Time for the comparison shots you have all been waiting for. The only things in my shots that are not default are the water shaders and airplanes. Everything else is out of the box default. As usual, locations are matched as closely as possible. I have not been able to find location 2. It seems to be a very tricky one to find, even with help.


Screenshot 1

FSX


Flight



Screenshot 2

Location has not been confirmed


Screenshot 3

FSX


Flight



Screenshot 4

FSX


Flight



Screenshot 5

FSX


Flight



Based on these shots, we can conclude that there is a huge improvement to the capabilities of the scenery engine. (probably a rewrite along with a texture set that is going to be completely new. They are probably still working on replacing the textures.) The shaders appear to have been upgraded a good amount. Buildings look like they have self shadows. (visible in shot 2, not posted here, but available on the Flight website)  The overall lighting on the aircraft in shot 1 and 2 seems very nice compared to FSX. (was forced to use FS9 planes in the comparisons due to the lack of fsx native freeware Stearmans and Vans RV-6A's) The water in Flight is looking good, although lacking some reflection. Hopefully that will be added. As for the waves meeting the coast, that is a huge improvement. Waves washing onto the coast in Flight are like nothing we can get in FSX. It would appear that the sand is even left a little wet from the water! Clouds look mostly the same, although there might be somewhat of an improvement to the way they are rendered. (more coverage?) Sky textures look to have all been redone. That horrible bright blue from FSX looks to be gone. Autogen coverage looks to be quite good. You can see it go out much further into the distance in Flight than in FSX. Ground textures look much better, although blurry in spots. My opinion on this is that the settings were not turned up all the way for these shots. (Microsoft doesn't want to show us even more amazing shots, then end up having to cut out a feature and Flight not look as good in the end.)

Overall, there is a huge improvement to the whole graphics engine. (I'd guess that it's a rewrite in progress, or completed. Texture set could be a work in progress with most of the textures we saw in FSX getting redone) As long as it delivers with these amazing graphics and good performance, it's a definite win. The online store shouldn't kill freeware. It's a store...meaning, it will offer payware, most likely. Freeware will either be available on a specific freeware place at the store, or will be freely available at all the normal add-on websites. Add-on development needs to be a little simpler for beginners, so I hope that they make that a goal.

Wow...Flight looks so much more in depth and much better detail...

BrandonF wrote on Jun 4^th, 2011 at 12:24am:

You know what ? Your ability to reproduce those screenshots in FSX is far more impressive than the screenshots themselves
Here is the best I could get in my FSX, and that's far from what you got



In this screenshot, I'm using the freeware Hawaii mesh coupled with a landclass that was made for FS9, as well as the FSX mountain mod.

Some people are just never satisfied man, and thanks for taking the time to do the comparison shots. It really shows how far Flight has come from FSX. I think Flight looks amazing and cant wait to see what else Microsoft has in store. So far its looking great. 

BrandonF wrote on Jun 4^th, 2011 at 8:36pm:


I am not impressed at all because on those screenshots, Flight looks like nothing more than FSX with alternative ground/rock textures. The scenery casting shadows on autogen objects are still the one and only new feature that we could see so far.


Quote:

Aren't you getting a bit too optimistic here ? It's quite obvious that Hawaii islands will be quite detailled (but still imprecise, if you compare with Google Earth pictures), but I really don't think that the whole world will get such a "precise" landclass. What we're seeing in those shots is just the Flight-equivalent of FSX's St-Marteen island. St-Marteen sure looked good in default FSX, but the rest of the world was not as much detailled (appart from the official "detailled" cities/airports). It will be just the same in Flight, just for different places.

