

If Microsoft is killing Flight Simulator, it's killing its 2nd oldest product (1980-2009) - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2009/01/23/has-microsoft-flight-simulator-been-canceled-after-29-years/

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amichail
X-Plane is much more accurate. It's frame rate is much higher as well. Check
out the X-Plane demo: <http://www.x-plane.com/demo.html>

There's also an iPhone version: <http://www.x-plane.com/iPhone/iPhone.html>

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kqr2
It's pretty interesting that Microsoft's Flight Simulator has its roots in
subLOGIC's flight simulator for the Apple II.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Flight_Sim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Flight_Simulator)

The wikipedia article also mentions that the software began life as a set of
articles on computer graphics, written by Bruce Artwick throughout 1976. Does
anyone know if those articles are available online?

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comatose_kid
I don't know about the articles, but Artwick wrote a book "Applied Concepts in
Microcomputer Graphics" in the late 70s/early 80s. I recall it had some Apple
II code in the back.

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nihilocrat
That's sad to hear. When I was a kid, I bought Flight Shop (3rd party product
to create airplanes for FS 98) and made a whole bunch of aircraft, most of
them from my own imagination or from sci-fi. I even made a Yehat Terminator
from Star Control that had VTOL capability. I used to want to become an
aerospace engineer and design planes, but somewhere along the way I noticed I
spent way too much time on the computer and got interested in programming
instead.

Sad to see the legacy of a childhood memory pass on.

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GHFigs
And suddenly, with a certain Proustian rush in vivid 8-bit color, I recall
long hours spent repeatedly pushing my little teal Cessna off Meigs Field only
to crash into the Sears Tower whilst attempting to land on top of it. The
point of such a feat, you ask? To savor the pleasure of taking off again, of
course.

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shutter
As one who used to play FS, what does that leave in terms of graphically rich
FS games? Anything besides X-Plane?

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jah
Flight Gear is a pretty nice simulator that's released under the GPL:

<http://www.flightgear.org/>

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dotcoma
so, windows is next ?

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ObieJazz
Maybe not:

 _Visual Basic, the great-great-great grandchild of Microsoft Basic for the
Altair, the company’s first product, is the oldest._

/crosses fingers

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vlad
They did kill it. VB.NET is nothing like VB 3-6, their popular offering
through the 90's. VB.NET is just C# with VB-like syntax, with the addition of
a couple of VB-specific retardations. I truly believe it's entire purpose was
to entice VB 3-6 developers to transition to the .NET platform instead of
Java, a more open and cross-platform language than Microsoft's .NET offering
at the time, as VB would no longer be updated and developers had to find
another language.

The other reason is they likely wanted to have lots of developers use their
language, so by killing VB off, the most popular language in the world at the
time, they thought they would be able to claim a lot of .NET users very
quickly. And of course, Java was being used as an alternative to Microsoft's
stuff and C++. Both of these show stupid standards.

Python and Ruby, for example, were created with the idea of having a beautiful
and useful language, and not by Microsoft for enterprise use, nor become
popular as a big company enterprise alternative to Microsoft's offerings.
Learning an open-source, beautiful language that isn't run by a big
corporation for enterprise use is just refreshing.

See Java's Cover: <http://paulgraham.com/javacover.html>

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ObieJazz
Point taken. VB.NET has come a long way from Altair BASIC.

Still, I'd be happy if they killed off VB so that I wouldn't have to deal with
its syntax and retardations. Working in an MS environment I can only ask for
so much, but at least with C# my loops get braces.

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weegee
it wasn't an MS product originally, it was a SubLogic application, and I had a
copy on my Commodore 64.

X-Plane is, in my opinion, a more accurate flight simulator than MSFS is, but
I enjoy the training modules MSFS X offers, even though in those training
modules oftentimes the program takes over the flying part to some extent.
X-Plane is a very accurate and enjoyable sim, less a game.

The other sad part of this layoff is, that the same team was also developing
MS Train Simulator 2, which was scheduled for release sometime this year.

