubt about FLIGHT? yes it MIGHT but still -I don't think so....
We've lost a studio that regulary made us a program, based on a previous version, that you could learn about and alter it to your likings. This won't come back unless Aerosoft makes us that sim- which they are trying [or we have to go to X-Plane, but that one has to come out of the FS2002 phase it is stil in]

I'm not an American so I don't know the meaning of "Thanks for your 2 cents" but but i'll take it as an insult okay?
Cheers

*Your 2 cents is your opinion*

If MS Flight was as closed as it sounds like it is going to be I would definitely consider X-Plane as an alternative.

Funny, we still have die hard FS2004 pilots who will never go to FSX for some reason (Pentium D's are not fast anymore guys! Move on!). Now we are going to get die hard FSX fans that would rather go to X-plane (scumbags ) rather than to the new Microsoft simulator, Flight! Microsoft really screwed this up!

I guess we will have to wait and see what the future press releases hold to view the future of the franchise. I believe we can make assumptions now, but we cannot be too sure. There does seem to be alot of gray and not too much color...

This is my two cents also, not a preconceived notion or a reply to anyone's commentary.

My main sim is FSX.... Why should I stick to it? Do I have a contract? Is this my best friend? It's a couple of lines of programming and surely, I shall not be the defender of this. There is a need of innovation, and I love innovation.

So I'm not going to be a "die hard FSX fan".

Now we are going to get die hard FSX fans that would rather go to X-plane (scumbags) rather than to the new Microsoft simulator, Flight! Microsoft really screwed this up!

Haha ! Yeah sure, that's why there are still people here and on POSKY forums waiting for models to get out, because this was already assumed when last year MS closed the studios. Moreover, you're basically implying that MS really cannot get a new product out because there's always this problem. Also, polls showed a different answer to that "problem" and it's nonsense.

Let me ask this: Why should I stick to another fs if there's not going to be another one out ?

With this reasoning, if MS announced that there won't be another windows, everybody goes to Mac or linux. Right? Haha, come on, please.

I'm not an American so I don't know the meaning of "Thanks for your 2 cents" but but i'll take it as an insult okay?

Neither am I. But this shows that you lack experience on forums. Take it as you want. It's not an insult, I'm not american.

Regards

Microsoft recently put up a FAQ section on their site. They still do not answer the big questions like paying for addons, compadibility with previous sims, and if they will be the sole provider of addons.

Here's what they say so far...
Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is "Microsoft Flight?"
A: "Microsoft Flight" is a new PC game from Microsoft Game Studios. The new title will be available on the Games for Windows – LIVE service and will bring a new perspective to the long-standing "Flight Simulator" franchise. From new game play elements and enhanced scenery and terrain to new aircraft and integrated content marketplace, it is an entirely new breed of virtual flight. The Games for Windows - LIVE platform sets the stage for all your virtual flight needs while connecting you to a global base of users, content and endless exploration. Microsoft Flight builds off its heritage of deep, immersive simulation and is redesigned to make the experience easier for virtual fliers of all interests and skills.

No comment on the title at this time...

Q: How does “Microsoft Flight” differ from “Flight Simulator?” Why the new name? What’s changed?
A: With “Microsoft Flight” we’re approaching the virtual flight genre from the ground up, with the focus on the universal appeal of the experience of Flight. We believe the simplicity of “Microsoft Flight” perfectly captures that vision while welcoming the millions of existing Flight Simulator fans. The new “Microsoft Flight” retains the full fidelity simulation longtime fans have come to expect while offering all players a whole new look and feel, a wide range of new game play and challenges, persistent experiences and social connectivity.

From the ground up? Does this mean that people have to rebuild (once again like FS2004 to FSX) all the airplanes in the world to fly them in the new program?

Q: How does Games for Windows – LIVE factor in?
A: Games for Windows – LIVE introduces a new level of connectivity to virtual flight, enhancing both the social and game play experiences of the title. Content is updated virtually. You can fly solo or join an entire global flight community online. You can easily connect with and facilitate flight experiences with your friends. The addition of Games for Windows - LIVE creates an ubiquitous virtual world of flight that offers easy and engaging access to the magic of flight for all.

A global server?! I already HATE the 12 year old kids that YELL "MAYDAY", WHY would ANYONE want to have them all in one place at one time?! :shock: How about your own dedicated servers? Will that option disappear? I like having the ability to kick the morons out of our sever that do scream in the mic. Banning them is even better!!! LOL!!! :lol:

Q: Who is developing “Microsoft Flight” now that ACES is gone?
A: “Microsoft Flight” is being developed internally at Microsoft by a team that includes many of the same creative minds that helped deliver countless entries in the “Flight Simulator” franchise.

They can say this because they did not fire everyone. As long as there is one person remaining on the team, what they said is fair game, but a huge joke to believe that the same strong "team" still exists.

Q: Why did Microsoft shut down ACES Studio last January?
A: Microsoft Game Studios is always evaluating its business model to determine what is best for both gamers and the company. Many factors were considered in the difficult decision to close ACES Studio, but we feel the 2009 closure helped us better align with our goals and long-term development plans. "Microsoft Flight" is being developed by many of the same creative minds that shaped "Microsoft Flight Simulator," and we're excited about delivering a new take on this classic franchise.

Too much gray here, cannot really make a reply to this until they expand a bit.

Microsoft recently put up a FAQ section on their site. They still do not answer the big questions like paying for addons, compadibility with previous sims, and if they will be the sole provider of addons.

A part of the answer to this can be found on the Aerosoft forums. Look at what Mathijs Kok says about this. You can only come to the conclusion that companies sell to Microsoft and they sell the [then approved] addon to us. Making things more expensive of course. Games for Windows live is a Internet thing. Flight will be an Internet thing and the picture you paint iheart707, with screaming kids might be correct.
In my opinion, ACES was closed because MS had a great opportunity in closing them at that time, at the very beginning of the financial crises. Normally people would have demonstrated against it. You don't close a studio of one of the best selling products ever. But in the situation they closed the studios all the world was looking the other way. It seemed inevitable to do it because in the economic crises nobody would buy a game [which turned out to be untrue anyway]
Thus not only unnecessary, but from a moral point of view disgusting. leaving us in the cold with one major question in mind: will Flight [or whatever] serve our needs. I seriously doubt that. MS hasn't been the most honest and reliable partner in the past [M.Kok] it's hard to believe it will be in the future.

Do you have a link to that article by chance?

http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showtopic=37244
several posts by Mathijs in this toppic. [please do not pronounce his family name the English way LOL ]

How should it be pronounced?

- hm yeah... actualy as you would in English which makes a very normal Dutch name sound erhm interesting..
Kok = kitchenchief not ...ck....

Well, I guess on a more positive note, through Windows Live it should be more stable than the flawed interface with Gamespy. That is ONE thing to look foward to.

Dear God, (er, Microsoft... I mean, surpreme overlord of Flight Sims)
Please do not include anything with Gamespy... Please do not include anything with Gamespy... Please do not include anything with Gamespy... LOL!!!! :lol:



I hope that hunk of junk is GONE FOR GOOD!