Microsoft Flight Launches February 29, 2012

[M31 0]

I think PC Pilot will clear up their opinion in the next issue, but in my experience their reviews often gush too much.

PC Pilot is a good read for a hot soak in the bath, and I have read the mag from the beginning, but its not gospel and i don't think anyone thinks it is.

[allardjd 1,853]

Quote

...or because the actual flight modelling is simply not up to par.

 

For me, it's not so much the flight modeling as it is the absence of the rest of the physical world and the aviation world. Flying realistically means more than smooth graphics and good flight dynamics - what about 30,000 airports? What about all the navaids, airspace, airways, ATC, traffic, real-world or user definable WX and the ability to create and use plausible VFR and IFR flight plans? Flight may have some of these things now or may eventually have them - when I learn that is the case, I'll have a look. Until then, it's just an arcade game with a flying theme.

 

It's not surprising that the MSF graphics are beautiful and smooth. Flight's code is modern and will certainly have been constructed to make better use of the machine resources (multi-core processors and high-end GPUs) than FSX which is a hodge podge of things written long before and much patched, updated in about 2006-07. Given MSF's better usage of the machine and the fact that it doesn't have to keep track of a few hundred thousand AI aircraft, complex WX, multitudinous data tables of navaids, radio frequencies, etc, I'd be flabbergasted if the graphics wasn't pretty fantastic - that's pretty much all it has to do. A true simulator must keep track of a much larger heap of static data and dynamic entities within the application.

 

John