33 replies to this topic

[American Eagle]

Remember when Microsoft discussed about dropping the "Simulator" from the title?  Well let's look at it this way-  I doubt that Microsoft would spend a lot of time just creating an "arcade-like" flight game based only in Hawaii.  Look at the superior graphics the development team put work into.  In my opinion, MS Flight is an eye opener to catch everyone's attention, and maybe soon we will see "Simulator" get added to the bottom of the main title "Flight" for a later release.  This is hope for simmers to see a reboot of Flight Simulator.  A major one.

[HighFlyin]

American Eagle, on Feb 8 2012, 03:13 AM, said:

Remember when Microsoft discussed about dropping the "Simulator" from the title?  Well let's look at it this way-  I doubt that Microsoft would spend a lot of time just creating an "arcade-like" flight game based only in Hawaii.  Look at the superior graphics the development team put work into.  In my opinion, MS Flight is an eye opener to catch everyone's attention, and maybe soon we will see "Simulator" get added to the bottom of the main title "Flight" for a later release.  This is hope for simmers to see a reboot of Flight Simulator.  A major one.

Threads based on speculation are boring. In a couple weeks, everyone will have theirs questions answered.

[ChaoticBeauty]

American Eagle, on Feb 8 2012, 10:13 AM, said:

Remember when Microsoft discussed about dropping the "Simulator" from the title?  Well let's look at it this way-  I doubt that Microsoft would spend a lot of time just creating an "arcade-like" flight game based only in Hawaii.  Look at the superior graphics the development team put work into.  In my opinion, MS Flight is an eye opener to catch everyone's attention, and maybe soon we will see "Simulator" get added to the bottom of the main title "Flight" for a later release.  This is hope for simmers to see a reboot of Flight Simulator.  A major one.

Superior graphics?

Have you seen the texture resolution of the ground? It's beyond horrible. Check out screenshot 3 in the February sample.

[jcovelli]

Superior graphics? yeah...  ok??? you must have better eyes than me.

the graphics suck period.... ok ok.. there's a few good looking trees and stormy clouds are pretty good i'll admit that

i wouldn't say a flashy menu, 2-3 NEW airplanes, and an "aerocache of the day" is any hope.

and even if it does become a simulator again... it's too expensive to make it one. also.. everyone hates the way it's distributed and controlled.  


the only way there is hope is if EVERYTHING we've seen from flight so far... turns out to be an april fools joke.

[162db]

I guess some people never give up.

[American Eagle]

162db, on Feb 8 2012, 03:47 PM, said:

I guess some people never give up.

I just did.     It's time to soup up FSX.  Thanks for the response everyone.

[Mumbles]

lol Microsoft Flight.

[AlexKitch]

I disagree with the graphics slating.

I played the Beta and the graphics were superb.  It's no Frostbite engine, but I saw volumetric fog/clouds, excellent lighting, proper texture streaming, and less stuttering and frame spikes than FSX.

You can criticize the marketing of the game, but not the rendering tech.

[jcovelli]

AlexKitch, on Feb 9 2012, 01:30 PM, said:

You can criticize the marketing of the game, but not the rendering tech.

considering it's 2012 and the "and the rendering tech" in flight is from 5-6 years ago.... i can criticize it.  it's dx9, no bump mapping, no tessellation, very low polygon count, same textures as fsx... etc. and the textures do not load well at all... and they pop in and out... which is the same thing fsx does. swaying trees and fuzzy/blurry shadows, the same god awful city textures and terrible night lighting do not impress me. the fsx rendering engine was out of date before it was released.. flight is the same thing... 5 years later.  i don't see how anyone says the graphics in flight are good??  and on top of that... there's absolutely no way to change any settings besides the amount of autogen.

[ChaoticBeauty]

AlexKitch, on Feb 9 2012, 07:30 PM, said:

I disagree with the graphics slating.

I played the Beta and the graphics were superb.  It's no Frostbite engine, but I saw volumetric fog/clouds, excellent lighting, proper texture streaming, and less stuttering and frame spikes than FSX.

You can criticize the marketing of the game, but not the rendering tech.

While the shaders and autogen are impressive, the textures are about the same level with FS2002.

