Microsoft ends MS Flight Sim / MS Flight

We should congratulate MS for extending the life of this flightsim fo some 20 years.
FSX still has many years of updates and inprovements. What MS gave us with FSX was a flightsim that could be expanded, coded without need for the source code. Just look at A2A and their excellent aircraft. Still lots of fun to be had with FSX.

Flight Simulator, be it 2002, 2004, X, whatever, was undoubtedly one of the best games that I have ever played. Many still play it, and make amazing creations, making their own updates.

I am lucky to still own FS2002, FS2004, and FSX Gold Edition, but I am unable to play it because I am on a mac. But FS will never be forgotten, and who knows, there might be an XBox version someday.

That is not the way I see it.

While plenty of software companies made COMBAT type simulators, FightSim was practically the only one that was simply flying, point A to B to C, in ordinary GA aircraft.

A strong niche community grew, and MS did the incredibly smart move of allowing 3ed person companies create aircraft models. Still, I once met a developer who complained how difficult it was to work with M$ to make products for the engine.

At one time FS was produced for Apple ][ and Macintosh, but M$ dropped it in the late 80’s, focusing only for DOS, then Win95 (not Win 3.1 IIRC).

One day a new company made a competing product, X-Plane by Laminar Research, for both Mac and Windows, and bit by bit grew in popularity and acclaim. A from nothing company successfully challenge THE behemoth?

So, the way I see it, FS was a Cash Cow for M$ because it had no real competition, so M$ did upgrades and charged large sums because the could. Later large upgrades seemed to impact the quality of FS, emphasis on eye candy over real world performance. M$started to get mediocre reviews, confidence lost, division canned.

That is my take on the fail.

It’s limited American appeal probably was it’s downfall. The best thing about FSX is that you can fly from your home airstrip. With VFR scenery I can fly over my house!

IMO MSFS tried to do too much, ie, world coverage. Sure, it was interesting to land a big jet at that mountain side strip in Nepal or where ever but did we users really learn anything from it. A far better choice was the Flight Unlimited series. Not so much area covered but, by the standards of the day, a much better flying sensation. ATC was so much better, complete with diversions to avoid larger aircraft, so many ‘Easter Eggs’, so many small fields to drop into, so many third party enhancements. A great little sim based in a beautiful part of America. With the later additions, longer frights could be made to the north where another detailed area was to be explored.

Such a pity that that team of designers were broken up. With today’s technology, it would be as close to flying the real thing as you’d get.

Pity I don’t still have it although, I guess it wouldn’t run on Windows7

Would that be Sublogic Flight ?
I had it on 5.4 inch floppy for my C64.
Had a very nice manual and maps of the (from memory 3 USA) scenery areas.

I think so, and I have Apple ][ version! 😀

A lot of developers are out of work now because of M$, for no good reason.

Was that 747 sim the one with lots of tiny engine gauges? I think the Sublogic one was based around a pa28 Archer. This was the one that MS bought out I believe.

Just as a matter of interest. I own MSFS 1 (On cassette tape) 😮

Moggy

Would that be Sublogic Flight ?
I had it on 5.4 inch floppy for my C64.
Had a very nice manual and maps of the (from memory 3 USA) scenery areas. Explained ndb and vor flying very well.

Anyone remember 747 for the Vic20! 3.5 k for a 747 sim and it worked quite well. At least I enjoyed it as a kid.

The FS program was cancelled simply because it was “Too Realistic”. There you have it. The most realistic FS known to man.

Just as a matter of interest. I own MSFS 1 (On cassette tape) 😮

Moggy

By the way, I waited for feedback on the beta version of MS Flight (I nearly signed up for it) and decided it wasn’t worth the bother of trying to download it based upon ratings. That after eagerly awaiting it and following their website from conception, expecting a greatly enhanced version of FSX. Too bad.

I have FSX and X Plane 10. Both have their good and bad points. X Plane has the advantage that it is still an actively developed program.

I’ve recently found scenery upgrades for both.

You can see some of my my X Plane videos (use my you tube username to find more) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i39q_XDDTS0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsSKn7NiDRE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93AzRaB9T2M

I can’t say I’m surprised, Microsoft Flight was a disaster!
Not a game and definitely not a simulator…

Microsoft should have called it quits after FSX, this year’s last hurrah was an embarrassed to the franchise.

Real world pilots need flight simulation software for instrument procedures training and practice (lots of that). We can’t just ‘go fly’ to do this as it is SO expensive. No pilots practice like that in real aeroplanes these days (not even airline pilots). We use simulators. We can learn as much from using a decent instrument sim on a PC as in the real thing because instrument procedural training is mostly about mental working.

My point was that most of these heads-down sims are now gone thanks to microsoft’s game. (I wrote the first UK PC instrument flight procedural trainer sim.) And hopefully, now that the MS monster is out of the game lots of smaller companies will have the space to restart. Microsoft is such a large company that nobody can complete. Look what happened with their flightSim. It took over and killed all other flight sims. The only way other flight sim companies could get a look in was to build add-ons for FlightSim. So no genuine alternatives evolved for either gamers or real-world pilots. Bad for both of us, I’d say.

I would suggest that the reason other flight simulators are no longer around is that MS Flight Sim was a better. I’ve played many sims from the Vic20 to today and can say that FSX is the better sim. True some sims were better at a particular `thing` but FSX, for all it’s faults and it does have some, is still a better all rounder. Also remember that a lot of people who use simulators are not real world pilots.

I agree however that we may now get a better simulator. Prepar 3D and Aerosoft are two that spring to mind. In the meantime I am happy with FSX.

FSX is a viable simulator. But if you want reality go fly!

This is good news for pilots. This flight simulator game had improved to the point that it has stopped development of serious instrument flight procedural training software for pilots. Like all microsoft junk it dominated the flight sim industry by shear weight of money. Before this junk was purchased by MS from the small software company that wrote it there were lots of decent flight sim programs for pilots. I know, I was the author of one of them. Now almost none remain for serious instrument training use.

Also MS flight sim never worked correctly. There was a bug in the 3D engine that was present in the pre-Microsoft version and remained to the end. If you flew an approach and wished to make a small lateral position correction inside the inner-marker to the threshold you couldn’t do it without huge (!) control movements. In real life it takes only small aileron/rudder/power inputs to ‘jink’ into line with the runway even when you are over the hedge.

So let’s hope for better and more serious flight sim programs in the wake of flight simulator. 🙂

Flight Simulator, be it 2002, 2004, X, whatever, was undoubtedly one of the best games that I have ever played. Many still play it, and make amazing creations, making their own updates.

I am lucky to still own FS2002, FS2004, and FSX Gold Edition, but I am unable to play it because I am on a mac. But FS will never be forgotten, and who knows, there might be an XBox version someday.

We should congratulate MS for extending the life of this flightsim fo some 20 years.
FSX still has many years of updates and inprovements. What MS gave us with FSX was a flightsim that could be expanded, coded without need for the source code. Just look at A2A and their excellent aircraft. Still lots of fun to be had with FSX.