Microsoft Flight About To Be Released - Landing In Hawaii On 29Th Feb. 2012

[Madfish]

I didn't find a better place to post this thread, I hope it's okay here.

Microsoft will launch Microsoft Flight on the 29th February.

Changelog:

- edited P51 Mustang - flyable from outside only

Price and content available

Some content, the biggest island of Hawaii and the plane Icon A5, will be "free". Additional content, planes and areas, will cost money.

At release they will offer a few paid extensions:

• the first expansion called "Hawaiian Adventure Pack". It'll cost 1600 MS-points (about 20€). and will offer the other (I believe 7), much smaller, islands and the Vans RV-6A, an agile civil and trainer aircraft. Additionally it'll offer about 20 new missions and challenges.
  
• For another 1200 MS-points (about 15€) they will offer the Maule M-7-260C, a robust "outback" plane that can be used for transporting cargo and passengers and landing on grass and dirt strips.
  
• For 640 MS-points (about 8€) they'll offer the P-51 Mustang. Flyable from the outside only (no virtual cockpit), it won't have weapons either and will be lighter than the original and can be used for "stunt" type challenges.
  

That means the game would cost around 43€ total for the complete area of Hawaii and 3 ½ planes. While Hawaii is pretty big and awesome... it's not exactly cheap.

Gameplay

Gameplay will be civil aviation. Each pilot will have a career, the career is linked to paid add-on content though. There are numerous missions and challenges available, an interesting concept. I don't know if missions and challenges can be flown in co-op.

The game will be very flexible in terms of experience requirements. Beginners can fly with mouse and keyboard in a simplified external view. Experts can bump up realism and are required to even prep their planes before flight. A detailed cockpit will be available of course. Complex control options are available (probably even hardware linking).

System requirements

Minimum

Dual Core CPU (2Ghz+)

Dirext-X 9 GPU

OS: Windows XP

Recommended

CPU: Dual Core (3Ghz+)

GPU: ATi Radeon HD 5670 or nVidia Geforce 9800T

RAM: 6 GByte

System requirements seem to scale pretty well. It should be possible to run the game even on low-end hardware and laptops.

Take-off?

Personally I'm a "little" sceptical about the price point. Why release a "free" game if even minor add-on content costs about 8-15€ (11-18$)? I guess the community will end up clustered and scattered like this. I'm interested in the missions and challenges but I'm disappointed you require special planes for them. While it's okay to buy a few I don't want to end up buying hundreds of virtual planes worth a real one just to progress on my virtual pilot career or to have fun with friends on-line. Personally I'll wait and see how it progresses instead of dumping money worth a full retail game on 4 planes and a few islands.

Please discuss

[Jabo]

I've seen (and flown) this on a beta-testers machine and frankly, it's poor, There's lots of eye-candy but the gameplay seems to be quite arcade-style. Leaving aside the ability to blow stuff up, I think IL-2 offers a better simming experience.

Jabo

[DD_Arthur]

From my reading of the release blurb the P51 seems to be flyable from the "outside" i.e. don't have no 'pit!

[BadAim]

I'll try the free version, I mean it's free right? If it's worth it, I'll throw some money at it. It's only money after all.

[Madfish]

From my reading of the release blurb the P51 seems to be flyable from the "outside" i.e. don't have no 'pit!

You're absolutely right. The P51 will not have a virtual cockpit. I edited the opening post.

Yes, I'll try the free version... but I'm getting mixed feelings.

Obviously it might be a game useful to draw new people into flight simming. Especially missions, challenges, score hunt and other social things are very desperately needed to keep the genre alive. Something I tried to communicate to maddox games as well.

The thing is that this doesn't have to affect the sim community in a negative way. Let the newbies fly with mice and keyboard (I've flown IL-2 with keyboard and landed etc.) as that may be fun to them and inspire them to buy more hardware etcetera. On the other hand side they'd have to make sure that realism is conserved as flying is way too simple and if the flightmodels are simplified it's just no fun at all.

That said it raises one question. How much would you have to pay for a decent pool of planes. Obviously they'll charge 15€ for a small plane with virtual cockpit. What about a few dozen different planes of various sizes and a decent area to fly above? With the entry price points they currently have you'd quickly end up paying several hundred dollars for the planes and thousands for new areas. Not to mention the effect this would have in terms of multiplayer. If everyone has different planes and areas unlocked... the community is bound to get clustered.

I guess that means I'll stick with the free version for a very long time.

[Akula]

Hmmm...mixed feelings for me too. Personally, I've always looked at MS Flight Sim as a semi-casual form of "edutainment"; the kind of "game" that can provide you with some basic aviation skills in the comfort of your own living room. An essential part of that has been the possibility to fly around in any part of the world; perhaps most around the areas close to home. A game like this will perhaps give me the opportunity at some point, but to what cost? And with which airplanes?

However, being a 3D artist, I can understand the dilemma. Given the screenshots, my guess is that the dev team has tried the utmost to give an as true-to-life experience of Hawaii as humanly possible. But - to do that for the entire world would be utterly expensive. Too expensive, in fact, and possibly with all kinds of hardware problems (lod-ing, texture memory, preloading of adjacent areas, synching in MP with low end/high end computers etc). Nonetheless, even if we say we are willing to accept less graphics for more flying, that is a "modified truth". Most of us do expect (and even though we may not at times admit it - want) a nice-looking game. So going for the lower end of graphical detail simply isn't an option, especially not after games with such outstanding graphics as IL2:CoD and Rise of Flight.

I won't complain when things are for free. But for this game to really make me want to invest, it simply has to be in the top end in areas like flight realism, physics and (future) choice of geolocation. Let's hope they will release geo expansions to a fair price. If the planes are proportionally expensive is less of a problem, I find. A single really good Cessna 172 will keep my interest far longer than a dozen half-sloppy whatever-planes.

Just my opinion, and I don't expect all to agree. Just airing (pun intended ) some thoughts!

[Mayhem]

I personally like civilian flight. There needs to be really nice scenery, excellent traffic control communication and air traffic though for it to really be worth it. Having all failures set to realistic is a must as well or there really is no point to it for me. The one thing I would love to see more of however is a privateer/economy aspect. For instance being a bush pilot in Canada, Alaska or Australia would be great if it included choosing your jobs and budgeting your company. Sort of like Freelancer of flight sims. If you were successful in making a profit you could upgrade or get a new plane and perhaps even manage a fleet at some point. I think that would really make civ flight much more enjoyable and strategic.

Most of the time I fly civ, I pick the most treacherous areas, set the worst weather and always have realistic failures set. Having to get packages or passengers from point a to b though would make it that much more entertaining.

[Jabo]

I'd like to see MS Flight pull more people into the simming community, but simming (even at the decidedly informal level I'm at) is so 'niche' these days that I'm not at all sure. Mind you, if it works...

Given how good the old FS was getting, this feels like a significant step backwards but we shall see.

I have had a change of heart tho and will try the free version at least as support is crucial for these small developers to grow and improve their product...

Jabo

[DD_Brando]

I downloaded and installed it - "flew" it - and deleted it an hour later. http://www.simhq.com/_air14/air_525a.html says it all better than I can.

[Streak]

Not very impressed either. I can't even seem to get track-ir working in the game and it does seem very simplified.