By Craig Pearson on February 29th, 2012 at 10:18 am.
Welcome aboard Microsoft Flight gfwlivesetup_4d5308d2e0000001_DIR.exe. Our free-to-play sim set in the skies of Hawaii, but we’ve been redirected to land on a strip near Tim Stone’s house. He’ll be trimming the review rudder for us sometime this week. We offer complimentary Big Island, planes and missions. Drinks and light refreshments, such as additional landscapes, planes and missions, can be purchased from our Marketplace. If you’ll look out your window to the left, you’ll see the launch trailer. And on the right, that black mountain spitting blood-red lava into the air, engulfing the ‘Limping Kitten Cattery’ in choking, sulfurous, acid rain is GFWL Mountain. There’s no way to avoid it. The stick has locked. We’re going innnnnnnnn!
Actually my experience with GFWL in Flight hasn’t proven turbulent as before, but I’ve only launched the game once and tried out the tutorial to make sure it runs. I am keen to see what happens when I get to the edge of the game world. That might be my lunchtime treat for today.
29/02/2012 at 10:29 lefishy says:
Oh god I hate myself. The first thing I thought was “Somebody needs to go to Microsoft and tell them what dubstep is because they missed the mark here”.
29/02/2012 at 10:31 Optimaximal says:
Don’t plane props make a wub sound?
29/02/2012 at 10:36 Beartastic says:
Every day a new trailer.
Every day a new dubstep/wub comment.
Today we get both. Yay.
29/02/2012 at 11:49 Orvidos says:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news for cliches, but this isn’t remotely dubstep, Bear.
29/02/2012 at 13:20 Sheng-ji says:
It was a nice little pop track, surely not one single person involved in the production of that video thought it was dubstep though? Or have you guys just assumed that they thought it was? I know how much you fans like to point out what isn’t dubstep a lot, but surely it’s unnecessary here because no-one thought it was.
29/02/2012 at 17:11 lefishy says:
That’s the joke.
29/02/2012 at 10:29 rustybroomhandle says:
‘landscapes, planes’
Plains and planes?
29/02/2012 at 10:43 Craig Pearson says:
Nicely done.
29/02/2012 at 10:30 apocraphyn says:
So, it’s free to play. But is it pay to win?
29/02/2012 at 10:53 Neurotic says:
ba-dum tish!
29/02/2012 at 12:10 eZ` says:
I’m not sure how you can win at a flight sim. Unless wings are an optional extra.
29/02/2012 at 13:24 Saiko Kila says:
Well, you might have to pay landing fee in real money.
29/02/2012 at 19:34 Faldrath says:
I thought the only way to land a plane in a flight sim was “point the nose down and hope for the best”.
29/02/2012 at 19:37 Brun says:
It actually starts to get pretty easy when you figure out the glideslope indicator and/or VASI lights.
01/03/2012 at 03:03 Finster says:
Think of it as an “airport improvement fee.”
29/02/2012 at 10:31 Optimaximal says:
I’m predicting either endless expanses of water or a prompt to buy further content that isn’t available yet.
29/02/2012 at 10:34 Kyrall says:
I’m hoping you get chased by a yeti
29/02/2012 at 10:52 Suits says:
pro tip: press f to ski faster
29/02/2012 at 12:31 soldant says:
Not sure if it’s the same, but in the beta you could zoom out really far to see the entire globe, with all the landmasses present. They were all exceptionally low detail but they were there.
29/02/2012 at 16:23 dontnormally says:
@Suits
You have no idea how much that bit of information made my day. 10 years ago.
29/02/2012 at 10:35 Orvidos says:
The P-51 model they’re selling for 8 USD doesn’t have a cockpit model, being external view only. No sale!
(On a serious note, I’m installing now, we’ll see what’s up soon enough.)
29/02/2012 at 10:38 UncleLou says:
Maybe it’s just the trailer, but it doesn’t look very good, does it. Compared to, say, Wings of Prey or Rise of Flight.
29/02/2012 at 10:39 Stitched says:
Just realized how insanely difficult it must be to make a non-combat flight simulator look interesting in a trailer. I guess lots of barrel-rolls helps.
29/02/2012 at 18:14 GameOverMan says:
Do a barrel roll (Z or R twice)!
29/02/2012 at 10:41 sharks.don't.sleep says:
I’m trying to install it.
The message I get when launching the setup is hilarious:
“Please wait until Windows cancels the game installation.”
Which it does.
Neat.
