Classic British Flight Sim

I've spent a fair bit of time with it now and although I was mildly disappointed at first, I don't actually think it is that bad. I think the main problem with it is that it is an unfinished demo and I do question the wisdom of putting it out like this - ie just one example is that the autogen has a major bug in that all the buildings have been inadvertently textured on the inside - thus there is a major performance hit (not to mention the massive trees). From a strictly marketing point of view - to attract new purchasers who perhaps have never simmed before - this is going to turn them right off, whereas we all know that even if the final version goes out like this (and it won't) - someone in the community will replace it (witness the clouds and weather in FS9).

On the other hand, they have at least given us a chance to see how existing add-ons will work, or not work and what problems to expect. Apparently, the whole thing has been built with the add-on market, freeware and payware alike, very much in mind - so its a kind of catch or even a compromise if you like between making it backwards compatible, or writing it new from the ground up. And if you write it new from the ground up, you can safely kiss goodbye to all our favourite add-ons.

Incidentally, I am under no illusion that they are being all warm and fluffy to the community - they know full well that great third party aircraft and scenery that only work to full effect in the latest verion of FS are in themselves an armtwist to get that version.

I think when FS9 came out, it was exceptional from the start (IMHO unusual in MSFS releases) - and without a doubt its going to be hard to beat. Even so, it is a fact of life that FS is more of an operating system upon which we then layer our aircraft, mesh, scenery, weather etc etc - there are few basics that cannot be altered and I think what they have done with the basics (disregarding the default aircraft which I never fly anyway - the very first a/c I flew in FSX was DaveG's Hunter T7!) is an improvement.

I am no friend of MS (I use a Mac exclusively - only run windows for FS), but I do like the water, the stars and the sky. I like the transitional visibilty effects, the ground traffic has potential (as long as they fix the 100mph cars with no bodies going in one direction). The autogen just should have been left out of the demo - this is just all wrong and I really hope they fix this ...

On a lighter note, I spent a mad half hour last night in a Hunter T8 at 500,000 feet ... quite literally weightless. Take yer protein pills and put yer 'elmet on!

I quite like it

There are plenty of problems with it as have already been mentioned, but on the whole I was pleased with how it looked and performed on my aging system.

Shame track ir doesn't work with the demo :sad:

The Hunter seems to work well. Wingtip trails seems to be built in to the sim now.
The Rapide has a tendancy to sit on it's nose upon loading, but otherwise flys OK. The float version will also nosedive after landing. Probably a CoG / contact point problem. I haven't adjusted anything yet.
Some hidden xml gauges that control things like the wind powered genny on the Rapide will need moving from the 2D panel to the VC as they don't get initailised unless the 2D panel is loaded at least once, but that's not really a problem.

Just a suggestion guys too, TD has been posting actively on his blog about the known issues that have been cropping up from the demo.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/archive/2006/08.aspx

Might want to read through. It gives some good insights as to what's going on behind the scenes.

It also explains the WX outage over the weekend.

I've been waiting for your comments Chris... conspicuous by their absence up to this point :think: Thus far, my 'ignorant' remarks do seem to be rather less ignorant than you were happy to accept

DaveB :tab:

I haven't made many comments as I don't have many to make. The program's about where I expected it. The new effects for things like spray when taxiing on wet surfaces and engine spray on the same is nice, the flight dynamics are more refined in some areas, the same in others. The change in file systems isn't as drastic as I'd expected to be honest.

I'm not making a whole lot of other decisions becuase it is a beta and they were rushed to publish it so things were forgotten that would have been nice.

My biggest gripe is that while Princess Juliana is nice, I'd have rather seen them put us at a major airport instead of a nice Carribean airport so we can see things like how our systems perform at Heathrow with maximum AI and autogen and how the jetbridges work on our addon aircraft. The fact that the ACES team did take note of what things were posted as "problems" and identified a few things the BETA team didn't and has promised to fix them for the release (like the wierd texture issue when the strobes flash) has me optomistic.

I don't know why they were 'rushed' to release a beta demo anyway. They've never done it before so why start now?? :think: (don't answer that.. I'm thinking aloud)! Perhaps the general public is the 'final' beta team!!

Does anyone know if the drag coef have been changed again?? I remember well running DM's 2002 Trident 4xflights per day on two pc's for a fortnight massaging the fuel scalar only to find that a week after release, M$ threw 2004 to the waiting public and the darned thing wouldn't even reach Cyprus!!

DaveB :tab:

DaveB wrote:I don't know why they were 'rushed' to release a beta demo anyway. They've never done it before so why start now?? :think: (don't answer that.. I'm thinking aloud)! Perhaps the general public is the 'final' beta team!!
DaveB :tab:

You Mean why change things now?
FSX Is right on target
Gotta love em

It's incredably jerkey

getting 8-13 fps on the Viscount!

Changing views makes it stop and wait to catch up :huf:

Garry

DaveB wrote: Perhaps the general public is the 'final' beta team!!

That wouldn't be a bad thing if it was the case - provided they listen to the general public - a lot of people all over the place seem to be pointing out all the problems they can find with it so if MS actually take on board what's being said about the demo then there's a reasonable chance that stuff will get fixed prior to the release.

I managed to get it going by loading a mission. And tbh the terrain textures are crap! I was running on full settings too.