Journey's end for Flight Simulator
 

The news that Microsoft has disbanded the team developing its successful Flight Simulator computer game has come as a shock to virtual aviators like Mike Smartt. He looks back at almost 30 years of taking off and occasionally landing safely in the world's longest gaming franchise.

It's supposed to be the computer game that grown-ups can own up to playing.

For years, Microsoft's Flight Simulator set the standard. Initially, the bar was low as the processing and graphics power of early home computers - like Sinclair's rubber Spectrum - struggled with the demands of replicating global air travel.

But in the early 1980s, as others were still guiding blips across black-and-white screens playing Pong, the thrill of attempting to land a single-engine Cessna, in colour in Flight Simulator's first iteration, was fun unsurpassed.

Never mind that it looked as if the instrument panel in your plane was cardboard stuck on with superglue and the runway facing you was a single dark strip in a featureless yellow field - and that was supposed to be Heathrow. You just had to use your imagination. What every simmer dreams about is being called on to land an actual plane in an emergency.



Job cuts ground Flight Simulator

Twenty-seven years and many updates later, FSX - Flight Simulator Ten - uses the muscle of today's high-end PCs to reproduce faithfully most of the world's airports in millions of colours in minute detail. Cities and landscapes look exactly as they do from the air in real life and air-traffic control instructions for final approach crackle continuously, and often confusingly, over the cockpit intercom.

And still the appeal remains a mystery to many.

With today's computer games, you can wipe out an entire German Panzer division, navigate Formula One's most challenging circuits and manage your football team in the European Championships, all without leaving the comfort of the chair at your PC. So flying an imaginary Boeing 757 from Stansted to Sarajevo in real-time can seem pretty tame.

But later versions of Microsoft FS do seem to "flight simmers", as we are known, to be just like doing the real thing. And more importantly, those who actually do the real thing say it's like that too.

Passenger applause

As one real-world pilot writes: "As a pilot, I use Microsoft Flight Simulator for training scenarios and often fly to a new airport virtually before flying there for real."

Of course, what every simmer dreams about is being called on to land an actual plane in an emergency. A trembling stewardess announces over the public address that both flyers upfront are suffering debilitating convulsions from the in-flight catering and has anyone flown an Airbus before?

"Er, not really but ….." you splutter.

You are the last hope and with increasing confidence and cool, you inform ground-control that the myriad of dials and gauges you face, once the ailing captain has been hauled from his seat, are second-nature. Eventually, you plop the aircraft on the runway with a couple of harmless bounces, just for dramatic effect, and applause from the passenger-cabin rings in your ears.
Taking the controls of a real plane is a 'simmer's' dream

That, of course, is one of the few times you would actually admit to being a simmer in normal company. My wife once informed a telephoning friend that I was "flying around the Australian outback" which gained me more respect than Aretha Franklin until she explained, after which I was never treated in quite the same way again by that particular mate.

Now Microsoft has announced that the special team of developers who have been updating Flight Simulator constantly for a generation is no more. And when asked why and what happens now, Microsoft HQ have chosen to give about the same amount of information you get at most departure gates enquiring about flight delays. Zilch.

Flight simmers (and there are millions of them, believe me - just google Flight Simulator) are devastated. Branded by many as sad nerds, today they really are, at least, the former.

As one asked quite reasonably, why would Microsoft kill off one of the few activities for which they attract much affection?

Tough times

It may be that FSX is so good that further improving the franchise on a computer screen is almost impossible. It may be that yes, the number of people who get a kick out of spending hours at the controls of a pretend aeroplane at which no-one is shooting maybe quite large but there are few new recruits.

It could just be that games are not Microsoft's thing and it is true that there are few in-house success stories. So in tough financial times, concentrating on core activities is a good idea.

One could speculate for hours. But sorry folks, my 14.30 take-off to Lucerne awaits and in five minutes I miss my slot.

Its a shame really, as they could have made a pretty good Combat Flight sim from the FSX game.

