Dovetail Games Flight Sim World confirmed and releases Early Access in May

[Novawing24]

So I know we have all been wondering if the rumoured flight simulator from DTG was just going to be vapourware as it had been a LONG time since anything had been said about it.

Suddenly out of the blue we have a release video and an announcement that it will be available in Early Access form before the month is out.

Check out the release trailer here: https://youtu.be/nW1RxSdoJzA

And here is the full press release from DTG for the launch.

SECURING THE FUTURE OF FLIGHT SIMULATION

Flight Sim World: Bringing the Skies to Life!


Chatham, Kent – 3rd May 2017 Dovetail Games, the multi award-winning simulation developer and publisher today announced that its much anticipated flight simulator, Flight Sim World™, will be released into Steam’s Early Access program in the coming weeks.

Based on benchmark flight simulation technology, Flight Sim World will provide players with an unprecedented level of realism and detail. Its officially licensed GA aircraft will be the most authentic and detailed in-sim representations on the market, faithfully replicating their real world counterparts, with every gauge and switch fully operational.

Not only do these aircraft look like the real thing, but they also interact with the environment in an accurate way. A combination of atmospheric effects and advanced behind-the-scenes mechanics, result in a remarkably unique home simulation experience. Watch the raindrops race across your windscreen in stormy weather, while the physics engine challenges you with true-to-life aircraft behavior, including edge-of-envelope spins and stalls.

Whether you want to plan a peaceful flight somewhere sunny or test your skills with tricky situations fraught with bad weather and engine failures, the comprehensive Flight Planner gives you full control over weather, location and time of day, also allowing you to add random events that will make your time in the air even more challenging. For those who want to focus more on content creation, also included with Flight Sim World is the Pro Mission Editor, which is a professional tool which allows players to create more complex missions.

“The time has come for a new flight simulator which really focuses on the physical quality of the aircraft and a flight model which brings them to life”, said Executive Producer Stephen Hood. “After doing some intensive work on the game engine – such as providing a much-needed 64 bit element
– we now have a flight simulation platform which will allow us and our partners to focus on creating new and exciting ways for simmers to benefit from these advances. New features and expansions to Flight Sim World will be rolled out as part of the Early Access program and beyond, reinforcing our absolute commitment to the hobby. In addition to providing core updates and expansions, Flight Sim World will build on Dovetail Games’ extensive partnership publishing program, allowing high quality add-on developers and publishers to make available excellent additional content such as aircraft, airports, missions, and scenery.

“We have already built relationships with some of the best and brightest flight simulation developers in the industry”, added Simon Sauntson, Head of Third Party at Dovetail Games. “Flight Sim World will expand on those partnerships as we continue to secure premium content for our players. In addition to growing existing partnerships, we are reaching out to the wider development community to foster new relationships and bring top quality content to FSW”

Available May 2017 on Steam Early Access

To follow the latest news and developments, please visit www.flightsimworld.com or follow us on facebook.com/flightsimworld twitter.com/fltsimworld

What are your thoughts?

Guess we don't have long to wait to get our own hands on it.

Safe Skies

Novawing24

[Novawing24]

Quick summation of what is integrated and available at Early Access when launched:

• Fleet of highly detailed GA aircraft
[Looks like Piper Seneca V, Piper Malibu, Piper Cub, Piper Cherokee, Diamond DA40 and assumaly the DA42 from Flight school]
• Easy to use flight planner
[guessing this is the same as Flight School]
• Integrated Orbx FTX Global textures
• Integration of Accu-Feel™ technology
• Lessons and missions to test your skills
[Looks like they have taken the lessons / missions from Flight School and put here in FSW]
• Pilot profile to keep track of your flight hours
• Pro Mission Editor
• RAINDROPS ON WINDSCREENS!

Safe skies

Novawing24

[Karl]

No screens, no words from beta testers, nor word of there being any beta testers. Hmmm. Warning- half baked product ahead :jaded:

[Novawing24]

The lack of beta testers is concerning, maybe why they are going Early Access?

There are screens and video

[WarHawK]

Looks promising. From what I know of the project, A2A and other developers have aircraft that are actually a part of the game, which would justify a retail purchase of this simulator alone from that standpoint.
Interested to see what kind of multiplayer support (if any) they have or will have in the future. Multiplayer has been one of the sole aspects keeping the flight simulation platform going for the non-training based user since Microsoft sold off FSX.