[yimmy149]

jcovelli, on Feb 9 2012, 10:21 AM, said:

. i can criticize it.  it's dx9, no bump mapping,

Is it really still DX9?  *sigh*

[jcovelli]

yimmy149, on Feb 9 2012, 04:27 PM, said:

Is it really still DX9?  *sigh*

yes it is. and yes....

that also means... there's really no room for improvement either.

[Daube]

jcovelli, on Feb 9 2012, 01:21 PM, said:

considering it's 2012 and the "and the rendering tech" in flight is from 5-6 years ago.... i can criticize it.

Sure...

Quote

no bump mapping

Are you sure ? FSX has BumpMapping but it's missing in Flight ?

Quote

very low polygon count

Are you sure ? The terrain doesn't seem less detailled than in FSX. The planes don't seem "low poly" at all, especially in the cockpits which look quite impressive in the screenshots. What are you talking about exactely ?

Quote

swaying trees and fuzzy/blurry shadows,

The "blurry shadows" as you say are real shadows *finally*, not the stupid 3D flat shadow that get invisible most of the times in FSX when the terrain is not perfectly horizontal. The shadows in Flight are quite impressive, to be honnest.

Quote

the same god awful city textures

It's called generic textures with landclass, as opposed to photoreal terrain.

Quote

the fsx rendering engine was out of date before it was released.. flight is the same thing... 5 years later.

As far as we can see in the screenshots and videos, the Flight graphic engine is better than the FSX one. Some defaut textures are not so good, like the defaut cumulus texture for example, but from a technical point of view, the rendering engine does a pretty good job, especially with the volumetric clouds, the water, the autogen and the lighting and shadows.

In fact I wish FSX had this shadows/lighting system.

[jcovelli]

so... you're impressed that flight has things that far cry had 8 years ago?   it's not impressive.. it's mandatory and expected in a modern game.

and you say "from the screen shots"... have you played the beta?

low poly count is the overall game... 3 nicely modeled airplanes out of an entire game.... WOW. i also never compared it to fsx... at all.

i'd rather have fake shadows than "real" ones if the real ones are that... bad. and they jump all over the place.

and i don't expect photo real terrain... but i do expect something better than textures that look like a class of 5th graders geography homework.....

[SamYeager]

jcovelli, on Feb 10 2012, 12:30 PM, said:

and i don't expect photo real terrain... but i do expect something better than textures that look like a class of 5th graders geography homework.....

So you're not going to bother with Flight then? Well that's ok - you've made your views clear, we're all clear about what you don't like so you have no further need to post in this particular sub forum. You still have all the other forums in which to post as well as all the other flight sims that you can use.

[AlexKitch]

jcovelli, on Feb 9 2012, 01:21 PM, said:

considering it's 2012 and the "and the rendering tech" in flight is from 5-6 years ago.... i can criticize it.  it's dx9, no bump mapping, no tessellation, very low polygon count, same textures as fsx... etc. and the textures do not load well at all... and they pop in and out... which is the same thing fsx does. swaying trees and fuzzy/blurry shadows, the same god awful city textures and terrible night lighting do not impress me. the fsx rendering engine was out of date before it was released.. flight is the same thing... 5 years later.  i don't see how anyone says the graphics in flight are good??  and on top of that... there's absolutely no way to change any settings besides the amount of autogen.

I don't mean to be rude, but you're incorrect on nearly all counts.

Flight not only has bump mapping, but also has (far superior) normal mapping.  Look very carefully at the plastic and metalwork within the virtual cockpits and you'll see it.

Full-screen post-processing seems implemented properly in Flight too, unlike FSX's woefully inefficient Bloom shading.  

The textures are not the same as FSX - not quite sure how you came to that conclusion.  They're all entirely new, as far as I can tell.  Alpha blending on textures is also hugely improved - only have to look at the transparent railing and fence objects to see this.  In FSX, these would have horrible black/grey halos around them.

Fussy shadows are commonplace in any modern game that uses them extensively.  Dynamic shadows are *incredibly* expensive on performance to render sharply, especially in the quantity that Flight renders them.  Typically, games reserve a handful of high quality dynamic shadow renders for characters and objects close to the camera.

The autogen settings *can* be changed from within the config file, just as they can in FSX.  I'm sure tweaking tools will be released for this very quickly.