Quote:

They could do exactely the same than OrbX guys could do with FSX, from what I've seen so far. Flight is taking the same path than FSX took. FS9 had some landclass terrain types, FSX had much more, and hopefully Flight will get much more than FSX too, but there is nothing impressive or unexpected here.

in your posts, you say that the locations can not be confirmed, meaning that noone except those at Microsoft know the true location of where they took their picture.  HOWEVER! you loaded your FSX and went to that location to take your comparison shot. So therefore you know of the location, but you just do not want to give away your knowledge, possibly for fear that we (the rest of the simming world) would know that these areas/airports are in a "Highly detailed DEFAULT area" and not just some random coastline in India, or South Africa. .... oh, and for your 2nd shot... that IS Hawaii, and I will prove it! ( see picture below )

Now, if Micro$oft wants to give the WHOLE PLANET the same attention that they give Chicago, New York, LAX, San Fran, Seatle, etc etc and not just 20,000 DETAILED airports but EVERY SINGLE GRASS STRIP as well, then yes, Flight might be worth something.


Your shots are edited for the Water Shaders.  What does the water look like STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOX?? As soon as Flight hits the shelves, there are not going to be 10 addon programs like, ULTIMATE TERRAIN, GROUND ENVIRONMENT, REX, etc to change things like the color/shade of the water. You get what you get.



Yes there are some improvements over FSX out of the box, but not much.  If Micro$oft really wanted to WOW! us with a new product such as this, then maybe they should STHU, stop listening to the designers, and start listening to the people that pour out THOUSANDS of dollars every year to make THEIR product better, because, out of the box .. IT SUCKS!!!!  -- Why do you think we have to buy ORBX, ULTIMATE TERRAIN, GROUND ENVIRONMENT, AIRPORT STUDIO, CAPT SIM planes, POSKY........... its all because FLIGHT SIM is not good enough straight out of the box.





Mighty funny that you can not find, or figure out where your shot #2 was from, when I could figure it out by the 3wing building that is just below my Port Bottom wing.  I have flown this island enough to figure it out for my self.   And doing my own comparison shot vs yours and Flight... WITH MY ADDONS, it looks like MY shot is closer to Flight than yours is.     .. oh, and if you get REX, if you look closely, you do get Cloud reflections on the water.

FSX (sp2)
REX
Ultimate Terrain X
Ground Environment X
PHNL - Honolulu, Hawaii

BrandonF wrote on Jun 6^th, 2011 at 12:01pm:

Ah, but have they? I'm merely pointing out that all is not necessarily as it appears.



Quote:

It seems obvious to me that MS wants to control all addons via the Games for Windows – LIVE platform. If you visit the website you will see that it's all based on commercial products. http://www.microsoft.com/games/en-us/aboutGFW/pages/gfw3intro.aspx

Well well well. So it time now to be forced to buy a new computer. I remember when FS2004 came out. With my computer I had that ran most software quite well, I could get only a stutter from FS2004.

Few years later and FSX comes out with "improved" graphics. Fire it up and with the computer that runs FS2004 with everything maxed, I get quite a stutter. So again I pack it away and wait.

Few years on and I have a faster computer. So I dig up FSX and it runs quite well but not with everything maxed. Oc course I cannot max aotogen and no clouds and few ground vehicles. Load a few custom sceneries and the famous stutter appears. My screamer is brought to its FPS knees. Getting 4 to 6 fps and I have to make 2 cuos of tea while FSX and the sceneries load.

While the graphics in the screenshots look better, at what cost?

Sure they will claim that my current system is not powerful enough and I must buy Windows 8 and another computer if I want to get any thing more than 2 FPS.

What I would like to see in any screenshots is the actual FPS and the hardware that is being used to achieve those figures. Otherwise any screen shot means as much to me as an image from google - nothing.

Sure Windows 7 can "run" in 256MB of memory, but what they leave out is that then you can run nothing else.

I wanna see their money where their mouth is. Show me the hardware and the FPS or show me nothing.

dapeeper wrote on Jun 7^th, 2011 at 3:53am:


When has any game company ever shown something like this while a game/simulator is in development? It's something that just wouldn't probably happen.

