It seems like very few of us actually care about this new installment, and it's kind of strange that MS put this out with little to no press. But, MS Flight is available for download now

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

Installing now.

Thanks. I was looking for a flying games

I was on the site a few days ago and wasn't available to download

Thanks for the heads up. I'm downloading now.

So they close Ensemble Studios, and then make a new AoE. Then they close ACES and make a new Flight Simulator. What are MS thinking?

Lets all check this out. (downloading now)

@Bevinsky said:

So they close Ensemble Studios, and then make a new AoE. Then they close ACES and make a new Flight Simulator. What are MS thinking?

"let's not waste money on studio's who only produce games that don't sell"?

Neat! I'll download and mess around with this later.

ok can they bring back combat flight simulator now?

I don't even.......

I need a flight stick.

@Zidd: I think the idea is that they can add combat stuff to this, for people who want it.

There's been a lot of moaning about the F2P structure of the game, but I think it's something that fits quite well here. I haven't tried the actual game yet though, so I'm assuming it doesn't suck.

Quick, someone tell Vinny!

Umm, the game is constantly/randomly crashing on me. First time i played, it crash as soon as i hit play. Second time i was flying between the baloons and it crashed...anyone else having issues?

Man, I'm suddenly looking to hire a flight stick... no, seriously. I want to play this, and it's not the same without one.

I've played a little bit of this now, it seems fun. It's certainly aiming to be much more accessible, there's a lot of tutorials and challenges to ease you in, the 360 controller actually works really well with it and the multiplayer is already hilarious. We need a TNT for this.

I don't know how much of the depth they've sacrificed, but it doesn't seem to be dumbed down much. It's still incredibly difficult, even with the tutorial, I completely crashed on my first landing. There's a lot to learn and it specifically tells you to practice at it a lot. Things like pre-flight take offs are a nice touch too.

I don't know if I'll pay for any of the add-ons, but yeah, it's a fun game.

Oh, sweet.

I was actually in the beta, but that damn NDA really limits what you can say (really, nothing) outside of the Flight forums.

As a free game, why not, right? I don't think the appeal will be there for veterans. The microtransactions really hurt when you want to do something like fly across the country. There's a lot of missing content compared to older games in the series, and even the genre. In that case, you're better off finding a copy of FSX.

But for newcomers, I think Flight does a good job of introducing people to flying, and how difficult and technical it actually is. Hawaii is a great setting to play around in, and Flight came across to me as what Pilotwings would be if it used real planes and attempted to model their physics realistically.

Now to download the non-beta version, to see what's changed...

Quick, someone tell Vinny!

Anyone else getting a lot of lag when signed into live? I didn't have any lag when I wasn't signed into Live.

Does anyone know if most of the Achievements can only be gotten through paid DLC, like in Age of Empires Online?

So how much of this game can you play for free? I don't want to download 30gb just to fly one plane for 10 minutes and get cut off having to pay if I don't like it.

I believe you can only fly on the island of Oahu and get one aircraft. Should be unlimited play though. Has anyone seen the prices for the add ons? Holy crap. 8 dollars for one plane and you don't even get a cockpit view(at least that's how I read it). Going to give it a go but then it's back to good old fsx.

I fixed the game

There's only one condition for this quick look:

All flight assistance off.

so a few thoughts

1: can we get a quicklook for this?

2: It actually play really well with a 360 controller

3: This seems crappy... I don't think one plane is worth 1400ms points, or the 800 for the mustang. On top of that the "full" game is twenty bucks and that twenty only gets you a total of four planes! What the hell! four planes for a flight "sim". The sad part is the game itself might be great. The plane models and controlls are great but there is just not enough here to justify a purchase. For 20 bucks I would have expected more activities and a minimum of ten planes. You can tell they are going to try to kill player with DLC, bet next month or so we'll see another two planes at 10 bucks a pop. All in all its very sad to see what they did with MS flight. Think I'll go buy FSX on amazon for 25 bucks, much better value.

In addition to the planes though you also get all of their challenges, missions, etc. The price is a bit steep for now but I've been going through tons of content and have yet to spend a dime so I'm happy with it. I'm sure we'll see those prices get tweaked and I'm really interested to see what they are planning on adding in the future.