It will be nice to get everybody on the same platform once again, perhaps it will bring a lot of people back to the community.

[Storm]

Looks promising (apart from the very unconvincing photoreal scenery at 1:40).

I'm not convinced it will inflate or even reinstate the flight sim population - that remains to be seen - but if it's a reasonable price then I may indulge: it looks sufficiently exciting for that.

As for lack of beta testers, things have moved on. Once upon a time (late 1960s) I remember Clive Sinclair being derided for seeming to make the world his test department! But that's all above board nowadays. Never mind beta testers: it's called Early Access and you pay for the privilege!

[ROBERT DUNN 2]

Inclusion of helicopters is being discussed by some familiar gamertags on

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/thr...licopters.875/

Dovetail forums. I believe you need to register therein to participate.

Thanks, Nova. I look forward to this experience.

[Wingman]

Nice package of integrations (OMGOOSE, RAINDROPS!). I'm curious to see just how far it is from polished on initial release (beta, early-access, whatever they want to call it) and how distinguishable it will appear to be from other similarly-configured platforms.

Edit: I really like what I heard at 1:56: "[the environment around you] has to be accurately portrayed... in order for you to fear it." Anybody remember the fog in Flight!?

[Novawing24]

Initial minimum specs have been published but with the caveat that these may change through development:

AMD APU Kaveri A10-7850K or Intel Core i3 6100
Radeon R9 Fury or GeForce GTX 970
(or an equivalent GPU with DX11 and shader 5 support)
4GB VRAM
8GB Main
DX9 compatible soundcard
Win 7, 8 or 10

[Kalo]

It's a shame ten years later and they are still working on FSX Wish they would work on the Microsoft Flight platform or something else modern.

[Cube]

I think that this is awesome.

[Oz-Flyer]

Well that answers why DTG stop the sale of flight school.

[Travis]

Well, I am not going to sugar coat it, but I am going to be that guy...
I am going to pick this apart and place my opinion in from the experience I have had and portray.


SECURING THE FUTURE OF FLIGHT SIMULATION

-This is a bold claim, considering flight school was almost a complete failure.

Flight Sim World: Bringing the Skies to Life!

-Another claim, what exactly brings these skies more to life than other sims, such as FSX or any others?


Chatham, Kent – 3rd May 2017 Dovetail Games, the multi award-winning simulation developer and publisher today announced that its much anticipated flight simulator, Flight Sim World™, will be released into Steam’s Early Access program in the coming weeks.

-Nowadays getting an award for software is pretty easy. For example, there are many "awards" given to flight simulation developers from many different websites. So these "awards" are not very hard to obtain in my opinion. Anyone can do it with some time, effort, and a little bit of skill
-Early access meaning, open beta that you pay for. Yes this is becoming a norm. No, I am not completely against it. But it will be a long time before we see a finished product/release. Most of us here at msFlights knows the dovetail team is quite small. Also the countless complaints I heard during beta testing of FSX Steam is something I am not interested in. I don't agree that people are doing their beta testing and still paying for the game. The people that put 0 time into testing and helping the company should be the only ones that have to pay(if they sign up).

Based on benchmark flight simulation technology, Flight Sim World will provide players with an unprecedented level of realism and detail. Its officially licensed GA aircraft will be the most authentic and detailed in-sim representations on the market, faithfully replicating their real world counterparts, with every gauge and switch fully operational.

-Benchmark FS technology? Do you mean FSX? So they are saying the base is still FSX and this wont be much more than a different version of P3D then... "Unprecedented level of realism," Like the Cherokee on Dovetail Flight School? Or for real this time? One thing I can say positive is, Dovetail is good at making highly detailed vehicles, there is no doubt about that. We will see about scenery...

Not only do these aircraft look like the real thing, but they also interact with the environment in an accurate way. A combination of atmospheric effects and advanced behind-the-scenes mechanics, result in a remarkably unique home simulation experience. Watch the raindrops race across your windscreen in stormy weather, while the physics engine challenges you with true-to-life aircraft behavior, including edge-of-envelope spins and stalls.

-We can only pray to god these things will be true. I am not holding my breath on all of these promises. It bothers me a little how they word this first sentence, then the second sentence features the raindrops first. This possibly shows me their priority of visual effects over physics.

