Jump to content

My opinions and perspectives on FLIGHT


Recommended Posts

Short version:

1. "Creating the whole world is not one of our goals for Flight"

2. "Long-haul flight is not one of the scenarios that we believe is interesting"

3. "We felt we couldn't best balance our investments and appeal to a massive audience by building Flight Simulator 11"

4. "Our business is not about trying to please that kind of person"

5. "Returning to Flight Simulator is not something that is being actively considered today."

///////////

Long version:

After yet another cockpitless WWII DLC and a delayed Alaskian Wilderness pack it is pretty self-evident that not only is FLIGHT never going to be a realistic contender to FSX/Prepar3D/X-Plane it will never take off for even the casual gamers and console aracade types.

I believe that Microsoft's business strategy with FLIGHT 2012 was to 1) put it as little effort and as little money as possible (hence only one small island as opposed to the entire world, and cockpitless aircraft as opposed to PMDG737NGX-like quality of virtual cockpits, etc)...... while at the same time 2) extract as much profits as possible by 2a) misleading, and thus fragmenting the flight simulator community with inaccurate "press releases" where Joshua Howard stated "to the contrary" that "flight simulator will appeal to hardcore simmers" or something to that effect, thus potentially driving down FSX/XPLANE and 3pd addons sales for those platforms while simmers anticipated the release of FLIGHT .... MSFT created a rift in the simming community by artificially setting high expectations while knowingly misleading and falsely advertising the actual product... this was perhaps a tactic to convert as many people to being "okay" with casual flying as possible.... to slowly disillusion to community and propagandize us into this "new paradigm" of flight but not "simulation". 2b)releasing the boring DLC one by one, basically forcing those more unpatient to buy them all along the way... as opposed to if they released all of them at day one then gamers could simply pick or choose what they wanted to buy.... an analogy would be the difference between watching a new show on TV episode by episode because you have no other choice each week, as opposed to watching LOST or some show that has already finished production and you can pick or choose the best episodes that you want to spend your time watching.... So by dangling this carrot out in front of gamers, FLIGHT is basically pressuring them into buying each and every DLC rather than being a true marketplace and giving them to choice to really pick which one they want to purchase... so this slow and elongated release strategy of cockpitless aircraft could be a business strategy done on purpose.

I'm seeing an obvious pattern here... When FLIGHT was still in development and only screenshots of Hawaii ever came out.. about 50% of the simmer community thought that FLIGHT was Hawaii-only (myself included) but the other half defended Microsoft at all costs saying that we were drawning conclusions and that it was not based on evidence or official release reports from Microsoft, and the theme was one of "wait and see" , "lets take a wait and see approach", "I'm still hopeful FLIGHT has potential", etc...

The same thing happend with the third party development in regards to FLIGHT. All 3PD were under NDA so they couldn't really say much until the very end when the cat was out the bag anyways.... but before that some FLIGHT defenders even dreams that the third party developers like PMDG/ ORBX/ etc were secretly in development with FLIGHT and had some good stuff up their sleeves.... turned out of course not to be true, FLIGHT has no public SDK and would be locked down to Games for Windows Live and a "marketplace".... basically no more secondary market, or if there was to be one, Microsoft will be taxing and skimming and taking percentages....

It was the same arguement with "jet engines".... Lot of people were dissapointed that there would be no "jets" or airliner transport aircraft... such during the beta/etc all we had were a old biplane and a new Toyota on Wings... people again urged to "take a wait and see approach".... "don't give up hope just yet"... "Joshua promised it would appeal to hardcore simmers in his press release"...

Now, even someone as pessimistic as me in regards to FLIGHT never in a million years imagined that they would SEE DLC aircraft WITHOUT cockpits.... and these weren't exactly UAV or state of the art pilotless aircraft, these were antiquated WWII planes....

I wonder what will we get suprised with next?

FLIGHT's business approach is to cater to the MASSES and make money by being a popular game.... this is why they did the freemium (which is basically a joke, its not a FREE game anymore than FSX DEMO was a free game) .... so they have basically given up on the simming community from the start.... (but don't mind taking the community's money and good will) they will appeal to xbox360 gamers, games for windows live platform, and probably kinectx support in the future, flap your arms/wings and fly sorta kids game.....

In order for FLIGHT's freemium business model to succeed it needs A LOT OF PEOPLE downloading and playing.... and a rather sizable portion of those people SPENDING money to buy the DLCs...... I just don't see how the average casual gamer who WASN"T into flight simulation or even casual flight or aviation genre before would all of a sudden be taken and brought into the world of simulation/flight because of a product like FLIGHT? I can't see that happening at alll..... at least not on some sort of mass scale that would be necessary to sustain FLIGHT's business model....

