Microsoft Flight

I downloaded the recently released game from Microsoft called Flight. Not to be confused with the old Flight Simulator series they shut down after some 10 years of development and, I believe, sold off a few years ago (that may have not been an exclusive sale though).

Flight has been in development for a while now and is a reboot/re-imagining of the series. Unfortunately, they decide that being more game-like, instead of simulation-based, was required. Now the focus is on "missions" - like flying through rings that are way too close to boats or buildings or flying a passenger on a sight-seeing tour (at least that one is fairly realistic).

They've also decided that the game should be free, at first, but that you should have to have a account with their XBox focused "Microsoft Live" and have to buy "points" that you then exchange for add-ons like small bits of new scenery or a new aircraft. You get two slow aircraft out of the free download, each add-on one (there's only two at the moment) cost from $6-$10.

Getting nickel'd and dime'd is a big turn off for me, unfortunately. So is buying "points" like I'm getting tokens at Chuck E Cheese. Points feel like the entire idea is to scam you: no refunds so you always have surplus points that aren't enough to buy anything and the opportunity for a fluctuating "exchange" rate so that points can loose value overtime. Massive turn-off.

The game graphics are pretty enough, but no big leap over MS Flight Sim X, which is years old now.

One of the great things about MS Flight Sim was the third-party eco-system: various companies were built around providing add-ons for the old system, from detailed aircraft models to air-traffic systems, and new scenery.

I looked into a few of those companies to see if they had announcements for Flight, but one had moved on to more training-based applications (selling hardware and professional flight software) and another has apparently gone dormant as their site looks like it's stuck in 2002. I can't blame them, they would have had to either re-make themselves or move on to other jobs when MS abandoned them by killing Flight Sim.

Having now down-played the simulation aspect of a flight simulator feels like a bad move to me. Flight Sim already had the ability to be played like a "game", as far as having missions, etc. It feels like MS decided that Flight Sim wasn't making enough money and that the solution was to kill it, re-create it, and then not include the main feature of it - simulation. Not sure that was smart, but maybe they were more concerned about using Live to sell Points and felt they couldn't shoe-horn Live into the old application.

Who knows though - the seeds of a good simulator are in Flight, maybe they'll let those bloom again someday.