Finally, I'd just like to point out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with DirectX 9.  Plenty of modern games are still being developed with DirectX 9 in mind (Skyrim? Arkham City? Crysis?).  There's no sense in shoehorning an unnecessary graphics API into a product just to be able to say the game supports it.  Flight would not benefit from using tessellation to any great extent unless you have some kind of burning desire to render each propeller blade in 50,000 vertices of hardware-tessellated splendor.

Edited by AlexKitch, 10 February 2012 - 08:53 AM.

[jcovelli]

Skyrim? Arkham City? Crysis

all look and feel like modern games.... flight looks and feels like it was made 6 years ago at least.... oh wait... it was cause it's the exact same as fsx. the textures are different in color perhaps... but they are the same week generic textures non the less.  and every single build and house... same exact textures as fsx... also besides the stormy cumulus clouds... the clouds are all exactly the same as well.

what's wrong with dx9 is that it's 10 years old...  and the only thing it's doing is holding games back. now think down the line 2 or 3 years.... you'll also be wondering why flight has dx9. flight was supposed to be a new platform or at least should have been a whole new platform.. instead they took those 3 years and made a fancy yet hard to use menu...

if there's bump mapping in fsx or flight... i haven't seen any.  and i do know what it is... i spend my days making bump and diffusion maps.... and textures

this thread was about hope for flight... sorry but i see none whatsoever.  and the things that are there that are better than fsx... again who cares that's the way it's supposed to be, those are the things modern games should have period. there is nothing whatsoever stunning or even remotely interesting about flight.

[jcovelli]

SamYeager, on Feb 10 2012, 09:15 AM, said:

So you're not going to bother with Flight then? Well that's ok - you've made your views clear, we're all clear about what you don't like so you have no further need to post in this particular sub forum. You still have all the other forums in which to post as well as all the other flight sims that you can use.

and no... i'm not going to bother with flight purely because of what they did to 3rd party developers. microsoft gave them the finger... i can give microsoft the finger back.

and thanks... i do use fs9 and xplane quit a bit

[AlexKitch]

jcovelli, on Feb 10 2012, 01:14 PM, said:

it's the exact same as fsx. the textures are different in color perhaps... but they are the same week generic textures non the less.  and every single build and house... same exact textures as fsx... also besides the stormy cumulus clouds... the clouds are all exactly the same as well.

Where is your evidence to support this?  The clouds in Flight closely resemble volumetric clouds rather than anything else.  FSX's clouds are nothing but cleverly arranged 2D billboards.  Textures may be generic, yes, but short of photographing every square meter of Hawaii in HD, I don't understand what you're expecting here.  Even Google Earth would wince at that idea.

jcovelli, on Feb 10 2012, 01:14 PM, said:

what's wrong with dx9 is that it's 10 years old...  and the only thing it's doing is holding games back. now think down the line 2 or 3 years.... you'll also be wondering why flight has dx9.

Another false statement.  I'm a programmer in the games industry and I can tell you first hand, having coded for PC, 360 and PS3, that there is *no* burning rush to adopt DirectX 10 or 11.  What we desperately *need* is better hardware from the consoles (particularly memory) to stop holding back PC development.  Fancier API's are simply a luxury - one that most people's PCs still aren't in a position to fully take advantage of.

jcovelli, on Feb 10 2012, 01:14 PM, said:

if there's bump mapping in fsx or flight... i haven't seen any.  and i do know what it is... i spend my days making bump and diffusion maps.... and textures

Given that FSX had bump mapping, it can be given as read that Flight also has bump mapping.

jcovelli, on Feb 10 2012, 01:14 PM, said:

this thread was about hope for flight... sorry but i see none whatsoever.  and the things that are there that are better than fsx... again who cares that's the way it's supposed to be, those are the things modern games should have period. there is nothing whatsoever stunning or even remotely interesting about flight.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but please get your facts straight before throwing mud at something you know little about yet.  I'm very skeptical about the future of Flight myself - I think Microsoft have shot at the wrong market and I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments about the 3rd party market, but being petulant about it isn't going to answer any of my questions.  Wait, and see.

Edited by AlexKitch, 10 February 2012 - 01:55 PM.

[ChaoticBeauty]

More than 70% of system today can take advantage of DX10, and more than 30% can take advantage of DX11. I think we ought to get an upgrade.