Steve M wrote on Sep 29^th, 2010 at 6:55pm:

The upper united states did seem quite left out. I'm not sure about other areas, but it seems that if it's not a city, it doesn't matter.



In Washington they seemed to think to themselves: Right, well here is the Boeing field and Seattle and I'm not sure about the rest so I'll just cover it in grass.

My response: Dang!

Much as I hate to say it, my suspicion is that this new 'Flight' will be more or less what Microsoft calls it - a game.  From a purely business point of view, they can't be faulted - making money for the shareholders but, for those who still hold a dream, look to others.  There's a groundswell of enterprise out there so don't be surprised at what happens next.

XxRazgrizxX wrote on Sep 29^th, 2010 at 10:17pm:

machineman9 wrote on Sep 29^th, 2010 at 7:00pm:


One of the many reasons why I have toured the State of California for the past 10+ years is because it has the most accurately represented ground scenery compared to the rest of the World. A comparison with the Google Map of the area flown over reveals the similarity.
I suspect this is because many of the scenery designers probably lived in, and around "Silicon Valley" (San Francisco Bay area!). From Santa Rosa to Los Angeles, down the Pacific Coast, is extremely well represented in the Sim, and is very close to authentic Mapping, and local photographs!.

The ground could be represented as a Google Map, but that would make it "Photographic Scenery" in flat 2D (eg: Flight Unlimited II/III), rather than the much more realistic 3D, MS; "Autogen" scenery.

But, as always, the more realistic the scenery, the more load is put onto our lowly computers, often making the Sim impossible to play!

I'm always afraid that if the designers take into account all our wishes from lists similar to this, like Aces did with FSX, that the next Sim will be just as impossible to play for most Flight Simmers!

A very careful compromise will have to be observed... ...!

Grass waving in the breeze?....actual Flies in the Teeth?.....MMmmmm.... .... don't fink so!.......!

Paul..G-BPLF...FS 2004...FS Nav....California Flower Power... ...!

..By the way...The scenery for Great Britain was/is a total waste of space, in the Sim... ... ...!

P.S....actually, as an enthusiastic; "Tourer", looking out of the windows, I would sacrifice many of the proposed frills and whistles in the Sim, for some excellent, even more realistic, ground scenery to observe.

machineman9 wrote on Sep 30^th, 2010 at 5:54am:




Which brings up the question...

Will the new "Flight" even run on older OS?

IE9 is supposed to be Windows 7 only,
and most future M$ software will more than likely follow suit, as they try to get the XP & Vista faithful to move up.

  I have a friend who still uses Windows 98, and a dial up modem, and swears he'd rather stop using a computer than upgrade. 

To each his own I guess. 




Quote:


What hurt Vista in the eye of the 'general public' was it's intense hardware demand at a time when hardware wasn't ready for such demands. 
When most systems only had 2Gb of RAM total, an OS that required 2Gb of RAM just for itself was pretty ridiculous.
Then when you tried to run any other program on top of that, it was pure hell. (I know because my dad still has one of 'those' systems.  )

This is the exact same reason why FSX got such harsh criticism at it's release (and still does).

As 3GB+ systems came out, it started to shine, but by then the damage was done in M$ mind, and that's why they stripped it down and called it Windows 7.

But just like my friend with Win98, and you with Vista, I'll probably stick with XP until it's useless. OS are like best friends, once you have them figured out, and you get comfortable with them, you really don't want to have to start over with a new one. 

Darn it, I completely forgot that it's highly likely that this new sim won't work on XP.

Sean....still with XP SP3....and loving it.

I run Win XP as well, and won't be upgrading this rig I have EVER, since it's already older than damn near anyone else's I know of.

Anyway, getting back on topic:

Most of the world (with the exception of California and the largest cities) was half-cooked in both of the last two sim installments, mostly because the designers couldn't spend five years creating it and refining it to map out each town in the world.

Although that is a bit strange, since most (non-commercial) pilots tend to utilize ground-based waypoints as their guides when not using GPS or frequency locators.  If a town or dam or something similar isn't where you expect it to be in FS, you are simply SOL and have to revert to some other form of navigation, which is something I always disliked about it.  This led* me to flying almost exclusively in places like the South Pacific, where the islands were (mostly) accurate.

Flying over your neighborhood and seeing the houses?  Probably not.

Flying over your city and seeing mostly accurate roads?  I frakkin hope so!

*edited for "lead" poisoning