If anything, FLIGHT's total and utter failure as a replacement for FSX platform will only solidify FSX's viability and extend its longevity going forward. FSX was released "ahead of its time" back in 2006 when commodity hardware could not catch up and most people couldn't play it at decent framerates.... in the future FSX will really begin to shine and with all the years of addons that have been developed for it, I forsee FSX being a viable and thriving platform for a least another 5 years, if not up to 15 years from now.

I wonder how that is going to make Joshua Howard and the suits at MSFT feel? That companies like FLIGHT1, PMDG, ORBX, EZDOK, Angle of Attack, etc making money off FSX and there is nothing they can do about it.... PMDG777X and remake of the 747v2 will both be more FSX, Orbx says the FSX will be core product for them for forseeable future (5-10 years).... There is so much momentum behind FSX it will not easily get replaced soon (if ever, since one day Prepar3d could be the successor) The FSX ecosystem is just too well entrenched for a joke like FLIGHT to make a dent... Even if Microsoft later came out with a NEW FLIGHT that catered to simmers (like Tom at AVSIM seems to dream, I don't know what that dude is smoking....) it will be too little too late for Microsoft, the developers and simmers all feel VERY betrayed and will no doubt be very vary of anything coming out of Redmond again. No one serious about simming will convert to FLIGHT and Microsoft is not going to make the profits that it had hoped and anticipated... simply because like the Windows 8 fiasco, FLIGHT also has an identity crisis.. it neither caters to the hard core simmer nor the casual gamer...(seriously, if you were a casual gamer would you spend money in flight or just get bored of chasing gold trinkets ?) just like Windows 8 will turn away a lot of desktop users and won't attract any tablet or mobile users...

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi Bo and Welcome to the Hangar. There are a number of us who share your view on MS Flight - as you will see from other posts, although discussion has died down a bit recently.

Please join in with our Forum activities - I'm sure you'll find us friendly and agreeable!

Cheers - Dai. :cool:

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi Bo and Welcome to the Hangar. There are a number of us who share your view on MS Flight - as you will see from other posts, although discussion has died down a bit recently.

Please join in with our Forum activities - I'm sure you'll find us friendly and agreeable!

Cheers - Dai. :cool:

Thanks. I'm still in shock and awe how the press release (Joshua Howard) promised it would be everything FSX was and more.....

A number of you have asked, “Why did you drop ‘Simulator’ from the title of the game?”

In addition to the FAQ on this topic, we want to directly address the concern that by dropping the “Simulator” from the name, we’re dumbing down the experience. Quite the contrary! We’ve developed on the “simulation” aspect for many years and have no intension of losing that legacy. What we’re doing now is improving the total experience while building on this legacy, enhancing the enjoyment for all who share a passion for flight. The more people who join us in the Flight experience, the greater the opportunity we’ll have to do even more.

We don't need to create an arcade game to welcome a wider audience.

As we said in the introduction, we're still early in the development cycle, so the fact that you comment on the similarity to FSX is great! This comment alone should ease some of the arcade concerns.

And then in this interview the same man states exactly the opposite of what he "directly address-ed"...:

We accepted that by doing something different with the franchise, we were going to upset some of our existing customers, but that’s the cost of trying something truly new. This new version has always been about finding a way to bring the joy of flight to massive new audiences, and we felt that we couldn’t best do that by building Flight Simulator 11....

To deliver the improvements we wanted in Flight, we had to make some tough tradeoffs. One of those was breaking with the tools that enabled the rich 3rd party ecosystem we had with previous products in the franchise.

When we consider the broad feedback we are getting, it’s fair to say that much deeper simmer functionality is not at the top of our list, but I also don’t think of things in such a binary way.

Creating the whole world is not one of our goals for Flight. Previous versions of the franchise include the whole world, and still do, [haha, funny comment.... maybe M$FT thinking about retroactively erasing everything but Hawaii in FSX to level the playing field for FLIGHT? LMAO] but we didn’t believe that delivering the whole world was a critical part of delivering Flight for massive new audiences.

Long-haul flight is not one of the scenarios that we believe is interesting for the bulk of our audience. Clearly some people want this, but our research tells us that for anyone but the simmer, the idea of simulating a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu is not a highly-requested feature.

As I mentioned before, TrackIR is one of the requests we are getting from simmers. In an effort to balance our investments, we are considering how we can accommodate this request along with all of the other ways we want to grow the experience. I can say that we understand that the experience of Flight with TrackIR would be very cool, even for the non-pilot, and even if the total number of TrackIR users is pretty low.

Trying something new is hard, and we never thought that absolutely everyone would appreciate what we were doing. Some reviewers have better understood our goals, while some were merely angry that we dared to build something that wasn’t exactly what they decided we should build. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but our business is not about trying to please that kind of person.

Microsoft Flight is our effort to bring this franchise a whole new audience. Our focus now is on making Microsoft Flight the most enjoyable flying experience we can, for anyone who has imagined what it’s like to fly. If returning to Flight Simulator makes sense again sometime in the future, I am confident that Microsoft would not ignore that possibility, but it’s not something that is being actively considered today.

Joshua Howard and the FLIGHT team have lost all creditbility with that kind of double-think two-face reverse 180 bait and switch.... And lastly the most ironic and humorous part of all....

I don’t have any concerns about our ability to build effective relationships with 3rd party content developers, whether they are from the existing pool of usual suspects or new faces.

As to where we are taking Flight, the answer is that I can’t give you an endpoint, but I can tell you we are committed to the journey. [so he doesn't even have a clue what it is he is being committed to....other than his paycheck]

I believe that Flight can appeal to millions and millions of people, far more than the simulation sub-genre ever garnered, and our journey will be continuing to explore ways to bring the magic of flight to a massive audience.

Somehow I really doubt that..... I don't even think Joshua Howard truly believes in his own kool-aid anymore... I'm betting after FLIGHT flops Mr. Howard is going to give another interview to AVSIM and blame the failure on the hard core simming community and the FSX for not giving FLIGHT a chance.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi bochen280

Welcome to the forums, you're not related to our member M31 are you? sounds like him speaking!

To be honest, I think we all share a similar view but it is old news now and like flogging a dead horse here, we are looking to the future in P3D and X-Plane, not to the disappointment to us that is MS FLIGHT.

FSX and FS9 have many years of life, and who knows, with P3D we will get what we deserved from FSX performance wise.

Cheers,

Joe

Link to post
Share on other sites

Welcome to MH - best FS site this side of Alpha Centauri.

 

You're (mostly) preaching to the choir here. There are a few members who find Flight interesting here, including one who was part of an RAF aerial demo team flying Hawker Hunters in the RW. He knows a thing or two about flying and has used MSF to make and post some very nice videos, taking full advantage of the eye candy and very smooth graphics in MSF. It does do a couple of things quite well, but on the whole I am largely in agreement with you about it. If we differ it's on the level of conscious deceit that the overall MS organization engaged in. I think much of what happened was the result of a) a poorly defined business plan for MSF, and b) the refusal of most of the early "partners" (i.e. potential add-on developers) to sign on to the draconian terms that MS wanted to impose on them.

 

As Mutley says, we've already pretty much beat that horse's carcass into a pulp here. Feel free to post what you like about it but understand that you're mostly plowing old ground. We're mainly not MS-haters who feel betrayed (though some are that too), but rather former MS customers who feel disappointed that they have abandoned the serious FS software genre and the community that has grown up around it.

 

Again, a hearty welcome. I think you're going to like this site. By the way, you write quite well.

 

John

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hello mutley, I'm not M31 nor do I have multiple accounts on this forum. I just signed up and have no idea who M31 is. I will say in the interest of full disclosure Tom from AVSIM personally banned me (as opposed to a moderator/admin/staff) from the site and forum not because I violated the TOS in any bona fide manner but because he publically called me out / singled me out on my anti-FLIGHT rhetoric and threatened to permanently ban me if I did not "cease and desist" in my bashing of Microsoft. I told him I felt he was erroneously, arbitrarily and capriciously biased in favor of Microsoft/FLIGHT team with no reasonable justification to being so…. Then he promptly banned me, deleted all my posts, and “made an example of me” by doing cleaning house of anyone who criticized flight in any way whatsoever…. And then had to have the “last word” by remarking how I did not have facts to back up my false assertions. Sure it is his site, he is the owner and he can do what he wants, but for someone his age I felt he acted really immature and childish… kinda like the whole FLIGHT team itself… and like Joshua Howard for bashing on the hard core simmers for complaining . That was before AVSIM took a nosedive and started blocking access to all unregistered members, censoring and then later closing down the FLIGHT forum section, along with a whole slew of other BS.

