Flight Sim World early access (BETA) out now

[Chris Trott]

One thing guys - we need to make sure when we're looking at the start of FSW, we're comparing it to stock FSX (hard to do for most of us, I know), but when we look at our FSX with hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars worth of "upgrades" on it, we're gonna be a bit "jaded" because we see what FSX can be no what it is. This was one of the early problems in the Flight! BETA that all of us had to overcome. We were comparing Flight! to our heavily modded FSX and wondering "what is improved?" Then, someone (don't remember who now) posted screenshots of default FSX and we thought we were looking at FS9 for a minute. But it reminded us of just how far FSX has come in the years since it was originally released with no direct involvement of Microsoft. We can't hold what 3rd party devs have done against Dovetail who have a price point they're trying to meet when we're comparing FSW to things like ORBX Open Landclass or Global Vector (which isn't included in FSW, just Global Textures) which on their own would more than triple the price of the software.

You're right, what I see now is no better than P3D v3 - but it's 1/3 the price of P3D v3 for that level. I see a major step up in graphics over FSX for 2/3 the price of FSX (even at full retail of $40 - FSX:Gold was $60). That alone has me sold. From here, hopefully it's only moving up.

Finally, I think DTG was kinda forced into the "Early Access". I think with the delays they had with TSW's release (which resulted in them taking employees off the FSW team) and the backlash of the "BETA" they had (where you paid as much as $120 for a BETA access then had to pay $40 for the full game when it came out and there was no discount), they had no choice but to get some money coming in and to try and not run into the same issue again with a "beta" that didn't count towards your purchase of the full game.

[blanston12]

Tried it for the first time last night. Had to restart it when while waiting for the flight to load I switched out to see something else, then maximised the window again and it seamed to lock up. My Video card is well below the specs (Radeon 7970m 2GB) with less than half the horsepower and memory recommended but still got about 20-30 fps in my test flight from Jersey to France in the PA-18.

The rain drop effect on the windows is cool for sure. there were some strange interface issues, lots of clicking to just get the flight loaded. The ATC window opened fine with the same key as FSX but its not a toggle, it just opens it, does not close it. The computerised voices were a bit weird but at least there are some non american accents in it.

Did some digging into the airport database, have not done a full analysis but its definitely smaller, about 18% the size of FSX/P3d. Will have to run some comparisons to see if its just a subset or have they started from scratch.

Examining the file structure its clear that its the same as FSX, I see on sim outhouse that some pilots have gotten FSX aircraft to fly in FSW but the non-xml gauges don't work. gau files are really just DLL libraries so if all that needs to be done is re-compile them as 64 bit then porting AC into it may not be that hard.

[DaveB]

I see a major step up in graphics over FSX for 2/3 the price of FSX

That's the very first time I've seen anyone post that. You sure you've looked at FSW Chris? The major step up in graphics is the cost of the graphics card you need to run it. This is exactly the same as P3D in that respect. Users who dived for 4gig cards to run P3D are now running for 970's/+ to meet FSW minimum spec.

The screenshots I've seen of it (and I've been sent some by someone who has it, not Dovetail promo's).. it looks exactly like ORBX FTX England only very pale.. an observation made by just about everyone. I dunno about you lot but this doesn't appear to be a major step forward at all. The only advancement is in the specs required to run it. Early days I know. It can only get better.
ATB
DaveB

[DaveG]

Indeed, I think the only "step up" is the VC raindrop effect (and even that looks a bit iffy close up). The rest just looks like stock FSX with Orbx textures, and the same low LoD radius & popup autogen.
Considering how far PCs & graphics card capabilities have come in the 10+ years since the original FSX it's hardly an earth shattering advance.
Hopefully it will improve, and I hope it does, but at the moment I don't see me spending much time with it.

[Rick Piper]

I'm at same conclusion

I don't really see any step forward so far but it's early days.
good framerate but looks nowhere near as good as My P3d currently

seems to be no Wide view button do I'm about 2 feet from aircraft in spot view! really irritating.

Looks like adding aircraft had been deliberately neutered as exe checks for added aircraft when you go to selection screen.
I can see addon pop up for nanosecond then disappear almost instantly.

What the hell have they done with elevator trim requirements.
I can only get the P28 to fly level with 6 degrees of nose down trim! (horrible) and it does 125 kts on demand!
(hey it looks lovely though

Regards
Rick

[DaveG]

[Rick Piper]

smartA***

[Vancouver]

Are you running FSW on a 660ti I have a 760GTX and have held off as I didn't think my card was up to it.

My Specs

Intel Core i5 6600K CPU 3.50GHz
Asus Maximus IX MB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660Ti
CT250BX SSD
16Gb DDR4

Runs fine high fps in the PNW. So not a terribly dense area. Default settings which were mid everything I was 60+ fps. When I maxed out all the sliders it dropped to mid 20's. A busy place like Seattle or London would probably strangle it but I lost interest when my eyes started bleeding with the awful vivid cartoon colours.

[DaveG]

You need to add this to the aircraft.cfg:

ui_thumbnailfile="texture.ZJ951\thumbnail.png"
ui_hangarfile="texture.ZJ951\hangar.png"
ui_selectionfile="texture.ZJ951\selection.png"
ui_tilefile="texture.ZJ951\hangar.png"
ui_info=3337053257

Obviously change the texture path to suit, make sure you have a "thumbnail.png" @ 600x240 and "hanger.png" and "selection.png" @ 1920x1080 in the folder or it won't show.
Vis code seems a bit hit and miss.

[Chris Trott]

I see a major step up in graphics over FSX for 2/3 the price of FSX

That's the very first time I've seen anyone post that. You sure you've looked at FSW Chris? The major step up in graphics is the cost of the graphics card you need to run it. This is exactly the same as P3D in that respect. Users who dived for 4gig cards to run P3D are now running for 970's/+ to meet FSW minimum spec.

I suspect the "paleness" of the colors is because something in the graphics hasn't been activated yet or got messed up in the compile for release as has been said with many - it's pretty consistent.

I'm sure I've looked at FSW. The graphics are significantly further along.

I'm running a GTX950 w/2GB and with "HIGH" settings I'm getting 40+ FPS.

Oh, and the graphics card issue - the GTX970 is over 3 years old now. I don't blame them from wanting that as a minimum. You've gotta move forward at some point and stay relevant. This was what Microsoft did with every version of FS. They made the minimum the last generation of cards and the optimum the then current generation. By the time the next version came out in a couple years, the "optimum" for the last version was now the minimum for the new one. It's how development's been done for decades, so why are so many being negative towards Dovetail for following the industry standard that we've been dealing with since FS1?