February 22, 2006

52 Flight Simulator X screencaps - this week Microsoft released a new set of screenshots of the upcoming Flight Simulator X. This is a collection of 52 pix determined to kill dial-up. I'm not really a flight sim guy, but these screens are worth a bit of a gander.
  • Very lovely images. Next on Microsoft's index of upcoming projects to master: The thumbnail page! Woot!
  • Buttload of imageshack "excessive bandwidth" markers. But a few of the images loaded, and they were indeed pretty.
  • Wow, my connection actually squealed as it burst into flame and spiraled downward into the bit-spewing abyss. I imagine they were excellent images though.
  • Lame. This image removed due to high-bandwidth usage.
  • *spnaks Chyren*
  • I tried a flight simulator once and all it did was crash. Not the computer, the plane. Might work better if I had something besides my keyboard to make it go, maybe some rudder pedals and a throttle yoke controller, but I'm not going to get all that just for a game if I don't even know whether I'd like it first. But the pictures looked cool...
  • Red Baron was a cool game.
  • Tie Fighter kicked eighteen kinds of ass.
  • X-Wing, I think you mean. Man, playing that game without a joystick was the workout equivalent of wheelchair basketball.
  • Tie Fighter was the sequel. Was even better.
  • Was not! *switches power to laser cannons*
  • Whoa. I wonder what kind of processing muscle & butt-kickin' graphics card will be needed for that kind of imagery.
  • *deep bass rumble, chokes petebest with mind* I find your lack of configurable joystick disturbing.
  • Oh boy, a Jedi swordfight! Mh, that sounds... oh well
  • Shit, now I want to go find a rom of Tie Fighter and go buy a ridiculously complex joystick.
  • Tie Fighter was good. Damn good. X-Wing Alliance, however, was a hell of a lot better. Oh, and a Gravis Blackhawk joystick will serve you extremely well in either of those games. These screenshots are awesome, to say the least. They're better than X-Plane - but to be fair, the X-Plane developers most likely do not have access to the Vista graphical interface yet, and therefore haven't been able to program for it. But I do wonder - can you actually log FAA flight instruction time on MS Flight Sim X? With the proper setup, you can on X-Plane.
  • I always thought the point of these sim planes was to crash?
  • Oh and : Does it run on OS X?
  • I used to play TF with a joystick that had a base that was about 18 inches long. Had built-in rudder and throttle control, and about thirty programmable buttons. Almost never had to touch the keyboard. Dammit, I miss that thing.
  • May one enquire what became of it?
  • Lost in a move somewhere. If it's still in one piece, the damn thing's about a decade old by now. I tried to google it, came up with nuthin'.
  • It was all a beautiful dream, MCT.
  • *brandishes lightsaber* No, you are the dream, old man. Or you will be, soon. *whhurrmzzzhhzhurrm*