AVSIM is gone the way of MS FLIGHT…. I honestly don’t know if MSFT is pressuring Tom or Tom is just clueless… but either way… I could care less about AVSIM if it were not for the fact that some 3pd such as PMDG have their support forum hosted on AVSIM. I’m a paid PMDG, AOA, etc customer and I can’t even access PMDG/AOA forums unless with TOR or some other proxy since Tom banned me and blocked my ip address because he didn’t like the fact that I didn’t agree with his views on FLIGHT. AVSIM hegemony is not good and I think their policy and recent actions are shooting themselves in the foot (metaphorically speaking)

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi bochen280,

Don't worry about AVSIM, we are all very aware of their actions towards members posting views against FLIGHT. We are not worried by your history with them but your/their actions are noted!

Also, we don't censure such posts here unless they are offensive or just plain ranting for the sake of it.

At Mutley's we have accepted that MS are no longer have our best interests at heart and we have moved on. All their rhetoric is for their own gain, to promote their product further and they will always take the high ground as it's the eaisest, most effective thing to do.

So join in here and enjoy simming with FSX, FS9 and P3D, that's the future for us.

Cheers,

Joe

Link to post
Share on other sites

allardjd,

Thanks for the welcome. I realize I am preaching to the choir here. It is not like I can preach anyplace else after Tom of Avsim personally banned/blacklisted me and MS FLIGHT blocked me from their flight forums and facebook page (I'm an MCSA/MCSE and FLIGHT beta tester too, so I'm not coming from an anti-MSFT just because I have nothing else better to do)...

But I think when the emperor has no clothe it is time to call a spade exactly what it is. If you read the comments on the facebook.com/msflight it is obvious this is classic case of a company not listening to even their target market. Casual gamers are complaining that cockpitless planes are retarded and not worth the money/value… At this point it doesn’t matter to me, FLIGHT is a lost cause…. But its like watching a train wreck in slow motion FLIGHT just keeps digging itself deeper and deeper into a dark corner.

The FLIGHT team lied to us and did a bait and switch. If flying around restricted to the single island of Hawaii in a paid DLC of a cockpit-less WWII airplane with NO traffic, AI, ILS, SDK, etc is considered “building on this legacy [of FSX]” and NOT “dumbing down the experience” but rather, “Quite the contrary”.. Then Joshua Howard should go work for some PR spinster not the Flight-but-not-simulator.

I agree that FSX still has the it’s best days AHEAD of it as a platform , not behind. To most in the simming community it is the addons that make FSX what it is, without that, FSX is an empty shell skeleton, nothing more than a flawed graphics engine with pitiful flight dynamics. In my case, for example, the PMDG 737NGX (and later 777X, 747v2X) is the “simulator” and the FSX is the “addon” that the sim needs to piggyback on in order to run. I like to think of PMDG as the application and FSX as the underlying operating system that the software needs to run... The job of the operating system is to appear seemless and transparent and "get out of the way" of the actual content... Why do I need the Games for Windows Live, Bing Search/Hunt, Xbox360 points and all that other nonsense that comes pre-baked with FLIGHT? With the 3pd ecosystem, FSX is nothing.

What I don’t understand is why Joshua Howard and the Flight Team felt compelled to mislead the simming community as opposed to being honest and transparent from the start. If we weren’t the target audience then what did they have to lose by being frank? And now Howard has the audacity to complain that we are ungrateful whiners after he betrayed us and THEN on top of that also lied to us and mislead us?

FLIGHT bashing is getting old, (and it is not the purpose of me being here, I plan to use this as a replacement forum for Avsim) but it will nonetheless be fun to watch this Charlie Foxtrot …. A slow motion wreck that just gets worse and worse, alienating not only the simmers but also its so called casual audience.

Though this analogy is over simplistic, I’d like to compare FS9 to Windows XP and perhaps FSX to Windows 7. Windows 8 will have the same identity crisis that FLIGHT is having… can’t make up its mind if it wants to be a desktop operating system (catering to “hard core” simmers) or a woefully inadequate excuse of a mobile OS with its silly and redundant/counterintuitive Metro interface (like FLIGHT’s training wheels, cockpitless aircraft, console 360 and future kinectx support, etc) ….

It is the developers that make Flight Simulator what it is, not Microsoft. Going forward FSX still has many many years ahead of it and I know that I’m not missing out on anything by never jumping on the FLIGHT bandwagon. Sure I might fly around in the Icon A5 for free, but I’m never giving M$FT a penny or single cent… it is not about money but able principles… and that is the real bottom line.

Look at the real life 737 for example, when the 737 MAX variant comes out in 2017 the 737 series will have been flying for 50 years and still going strong! This plane will end up having a total life of probably 75 years or more! Just think about the progress that was made in aviation during its first 75 years from 1903 to 1978!.... Flight has matured! ... So has technology in a lot of ways. This is not like back in the day when we upgraded OS every two years (Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT, XP, etc) or Flight Sim 95,98,2000,2002,2004.... Just like desktop operating system has matured (the ONLY reasons to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 are because of DirectX11, 64bit {addressing more than 4GB of RAM}, and ipv6... We will NEVER need a consumer operating system more than 64bit, and even today DirectX9/10 is not even fully taken advantage of in most games, plus after switching to ipv6 that is it...(not to mention the ipv4 to ipv6 transition will take years if not decades!) So technology has matured.... so has operating systems... Now everyone is hyping how social and mobile is the future, but I don't believe productivity can sustained in such small form factors, unless it becomes projected through a HUD and the traditional large desktop displays gets replaced by something like Google glasses, etc but I digress.... point is, mobile will never replace desktop.... but desktop has matured and become very stable... which is a good thing. On the desktop platform, as far as I'm still using Windows, I predict Windows 7 will be my last operating system ever, and it is not because I'm old or dying.... simply because after the jump from XP to 7, solving the problem of ram, directx, and ipv6, I don't see the reason to EVER upgrade to another version of MSFT OS, EVER! Holodeck, Star Trek, Quantum computing? They are about as far off as nuclear fusion, zero point energy and the singularity (which is to say, practically NEVER)

Likewise, I predict (for various reasons) that FSX will have a very long life (much to the dismay of Microsoft and the FLIGHT team) and that at the end of the day it is not even the platform we need to worry about (because it will be FSX/Prepar3d) but the quality of the addons that the 3pd come up with in the secondary (primary? lol) market... Going forward there is no doubt in my mind that FSX is THE platform.... I just get a kick out of seeing MS FLIGHT fail.

FLIGHT TEAM: FSX is DEAD

Simmer community: Long Live FSX!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Whilst I would be the first person to say I also agree with a lot of your findings / experiences of avsim/T.A. I have to add that I would not want to see mutleys hangar getting the reputation for being a public forum for avsim bashing/ critique, as there are a lot of members here that also enjoy the wealth of information that avsim offers, however the management here has a more intillectual way of keeping postings from getting completely out of order. or keeping wayward posters from giving the site a bad rep.

I also have suffered from T.A. and his cronies childish behaviour who rather than get involved in intelligent discussion chose to just shout one down, something that i also felt wouldnt have happened some years ago, and I also endorse your opinion on several other points that you bring up but wont mention, however it is his site and he can do what he wants with it, which is why i chose to join a more enlightened flightsim group, in the form of mutleys.

As other correspondants have already noted, you are preaching to the converted by and large, by criticising Flight here, however there are one or two around that do find that flight has some value, so cool that is their opinion and they are entitled to it, and that is where you will see the difference between mutleys and other sites we accept that others have an opinion without trying to force our ideas on them.

enjoy the site!

Tom from AVSIM personally banned me (as opposed to a moderator/admin/staff) from the site and forum not because I violated the TOS in any bona fide manner but because he publically called me out / singled me out on my anti-FLIGHT rhetoric and threatened to permanently ban me if I did not "cease and desist" in my bashing of Microsoft. I told him I felt he was erroneously, arbitrarily and capriciously biased in favor of Microsoft/FLIGHT team with no reasonable justification to being so…. Then he promptly banned me, deleted all my posts, and “made an example of me” by doing cleaning house of anyone who criticized flight in any way whatsoever…. And then had to have the “last word” by remarking how I did not have facts to back up my false assertions. Sure it is his site, he is the owner and he can do what he wants, but for someone his age I felt he acted really immature and childish… kinda like the whole FLIGHT team itself… and like Joshua Howard for bashing on the hard core simmers for complaining . That was before AVSIM took a nosedive and started blocking access to all unregistered members, censoring and then later closing down the FLIGHT forum section, along with a whole slew of other BS.

AVSIM is gone the way of MS FLIGHT…. I honestly don’t know if MSFT is pressuring Tom or Tom is just clueless… but either way… I could care less about AVSIM if it were not for the fact that some 3pd such as PMDG have their support forum hosted on AVSIM. I’m a paid PMDG, AOA, etc customer and I can’t even access PMDG/AOA forums unless with TOR or some other proxy since Tom banned me and blocked my ip address because he didn’t like the fact that I didn’t agree with his views on FLIGHT. AVSIM hegemony is not good and I think their policy and recent actions are shooting themselves in the foot (metaphorically speaking)

Link to post
Share on other sites

whilst win 7 is very good i dont necessarily think it will be my last o/s , just as win98 corrected the shortfalls of win95 and likewise xp fixed win2000, and similarly win7 fixed vista, I am quite sure that win8 which I agree will only have minority interest, will be fixed by a newer, not announced o/s.

Likewise Fsx whether it will be a m.s. product time will tell, but I believe that M.s. despite all the rhetoiric, will produce FS11, and it will be good. LM cannot legally produce an over the counter product, and whilst it is largely FSX with some small mods, it will be some time before it becomes a major competitor for FSX, if it ever does. X plane has great potential but there again is has had potential for a long time and never capitalised on it, and there are one or two other sims that have great potential as well which warrant investigation, so whilst I enjoy fsx and all its add ons at the moment i dont think It is the be all and end all of flight sims, I am sure something better will come along and in a few years we will all be looking back on FSX fondly much as we do now with FS9.

Link to post
Share on other sites

whilst win 7 is very good i dont necessarily think it will be my last o/s , just as win98 corrected the shortfalls of win95 and likewise xp fixed win2000, and similarly win7 fixed vista, I am quite sure that win8 which I agree will only have minority interest, will be fixed by a newer, not announced o/s.

Likewise Fsx whether it will be a m.s. product time will tell, but I believe that M.s. despite all the rhetoiric, will produce FS11, and it will be good. LM cannot legally produce an over the counter product, and whilst it is largely FSX with some small mods, it will be some time before it becomes a major competitor for FSX, if it ever does. X plane has great potential but there again is has had potential for a long time and never capitalised on it, and there are one or two other sims that have great potential as well which warrant investigation, so whilst I enjoy fsx and all its add ons at the moment i dont think It is the be all and end all of flight sims, I am sure something better will come along and in a few years we will all be looking back on FSX fondly much as we do now with FS9.

From the DOS, to 95 then to 98 and XP was a huge change. We saw the transition from 16-bit applications to 32-bit apps and now 64-bit apps. There will never be a need for anything more, such as 128-bit OS.

Again, for another example from a file system standpoint we went from FAT16 to FAT32 and then to NTFS. Windows Vista was supposed to have a new file system WinFS or something like that. But nope Win7 and even 8 are still using NTFS. There is nothing wrong with it and don't fix what isn't broken. It will take years if not decades to move the Internet from ipv4 to ipv6. We've been "transitioning" for over a decade now! Once that is done, never a need for anything more than ipv6, ever... There comes a point where there is no more need for change. Also on the graphics side, arguably the first Crysis, Crysis 1 from Crytek on the older CryEngine 2 is still to this date the best looking graphics on PC, and that piece of code was released in back in 2007 over five years ago! Think back on the improvements in 3d gaming industry by John Carmack with the Doom and later Quake engines from period of 1995 to 2000! And yet to this day we haven't moved past 2007 technology.... Everything is console-ized and then ported to PC, and Crysis 2, etc have sacrificed quality for performance.... again catering to the battle of demands and lowest common denominator... Point is, one of the selling points of Vista/7 was that with DirectX10/11 games would be much better than Directx9 (which XP is capped at) but so far really very few publishers /developers have done games that FULLY take advantage of even everything DirectX9 has to offer... it will be a long while at current trends for a game to fully utilize directx10 and then 11.... So after Windows 7 service pack 2, really want is the reason for me to upgrade to another version of Windows? Other than the fact that Microsoft will end the extended support of it in January 14, 2020?

Plus, imho, Windows 8 will be a step DOWN from Windows 7, akin to FLIGHT vs FSX. Ask yourself was that change for the better or for the worse? Each version of Flight Simulator has always been an overall improve over the past, but FLIGHT is not an improvement over FSX. Much in the same way, I'm willing to bet Windows 8 will be a downgrade from Windows 7 in all the ways that truly matter. In terms of Metro interface without a start button will confuse everyone who has also muscle-memory trained himself to the classic Windows GUI and interface, and really who needs a MOBILE interface on a DESKTOP or laptop device? Plus with the Windows APP store intregrated into Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to match the FLIGHT closed 'marketplace' and basically killing the whole concept of open platform "PC" as we knew it to be.... just like with FLIGHT , MSFT changed the Simulator franchise and kicked out all the 3pd and abandoned the SDK. Corporations are just now on Windows 7, a large portion yet to migrate from XP (an OS in its 11th year!) . You really think they will ever move to Windows 8 or 9? On the mobile side there is IOS and Andriod, Microsoft doesn't stand a chance.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 7 months later...