Well, Tuna: not sure if you've been reading the speculation going on around here, but that's all it is.  Speculation.  We have very little in the way of definitive evidence, and even less actual assurance that the final product will function as they say it will.  There is just no way to know at this point, and anything else is less than hearsay.  What I would suggest is that you keep working with FS9.  When you get that new rig, load up FSX and see how it performs.  If it works well, stick with it.  If not, go back to FS9.  Then wait until Flight hits the shelves and read what will (inevitably) be written about it extensively on this site and many others.  If it sounds like it would work well on your machine at that point, then go out and purchase.  There is absolutely no reason to waste a perfectly good copy of FSX just because something better comes out.  As the adage goes: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Ahem!  Clearing the guns . . .

Yes, MS has said that they are now catering to the FS community, but they have said that on numerous occasions.

I place much stock in the FS franchise, simply because they have, in the past ten years, consistently delivered a product that tried to meet the expectations of the FS community.  That community is as diverse and as complicated as any in gaming, since it demands complete dedication to the hard-core sim pilot, yet also tries to retain a sense of "availability" to those folks that aren't actually looking for the "as real as it gets" genre.

Those of us that truly want a sim that encompasses the most rigorous and intense aspects of being a sim pilot, versus those that want to just get their jollies by buzzing the tower, have been free to do so up until now.

However, I see that Flight seems to be aiming more towards the avid gamer, rather than the sim pilot in the last two installments.

Sure, we had some new features of aircraft manipulation in FSX, but the main focus was on the look of the sim, rather than the realism of the sim, which is a trend that I see continuing with Flight.

In 2007, I sent a message to the MS (ACES) team, asking that with FSX they develop a way to incorporate true VTOL capability, which has been a constant bother in every installment of FS.  However, they instead focused more on creating dynamic scenery (which ended up being poorly written) than actually developing a new platform that would allow new types of engines and flight dynamics that would allow the 3rd party designers freedom to explore the aircraft designs that are currently being tested.  As a result, we (as designers) have had to rely on legacy software that makes it very difficult to simulate the current aircraft systems in production.

This is the main reason I haven't worked on any aircraft project since the Angel 44.  I refuse to work with a system that makes creating an aircraft that actually exists so difficult.

I started a V-22 project in 2004, but was disillusioned when I found that I couldn't create a true VTOL aircraft without extensive XML knowledge, so I scrapped it.  It would have been a freeware project (I never will make payware products!), but I could not get it off the ground unless I actually paid some developers to get their XML codes that would allow for true VTOL capability.

My hope for this newest installment is that we, as a community, are not forced to set our standards low, simply for the sake of selling to those that would turn FS into a game.

We want a sim.  It is as simple as that.  We want to experience the gamut of flying the aircraft that exist in today's world, and we want to have the option to fly aircraft that may exist in the world to come.  Don't skimp us on the technical data in expense of the visual media.

I would rather have a sim that looked like FS9 that allowed me complete control of the system, than have a sim that reiterated the same functions again and again.

Yes, I ranted, but I think it's justified . . .

I think you could compare graphics untill the cows come home, but without knowing what kind of hardware and software the MS developers are using with Flight screenies or framerate data as they take the shot it's all kind of moot at this point. I still have my FSX if Flight is kicked out of the nest to soon. If I were to take a screen shot from my FSX  a few years ago and compare it to a recent FSX screenie, there is a vast difference. Same Sim, different look.   ☼

BrandonF wrote on Jun 12^th, 2011 at 3:04pm:



Brandon, I am refering to your original topic, not so much the FS9 comparisons.  

BrandonF wrote on Jun 12^th, 2011 at 2:24pm:

BrandonF wrote on Jun 12^th, 2011 at 8:21pm:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 12^th, 2011 at 8:21pm:

BrandonF wrote on Jun 13^th, 2011 at 1:12am:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 13^th, 2011 at 1:12am:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 13^th, 2011 at 1:12am:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 13^th, 2011 at 1:12am:

JBaymore wrote on Jun 15^th, 2011 at 10:02am:

Yes exactly ...

