May FSX and Flight Comparison Screenshots

[BrandonF]

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)

[Strategic Retreat]

Looks less flashy than FSX, and in truth its coloration and conspicuous absence of the horrible FSX-style blue haze, remembers me of a very tweaked FS9 (only coloration, mind)... but... :-?

All the graphic recoding and texture refining and STILL no cloud shadow... what will it take to make them understand that is good for realistic clouds to be fluffy-looking, and/or detailed, and/or sometimes reflective on water, but MAINLY, to be concretely realistic, they SHOULD PROJECT A SHADOW on the ground or water below? It's basic logic, yet they seem unable to grasp it, and it's been decades too.


Edit: Grammatical Correction

[XxRazgrizxX]

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

[BrandonF]

Looks less flashy than FSX, and in truth its coloration and conspicuous absence of the horrible FSX-style blue haze, remembers me of a very tweaked FS9 (only coloration, mind)... but... :-?

All the graphic recoding and texture refining and STILL no cloud shadow... what will it take to make them understand that is good for realistic clouds to be fluffy-looking, and/or detailed, and/or sometimes reflective on water, but MAINLY, to be concretely realistic, they SHOULD PROJECT A SHADOW on the ground or water below? It's basic logic, yet they seem unable to grasp it, and it's been decades too.


Edit: Grammatical Correction

Honestly, if it's so bad, why do you bother to hang out here? It looks amazing as is, and that's a fact. Way better than you can possibly get in FS9 and FSX even with add-ons. I'm sure there's a reason they haven't shown us cloud shadows. It may be a performance reason. Getting something like cloud shadows to show and not have an impact on performance can not possibly be an easy task. Give them team some credit for the huge amount of work they've had to do already just to rewrite the graphics engine!

You're the only person I've seen who is unimpressed even after seeing the comparison shots. (I've posted these shots around at a few forums and received many replies with people's thoughts on Flight completely changing for the better.) This tells me something...

[Strategic Retreat]

Honestly, if it's so bad, why do you bother to hang out here? It looks amazing as is, and that's a fact. Way better than you can possibly get in FS9 and FSX even with add-ons. I'm sure there's a reason they haven't shown us cloud shadows. It may be a performance reason. Getting something like cloud shadows to show and not have an impact on performance can not possibly be an easy task. Give them team some credit for the huge amount of work they've had to do already just to rewrite the graphics engine!

You're the only person I've seen who is unimpressed even after seeing the comparison shots. (I've posted these shots around at a few forums and received many replies with people's thoughts on Flight completely changing for the better.) This tells me something...

I prefer NOT to be content with the little they feel they want to give, but TRY and get MORE and BETTER for my money (potentially speaking, of course).

You think it's bad policy on my part? :-?


PS
Remains unchallenged the fact that if more people behaved like me instead of lavish whatever they receive with amazed compliments regardless of its real validity and amount while paying for it too (because FS, or Flight, is NOT a freeware... was it FREEware you would be right... it isn't), we probably wouldn't be dealing with FSX's problems right now, you know.

[Daube]

You're the only person I've seen who is unimpressed even after seeing the comparison shots. (I've posted these shots around at a few forums and received many replies with people's thoughts on Flight completely changing for the better.) This tells me something...

That makes two persons then.
I'm not impressed at all by those shots.

[Daube]

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.

[BrandonF]

That makes two persons then.
I'm not impressed at all by those shots.

How could you not be impressed? Flight looks nothing like FSX except for the clouds. Other than that, it looks almost completely new. (New and much better than the crappy default fsx scenery) Sure, you can load FSX up with a bunch of payware add-ons and get it to look about as good as Flight. But Flight looks just as good, if not better out of the box...and likely not just in Hawaii, depending on if they are working out the horrible airport background textures and silly landclass transitions. Imagine what add-on developers could do with Flight after they get their hands on it...

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

https://www.simviation.com/phpupload/upl ... 266901.jpg

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.

