Microsoft Flight Simulator

[PopeSmokesDope]

I just want to fly C-130's down the welsh valleys..... let me do that and 'll be a happy chappy....

[SeanR]

mate... pirated flight simulators and the joy of pecking at the keyboard to see which key did what:

 

G for landing Gear while still on the tarmac was always a joyful experience

F for Flaps...

 

< and > for rudder

 

and then? hunting for throttle. sometimes 1-0, other + and -

 

switching weapons. Tab? usually a good bet.

[TehStu]

Yeah, I could rattle off the keyboard shortcuts for any of these, when I was younger. This is all bringing back such excellent memories. Did anyone else play F-15 Strike Eagle? I think it was the third one which added a local LAN mode co-op mode where one of you could pilot and the other could be the navigator. God damn, that was FUN. Mate and I had our shitty old beige 386 PCs side by side, giving it some. He had the stupidly expensive Thrustmaster, back when the 15 pin joystick port was a thing, which didn't have force feedback (not sure that existed then?) but had actual tension to simulate non-fly by wire flight controls. Would wear you out on extended play. 

[Stevie]

56 minutes ago, SeanR said:

looking at

 

https://www.thrustmaster.com/products/tflight-hotas-one

 

now...

 

This might be heresy, but I'm going to stick with my xbox controller. I used to be into flightsticks back in the day but controllers are so good these days so why bother?

[Fitzcarraldo]

Limmy's streams for this are going to be amazing.

[TehStu]

10 minutes ago, Stevie said:

 

This might be heresy, but I'm going to stick with my xbox controller. I used to be into flightsticks back in the day but controllers are so good these days so why bother?

A HOTAS will be a good excuse for me to finally, properly starting Elite Dangerous. I struggled with the pad, just can't do precise flight siming in it. 

 

 

[milko]

The fact I already have a relatively fancy HOTAS does up the chance I'll get this too. It's just so much more convincing a feeling and with rocker switches etc everything's that bit more tactile. 

 

Trying to remember my formative flight sims now.

Spoiler

 

Fighter Pilot on speccy.

F15 Strike Eagle on my mate's Amiga (just messing around, didn't really understand what to do or how to play it).

Mig 29 Fulcrum on our PC.

SWOTL (watching my grandad who'd flown Lancasters in the war flying a B17 was interesting, he loved it).

AV8B Harrier Assault.

Rowan software had a golden age, for WW1 and WW2. Overlord, Battle of Britain, Dawn Patrol.

I remember Microprose being massive for these games for a bit but I can't remember getting that into them now. I had Gunship 2000, and I guess F15 was them.

Flight Unlimited 1 and 2.

IL-2 Sturmovik and various descendants of that.

 

plenty more also-rans but those stand out has having eaten much of my formative videogame time.

 

 

[SeanR]

Flying into Mount Rushmore In fighter bomber. Sometimes you’d clip right through it. Or flying upside down at 0ft. Tail in the ground

[simms]

5 hours ago, milko said:

That looks very pretty. If it can smoothly handle the level of detail changes to be convincing from high altitude to low it's going to be incredible. Any word on if it'll support VR? 

 

What I've always felt these non-combat sim games need is a bit of a game though, scenarios and stuff. There's one coming soon called Deadstick where you fly bush planes into tiny backcountry airstrips and the like, doing deliveries and dealing with conditions and faults manually. That seems to me to have way more longterm draw than just aimlessly looking at scenery... once you've flown under the Golden Gate Bridge a couple of times and so on. I know there's people out there who like accurately simming a 737 journey from Gatwick to Stuttgart or whatever, with all the air traffic control and whatnot though, maybe I'm too niche within a niche.

 

Hopefully it will be like Euro Truck Simulator where you have to carry out jobs which is surprisingly entertaining 

[milko]

Yeah, I think I read an interview in The Flare Path on rockpapershotgun where that seemed to be the vibe they were going for earning your way up. The steam page is a little light on updates so fingers crossed they get it done this year.

[smac]

1 hour ago, milko said:

Trying to remember my formative flight sims now.

 

Oh yeah, I used to love flight sims. Often the idea more than the actuality (my experience of Falcon on the ST was mostly the sampled speech shouting a barely understandable 'Puwww UP, Puwww UP!' before I crashed into the deck)

 

Mine:

That ZX81 Flight Simulator I posted the screenshot from, above. I never played the Speccy version, for some reason.

Tomahawk on the Speccy. Once I was past the Lenslock, that is.

Falcon on the ST.

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. Awesome game with the best manual of any game before or since.

F19 (ST) and F117A (PC) Stealth Fighter.

Knights of the Sky

Red Baron

Gunship 2000

Warbirds on the Lynx (OK, not a sim, but as close as the hardware was going to get).

 

But it all kind of petered out - I never really got into IL-2, and drifted away from flight sims.

[milko]

1 minute ago, smac said:

Often the idea more than the actuality

 

Yeah, that resonates. Little to no idea what I was doing, so very little actual progression but I was happy for a long old time with that. 

[milko]

Just now, Pockets said:

How hard are these to pick up for an absolute novice? I like the idea but I struggle to remember the buttons in most games these days.

 

It depends on how far you want to go. Realistically taxiing your Airbus A-380 across the crowded airfield at JFK before flying 8 hours across the Atlantic, landing safely and again taxiing to the aircraft stand, with all the ATC stuff on the way? It's probably fucking difficult, I certainly never had the patience to bother. But they usually have something much more basic to fly and scenarios that set you up on the runway or already in the air, and tutorials as well. It's easy enough to just cruise about like that, circle the statue of liberty and try to fly under brooklyn bridge etc.

[Stevie]

1 hour ago, TehStu said:

A HOTAS will be a good excuse for me to finally, properly starting Elite Dangerous. I struggled with the pad, just can't do precise flight siming in it. 

 

 

 

 

Press Y to frame shift, what else do you need? 

[milko]

I’ve not done the Steam MS Flight Sim, reports were not great at the time. Is it cheap?

[TehStu]

14 minutes ago, milko said:

I’ve not done the Steam MS Flight Sim, reports were not great at the time. Is it cheap?

Do you mean Flight Simulator X? It's quite old now. Nothing wrong with it, just old. At one time, it was the shiny like this one.

 

Unless there's something specific to the Steam version that's wonky?

[milko]

30 minutes ago, TehStu said:

Do you mean Flight Simulator X? It's quite old now. Nothing wrong with it, just old. At one time, it was the shiny like this one.

 

Unless there's something specific to the Steam version that's wonky?

 

I was more trying to answer @Pockets - didn’t they do MS Flight to relatively poor/early abandonment results? 

[SeanR]

Spoiler

FS2

Strike Force Harrier

Falcon

Fighter Bomber

F-15 Strike eagle

Air Warriors (an online dog fighting sim, who knew?)

Harrier Strike Mission

Thunderhawk (the ST game)

Thunderhawk 2 (the PS1 game)

Air Combat

Flight!

one of the comanche games (possibly gold)

 

 

I never got the ST version of Top Gun to run. My version of JetFighter was riddled with viruses.

 

and then the FPS genre started

 

[smac]

Oh. I almost forgot:

 

Crimson Skies! The PC version was awesome, despite it dropping to seconds per frame rates (that's not a mistake) in the final NYC scenario on my ancient PC. The game my MS Force Feedback 2 was meant for.

[milko]

Ahhh Crimson Skies is magnificent, especially the first one. I can't really think of it as a sim exactly, but that was such a brilliant game.

[autoq]

18 hours ago, PeteBrant said:

Look at all those colours! Luxury!!

 

 

ZX spectrum. Psion.  My first Flight Simulator...  10/10 for nostalgia...

[SeanR]

Forget what I said about a thrustmaster HOTAS, I just had a better idea

 

https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/B747-100-ex-PAN-AM-WHOLE-UPPER-DECK-SECTION/283511495586?ul_ref=https%3A%2F%2Frover.ebay.com%2Frover%2F1%2F710-53481-19255-0%2F1%3Fff3%3D4%26toolid%3D11800%26pub%3D5575097073%26campid%3D5337845198%26mpre%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fitm%2FB747-100-ex-PAN-AM-WHOLE-UPPER-DECK-SECTION%2F283511495586%3Fhash%3Ditem42029a1ba2%3Ag%3A7sAAAOSwGhBc~YCg%26srcrot%3D710-53481-19255-0%26rvr_id%3D2003629507268%26rvr_ts%3D454a589116b0a88aa7369755ffeacff6&amp;_mwBanner=1&amp;_rdt=1&amp;ul_noapp=true

 

that’s the same amount I’m getting for my redundancy!

 

[Not Thread Owner]

Martin Mucklowe is going to be well excited for this.

[Not Thread Owner]

Birds of War > All other flight sims

[NinjaSeb]

That looks like it’s going to melt PC’s..

[SteveH]

Apparently it uses 2 petabytes of geological data to stitch the earth together!

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-wants-to-bring-back-flight-simulator-to-show-it-supports-pc/

[tronied]

I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days and really think they could make something great. I'm not just talking with the graphics but with how the community and add-ons are managed. They've been making all the right noises (as in the above article), but they could really push that further. Here's a couple of things I'd like:

 

1) A common market place available in the game to get free / purchasable add-ons. I know this fills a lot of people with dread, but if MS charged a small percentage to creators to host their wares then it would really simplify the process and open it up to a lot more people without having to mess around with the file system.

2) As part of this, they could have different categories like custom created missions or even... certifications! Just think how amazing it would be if you could do the majority of a pilots license by using videos and actual practise with tie into the game. That way if you do actually go for your real license, you've already covered the material / tests you'd need. They could even get these two involved: 

 

 

3) Have the option for a streaming or local option. Most people are assuming they'd stream the assets (scenery) from Bing onto your local machine which will mean it's an online only. This is great but not everyone has a good internet connection yet. As such it would be great if they'd offer a simplified offline option to broaden the appeal.

 

Obviously it's still a long way to go yet until release but I don't think I've been this excited for anything in a while  It was so out of the blue but roll on a year and I guess we'll have some of these answers.

[SteveH]

Microsoft are going to be running an Insider Program for this (Xbox and PC) 

 

You can sign up here: https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/microsoft-flight-simulator?ocid=Evergreen_soc_omc_xbo_fb_Video_buy_6.16.2&fbclid=IwAR0ARJRgwPAQStf6Dir97T_euEM43VTIBrMBgfLh_2hytNPszXHQT3koBFM

[Stevie]

On 11/06/2019 at 08:56, deKay said:

Birds of War > All other flight sims

 

 

WW2 fighters>Birds of War

 

 

 

 

[SeanR]

Update!

 

Quote

Greetings Insiders!

 

Our first Tech Alpha build is just about ready for testing! If you are interested in participating in the upcoming Tech Alpha release, please be sure to go to the official Microsoft Flight Simulator website, sign into the Insider Area, and follow the registration link to the survey. 
 

When filling out the survey, please be sure you completely fill it out and submit. Failing to completely fill out the survey will greatly impact your chances to be in our first round of Tech Alpha testing. Please keep in mind that we will do our best to get as many people in as possible, but signing up does not guarantee that you will be selected. 
 

Reminder - you will need to use your Microsoft account to access the insider hub, if you do not have a Microsoft account you will need to create one before you can fill out the survey. Account creation link 
 

For more updates and information on the technical alpha be sure to check out our next developer update on September 19th, where we will be releasing more information on the Tech Alpha build goals and release timeline. 
 

 

Thank You!

The Microsoft Flight Simulator Team