01/03/2012 at 05:19 speedwaystar says:
screenshot or it didn’t happen.
29/02/2012 at 10:48 Khemm says:
Don’t have the time to download it yet, but I’m eager to read what everyone’s impressions are. Graphics, flight model and so on.
29/02/2012 at 10:53 Paul says:
Does it support x360pad ?
29/02/2012 at 11:32 Craig Pearson says:
Yup.
29/02/2012 at 10:55 codename_bloodfist says:
Fly free, die hard. Looks very nice though.
29/02/2012 at 11:09 Toberoth says:
Crude humor and mild violence apparently.
29/02/2012 at 12:19 apocraphyn says:
Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking. Strange.
29/02/2012 at 19:06 apa says:
I can’t find either from the trailer :(
29/02/2012 at 11:22 Shoelip says:
I wonder if the terrain will be more accurate than Test Drive Unlimited… That would be kinda sad.
29/02/2012 at 11:58 Orvidos says:
So “Flying Free” for me meant spending about 30 minutes flying at as low an altitude as possible over as many things as possible. Thoughts follow.
- The flying is, odd. It tends to autocorrect and stabilize in odd ways, often jerking you around when you want to have a little finer control. Yes, I had the Plane Stabilizer option off.
- The textures aren’t terrible on most things, comparative to most recent flight sims. It’s not Wings of Prey, and if you get too close it’s pretty blurry and low-res. At higher altitudes you’ll have no worries, and most of the large buildings in the main downtown area looked alright.
- Two planes, some weird two-seater plane that looks like it’s some billionaire garage inventors baby that Microsoft got payed a lot to make the face of the game. The “Icon”, specifically. The other is… well I forget the name, but it’s that two-seater prop bi-plane that has been every crop duster and training plane you’ve ever seen in games and movies. Two other planes are on offer, for what are certainly prices. The P-51 has no cockpit and is external view only, and I don’t know a damn thing about the other.
- A wide array of interesting weather conditions unfortunately seems to be the best thing about the game. This leads smartly into decent graphics. Its been many moons since I’ve played FSX , but looking at screens they seem comparable, though Flight is much more low-fi in terms of terrain.
Resounding eh. No Microsoft, you can’t have my money for something I already own. Now where’s my FSX box?
29/02/2012 at 12:05 psyk says:
The beta did seem to want to be TDU of planes.
Fuck the icon as well, looks like your flying a car and lands way to easily.
29/02/2012 at 12:34 soldant says:
Flight is actually superior to the base FSX scenery, but I’d say mostly inferior to the more commercial scenery where they charge you $80 or something. I still find FSX’s default scenery laughably bad for much of the content. Especially when FSX’s idea of my home city is a 20km blob of dense urban buildings that abruptly turns into the outback… with bright blue water on the coastline.
29/02/2012 at 12:37 Orvidos says:
I stand corrected, thanks Soldant.
As for the Icon, I gave it one more shot. Immediate full power, took off after about a foot, for some reason couldn’t get over 110MPH and then landed at 110MPH without a single issue. It’s not exactly a sim.
29/02/2012 at 12:33 maninahat says:
This can’t be a simulator game. It lacks the word “Simulator” in the title, and it doesn’t even have the obligatory simulator font. What are they trying to pull here?
29/02/2012 at 14:13 Deepo says:
Second option in the menu is “Buy Hawaii”.
That is quite the thing.
29/02/2012 at 14:15 famousright says:
Flight Application has stopped working error for me. Any fixes?
29/02/2012 at 16:21 spamenigma says:
Just tried this, Live pops up asking for a CD KEY… no idea where that’s supposed to come from?? Cancelled that and had a go at playing, but I guess whoever made this game doesnt have more than one display, my mouse pointer moves off to another screen whilst trying to fly and lose control…. Rating: Even for free… POOR!
01/03/2012 at 02:05 kalelovil says:
I’m having the issue. It advertises more free content if you log into your live account, but on trying to do so it then asks for a product key. No idea what that product key is, and a google search doesn’t seem to reveal anything relevant either.
Anybody have a solution?
01/03/2012 at 05:23 jbrians says:
For folks having the CD Key issue:
https://microsoftflight.com/en-us/faqs/#troubleshooting
29/02/2012 at 16:45 faillord_adam says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_A5
03/06/2012 at 20:37 Ranzabar says:
This thing is just awful, except if you’re stoned. Then it’s amazing. Microsludge does it again. Takes something iconic, kills it and regurgitates it as a kiddie game.