Sorry to drag it all up again, but talk of the future interests me!

Windows 8 has turned out to be a sensible manouvre, heading for the mobile/touchscreen devices - and touchscreens will become much more common around us. My friend has an HP laptop, touchscreen, about 2.5 years old. Touchscreen desktops should be less than three years away.

However, at some point all OS makers (Microsoft, Apple, other), will have to make another jump forwards - but not 128-bit. I mentioned the future - IBM has acheived a very small amount of quantum computing. For people who never studied it, the theory of superposition (that makes up the interesting part of quantum physics) basically states that two things can happen at once in the same place as long as it isn't observed. Crazy perhaps, but that could also mean a trillion things happening at once in the same place, etc. Which means for computers, a 256-qubit (quantum-bit) processor can calculate more things in one second than there are atoms in the universe. For FS, this is basically infinite computing power. We know how heavy FSX is on processors... with SSD cards and quantum processors we might see the first 10,000fps FSX flight in twenty years!

If P3D was to plan for this, get on board with IBM as an interested party, we might see an albeit bloated P3D of 500GB in size, full of extras that can be utilized if you have the power. Eventually, we'll have a flight simulator that is almost real, and I know the USAAF and multiple other parties would love this. By real, they'll be using touchscreens - press and drag the gear lever, it'll follow your finger. No more pressing 'g'! In another ten years, it'll trickle to the commercial market, and within a year Microsoft (if they're still around), will be selling QFS on Steam (if that's still around) as freemium.

I hope!

Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

Windows 8 has turned out to be a sensible manouvre, heading for the mobile/touchscreen devices - and touchscreens will become much more common around us. My friend has an HP laptop, touchscreen, about 2.5 years old. Touchscreen desktops should be less than three years away.

However, at some point all OS makers (Microsoft, Apple, other), will have to make another jump forwards - but not 128-bit. I mentioned the future - IBM has acheived a very small amount of quantum computing. For people who never studied it, the theory of superposition (that makes up the interesting part of quantum physics) basically states that two things can happen at once in the same place as long as it isn't observed. Crazy perhaps, but that could also mean a trillion things happening at once in the same place, etc. Which means for computers, a 256-qubit (quantum-bit) processor can calculate more things in one second than there are atoms in the universe. For FS, this is basically infinite computing power. We know how heavy FSX is on processors... with SSD cards and quantum processors we might see the first 10,000fps FSX flight in twenty years!

If P3D was to plan for this, get on board with IBM as an interested party, we might see an albeit bloated P3D of 500GB in size, full of extras that can be utilized if you have the power. Eventually, we'll have a flight simulator that is almost real, and I know the USAAF and multiple other parties would love this. By real, they'll be using touchscreens - press and drag the gear lever, it'll follow your finger. No more pressing 'g'! In another ten years, it'll trickle to the commercial market, and within a year Microsoft (if they're still around), will be selling QFS on Steam (if that's still around) as freemium.

I hope!

 

George,

 

Interesting thoughts. You make some good and valid points and the concept of quantum computing is exciting and bodes well for computing in general. However, I must disagree too in some places.

 

For the life of me I cannot understand the value of touch-screen desktops. I'm sitting in front of a 32" monitor and a 19" monitor that are easily 24" from the front edge of my table. I have my hands on the tabletop using mouse (OK, track ball in my case) and keyboard. If I'm slouched a little in my chair, my normal computing posture, the top edge of the large display is higher than the top of my head. My eyes are 37" from the top edge of the display and my shoulders are even further - good grief, my arms aren't that long. Why on earth would I want to raise my arms to the level of my shoulders or higher and change the physical position of my body in the chair to be able to reach and manipilate things that can be done with my forearms at rest and with mere finger movements? How about a laser-pointer sensitive display screen? Now that might work!

 

For the landing gear lever, I use one of the switches on my CH yoke, to which I've glued a painted wooden toy wheel, with a saw kerf in it, simulating very well the actual landing gear lever in an aircraft. I'm not sure why stabbing a finger at a flat panel is any more realistic than a switch on a yoke or joystick, or even the G key on the keyboard. (By the way, I share your disdain for using the keyboard in flight simulation - that is to be avoided where possible.)

 

I agree entirely that for handheld devices up to the size of tablets and perhaps laptops, touch screens open new vistas (ahem) for user interface. For desktop displays, unless we're talking about some very different displays in terms of size, placement, orientation, etc. from what we have now, I don't see it being particularly useful or comfortable.

