Microsoft's free flight sim hits the clouds Microsoft's latest flight simulator officially took off this week, with aircraft enthusiasts and anyone else who wants to take to the skies able to download and play the game free of charge. The latest version of this venerable MS product, now simply dubbed Flight, touches down with a configurable control system so that …
Once you start to add in all the extra downloads in (priced in Microsoft moon points) it starts to look expensive compared to Flight Sim X Gold which can be picked up for 20 quid with all the bells and whistles, loads of planes and more scenery than you'll ever be able to view. (in fact you can get it much cheaper than that, but I'm using the Amazon pricing).
In fact with all the extras if you bough Flight Sim X instead you'll still have enough change to buy a load of cool extras such as the UK scenery packs.
If Microsoft think a free game with DLC is the way to go then fine, but I'd argue that the pricing for the extras is rather high.
.... which is very good.
And free.
http://www.flightgear.org/
FlightGear is an open-source flight simulator. It supports a variety of popular platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and is developed by skilled volunteers from around the world. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.
Cheerio.
When I start Steam there is this wretched game called RailWorks which every bloody week seems to feature in the new DLC list because it is constantly releasing new trains or trakcs. How much do you think one of these trains costs? A pound? Maybe a couple of quid?
No, fourteen quid upwards is the answer. Some trains are thirty quid. Tracks can cost thirty quid or more. Clearly there are enough sad people out there who would pay £14-30 for a virtual choo choo train that they can make money from it.
I expect someone in Microsoft sat up and took notice of this. MS Flight Sim has always been content driven and there has always been a lot of 3rd party content for it - scenery, aircraft packs, airports, etc. Microsoft has decided to monetize the service and draw all the content into their online DLC and payment system. It'll probably be cheaper than RailWorks but it's the same sort of model.
It is surprising that any content driven game should cost money really. Look at games like Guitar Hero, Forza, Gran Turismo, Buzz, Singstar etc. It's the content that makes these games fun so why not give the runtime away for nothing with some free content. The free download would entice a lot more people to try the game and they'd make a lot of sales from people buying content packs.
"When I start Steam there is this wretched game called RailWorks which every bloody week seems to feature in the new DLC list because it is constantly releasing new trains or trakcs"
That and that bloody card game!
and notice if you page down and click on a game further down on the list and then click "back" you DO go back to the list but you are right at the top and have to page down all over again. I haven't logged into steam for a month so *maybe* they've fixed that
Okay, so this is going to get up people's noses, but on all of the marketing that MS has put out, there hasn't been mention of the 's' word - Simulator
It is being marketed as a game, pure and simple. If you want simulation, go with FSX or one of the other flight sims (read PCPilot for a list of the good ones).
Flight just seems to be a free game and MS will get the money back because everyone will want to fly around their house. Little realising that FSX has their house already loaded and lots of planes too.
Yes, I have downloaded it, but I was disappointed to find that it is only 32-bit. FSX was touching the limit of 32-bit systems and I was expecting the next flight game/sim from MS to be 64-bit.
Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you fire all of your best coders.
MS has decided to make a dumber flight simulator for those who don't want to master the skill required to fly, as much as Guitar Hero player don't want to master the skill required to play a guitar - and in their dreams those are "20-30 millions". Let's see, a flight simulator can be really boring if you just fly around easily. It becomes interesting when you put in real world challenges.
A real fligh experience is made by being physically in the air (something no PC simulator can give you), looking at the world from above (and Google Earth does a better job) and mastering the complexity of flying an airplane. But it looks today "complex" is a bad word, everything must be "siiiiimple" and "eeeeeasy" although the real world is not.
Add the "Windows Game Live" experience (aka "pay us for every little bit you need") and you get a real loser, especially compared to previous versions.
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