In my shots, I used default everything except for the water shaders and obviously the planes. It took lots of experimenting with view points and zooms to get the shots somewhat close. Then there was slewing around to get the best location. I had to load up the original screenshots from Microsoft into an image editor and create another image the same resolution, which I would then do a screen capture from in FSX, then paste in the image editor. Then I'd flip back and forth between the flight and fsx image and make adjustments in the sim until I got a reasonable comparison. It's not easy!

[XxRazgrizxX]

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.

[Strategic Retreat]

...and some other people are just too easily satisfied, falling straight into the trap of playing in the hands of lazy coders and ruining ultimately the simming experience not only to themselves, but to ALL the others simmers that have to content themselves with the already spoken of little, instead to attempt to receive something BETTER.

Then again, I think the problem resides mainly our upbringing... mine was so that I had to fight for everything and never content myself for little, or I would have ended up having to be thankful in being able to eat shit, while those who content themselves with whatever they're given probably led a much easier life, in a more forgiving environment.

All of this rant is to simply explain that I can't help to fight for more just like you on the other side of this debate can't help but feel satisfied with whatever you're given no matter what it is.

...and can't help but feel betrayed that all my efforts and the efforts of those like me who try to get something better for everyone are promptly frustrated by the "easy to satisfy majority" as well.

[Daube]

How could you not be impressed? Flight looks nothing like FSX except for the clouds. Other than that, it looks almost completely new. (New and much better than the crappy default fsx scenery)

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.

Sure, you can load FSX up with a bunch of payware add-ons and get it to look about as good as Flight. But Flight looks just as good, if not better out of the box...and likely not just in Hawaii,

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.

depending on if they are working out the horrible airport background textures and silly landclass transitions. Imagine what add-on developers could do with Flight after they get their hands on it...

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.

[Hagar]

How could you not be impressed? Flight looks nothing like FSX except for the clouds. Other than that, it looks almost completely new. (New and much better than the crappy default fsx scenery) Sure, you can load FSX up with a bunch of payware add-ons and get it to look about as good as Flight. But Flight looks just as good, if not better out of the box...

Some people have very short memories. Remember the "magic screenies" posted on the FS Insider website before Acceleration was released? http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1008972/microsoft-flight-simulator-developers-images-paint-misleading-picture

Imagine what add-on developers could do with Flight after they get their hands on it...

I assume you mean Payware developers. I see no mention of Freeware in the official announcements. I'm not convinced that I will be able to create/modify anything myself which is what attracted me to MSFS in the first place.

[Capt.Propwash]

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.

[BrandonF]

How could you not be impressed? Flight looks nothing like FSX except for the clouds. Other than that, it looks almost completely new. (New and much better than the crappy default fsx scenery)

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.

Sure, you can load FSX up with a bunch of payware add-ons and get it to look about as good as Flight. But Flight looks just as good, if not better out of the box...and likely not just in Hawaii,

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.

depending on if they are working out the horrible airport background textures and silly landclass transitions. Imagine what add-on developers could do with Flight after they get their hands on it...

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.

Some people are never satisfied. Oh well, more Flight for the ones that are satisfied and know that there is an obvious improvement over textures and shadows, leaving FSX users with a buggy sim and low FPS.

[Hagar]

Some people have very short memories. Remember the "magic screenies" posted on the FS Insider website before Acceleration was released? http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1008972/microsoft-flight-simulator-developers-images-paint-misleading-picture

Have we seen anything like that for Flight done yet? No....only the announcement trailer and webisode 1 were fake. Since then, it's all been in game. (obvious enough that they are showing us what we will get....maybe more, maybe less...point is, they are not showing us a bunch of photoshopped screenshots this time.) Microsoft has clearly learned their lesson this time.

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

I haven't seen any mention of payware either. We already know Flight will have an SDK. (there was an ad a while back where MS was looking for someone to be the lead designer or something on the Flight SDK)The way I see it, there's a big chance that it's not going to be kept to the payware developers. People have to learn how to use the new tools available, and new users aren't going to want to pay for an SDK or release payware as their first Flight add-on.

It seems obvious to me that MS wants to control all addons via the [b][i]Games for Windows