FSX is really good. Improving on it at this point in time would be hard. Maybe in 10 years time when technology improves and more can be done we will see a new flight sim release.

They even used FSX for some shots on the latest episode of Lost. It was for a fictitious airline and they had taxi, take off and cruise shots.

I think this is an absolute disgrace to flight simmers all over the world. I am deeply saddened :(

Yeah thats dissapointing.:(

For the people who played FS, throw some screanshots up of what you liked doing the best.

This should be fun.

VH-EBW touching down in HKG from SYD as QF127
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...tuff/VHEBT.jpg

Taken from Blake Riley's 77W of me in my girl doing some quality air to air.
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1...20Stuff/JQ.jpg

Sad to hear there will be no new version of flight sim.

Screenshot of one of my many flights I have done on FS that would have landed me in serious trouble with CASA in real life:)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...380bridge2.jpg

For fans of FSX checkout the FTX series of addon scenery and airports for Australia: http://www.ftxnow.com/

In particular the Gallery to see how it looks, and there also some vids on the main home page.

It is truly spectacular to see what they have done with FSX. I have all regions of Aust myself and its just fantastic.

You can actually download a demo of FTX which is the whole of Tassie. If you've got FSX and are sick of the crappy looking default scenery download it and give it a go. Also grab the freeware Launceston airport too while your there. Both demo and freebies available on the Free Downloads section. This might sound like a paid advertisement but I honestly have nothing to do with ORBX other than being a happy customer!

There is also another group OzX that cater for the GA enthusiast with hundreds of add-on aerodromes and strips all over the country. http://www.aussiex.org/

Some screenshots from 76 hops around Alaska in the King Air.

http://nicknavarro.smugmug.com/photo...29_EKmfH-L.jpg

http://nicknavarro.smugmug.com/photo...28_EunhA-L.jpg

http://nicknavarro.smugmug.com/photo...11_kzC22-L.jpg

SHB underfly
 

Didn't Dick Smith really do that once in a helicopter? And I think they appointed him to head CASA at one stage!

It was a sad day when the announcement was made. I saw FS on an Apple when first released and still have every version released on PC plus a heap of add-ons.

However...... a couple of years ago came across another product called X-Plane.

This simulator IMHO is better than MS Flight Simulator and has a commercial version in the US that is FAA certified!

Cheers
John

Here is a shot i took just after landing on an oval near Newcastle's Westpac Base. Helicopter is a Eurocopter EC145 painted in the REGA 1414 scheme.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27375165@N03/3315234698/

Shame. Would anyone be able to tell me how to get the a/c downloads to work? I have no idea and I am getting bored with the originals, I am on fsx.

Hi Zac,
There are a couple of ways in which you can download & add aircraft to your FSX library. For me personally, I just go into google & type into the search bar what aircraft im after ie Saab 340 FSX downloads. Once you download a file, you will normally have to unzip the folder. I then normally cut & paste the downloaded aircraft folder into the FSX aircraft folder (ie C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes). This works for me so I'm hoping it will work for you. If you can't understand what i wrote above, don't hesitate to PM me ;).

Cheers,
Jayden

There's still a bit of life left in the Microsoft flight sim line yet, MS is apparently still going to publish and market FSX for the time being.

www.flightsim.com and www.avsim.com are good repositories for aircraft, scenery and other add-ons for Flight Simulator 98 to FSX, they even have files for X-Plane and others.

Multiplayer will also keep it going for a few years to come. The built in multiplayer functionality found in FS98 - FS2004 is pretty cumbersome, FSX is the only version with pretty user friendly multiplayer and built in voice communications. There are alternatives though.

VATSIM has been around for years and supplies real time ATC via dedicated people running different airspaces, there are usually two or three that will control at least the east coast of Australia. For the more casual flightsimmers there is the recently started Bigpond GameArena flighsim server which has no stringent rules or ATC requirements. Both of these options require the download of a couple of extra, but fairly easy to use programs. The biggest plus of these multiplayer services is that you can play no matter what version of flight simulator you have, handy if a friend has FS2004 and you have FSX. If your ISP is telstra, the gamearena server has the added bonus of being usage free, meaning it won't count towards your monthly download limit.

