Classic British Flight Sim

Is the latest offering from Mr Gates going to kill this hobby, or is it a missunderstood masterpeice, waiting for affordable hardware?
Discuss........................ :think:

I don't have FSX but from what I can tell, for every person angrily re-installing FS9, there seems to be another aviating in FSX bliss. The hobby might be suffering a hiccup but I've no doubt we will all bend to FSX's will as time goes on.

Well to be perfectly honest I installed FSX thinking only bad thoughts and my first two weeks of simming with it were, quite frankly, bloody awful. Mainly due to poor frame rates and the whole environment being totally different to the accomplished FS9 world of which I am so used to.

Having acquired GenX scenery and tweeking the settings sliders til my fingers nearly bled, I have now found that FSX overall is top notch.

Obviously a persons opinion is based primarily on performance and this particular offering has been served as a taste of whats to come in the future.

I miss the add-ons, particularly Just flights airports and scenery that I had installed with FS9. But I still have them and will continue to use FS9 every now and again.

But its like moving house. You are initially uncomfortable moving from a location you are used to and tend to take time to settle in to a new environment. :k:

Although from the feedback of the chaps here it seems that its only Rick Piper and I that are enjoying it so far!

There you go Eddie

Like many if not all that do find FS.X better a lot of tweaking and extra bits added to make it run like it should of out of the box.

And there's the difference

It seems not to run well but can be made to run better with a lot of effort.

Garry

I think with each version of FS the hobby is slowly dying, and good new freeware becomes even harder to find - which I assume (as a non designing type) is down to ever increasing complexity and designers losing interest or having their talants picked up by payware companies.

How longs FSX been out know? 3 months - one or two payware companies have released updates for FSX (Real Air/Aerosoft with the SF260 and Beaver respectively), but not much FSX payware has appeared. As for freeware, I think the only FSX freeware aircraft I have in FSX is Rick's Chippie...

As Ive said before: FS10 is good, but not good enough to make me use it over FS9 for a good while yet.

I don't think FSX will kill the hobby. It's more likely to be demanding simmers.
A couple of years ago models were relatively simple, and simmers were happy. Now as people like Rick and Dave M push the boundaries, simmers come to expect more complex models with all systems simulated. Models take much longer to produce and the workload on the modeller is much higher. Couple this with new techniques to learn and new ways of doing things with each passing version of FS, no wonder there are less and less new models appearing and more modelers quiting.

As a committed simmer since FS4 I dont think FSX is the beginning of the end. It is a quantum leap in simming and needs much more processing power than FS9. Over the next year or so simmers, like me, will be upgrading their kit and slowly converting to FSX and - most probably - moaning about the much higher tech requirements of the rumoured FS11.

So for the time being I run both FSX and FS9 and the older dog is still the tops in my book at the moment..... but when I get my super duper thingy who knows.

My only fear is that the greater complexity of the aircraft will turn people off. I refer to people like me who want to be able to go fly a Tu154 without a crash course in Russian or having to learn how to start the damn thing using the correct procedures. Commercial companies are already onto this problem and we have seen 'Light' versions of aircraft appearing. Ideal for me for when I want to have a half hour bash.

Therefore, IHO FSX will not kill off the flight sim it will continue to flourish providing developers do not make add ons that are too complicated.

I will now retire to my bunker...............


Allan

I think that FSX is a new threshold in simming, its going to take a few months to cross but once we get over it everyone will be all the better for it.

FSX took me about 2 weeks of tweaking to get "perfect" it is now, in my humble opinion, the most advanced, graphically pleasing, and powerful simulator I have had on my Hard Drive.

I also think it will bring more people into the hobby, the only people it could possibly drive away are the older, more set in their ways, simmers who dont want to change over as they are scared of new things.

Yes it needs more processing power but then again, it should, otherwise it isnt likely to be able to offer what we will be wanting in 1 -2 years time in terms of features.

Of course this can only be done by 3rd parties such as developers.

If FSX is viewed as a platform upon which we can build an excellent sim, then it outperforms anything else available.

If you wish to look at is as an "out of the box" product then it probably really isn't top noch, but how many of us here REALLY want to run it just as it is out of the box? exactly!

Alex

After seeing the new Microsoft promo for FSX, it makes me just want to run out and .............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQD4xs_M3rQ