Microsoft announced on Facebook that Flight development has ceased. Anyway, Flight will remain available for free download and the additional content for sale will be found in the same places, to cover a part of Alaska or Hawaii islands for example. The few people that purchased addons are not limited in use.
For its five short months of life, I haven’t seen great enthusiasm and a massive community either behind this PC game. The most obvious and repeated criticism towards Microsoft has been to miss a Flight Simulator sequel : realistic, global, opened to third party developers.
Will Microsoft listen, at least, to the oldest and most faithful community in the PC game and simulator world ever ?
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Microsoft killed the hobby when they killed ACES. Cancellation of Flight just shows how little they care for their customers. It’s too late for an FS11. Who can trust a Microsoft product enough to invest time and money in it?
it was a total Failure from its inception anyway, badd idea, poorly executed plan, and way too “Generalized” for the flight sim community. To be more Blunt, somebody at the top wasn’t truly intersteaded in Flight Simming, the flight sim community and not much else for that matter, they were truly severely out of touch with the Real seasoned veterans of the community and frankly didn’t care ! This 1/2 assed idea this “Generalized” thing they call “FLIGHT” was truly geared more for the 10 to 15 year olds who’d play the thing for like 30 minutes , once every 3 months if that even, those kids want things to shoot, blow up, a faster pace enviroment. The older flight simmers the veterans seasoned flight sim pro’s want more realisim with scenery & aircraft , NOT limited to 1 tiny little state HAWAII,, with 1/2 assed graphics that really weren’t much than any other of the flight simulators. The addition of maybe Alaska was a total joke, and I heard you cou8ldn’t Fly long haul from Hawaii to Alaska or vice versa because theres NO scenery in between the two in the pacific, unlike the other flight sims ! Also, NO Helicopters, very few Jetliners, not very good propeller aircraft or a Variety NOT being able to INJECT the aircraft you already have into this FLIGHT from other flight sims etc. FLIGHT a total Failure not to mention a Total Joke as well ! the Jetranger!
A company so big as MS making such ignorant choices, while having the most honest and knowledge able communities to find out almost directly what is desired in their new products!!
I never gave it a look knowing what MS had in mind with it.
Serious simulation is what I want, and there I still stick to FSX along with Lockheed Martin’s P3D which is what I think the future.
At least there’s a solid development base behind this product.
Its a bit of a surprise, but no shock! MS should have concentrated on FS11 and they would have made a good winning out of it. They HAD the biggest gun with the combination of FS2004 and FSX, but now its all lost. And im sure this FLIGHT will hinder further (if any) MS excurses in the flight sim business. Would you buy one?
Although I was expecting this end, I am suprised it came that early… I still do not know what kind of geniuses came out with this flat idea at MS…
I mean by flat idea: creating a flat flying game…
What really got me was hearing from those that did try FLIGHT, and were deeply Disappointed that many of the Aircraft only had Panels, and NO Virtual Cockpits or Virtual passenger cabins ! and they wanted you to PAY a fair sum of money for these 1.2 assed unfinished looking aircraft. Yet – I can go to a reputable web site and Download a decent Quality Aircraft made by either the Great Milton Shupe or Jens Kristensen, and their FREEWARE Aircraft have a really good awsum looking Virtual cockpit and passenger cabin in fairly good detail and all the gauges work and lights with additional animations even ! But, many of you stated that FLIGHT’s Aircraft, what FEW there were, were kinda lame and not all that great, unless ya just want to brag about how great the gauges looked in that 1 aircraft and thats was suppose to sum up the Entire Game of FLIGHT, because WE all know , it was never a Simulator, NOT in the shape it was in and they released it in, it was more of a Quick, Cheap get your 15 minutes of Thrill Game, and do it again in a few months. Just from what I seen of the Graphics of FLIGHT in YOU TUBE video’s, my FSX with my add on’s and my New Fairly expensive graphic/ Video card, put Flight’s Graphics to utter Shame !! Keeping in mind FLIGHT had NO ATC, no A.I. aircraft, limited decent Aircraft , NO Jetliners, NO Heli’s, and I assume NO A.I. ships or boats and NOT really much else either other than dumb rings you fly thru for missions or whatever. I wasn’t about to be foolish enough to spend money on something that poorly designed, not to mention a lotta users said their Joysticks and flight yokes and rudder pedals wouldn’t work with flight the way MS had designed it – so – then it appears to definetly be made & used for those wanting to kill about 15 to 30 minutes of time quickly, and move on to another Venue. Basically take a quick dip in the water and cool off, then off to the bar for drinks, those kind of people is what they geared Flight to it appears !
The funny thing is that we agree on probably 90% of the faults in Flight – one of the biggest being that content was way too slow coming and overpriced for what you got. While someone who wants to fly with a HUD in an external view can always just ignore a cockpit view, the converse is not true.
The funny thing is that I still believe – as I stated before Flight was even released – that Flight and its failure is indicative of exactly why Microsoft management will never get what they want.
They are still bleating about not getting “their fair share” of after-market sales, micro-transactions and paid-for consumables, but when they produce DLC and/or after market add-ons they’re way too long coming and cost too much. If they want after market sales, DLC and micro-transactions then they need to cut back the micro-management of products to fit the “corporate aim”, they need to massively reduce development time and increase responsiveness to constructive customer feedback.
However it was, and still remains, a (very limited, badly supported and sadly lacking) flight simulator. Saying otherwise is just churlish.
this was bound to happen..
+1
Ian P’s view.
I am really disappointed – I was really enjoying FLIGHT…
Microsoft could have made flight work if they had made a full heated decision. If they had decided to produce an arcade styled combat flight sim, complete with fast jets and weapons, it would have worked. Similarly if they had taken the time and effort to create a fully functional flight simulator to the standards of P3D or acceleration, and allowed 3rd party addons, we could now be talking about the next great flight sim. But we’re not, and why? Because Mocrosoft decided to go half and half. An arcade styled general aviation sim with just one scenery, no big planes or fast jets, just a small Icon A5, which hardly anyone has ever heard about! And they made a financial error in making it free, but they left themself no choice but to make this useless sim free.
I just posted a feedback and after posting it noticed that I typed my email incorectly, I apologize…. in that post i was wondering if MS will think about packaging an open source / SDK version and sell it online…
Cheers
Extremely unlikely. At Avsim Kevin “Gibbage” Miller, an early developer of MS Flight who left the project a year ago, writes: “Fourth, will MS release the SDK or code? I doubt this very much. MS is not one to share its hard work with the world for free. Could OrbX, A2A or even REX take it over? I doubt all of them put together could gather enough money to make it worth MS to sell the code or license. I truly wish someone will take over and move the Flight IP out from MS, as the base code and SDK for Flight is simply amazing, but it would take a lot of money and work to do just that”
Yeah I see, I was just dreaming 🙂