Hi all,

I've been using MSFS for nearly 15 years now.
Starting with FS4, my greatest moment was when I installed the Sound Card add-on software, with real engine sounds, and also a scenery and aircraft design toolkit (Very basic). I used to make little secret airports around the world, one even in a really deep valley that made it impossible to land unless you know how to.

In FS5 I started designing more aircraft with some editor, and more scenery, nothing major though.

I also used fs98, fs2000 and fs9, and am currently using (On and off) FSX.

FS4 ran on my NEC Powermate 386 SX-16 with 4MB ram and 42MB MFM Hard Disk, 14" CRT Monitor, 8 Bit Mono Sound Card.

FSX runs on my Intel QuadCore Q6600 2.4Ghz, 4GB Memory, 1.5TB Total Disk Space, 256MB Video Card and 17" (Soon to be 22") LCD Screen.

Greatest moments include flying online for the first time with mates around the country over the space of a year (Every weekend), taking the SR-71 Blackbird for a short hop PER-SYD (The long way round), and finding a setting in aircraft.cfg that could change the thrust of the 737-400 so that you could take off and be at FL350 in under 60 seconds using only 50% engine power! :)

Cheers,

Carsten

PS: Does anyone know a good BAE146 or Avro RJ70/85/100 Sim for FSX?

How do you re-write those cfg files? My computer doesn't have outlook, I have other than the default a/c, VH-QOH and the dash 8 100.

Outlook? WTF?
Outlook is an email client.
aircraft.cfg is a plain text document.
Open Notepad, File | Open, change file types to All, then open aircraft.cfg
Make sure you backup any files.

Change the following line
static_thrust =

Cheers,

Carsten

My Computer says it is a Microsoft Office Outlook Configuration file.

Oh ok.
Well if you follow my instructions you will be able to edit the file.

I'd be interested to know what level of hardware all you FSX simmers user. I've never been able to get it to run with a decent frame rate on my PC. I'm just about to upgrade and would like to know what specs I should be looking for. Any help is appreciated.

I run FSX on my HP DV9000 laptop, 1.83Ghz Dual Core, 2GB Ram, 512MB Graphics. When I first got the laptop it worked a treat on full settings, now I have to tone it down ever so slightly to get it to run perfectly.

I get around it though by plugging the laptop into my Samsung 32' LCD TV with the HDMI cable then put all setting on high and it works with no problems.

Just bought my new computer, and it runs FSX pretty decently, but slows down in 'busier' airports or scenery areas. Planning to get some of the expansion packs etc for Sydney and stuff. Not happy with the default scenery, particularly there is a house on the side of the taxiway to Rwy 34L, and in a B747-400 your wing will hit it!

Started playing around with adding some new planes etc too, mostly Project OpenSky ones for the moment. Anyone have any other good recommendations? Also thinking of adding World of AI packages.

Anyway, system is:

Vista Home Premium 64 bit
Pentium 8200 Quad Core
4GB Ram
Radeon 4850 Graphics Card (512MB)
Acer 24" P244WB Monitor
XClio A380 Case (Just had to mention :P)
FSX is installed on a dedicated 1TB HDD.

Running most settings at Ultra High with Light bloom and 1920x1080 res.

Loving it! Even with the slight lagginess here and there.

Dan

I only got FSX at the end of last year and i quite like it.
But i have question for anyone that knows, i'm using it on my laptop mostly because I go out to bathurst to uni , but when i try open cargo doors or something along those lines, SHIFT + E + 2, never works, it only opens the main exits along with opening up something like the GPS window?

Anyone know how to get it to work?

Thanks

Gerard

Shift + E and then 2, not at the same time:D

Ha, ok thanks Zac. It all makes sense now!!!

Hey Gerard,

Some aircraft have them and others dont. If yours does, Hold shift and E at the same time then when it says "Main Exit Opening" quickly press number 2(which is the "@" symbol above the letters of the keyboard) and press 3 too and you might open another door.

