I don't want REAL weather (no desktop PC would have snowballs chance in hell of creating anything like it) - I want REALISTIC weather and AS2004 gives me that.If you want real weather go outside and play.Andy b

Hi Darren,Thanks for your input...If I understand correctly, you are not happy with the fact that the wind transition bug in FS9 is not completely solved. I can relate... But at no time did we claim that FS9's internal bug was solved (how can we do that?), only that we have spent a great deal of time trying to lessen this issue. As a matter of fact we were very open about all of this, if you check the forum for past posts regard wind shifts and pre-purchase questions you'll see.I don't see how we are downplaying or placing blame. Actually, I feel it is quite the opposite.. Why else would we spend so much time, effort and resources in trying to make things better in this regard when it is not even related to our products?And where did we lead anyone to believe that they "owed" us time?Darren, obviously you are frustrated, and obviously you did purchase AS2004 only to solve wind shifts and are not the least bit interested in the other features. I can understand your position. Please e-mail me directly for further discussion... Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyhttp://www.hifisim.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg

DarrenI can understand that you're somewhat frustrated with the wind shift situation, but your are being needlessly rude and exceedingly unfair in your previous post.Obviously, you have bought AS2004 for all the wrong reasons. Its purpose is to ENHANCE weather in AS2004 by using real life online weather and by making it look better than FS9's default weather (which isn't all that hard to do) and it does an absolutely awesome job delivering on that promise.Where exactly does HiFi Simulations claim that AS2004 fixes the FS9 wind tranisition bug? Please be so kind as to point me to the part of the product description where this claim is made, because I have been utterly unable to locate such a statement and I have been searching very hard.How can you seriously expect a third party weather add-on to fix a severe bug buried deeply in the FS9 code? Damian would never make such a rather outrageous claim, simply because there is no way that this bug can be completely fixed from outside FS9. Your accusation that Damian is trying to "pass the blame back to Micro$oft" is almost insulting. Micro$oft *IS* to blame for that bug. Period.Neither Damian nor Jim have ever downplayed the wind shift problem. The discussions about that issue in this forum were always very frank and open, more so than in most other vendor support forums I know. Damian and Jim have always done their best to help users get the most of what we currently have.Damian is working very hard at trying to minimize the effect of M$'s errors. and he is doing a very good job so far. Besides, only a minority of AS2004 users even bother with winds aloft, many have them deactivated and many only fly down low below the levels, where the wind shift problem is negligible. What Hifi Simulations does for the few that fly jets up high and use winds aloft is far beyond what other developers would do.And no, the beta testers are not thrilled that they barely surive a flight with the aircraft in one virtual piece. What we're thrilled with is that each new incarnation of AS2004 improves greatly on things and gets us closer to where we would like to be. We will probably never have nice, completely smooth wind transitions, at least not until M$ fixes FS, which probably won't be until FS2006.Until then Damian will be working hard to give us the best FS weather experience possible with the present state of FS9. And the beta team will be working equally hard to assist him. None of the beta testers, except Jim and Damian work for HiFi and we don't get paid to do the testing and believe me, the exchanges in the beta newsgroup are very frank. But yes, we all are proud to be a part of it all.So far the only thing very transparent here is that you are frustrated and need to vent, but IMHO you picked the wrong scapegoat, maybe because you know quite well that if you vent at the real culprits up in redmond, you will get no reply. So you think you don't owe HiFi time to improve wind transitions further? Fine! But I don't think Damian or Jim owe someone who comes across as arrogant and self-righteous as you time to counter your unfounded and ridiculous accusations, which are based on things you think you read or heard somewhere about AS2004. AS2004 does all it claims on the product page and even some things it doesn't claim to do, like MUCH improving on the winds aloft issue in FS9.So next time, why don't you calm down some before posting, maybe reread the product documentation and homepage, just to verify that you are not accidently accusing a vendor of breaking promises that were never even made. Besides, posting in a non derogative, civilized way is much more likely to yield favorable answers and support than using the verbal sledgehammer.To all the other readers of this forum: Sorry for the long post, but I felt this needed to be said (I'll now put MY verbal sledgehammer back into the darkest part of the closet, where it belongs ;-) )Best RegardsMax (Bern, LSZB)http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg