i doubt that new MS Flightsimulator will be a threat to il-2, since it is mostly based on general aviation with POOR and nearly unexisting simulation, it is aimed at general public audience and the major "luring in" effect is the beautiful environment and graphics (which is an important sell out factor for a commercial game)

Where as to me, the shot looking down at the ocean and runway, where every little stream on every hill in the forest is sparkling like the sun is directly on it looks comically bad.

OK, so there are two possibilities here. Either everyone posting in this thread that IL-2 looks better are being paid to say it by Steve Jobs or they are legally blind. These screen shots look wonderful, what's the issue?

This right here! Also MS really "Cherry Picks" their screenshots that they want to show off. In the past there were issues with them retouching screen caps and generally misleading buyers as to what they were really getting.

One thing that they do well are mountains. They tend to look pretty good at a medium to higher altitude and I have to give them congrats on that. Get any lower and you see where they start to fall short, especially away from well known landmarks and airports where they have not put much detail into the terrain or buildings.

As for competition? A lof of people who fly FSX and who will pick up Flight will have no interest in COD because they are interested in pretending to be an airline pilot or a pleasure-flyer, not a fighter pilot. There are also a lot of people who will fly both. I don't think someone is going to look at FSX or MS Flight and say, "Well I'm going to skip COD because I have this game!". With the exception of flying aircraft, that's about all these two products have in common.

Microsoft has a history of false advertising and very crappy graphics down low and away from any airfield. I do like the the screenshots, but I would be very very very skeptical on their quality at low level.

Microsoft does a great job on takeoff procedures, climb to 10,000ft and navigate to your destination, but if you like low level site seeing forget about it, unless you spend a tidy some on all the third party terrain updates. Either way it would probably soon get boring if your primarily a combat flight sim pilot. Although I never had time to get bored with FSX as it was so damn ugly down low I quit flying it.

Mmm, the reason for me being pessimistic is that it is obvious that Flight is just FSX with some tweaks, and FSX looks good at some places high up, but looks like crap on most places down low. To make my point I fired up FSX Acceleration right now and took two "ms web site" shots (no addons) and one "the real FSX shot" at Ultra everything settings (all settings at max accept cloud range at 30%)

Here we have Grand Canyon in dawn... I sure could find a better place and more dramatic sunset if I put more than five minutes to it. Just searched Grand Canyon and took off and took the shot.
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/7...randcanyon.jpg

EDIT: OK, I put in five more minutes and took off from Honolulu in sunset:
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/2843/fsxhonolulu.jpg

And here we have the "white" cliffs of Dover down low...
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/7625/fs10manston.jpg

Most places you fly look like Dover, but the screenies look like Grand Canyon or Honolulu - that's my point!

Anyone want to discuss the palette or the selection of spruce trees and Large multifloor buildings in the Kent countryside? The color of the cliffs anyone?

Yes, I know they cover the whole world and then it gets like this...

EDIT: Yes I forgot the mapping for the darn brakes, in FSX it's no problem taking off with full brakes in a tail dragger anyway ;)

EDIT again - the people complaining about the CoD beta shots being too green maybe want something like this? (could not resist it ;))

Could you rehost the second pic, I'm not seeing it.

My office is blocking it due to the file name I think. It's saying it's porn. Probably something to do with "xdover" thinking "bend over" manybe?

lol, nice cliffs, I really dig those 2d trees too. :-P

It just doesn't get any uglier than those FSX cliffs of dover, tree, and quagmire terrain textures. It will be easy for MS Flight to do a better job, but I'm not holding my breath.

Probably a safety measure: that image can cause eye cancer... :mad: