MS Flight Cancelled, from an X-Plane Perspective

[DMullert 216]

Howdy Team!

 

I don't think anyone of us can reaally say this caught us by surprise.........the question is how this new twist in our hobby migt or might not affect the future of X-Plane going forward. It will be interesting to follow this in the next couple of months.

 

Dennis

[GoranM 3,799]

Judging by the amount of developers that have been making the move to x plane over the last year (many of which have been unannounced), I'd say it's going to get a lot busier in the x plane add on market in the near future.

In all honesty, I was hoping Flight would do well.

[greggerm 312]

I don't think it will overly help X-Plane, but it certainly won't hurt either.

 

MS Flight was designed towards a specific demographic of user - one which might be less inclined to use a product like X-Plane or other more serious sim. While there were some "crossover" users who enjoy MS Flight for what it is AND enjoy a more complex simulator, they are likely already entrenched behind the advanced sim of their choosing.

 

MS Flight isn't going anywhere just yet - it's download and content will still be available, but nothing new will apparently be made for it. It can still act as an introduction to flight sims for some time, and hooked users can then migrate to a "big-boy" sim as they outgrow Flight's limited scope.

 

Although highly unlikely - imagine if MS decided to pop open the MS Flight SDK for open development? That'd be interesting...

 

-Greg

[N1G 88]

During early discussions prior to it's release, there were many that stated it would fail. Their original demographics concerning the number of expected user/buyers surely has come back to bite them. A very short lived product.

 

Bob

[DMullert 216]

Hey Bob.....Yes........I was one of those who raised the hand and said........eehhhhh, this won't fly. Flight was actually the catalyst for me to jump 100% into the XPX bandwagon and I'm glad I did.

 

Cheers, Dennis

[xplanery 250]

Yeah, I was kind of suspicious towards Flights business model from the start. There simply isn't that big market in gaming community for civilian flight games, and Flight apply to most of FS community either. I think I will now reinstall X Plane 10 again (lost old installation in hard disk failure) and look more carefully what it has to offer.

[Luis_KMIA 242]

Plenty of discussion here too http://forum.avsim.net/topic/380799-the-end-of-flight/page__st__225

[mikea76 184]

Hey Bob.....Yes........I was one of those who raised the hand and said........eehhhhh, this won't fly. Flight was actually the catalyst for me to jump 100% into the XPX bandwagon and I'm glad I did.

 

Cheers, Dennis

 

Same here. I remember in one post I said " The dev team should not go out and make any major purchases"

 

Sadly people are loosing their jobs over this.. I wish them well.

[ahuimanu 50]

I've purchased both XPlane 8 and 9 in the past. I never spent more than 5-10 hours as I found it didn't hold a candle to FS2004 and FSX, respectively. While I haven't, and won't leave FSX for who knows how long, I think the death of Flight really sets a new stage for Laminar. The truth is, there is no platform leader left. Unless Lockheed Martin can do some legal wizardry and just step in as a successor to the FSX codebase, we really are down to Laminar and XPlane.

 

I'll pony up for XP10 and get onboard - it seems like the only way forward. Aersoft throwing in really changes things for me as well - they were seriously considering making their own alternative but got behind Laminar instead.

 

Ball's Laminar's court and you have my attention.

 

I know one thing, I'm always going to need high-fidelity flight simulation and Laminar seems to be committed to that.

[jcomm 5,999]

I know one thing, I'm always going to need high-fidelity flight simulation and Laminar seems to be committed to that.

That's why I am here too :-)

[SpiritFlyer 987]

I changed the thread title to "MS Flight Cancelled, from an X-Plane Perspective" so that I would not have to follow the rules and move it to the Flight forum, delete it as being off topic, merge it with one or all of the others on the same subject or anything else.

 

You are welcome.

 

I was never here.

[ahuimanu 50]

That's why I am here too :-)

 

Here's another reason why I just pulled the trigger with XPlane: http://www.x-plane.com/hardware/evo/12_prep/12_prep.html

 

While I've found him odd at times, this guy has a vision and passion and is actually a pilot.

 

This week, we've been reminded why this is important. Additionally, cross-platform means that Windows 7 is my last Microsoft OS.