Whether you want to plan a peaceful flight somewhere sunny or test your skills with tricky situations fraught with bad weather and engine failures, the comprehensive Flight Planner gives you full control over weather, location and time of day, also allowing you to add random events that will make your time in the air even more challenging. For those who want to focus more on content creation, also included with Flight Sim World is the Pro Mission Editor, which is a professional tool which allows players to create more complex missions.

-They should give options to have a basic flight planner, such as the one they are using now, and a realistic flight planner, such as skyvector. Giving most of the information a real pilot may want with just a few clicks. Skyvector.com does a great job at this. Real world ingratiation would be cool as well, such as TFR's and Sigmets.
-Giving the community tools to create content with ease, is a great tool to keep people using and purchasing your product. Add more easy to use tools! (but not too easy!)

“The time has come for a new flight simulator which really focuses on the physical quality of the aircraft and a flight model which brings them to life”, said Executive Producer Stephen Hood. “After doing some intensive work on the game engine – such as providing a much-needed 64 bit element
– we now have a flight simulation platform which will allow us and our partners to focus on creating new and exciting ways for simmers to benefit from these advances. New features and expansions to Flight Sim World will be rolled out as part of the Early Access program and beyond, reinforcing our absolute commitment to the hobby. In addition to providing core updates and expansions, Flight Sim World will build on Dovetail Games’ extensive partnership publishing program, allowing high quality add-on developers and publishers to make available excellent additional content such as aircraft, airports, missions, and scenery.

-Could have just summed this up with: After our failure with Flight School, We are finally fully listening to the flight simulation community that is actually buying our products.

“We have already built relationships with some of the best and brightest flight simulation developers in the industry”, added Simon Sauntson, Head of Third Party at Dovetail Games. “Flight Sim World will expand on those partnerships as we continue to secure premium content for our players. In addition to growing existing partnerships, we are reaching out to the wider development community to foster new relationships and bring top quality content to FSW”

-The fact that ORBX and A2A already have their hands in the pot is telling me they are having a hard time with scenery and flight characteristics. This could be a good sign that they are in way over their heads again, or that they are leaving these jobs to the people that know what they are doing. (At least to some extent.)

Available May 2017 on Steam Early Access

-Really? May? this was written on May 3rd... They must have just hit a brick wall in development or something.

To follow the latest news and developments, please visit www.flightsimworld.com or follow us on facebook.com/flightsimworld twitter.com/fltsimworld


So, this is my opinion on everything. You may or may not like it, and that is fine. But only time will tell if we are disappointed again, or pleasantly surprised and win a great simulator.

My recommendations are to NOT purchase this product until you have read/watched at least 10 different reviews on the product and full flights to places less traveled. Or places and types of flying you are interested in. This is how they trick you... They let you gawk at the pretty pictures and videos they produce, then when the real thing comes out, it is a real let down such as how Flight School was.

Best of luck to us all.

[ROBERT DUNN 2]

All this you ably critique, Travis, is garden variety hype. Haven't we been conditioned to discern such nonsensical hyperbole in our daily lives, internet or otherwise? I can agree with you point by paragraph here but I must respectfully disagree on your take of this advertisement as being intended to be believed as cannon, gospel, statement of fact by our friends at Dovetail.

I'll watch what Dovetail actually does and their intentions and motivations in this 64 bit endeavor and take the company's actions and forum-like question responding as my impetus to like or dislike their new offering. Dovetail went a long way in winning me over to the "wait and see" column when they took the good faith step of offering Flight Simulation World gratis to owners of Flight School licenses. I got my Flight School license for USD 7.50, never found the opportunity to try DFS out. Dovetail's Aimee's handling of the tough questions on an AVSIM thread (as in kinda live, minute by minute) The day of early access announcement impressed me as non-evasive, calling a spade a spade and emphasizing what couldn't be publicly disseminated and why that question answer wasn't currently available.

I'm going to give Dovetail every opportunity to convince me. See the "Helicopters?" thread on the Dovetail FSW forum. Having said all this, I'm probably a P3D fan going forward and when I get the time, I'll explore XPlane 11, DCS, AeroflyFS2 and any other simulator that comes down the pike that will promise me a worthwhile experience.

[Travis]

I don't by any means hate the company. I don't like them very much right now. I really hope they prove me wrong. Because if that happens, everybody wins! But only time will tell, and they won't have me convinced until I see it and hear it. And we all know how hard to please and cruel the flight simulator can be. They will really have to make me feel like I'm missing out if I jump on the beta band wagon too.