Very good op-ed on the other site

[Guest]

Lot of good things to think about in Andrew Herd's missive. I hope the folks at MS are reading.

[Guest]

He has some valid points, but quite obviously is mainly ranting about Microsoft the Big Bad Brother who doesn't care a darn thing about anyone except their shareholders...In fact, 3rd parties are in close contact with the design team. They get all the betas and can start working on their addons way before the next version of FS is released (remember all those people wondering how new addons specific to FS2002 could come out just weeks after FS itself? Now you know).Same with the SDKs. Commercial partners get those before the general release, so they can have a headstart (and rightly so).As to dropping the old MDL format, that's progress. At some point you have to say goodbye to being backwards compatible with old stuff. If you don't your product gets so bloated it becomes impossible to maintain and run (FS now effectively has 2 rendering engines which degrades performance. By scrapping the old one (which is a relic of FS98 or earlier) a lot of good things can happen.Developers will by the time FS2004 is released have had several years to work on replacing their FSDS models with GMax models. Many are doing so even now (POSKY 767 v.3 comes to mind as a direct replacement. Euroflight was working on a new 757 in GMax before they called it quits. Commercial vendors have all made the switch for their new products too).As to the ATC in FS. Yes it's limited, but it's a basis for future enhancements that will percolate through the new versions. Expect some sour faces next year when people find out their AFCAD and TTools stuff no longer works or is no longer needed (with the screams of outrage that Microsoft dared do this thing. I can remember the screams of outrage that Microsoft had NOT incorporated those things in FS2002 but that will be forgotten by then).Proflight was good, but limited. It was also a ported FS98 product. AETI and others decided that enough is enough and you can't go on supporting products into eternity. They are in it for the money, and if you are you can't keep releasing free updates (which people seem to think is a natural thing) forever. At some point you either have to stop supporting the product entirely or make an upgrade that you can charge for.