Microsoft Flight Development Has Stopped

[V_R]

Rumours that Microsoft’s Vancouver studio had been completely shut down were swirling around the internet this morning, but in a statement to Gamespot, the company has specified that the studio will survive despite cuts. One of the projects that will cease, however, is Microsoft Flight, which means Tim Stone’s desire for “jets, smuggling, and air-sea rescues…via DLC” is likely to be forever unfulfilled, at least in this game. The free to play title seemed to have been designed as an expanding world but there will be no growth now. Our thoughts are with those whose jobs are affected, on this and other projects. Statement below.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/26/grounded-microsoft-flight-development-has-stopped/

 

[Abarbarian]

There are alternatives.

Free

http://www.flightgear.org/about/features/

Extensive and Accurate World Scenery Data Base

• Over 20,000 real world airports included in the full scenery set.
• Correct runway markings and placement, correct runway and approach lighting.
• Taxiways available for many larger airports (even including the green center line lights when appropriate.)
• Sloping runways (runways change elevation like they usually do in real life.)
• Directional airport lighting that smoothly changes intensity as your relative view direction changes.
• World scenery fits on 3 DVD’s. (I’m not sure that’s a feature or a problem!) But it means we have pretty detailed coverage of the entire world.
• Accurate terrain worldwide, based on the most recently released SRTM terrain data.) 3 arc second resolution (about 90m post spacing) for North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
• Scenery includes all vmap0 lakes, rivers, roads, railroads, cities, towns, land cover, etc.
• Nice scenery night lighting with ground lighting concentrated in urban areas (based on real maps) and headlights visible on major highways. This allows for realistic night VFR flying with the ability to spot towns and cities and follow roads.
• Scenery tiles are paged (loaded/unloaded) in a separate thread to minimize the frame rate hit when you need to load new areas.

Paid for

http://www.x-plane.com/desktop/meet_x-plane/

The full X-Plane scenery package covers the Earth in stunning resolution from 74° north to 60° south latitude. On Earth, users can land at any of over 33,000 airports or test their mettle on aircraft carriers, oil rigs, frigates (which pitch and roll with the waves), or helipads atop buildings. They can also realistically model the flight of remote-controlled model aircraft, perform an air-launch in an X-15 or Space Ship One from the mother ship, fly re-entries into Earth’s atmosphere in the Space Shuttle, fly with friends over the Internet or a LAN, drop water on forest fires, or shoot approaches to aircraft carriers at night in stormy weather and rough water conditions in a damaged F-4. The situations that can be simulated are unbelievably diverse!

All that and 1,400 free aircraft aswell.