At this moment there can be no other reason for thinking otherwise ....

So sites like this will be left to pick up the open source development addons - but nothing to add to 'MS Flight' because that looks like it will be all filtered through the 'Central Marketplace'.

'Flight Simulator' is a CLASSIC PROGRAM - not only through it's longetivity but also through it's 10'000 of contributors to the development of this great program. Yet M$ ditched it for financial reasons.

In the same vein I would imagine M$ would buy a Leonardo da Vinci painting and cut it into 10cm sections for sale  if it thought the total profit would be greater than the original. 

The best scenario with FSX as it is now (which is prepare3d) would be that Lockheed Martin realises the potential of having Prepar3d in 2 forms -- one for the millions of traditional 'Flight Simulator' users at an affordable price and then the 'professional' version with all the professional bits included.

'Bring people in - and you bring them on!' 

Of course there is also Flightgear - which in theory could be everything we ever wanted .... (if only people weren't sheep)

& Of course FSX, as it is, has still a long way to go as long as leaves don't start dropping off the trees ... (which of course they will )

Not sure where you guys are getting your information. Things said in these last two replies are what spread rumors. We have no way of predicting exactly what Flight will be like. It's best to wait and see how it actually will be. No one ever said sites like SimV, Avsim, SOH, etc will be done because add-ons will only be available at the online store and that they will only be payware.

Quote:


The engine looks new, but still uses some of the same textures shared with FSX mixed in with new ones. Too much looks different for it to be FSX. And let's not forget this quote from Microsoft in an article in PC Pilot Magazine..."we will take advantage of the expertise and existing elements of the existing FS code base and architecture where it fits..."

And actually, the FSX engine was not that outdated...it was a modernization of the old code.


Microsoft has shown actual improvements, along with new features. Lets look at a few examples.

• The waves meeting the coastline. Nothing like that can be achieved in FSX unless you used a static texture painted onto the ground. You'd have the waves, but they wouldn't move.
• Ground textures no longer stretch on vertical terrain. Can this be done in FSX? Not that I know of.
• Aircraft lighting/shadowing greatly improved. Can this same lighting be achieved in FSX? No.
• Buildings have self shadowing and cast soft shadows. Trees cast shadows on the ground, aircraft, and other trees. Terrain also casts shadows on the trees.
• Weather system appears improved. From the few screenshots we've seen, it's hard to tell if it is just some texture updates to the clouds, or the actual rendering of them.

All that, and default scenery that finally doesn't look like crap. At least not in Hawaii anyway, and it looked pretty bad in FSX. Bigger high detail coverage of any location than we have seen in FSX by default. If the rest of the world looks pretty good, (obviously won't have as much detail, but just a simple texture/autogen replacement would do) and Flight has better performance, it's going to be one nice sim. Imagine when the add-on companies get their grimy little hands on it.  Some really amazing things could be done that can't even be done properly in FSX, or even done in FSX at all. Bottom line, we've seen actual improvements and new features. We'll have to wait and see how performance is, but Microsoft said that has been their focus since day 1. Plus, how are you going to appeal to a wider audience if your sim needs a NASA computer to run it. 

patchz wrote on Jun 19^th, 2011 at 1:21pm:


Interesting topic. I suspect that they are trying to hurry up and get the most sales out of FSX add-ons as they can before Flight comes along and sales go down for FSX add-ons as people switch over to Flight and want to improve it. Just a though.

BrandonF wrote on Jun 19^th, 2011 at 12:00pm:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 19^th, 2011 at 12:00pm:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 19^th, 2011 at 12:00pm:

BrandonF wrote on Jun 19^th, 2011 at 3:46pm:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 19^th, 2011 at 3:46pm:





BrandonF wrote on Jun 19^th, 2011 at 3:46pm: