DTG Flight School and Flight Simulator

[arjgrundy]

I have just read that Dovetail Games have pushed back their release of Flight School until the end of May. I am interested in this and the upcoming release of their Flight Simulator later in the year. I am aware that it is using a revamped version of the old FSX engine but it does look promising for flight simmers. Who else is giving it a try?
I have been a fan of the Microsoft Flight simulator franchise for years and own FSX SE at the moment. I was tempted to sway towards the updated version of Prepar3d but will see how Dovetail Games do first. Fingers crossed!

Spoiler

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Option B, go look at DCS.
The core "game" is free, and includes 2 aircraft. The primary issues with the game are it's lack of maps, or should I say that you have to pay for both the maps and extra aircraft.
Personally, I always wanted to try a good helicopter sim, so have been working up my skills in the Huey, which is great fun to fly.
The other key point, is that it is aimed at military simulation, so there's no real passenger aircraft, cessna's or similar.

 

[arjgrundy]

Option B, go look at DCS.
The core "game" is free, and includes 2 aircraft. The primary issues with the game are it's lack of maps, or should I say that you have to pay for both the maps and extra aircraft.
Personally, I always wanted to try a good helicopter sim, so have been working up my skills in the Huey, which is great fun to fly.
The other key point, is that it is aimed at military simulation, so there's no real passenger aircraft, cessna's or similar.

Ah yes I do own one of their combat simulators. It is very good and very in depth but I was meaning more or along the lines of Flight Simulation for commercial aircraft.

Dovetail games appear to be listening to the flight simulation community. I just hope their end product meets expectations.

 

[redline]

I've pre-ordered this purely to see what they have done with the FSX engine, which is now 64bit. It will give some indication as to how the fully blown simulator will be when that is released later this year.

I don't think it will eclipse P3Dv3 in terms of visuals, or performance, but the move to 64bit should help those who suffer OOM's.

For £15 with full Orbx Global scenery this is a bargain.

 

[PieEater]

For £15 with full Orbx Global scenery this is a bargain.

It's currently £11.99 on Steam. Where did you get the info that this will have full Orbx scenery? I can see that DTG have teamed up with Orbx but couldn't find anything stating definitively what this would mean for either sim. I imagine that Orbx will have some input into how the scenery is rendered but seeing as Orbx Global is pretty expensive on its own I can't see it being included in a £12 sim, great if it is though.

 

[redline]

It's currently £11.99 on Steam. Where did you get the info that this will have full Orbx scenery? I can see that DTG have teamed up with Orbx but couldn't find anything stating definitively what this would mean for either sim. I imagine that Orbx will have some input into how the scenery is rendered but seeing as Orbx Global is pretty expensive on its own I can't see it being included in a £12 sim, great if it is though.

Yeah, sorry £11.99... even more of a bargain

The Orbx Global full world coverage has been widely reported on, but it seems all the official sales info gives very little info.

Anyway, yes Orbx Global is part of the product, which is quite something considering the price point. I guess Orbx will do well from the volume of sales, over the more limited hardcore FS market.

I try and find a link that confirms it and add it later... there is tons of stuff on Avsim, if you care to wade through it.


So, from here onwards tells you, though its still comes across as a little vague [however the above info is correct]... http://www.avsim.com/topic/483642-a...ut-dtg-flight-school-flight-simulator/page-14

 

[Stealthploit]

this is gonna be awsome with multiple monitors

 

[PieEater]

So anyone got any thoughts on Flight School?

My initial thoughts are that as a showcase for 64bit and DX11 I'm disappointed as I can't see any great improvements over vanilla FSX visually, so in that respect it doesn't look very promising for the full flight sim although the availability of more than 3GB of RAM should allow for more bells and whistles.

I've pretty much completed the lessons but I'm not convinced that someone new to flight simming i.e. the target audience for this release would fully understand what they were doing and why when following the tutors instructions. To my mind there is a lot more learning resources in FSX but you don't get the level of hand holding as in Flight School as far as it goes which I don't think is far enough.

I don't really know what to make of it to be honest or why anyone would buy this over FSX.

 

[Dynix]

I have no experience of flight simulators but I saw this pop up on Steam last night and bought it. I'm currently doing my (real) pilot training so I skipped past the tutorial and hopped straight into the PA28 to fly from my base airfield to a local one I've also done training at.

Took me a while to figure out the controls and how to move the camera around but after that it was a breeze and pretty fun! Could probably do with a joystick or something though, I'm sure keyboard and mouse isn't the way to go for sims.

 

[picnic]

Only taken a year but I see Dovetail have announced Flight Sim World and all owners of the now defunct Flight School will get a complimentary copy of the new game.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/441920/discussions/0/1327844097116329191/

 

[Vern1961]

An element of wait and see with this one. DTG's recent "Train Sim World" (TSW) not generally that well received. A performance hog, physics way off and full of bugs with little sign of the developer conceding the issues.

The glimmer(s) of hope for FSW are that it may be a different team than worked on the train sim and that it appears the FSX core is being used as a basis rather than pushing over onto the UE4 engine. Also will be available on early access as opposed to the limited and conditional "beta" of TSW, albeit that brings the caveat of no refund once you sign up.

Surprisingly little discussion of the topic over at Flightsim dot com too.

 

[redline]

I'm not in the least bit excited for this release, even though I'll get it free as a buyer of Flight School, which was very poor. Apart from moving to 64bit it seems to add nothing over what we already have, at least for those of us who have moved to P3D... Maybe people still running FSX will find it a jump in some ways (or those who suffer OOM's on either platform) otherwise it appears to be more of the same.

I will download it and give it a proper test, but if I were not getting it for free I would be more inclined to wait for P3Dv4, rather than investing in yet another branch of the same base sim... esp. when there is uncertainty about how, and which, third parties will be involved. Orbx have already stated they will support owners of P3D by not charging for scenery updates when v4 comes, but I'm sure the same won't be the case with FSW, as the arrangement will not be same; and that's assuming they even sell additional scenery for it, which so far they've made no mention of so far.

 

[picnic]

Orbx do supply the ground textures for FSW so I'd think there is a strong possibility that they will provide more products for it. I too am more existed by the prospect of P3D V4 than FSW.

 

[Vern1961]

From information emerging at Flightsim Dot Com, it appears the aircraft in the initial release are likely to be propeller only, no jets. While not a purchase killer a bit of a downer as I like flying the heavy iron, particularly vintage jets such as the Tristar and DC10. Not really into general aviation or puddle jumping.

 

[Vern1961]

Just saw a thread at Flightsim dot com indicating this goes live on Steam either 18 or 19 May, i.e. Thursday or Friday this week. May wait and see initial feedback before taking the plunge though.

 

[PieEater]

Flight Sim World is available for download now, anyone had a chance to play around with it yet? Downloading my free copy now.

 

[LeMson]

Steam reviews suggest this runs like a 10fps dog on everyones quad titan setups, what's it actually like chaps, as I love planes :E

 

[Digital X]

Apparently windowed mode helps, but I'll hold off buying it. Seems low FPS across the board even with high end PC's

 

[traveyb]

I bought it yesterday as tbh i've wasted more than £25 on FSX/P3D addons that have never been used!
Quite impressed from the way it looks out of the box. All settings on ultra, I get playable FPS in downtown Vancouver (where it looked like autogen was on max). For an out of the box sim, it looks and feels good so far (considering its essentially a beta). The only thing i'm concerned with at the moment is Dove Tails attitude towards forcing third parties to use Steam (and a lack of SDK at the moment). We won't be seeing any PMDG products that's for sure...

I personally am waiting for P3D v4 (or whenever the 64 bit version comes out). We really are at the limits of the 32 bit client can do. However people need to realise, once this does release, it could possibly be several months unit the big add on makers release there products. I'm sure people will moan saying it looks the same, a lot are so used to having a sim full of addons.

 

[PieEater]

I've done a bit of testing and just as with FSX performance in FSW is limited by CPU core speed, as the main SIM engine evidently still runs on a single core. The remaining cores look as if they are doing more work than with Vanilla FSX as I guess Dovetail have been able to offload some of the optimisation processes to other cores but my GTX1070 fluctuated between GPU 55-75% utilisation with ~ 3GB of VRAM being used so was never really stretched, I guess I was averaging about 45-50 FPS with everything maxed out on my 2700K @ 4.7GHz.

Certainly FSW looks much better than vanilla FSX but it seems dumbed down a lot. I can't see it ever getting to the stage where FSX enthusiasts will make the switch to FSW as most already have the upgrades that make FSX look just as good as FSW with similar performance. It might be a good starting point for folks new to Flight Sims but without knowing how DTG are going to facilitate or market add-ons to the sim it's difficult to recommend over the alternatives.