Closing them is the same process but you need to view the aircraft from the outside to make sure they do close.

Hope I have helped.

Too quick Zac!:D

Thanks Tim,

Everywhere i read it i saw it as press them all at the same time. I'd try it now but if i start playing now ill never come back to the assignment thats driving me up the wall. I'll let you know if it doesn't work.
Thanks heaps!

Gerard

I bought my laptop for uni but intentionally found one with specs so that I could run FSX at least better than running it on my older desktop (which seems to have a heart-attack everytime i had tried to play it :p)

I run the game with everything on maximum settings and it work really fine, with only minimal lag as someone mentioned earlier at some of the large/busier airports.

I normally average at least 23fps while moving on the ground and about 35+fps when stationary on ground or in the air.

My specs:
HP DV5-1139TX
Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53GHz 6mb L2 Cache 1066MHz FBUS
4GB DDR2 RAM (although only 3GB is being actively used due to my 32bit Windows Home Premium :(
512MB GeForce 9600M graphics
15.4" display

Ahmet, does the game quality improve my playing it on a TV screen?? (i have a 43" Plasma that I might try it out on)

Cheers

I'd say any performance gain in plugging it into a LCD/Plasma TV would be because of the reduced resolution - most LCD's/Plasmas will only accept PC input at 1366x768.

That's exactly what I was thinking. But when I read the earlier post I thought maybe the newer technologies have made it possible to achieve either same (or perhaps even better) resolution while still making the game even more "playable" than if you had been playing the entire thing on a laptop/PC.

However I can only imagine that it would be totally awesome to play on a whopping massive TV screen with a full surround sound home theatre system providing an exhilarating experience :p

It could actually make things worse. The PC may have to scale the image to a resolution that is not native to the TV hence the reason all manufacturers recommend PC Monitors and the like be used at the native resolution for that particular monitor.

A good website i found that has some aircraft & has over 100 different aircraft textures on it (eg Air Vanuatu 737-800 paint scheme).

Website is: FS-files.com. You have to become a member but its usually free to join.

Cheers,
Jayden

I can't remember what resolution I am using, I can check that out if you like. But all I know is that I can play FSX on the TV without any lag and while all of the setting are on High. I have 2 saved settings, 1 for playing on the laptop screen (which is toned down) and the other on full for playing on the TV. I can't help but think that when it's plugged into the TV, the laptop saves processing power from projecting the picture on it's own screen as it is assisted by the TV's own processing power.

Russell, TV's are so cheap these days that i've often thought about buying another 2 and setting them up just for FSX. I've always thought i'd like to have something like 9 or 10 17-19" pc screens. This way i'd only have to buy another 2 TV's. Or maybe that's a little bit overboard :)

This guys has seriously taken Flight Sim to a different level!

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/...447451617.html

Cheers

M

Just wondering if anyone can help me. I downloaded the latest service pack for fsx and changed a few of the setting, now i don't have any aircraft traffic at all. I even went and changed traffic to max on all of it and still nothing.
Does anyone know how to get it back? Is it something to do with the number of frames per second or the settings?

Thanks in advance

here's a few from my FSX adventures,
As u can see its come along way

App into YSSY
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/219...5112810421.jpg

Dep YSSY
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/665...0124633562.jpg

Dep YBBN
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/905...2182738671.jpg

YMML Ariel
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9424/37163545zw4.jpg

YMML Ariel
http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/1264/55187711ot9.jpg

:):)

Fs x
 

Josh, what Melbourne scenery are you using?

Dad tried the FTX scenery and it made his slow and jittery.

That Melbourne scenery is not very accurate: there are plenty of spaces available in front of the Hilton... ;)

Hi Ryan,
I'm using FTX Australia and FTX YMML there,
Its pretty cpu intensive software but after the service packs and updates I get a well rounded performance flying in and out of YMML...
There various options U can check and un-check to help with frame rates plus their support forum is 2nd to none for help hints and idea's!!