US Cities X – Los Angeles Preview!

Aerosoft is currently in development with there next city in their continued success of “US Cities”. This time it shall be the great city of Los Angeles (my home 🙂 ). Here is what Aerosoft have to say about it,

There is probably no city where you see more aviation then Los Angeles. Not only are there several major airports close to the city but general aviation rules the skies over the city. Besides Alaska there is no state where single engine aircraft are more used and there are more helipads then in any other city. That’s not only because of the rich and famous (just see how many helicopters land in Hollywood) but also because the layout of the city looks spectacular. From the coastline to the mountains around the city, LA is a great city to see from above.

Some of the features included when the final product comes out include,

• More than 5000 major buildings (compared to Chicago’s 2000)
• Over 150 helipads!
• Major airports in and around the city with new ground images
• Detailed rendering of Catalina Island & MORE!

Aerosoft has also said that it shall be compatible with MegaScenery Southern California X and FSDreamteam KLAX which is fantastic.

Notes : Only for FSX use. Price = unknown. Source, http://www.aerosoft.com

Microsoft Flight – First Impressions

Okay so I downloaded ms flight yesterday. It was a fairly quick download, around 1.5gb file, and took about 15 minutes. So…what do I think? Well, my thoughts ahead of the game being released are very accurate to how my thoughts are now about the game. Quite simply, boring. There’s no doubt that the graphics have drastically improved, the frames are ten times better (however I run an i7 2600K 4.6Ghz) but still, even on FSX I get stutters in heavy density areas. The menus look much more professional and eye catching, you could even say its eye candy because quite frankly, it is! It should also be stated that the menus have a much more advanced look than the past simulator games, a lot like a Battlefield 3 kind of PC game menu…..it’s about time.

Graphics/Performance – The gameplay like I stated briefly earlier is ten times smoother than FSX. If you remember correctly, FS2004 was great for frames, hence why many simmers STILL use it. Then came Flight Simulator X, and that was crazy heavy on the CPU. You must remember that back in ’06 the computers weren’t as powerful as they are today and as a result, nobody could use it to its full potential. The biggest problem was framerates….fast forward 6 years and now most people with modern machines can easily run FSX (me) along with the right graphics card. So, back to MS Flight, the frames are fantastic, no doubt in my mind about that, you can pan around your cockpit/outside without any stutters or issues at all so I will give the MS Flight team credit for that. The colors in MS Flight are also fairly nice, the sunsets/sunrises resemble Real Environment Extreme a lot, the water textures have also improved astronomically compared to FSX. It actually looks like water now. Beautiful shades of turquoise and dark blue for the reefs around Hawaii set a great mood and visual experience. Airports have improved also, better ground textures and night lighting provide for a greater experience once again visually than its predecessor FSX. If you get close enough you can actually see the grainy effect that the asphalt has on the runway, of course with payware sceneries in FSX you could achieve this but never the less its an improvement. All these texture/frame improvements don’t affect the system at all, however as stated earlier, the test machine for this first impression was on my i7 desktop. I’ve heard from other sources though that MS Flight run’s well on lower performance machines.

Gameplay – The gameplay in my mind is where MS Flight disappoints incredibly. Most of us knew this would happen before its final release after trying the BETA. Basically, to put it simply, MS Flight is a mission based game. It isn’t as free and wide open as FSX/FS9 was, there is a free flight mode but you can only be stuck to the Hawaii area and the planes that you can use or buy aren’t very spectacular. If your into the heavy jets then you will be disappointed because there are none to use or download and it looks like this will be the case for a while due to Microsoft not allowing third party addons to be created. In MS Flight you gain XP (experience points) as you progress through missions, so this is much like a Call Of Duty game and straight away it tells you how off track Microsoft have gone with this. In the game you find yourself a job/s and progress through them gaining more experience, this will help unlock further goodies throughout the game. Forgive me for lacking enthusiasm. The missions are fairly easy and simple but develop into more challenging missions as you progress further into the game. If you remember in FSX there were missions available to play but the main attraction was the free flight mode, where you’d set a departure/arrival, create a flightplan and go. However now its obviously based towards younger people who have no interest in becoming pilots but just want to play another game. There is a free flight mode in MS Flight but its nothing spectacular and there is no free world to go and fly around. Wonderful. A nice feature though is how they have implemented a walk mode so you can walk around the airport/aircraft unlike in FSX where you had to buy addons like EZDok or DBS Walk and Follow. 

Continue reading here…..

ms flight has arrived

Looks like it’s here, hoorayyyy…….no?

Much hype has been created by the Microsoft Flight Simulation franchise over the years, and when we heard a few years ago that the franchise would be no more, we felt robbed. We felt robbed because of how successful the games were, millions of people bought copies, hundreds of companies evolved from a product that MS had created and it was just something that nobody could take away from you, the sense that you were flying. However in early 2011 we discovered that MS was coming back to life with their aviation franchise, a new product called ‘Microsoft Flight’. People all around the world immediately thought, “hmm, I guess there giving it a new name, oh well, they’re back, who cares!!” But oh did it matter. It didn’t take long for flightsim forums/communities all over the world to realize that Microsoft Flight was far beyond what us dedicated simmers are accustomed to. It was obvious that they were approaching this product as more of a gaming atmosphere instead of simulation, they want young kids to buy it and to be able to fly around and crash planes, pop balloons and drop flour? They don’t care about the product at all, they don’t care about the dedicated long time simmers that have provided Microsoft with so much money and praise of the years.

It had been said (now confirmed) that when you download MS Flight, you will get a few aircraft, a certain part of the world and to unlock other areas/aircraft you would have to buy them or use your Microsoft points. So it is very clear that they are trying to draw us in by teasing us with colorful, beautiful looking add ons that have been tested on desktop’s that we’ve never even see in our wildest dreams! Guys, it’s about money, always has and always will and that’s okay because what else is a company for? But the difference between now and the past is in the past, you had a sense that they actually cared about us, you could download free add ons, edit files, put new things in, make the simulation experience ten times better than we had ever seen before. But with MS Flight, they are giving nobody the rights to edit anything or create any type of third-party add ons to sell and play. Microsoft instead shall be doing all of that….wonderful. Don’t be discouraged to early though, one of the team leaders digressed that if MS Flight doesn’t do well with their new approach, then they shall consider allowing and scripting the game to enable third-party add ons. Still doesn’t excite me though.

One aspect of MS Flight that I think everybody will agree with me on is the fact that they have taken the time to really detail certain parts of the worlds. They said that it was more important for them to include areas of higher detail than just a world with no detail at all. Also, Flight is apparently much smoother than its predecessor and not so CPU intensive which I’m pretty sure we’d all appreciate. Aircraft designs are more crisp with better color and lighting, but it should be noted that there is no 747/737/757 category.

All in all, this is not something I am looking forward to or something I have ever been excited about. I, like many other simmers think this will be a failed product, and the only people really buying it shall be less experienced simmers. I guess FSX shall be making a lot of money in years to come. Leave your comments below and let me hear your thoughts!

Thanks guys.

Notes: MS Flight is free to download NOW, add ons are payed for through Microsoft, release date was 29 February 2012

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

Microsoft Flight – Aircraft