icemann on 15/8/2020 at 05:39
[video=youtube;RaeAhxmPodM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeAhxmPodM[/video]
LGR put out a video on Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. I was never a big fan of the games myself, always preferred Wing Commander (for it's action) back then. The games do have an appeal to them though, with just flying around and admiring scenery + the flight experience.
Did you play these games back in those days?
henke on 15/8/2020 at 10:27
I played one of em on a friend's PC in the early 90's. I think it might've been MS Flight 5.0 tho. Here's a compliation video of the series.
[video=youtube;gQ9o2IvoRMU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ9o2IvoRMU[/video]
The only one I've been really into was the free-to-play MS Flight from 2012. I liked the gameloop in that one, with accepting missions at airports. And the whole thing being limited to 1 island meant you got the fun, challenging parts of the flying experience (taking off and landing) without too much of the boring in-between part (actually flying). That's why I'm a bit sceptical of this new game. Sure, it looks pretty, but what do you actually do in it? Just fly? If so, no thanks.
twisty on 15/8/2020 at 15:56
I'm not which version I played, but from memory I think it was probably V4, judging by a comparison of
(
https://flightsim.gl/flight-simulator-history/) earlier releases .
While I wasn't very good it, frequently stalling the plane, crashing into airports, mountains and other things, I found it intriguing, and did improve after a while, particularly after I bothered to read snippets of the manual. Like iceman however, I eventually lost interest after getting my hands on WC, the third one in my case, and then Privateer. I've never been tempted to try any of the latter versions.
heywood on 15/8/2020 at 17:11
I remember playing the original subLOGIC Flight Simulator on a friend's Apple II when I was 9 or 10. Shortly after, my family got an Atari 400, and my neighbor and I played the hell out of Hellcat Ace and Mig Alley Ace. Later I got a Commodore 64 and immediately took my money saved from lawn mowing and purchased subLOGIC Flight Simulator II. I put hours and hours and hours into that sim when I was a teenager and it definitely influenced my decision to enter the USAF. I got a PC in my freshman year of engineering school and that's when I got Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. I put as many hours into that as FS2. I liked F-15 Strike Eagle and Falcon too, but not as much as FS4. Possibly the only game I've logged more playing time with is Deus Ex.
henke on 15/8/2020 at 17:30
As if to answer my question of what you do in the new game, this video popped up in my youtube feed just now.
[video=youtube;PSRnshNpwMw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSRnshNpwMw[/video]
I skimmed through, and what I got was: no real campaign, but there are some "jobs" you can take on. I'm guessing delivery missions. I'd also like it if the geocaching missions from MS Flight 2012 returned, where you have to land in tough spots to pick up the cache.
heywood on 15/8/2020 at 22:48
(
https://www.asobostudio.com/careers/mission-designer-mfs-72) There will be missions
My take is that they are trying to appeal to both casual and hardcore flight sim fans, but leaning more towards the casual. Still, if you're looking for rewards, advancements, or some kind of game-like structure to keep your interest, you're probably not going to be satisfied. It seems like this edition is all about the realistic scenery. It looks gorgeous, and if the level of detail seen in the trailers is available in the areas that interest me, I will probably end up buying it JUST to fly around. But given the 150GB free space requirement and (what I assume to be) a casual focus, I might just stick with X-Plane 11.
demagogue on 16/8/2020 at 06:03
The thing like the OP video that I played a lot was the original Stealth Fighter in C64.
As for what one can do in the new MSFS, aside from just exploring the world and knowing that what you're looking at looks very, very close to what the real thing looks like -- which makes me want to explore some really off-the-beaten-path places in the world -- I think the multiplayer element can make it special. This video shows off how that can be fun. And there's a mission editor, like heywood said, so people will be sharing custom missions all over the world over time.
[video=youtube;UvnDHpvjndo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvnDHpvjndo[/video]
Shadowcat on 16/8/2020 at 09:48
My first flight sim was the legendary Geoff Crammond's 1983 release "Aviator". (
https://youtu.be/iqGcL5QW97o?t=330) Here's someone flying under the bridge. What a difference 37 years of technology advances makes.
Mind you, Aviator also featured an alien invasion to defend against, which might not be a feature that ever made it into the Microsoft offerings :)
Shadowcat on 16/8/2020 at 10:04
Quote Posted by demagogue
aside from just exploring the world and knowing that what you're looking at looks very, very close to what the real thing looks like -- which makes me want to explore some really off-the-beaten-path places in the world
The video looks absolutely phenomenal, but... I wouldn't count on serious fidelity from anything other than the very-much-ON-the-beaten-track regions. Certainly their past iterations always had relatively poor detail for most of the world, and really good detail in only particular bits of it. All for fairly acceptable reasons, mind you.
There was a significant market for third-party scenery, so that people could actually make their neck of the woods look good (because it's really pretty good fun to fly around the places that you personally are familiar with).
Edit: (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150748#post2455208) The video henke posted speaks to this at the 15:00 mark. There is also some subsequent discussion of the ability to deliver scenery update mechanisms when they have more accurate data. I suspect the generic renditions will look pretty good to everyone who isn't familiar with the locations, but maybe those who are will find that the inaccuracies jump out at them? (Hopefully nothing so glaring as the absence of an entire island from my local region in the 2004 edition, but I suspect there'll still be a "that's not quite how it actually looks" feeling to a lot of places.)
demagogue on 16/8/2020 at 11:06
I don't know. There are videos made by people from very rural areas of Canada and Alaska where they fly around their hometowns, places that can't possibly be hand-touched and must be done entirely by algorithm, and point out what's accurate and what's not accurate. The basic punchline was, well I'll just give an exact quote from a (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oHHfyBlZoQ&t=30m21s) video flying over a rural town of Canada with less than 1000 people: "The mapping is so good and so detailed that where it's not quite right stands out just because of how much an exception it is, and how bizarre it is." You should watch that whole video & its Part 2 even. He goes practically building by building and points out the few places where something is off. (It's better to start from (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oHHfyBlZoQ&t=28m15s) 28m15s, where he really starts to talk about it.)
This could be a semantic issue of what you want to mean by "serious fidelity", but even in the everyday sense, it's pretty convincing for a lot of things, enough that the things that are off really stick out.
The typical things that are off are like three buildings will be represented as one, structures using a stock model, bank-side buildings and bridges get rendered underwater, and water gets janky in other ways (like ice gets rendered as lakes on hills, or the levels get weird), trees are the wrong size (another stock model issue), and you can see the seams where satellite images meet. I have a feeling all of these things will get categorically fixed (as in they'll catch a lot of cases but not all of them), and some things like stock models will always be an issue.
But anyway, as far as this regards my earlier post, another point the guy that made this video points out is, even though it's not 100% accurate, it still fairly represents the kinds of things you'd really see in this area. It captures the basic look and feel of a place that even locals think is a fair representation. That's kind of what I meant by saying that. It's enough for me that it basically looks like the place except a few models may be a little off. This isn't something any other earlier flight sim could do out of the box.