[jcomm 5,999]

Here's another reason why I just pulled the trigger with XPlane: http://www.x-plane.c...ep/12_prep.html

 

While I've found him odd at times, this guy has a vision and passion and is actually a pilot.

 

This week, we've been reminded why this is important. Additionally, cross-platform means that Windows 7 is my last Microsoft OS.

 

Yes, that's very true, both regarding Austin, and his team, and the operating system... ;-)

[flyerkg 62]

Sadly people are loosing their jobs over this.. I wish them well.

There is a human factor to this whole mess that is directly related to decisions made by MS. This was a unfortunate event from the start.Now I am determined to not get excited over MS for any reason unless an improved Aces comes along and makes all the improvements that we thought we would have seen in FS11. Then again MS can do whatever it wants to with or without the interest of its product users.

 

I will continue to keep FSX and FS9 going for the time and money I have invested in them over the years. FS9 is becoming more or less an experiment lab for me and I am slowly migrating my FSX addons to P3D. And have also had X-Plane since v.4 and will also build on my addon inventory for X-Plane 10.

 

I am not a one or the other simmer, but a long-time fan of both products. The dust will soon settle from this distraction and maybe more users will take to X-Plane as Laminar Research continues to make frequent updates to the major release.

[cmdrnmartin 1]

I think this represents a wonderful opportunity for many reasons.

 

1. Prepar3d is not really for Civie use, the license is essentially being abused by those buying it for civilian flight simulation. Frankly, Lockheed Martin has mismanaged so much recently, I find it doubtful that we'll see much come of it. I could be wrong, but right now, it doesn't strike me as a marketable alternative.

2. X-Plane has a decent usebase allready, and has name recognition, even if it is as "that other flight sim"

3. The developer is dedicated and constantly working on it, improving it, and moving it towards the level of sim that many users of the old FSX like.

4. MS has essentially abandoned the genre, leaving Xplane as the only civilian flight sim developer on the market, and one with a strong code base to start on, with a fully navigable world.

5. Third Party developers have been switching over to xplane in droves as they saw the writing on the wall. Where they go, the market will most likely follow.

 

I do see problems though.

 

1. Xplane's design team is ridiculously small. Meyer might be approached by a big name publisher and offered support, or a full on buyout, but until that happens, upgrades, code changes, and features are limited by what a tiny team can whip out. Even chained to a deskwith limited breaks a man can only code so much.

2. Xplane has a lack of addons at the moment. For people who spent thousands on their software, not to mention hardware, there is a certain expectation when they boot up flight sim. They want to fly the models they know, using the controls they know, to make it work for them. There are many differences between the UI in xplane and in Flight Sim. These are hard to overcome, and some are very poorly thought out (as a convert, there has been a lot of frustration relearning a flying sim/game)

3. Wx. Xplane does not do wx as well as Flight Sim did, and it needs to. Not everyone likes flying a helicopter around Seatac, there are plenty of people who want to do high altitude transatlantic stuff. The current map system, wx system, and metar grabbing system are not good enough. A third party addon would be welcome here, but the coding of xplane currently is limiting.

4. Visual fidelity. I am sold on the terrain for xplane, and some of the atmospheric effects. They are awesome. But the visual aircraft models need to be better. Cities need to be designed in many areas to attain higher visual fidelity. I am also convinced that the airport database is based off the ancient DAFIF release before it was sealed to the public, and many of the airfields are in desperate need of upgrading to reflect changes. This comes back to having a larger team working on the project.

 

I could list off a lot of things in both, but those are what came to mind immediately. I am excited, and I hope Xplane and Laminar will step up to the ball game. I'm sure Austin is jumping for joy at the MS announcement, while at the same time realizing that this is an opportunity that if not handled correctly, could damage his baby as well. Lockheed might pick up the ball and contract out to a mjor house to move prepar3d forward. It could turn into BluRay vs HD-DVD all over again. Austin needs to exploit this properly.

 

I sincerely hope this helps out Xplane, the potential is there, and when I first fired up nine, that terrain mesh and autogen showed me what a flight sim could be like. Xplane 10 has some great night lighting, and the terrain, it really does let you think you are flying, as many of the airports I fly to have uneven runways, with slopes and what not. It's a level of reality that helps to immerse. But it still has annoyances that drop the immersion spell. And those need to be ironed out.

 

My 2 cents.