 

I have to assume the 10,000 fps figure is hyperbole as opposed to suggesting something that would be useful. The human eye really can't perceive any improvement much above 30 fps.

 

The fact is, computer hardware that is available today has significantly more computing horsepower than FSX can use. The current narrow neck of the bottle is not the computer, it's the software, which consists of much patched code, some of which was probably originally written in the early 1990s. As it exists, FS is not able to make use of multiple processors, vast amounts of RAM or the immense power of modern graphics cards. Obviously none of the current hardware holds a candle to what quantum desktops might deliver in the future, but current hardware is probably already approaching an order of magnitude better than our best available desktop flight simultor can utilize.

 

I believe that L-M/P3D is attacking those barriers in software space in order to give their version of Flight Simulator better access to the raw hardware horsepower that already exists in modern PCs. That's the easiest, quickest and cheapest way forward.

 

As for IBM, they've done and continue to do some wonderful things but if you enter into a business deal with them you'd best have one hand over your wallet and read all the fine print carefully. Nothing IBM has ever done is remotely inexpensive or usually even affordable. They are a premier research and development company and a very good supplier of BUSINESS (and government, military, institutional, etc.) computing hardware, software and services as long as you're a customer with deep pockets. I say this having had some years of commercial experience as a business customer of IBM. As a consumer, I'd be very wary of any project that depended heavily on IBM for hardware, software or services. They're not a bad company and I wouldn't mind owning a ton of their stock but they are not known for affordability nor for retail consumer services. (In fairness, neither is Lockheed-Martin)

 

Anyway, my point is that quantum comuting on the desktop is not necessary for us to have the NGFS - it only requires software that can effectively utilize what is already available on our motherboards and graphics cards.

 

I look forward to whatever IBM and others can bring to the table as we go forward, but for a quantum leap in the performance of desktop flight simulation, quantum computing in the formal sense really isn't a pre-requisite. I think P3D is already on the best short-term path.

 

John

Link to post
Share on other sites

Then I can look forward to the short-term and long-term future! P3D will be very useful - we as a simming community aren't powerful enough for Microsoft to bother with, but if an airforce got on board, that's only a bonus, and that's what LM seem to be doing, giving the same product to institutions and consumers.

10,000 was much more of an arbitrary comparison, I can't tell the difference between 22 and 25 :P

As to touchscreens - I am a composer and I use the computer a lot for that. I am always dreaming of a horizontal (maybe slightly slanted towards me) touchscreen that I can move my score onto and wiggle around with my finger. The centre of that would be about the same distance as the centre of my palm with my right arm straight out, at an angle of maybe twenty degrees to the right. That's about the right position I think that many aircraft controls are at. And whilst the action isn't quite as precise as an actual object (if I weren't a teenager and I had basic woodworking and electric skills I'd love to make paraphernalia like that!) I suppose for me the location is just as important. Controls aren't under the nose, stuff like flaps and throttles are by your leg!

Anyway, I'll always be a waiter and a dreamer. Thanks for the reply.

Link to post
Share on other sites

George,

 

A horizontal or near horizontal touch screen might be useful but would force me to eliminate some of my desk clutter. The only problem with that is the cats would have to find a new place to sleep.

 

John

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...
Hi bochen280

Welcome to the forums, you're not related to our member M31 are you? sounds like him speaking!

 

Christ Joe, just been catching up on things on your forums the past few days after my sabbatical and found this.

 

I can assure you we are different people, but sometimes like minded folk ETC.

 

If its any consolation, I agree with every word the guys says, Win 8 too, so I can understand you might think it was me, the guy is very intelligent ... I'm quite chuffed :)

 

My fight with MS Flight is long over now, its a done deal and nought I or anyone can do about it.

 

I'm sure somewhere you can check IP addresses and suchlike, but honestly, coming back like that is not my style ... I respect you and I would not do that.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I also agree that I cannot see touch screens becoming main stream except for some particular work like composing, and I tend to think the p.c. makers agreed and suffered the anger from M.S. for not supporting win8.

My screens are also out of my reach in any case who wants to have to clean a monitor twice a day?

Link to post
Share on other sites

Don't worry, 

Looking back I can see this is not your style Colin, apologies.  :)

 

No worries Joe, LOL, don't want to harp on, but it was kinda funny seeing the way MS Flight eventually panned out ... and I'm not saying I told you so or anything, just sad the grand MS Flight Sim series ended this way after so many fond years ... IE nothing, maybe it can be resurrected? I hope so.

 

Cheers.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...