8 ms·
Microsot Flight Simulator is back
- cstuder 16y agoThe official website: http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/ http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/ But it's pretty much without content at the moment (And I'm not just saying that because it's all Flash.)
- sosuke 16y agoThe site doesn't even render correctly in Internet Explorer. I really hope this was a mistake release to production for the Flight site, it still needs some love to be finished.
- Setsuna 16y agoAge of Empires is back too http://www.ageofempiresonline.com/ http://www.ageofempiresonline.com/
- cstuder 16y agoWho's gonna say the F-word first?
- nkassis 16y agoNot sure about this new edition but AoE does bring back some great memories. The second was awesome. Made me feel like trogdor burninating the peasants.
- Setsuna 16y agoAoE2 was set in middle ages and IMO is a fantastic game. This however is set in Greece.
- jpr 16y agoNot much information, but everything seems to indicate it would be more of a game than a simulator. I hope that it has as good add-on capabilities as the previous versions.
- ritonlajoie 16y agoI can't wait to see it. Flight Simulator is one of my favorite all time game. Great news !
- motters 16y agoDitching Flight Simulator was one of the dumbest decisions Microsoft ever made. It's probably one of their best known games, with a hardcore user base.
- bl4k 16y agoSomebody I know very well was making small talk with Steve Ballmer and asked "So why did you guys get rid of Ensemble Studios, I have lost hours of time with those games and loved them". Steves response was: "who?" Gives you an idea of how things are at Microsoft.
- techsupporter 16y agoThe internal uproar when FS got dropped was deafening. I'm on several "social" distribution lists and at least 3/4ths of them had some kind of long thread wanting to know whose head the sender could chew off for making this "happen."
- cstross 16y agoNaah ... their dumbest move was circa-1987, when they sold their license to market a product based on System V UNIX called Xenix to a then little-known device driver shop run by a father-son duo called Larry and Doug Michels, in return for a stake in their company. Who subsequently used Xenix to grow their start-up, the Santa Cruz Operation, into a $200M/year multinational. (This was before the dark days in the late 90s when, having been spanked out of the desktop market, the board of SCO sold their IP and the company name to a linux startup from Utah called Caldera, who renamed themselves the SCO Group and went into the IP troll business. Thus indelibly blackening one of the names on my resume.) If M$ hadn't sold Xenix to SCO and focussed on OS/2 it's possible they'd have moved wholesale into UNIX circa 1988 with the advent of the ia32 architecture. And the whole history of desktop OS development through the late 80s and 90s would have been unrecognizable ... (Somewhere I have some old PC magazines, circa 1982-84, with advertisements by Microsoft promoting "UNIX -- the operating system of the future!")
- glhaynes 16y ago
- elliottkember 16y agoI'm interested, but that website really doesn't bode well for a good-looking game. For a while there, I thought they were bringing back the original version.
- snom370 16y agoI've never used Microsoft Flight Simulator, but I've been very happy with X-Plane (http://www.x-plane.com/ http://www.x-plane.com/). It's cheap, available for Mac, Linux and Windows and has a very active community. And it lets you use your iPhone/iPad as a controller w/flight instruments.
- elblanco 16y agoShutting down MFS was the best thing that ever could have happened to X-Plane. If I remember correctly, until MFS went away, X-Plane was pretty much free.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoX-Plane has always charged for a copy, although iirc they had multiple price tiers based on what scenery you wanted. With the announcement of MFS going away, X-Plane slashed their price and adopted a single pricing tier to help draw in converts. I'd been eying X-Plane for a while when the price slashing occurred, and jumped on opportunity, and I love it.
- nfg 16y agoIt's also available natively on iPhone and is a lot of fun to play around with.
- sofuture 16y agoI have used Microsoft Flight Simulator, quite extensively (all the way from CGA graphics up through DirectX 10). And while it's a great program, and other than the nicely crafted missions in FSX... X-Plane beats it hands down. I haven't looked back, especially since I can run it flawlessly on Linux.
- joshwa 16y agoTo repeat my previous post on the pilot's license thread: X-Plane: * Has the most accurate flight model -- so accurate that some manufacturers use X-Plane to flight-test models not yet produced. * Can be FAA-certified for instrument training * Can be networked among multiple machines to power multi-monitor cockpit setups * Can be extended via plugins, of which a wide variety are available * Has an extremely active developer community-- plugins, aircraft, scenery * Can be used to fly online with VATSIM (US) and IVAO (Europe) - where there is often live ATC and where griefers are kickbanned liberally. * Has an awesome developer blog, talking about 3d graphics implementations at a very low level: http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/ http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/ * Has Austin Meyer (owner/lead dev), who is a colorful personality, and blogs often about aviation and other miscellany: http://www.x-plane.com/pg_PIREPS.html http://www.x-plane.com/pg_PIREPS.html * Is available for iPhone and iPad * Can use your iPhone or iPad as a joystick and to display instruments tied to the sim on your computer
- joshwa 16y agoKey phrases from the press release: "announces the development" "announces the internal development" "inspired by the best-selling Flight Simulator franchise" "bring a new perspective to the long-standing genre" "Reinventing these franchises with social, shared experiences" So it's vaporware, bearing no resemblance to the original, without any of the original developers, which, if it's ever released, will be filled with griefers.
- Groxx 16y ago>if it's ever released, will be filled with griefers. >"Reinventing these franchises with social, shared experiences" and "bring a new perspective to the long-standing genre" And "friends". And "points". Not that I was a fan before, but that seems it would screw over anyone serious about it.
- watmough 16y agoMicrosoft Flight Simulator was such a genius product due to the number of add-on planes, scenery etc., that could be integrated into the sim due to the open-ended nature, SDKs etc. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555857 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555857 I'm hope I'm wrong, but a diluted-down, closed game is going to disappoint many of the enthusiasts who've supported Flight Sim over the years, and even in the best-case, the likelihood is that much of the talent and knowledge that built Flight Sim X is gone for good.
- bitwize 16y agoMicrosoft Flight -- now under development by the Office Team! The easy-to-use new "Ribbon" interface takes the complexity out of flying a plane.
- nailer 16y agoExcel 97 had a 3D flight sim. Seriously.