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PhilTaylor

Sad but true

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1) When you say "ACES is back," do you mean there is a recognized development group within MGS that is recognized as "the Flight Simulator development group," or do you mean that some of the former ACES staff have been hired back for general development at MGS?2) How many of the ex-ACES staff is "back," and how senior were they in the former studio?3) When you say "nobody knows if it will be a new series, a continuation, or an overhaul," does that include the possibility that we're only talking about a Falcon-style shoot-'em-up game for the XBox 360 as a one-off product?While I've never worked for Microsoft (although I did do the interview marathon with them once), I was in the game-development field for around fifteen years, and I'm deeply suspicious of any "Microsoft closed ACES and laid everybody off, then hired them back for a pseudo-ACES group at MGS and had them get back to work on a completely-new attempt at FSNext" scenario. It doesn't seem in keeping with the way the game industry works (in my experience), nor does it seem to make any sense to let people go and hope you can convince them to come back right away (if at all). My guess is that either a handful of ex-ACES staff are going to be making a completely-different and completely-incompatible flying game (as opposed to a simulation) for the console market, or that Microsoft's merely "playing the vaporware card" to nip Aerosoft's proposed FS in the bud. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.P.S.: Whether Bill Gates loves flight simulation or not is rather immaterial, since he is no longer running Microsoft. If he was still in the CEO's chair, it's possible that ACES would have been given carte blanche to make FSNext the greatest sim the world has ever seen. But he's not.
Guys, isn't it time we all started to move on? By their actions I would venture to suggest that Microsoft (NOT ACES) have demonstrated very clearly what it thinks about the FS community. Yes FSX and FS9 still have some life in them, but FSX has had the rug pulled from under it and it's really difficult to believe that Microsoft will resurrect the franchise in the future. Why should they? They are just not interested because currently, and for the foreseeable future, there are few financial reasons for doing so. Let's stop kidding ourselves and start the process of moving towards pastures new.Time to encourage other developers to take over the mantle until a product emerges as being the true successor to MS Flight Simulator. Hopefully one day in the future Microsoft will be persuaded to see their actions for what they truly were: bad decisions that contributed eventually to losing them the global support which was so badly needed during those uniquely economic hard times. You see, Microsoft, it's not all about money. Now the winds of change are blowing throughout the world you should wake up to this fact before it's too late. Despite your world dominance, in the end I suspect you will always need us far more than we need you. Paradoxically, I predict that our hobby will grow stronger rather than lose any impetus. Yes, we have been shocked by this event yet, instead, why not look on this as an opportunity. The MSFS series gave us long-term continuity and a sense of security in the knowledge that we all shared common ground, but this has been stifling any potential competition. For me, FSX, while beautiful to behold, was dogged by performance issues and forced ridiculous hardware upgrades at a time when such expenditure was both imprudent and unnecessary. I suspect Microsoft realised too late that if Flight Simulator was to maintain its market share then existing and outdated code had to be ditched in favour of a complete engine rewrite. This, of course takes time and considerable investment and, as we have seen, Microsoft, quite clearly, have other priorities. Let's accept that fact and not waste time and energy needlessly trying to persuade a sea change in attitude. Recently, and as a direct result of all that has happened, I was persuaded to purchase X-Plane. If ever there was a flight simulator that deserves greater recognition and support then this has to be it. As many will tell you it's far from being perfect, but it is a simulator that performs well and is so smooooth 'out of the box' under OpenGL rather than DirectX. I cannot comment about the flight modelling of the default a/c as I'm not a r/w pilot, but compared to FSX and FS9 the a/c are way too responsive and twitchy both while in the air and on the ground and, for me, this is disappointing. However, I imagine such aspects can be improved upon and this is the key: X-Plane undergoes continuous development and, I understand, updates based on user feedback are released to the community every 10 weeks or so! Perhaps ways could be found to port FSX 3rd Party products to X-Plane. Realistically and for the foreseeable future it is likely that X-Plane will be regarded as being the only viable alternative. It's perhaps ironic that X-Plane has always been there, but perhaps now is the time to consider redirecting our attentions towards this potentially great flight simulator whose author/s encourage 3rd Party involvement.I have always been faithful to the MSFS series and it is likely that FS9 and FSX will remain, in their highly customized versions, on my hard drive for some time to come. However, with Microsoft turning it's back on the franchise has come a shift in my perspective and I am starting to look around for something that is not necessarily better but with the potential to grow into something better. It is conceivable that X-Plane might indeed fit the bill.Mike

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All I will say is there is a developer on this forum somewhere, his name will go unnancounced, but he has a good relationship wtih the people at MS, and he gave me the details about what media that FSNExt will be on, and if it will be for PC. If he told me, I assume that he can say it to anyone, but I do not want to tell anyone right now, till MS comes out themselves.
Somehow that doen't really convince me. An unannounced(?) developer told you what he says a contact at Microsoft told him.

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Somehow that doen't really convince me. An unannounced(?) developer told you what he says a contact at Microsoft told him.
N4gix, told me some details, ask him... I speak the truth, no lies. I also found out long befor n4gix sent me a PM I got the message that FS is back. All I will say is the plan is it to be released online on the PC, since he already posted it. (Proof: http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?s=&...&p=1579555)Check out this post...http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?s=&...t&p=1547306
That's Atlantic Monthly, Computer World, PC World, BBC. And probably more I haven't linked directly. Pretty mainstream. You don't last that long as a product without a dedicated following. And the fact that the product lasted that long means something in and of itself, an intangible.So what does it all mean Alfie? I can tell you what I know, and I can then present some informed speculation.There are 2 new groups being formed under 2 of the 5 top-level studio managers. No names, even though I know them. :-)Group 1 is over in MS Research, with something like 20 heads this year and 10 transfer heads either this year or next fiscal year. The charter from my information is a bit vague but it sounds more like social networking 'stuff' using the character animation bits that Train Sim2 was going to have and that ESP2 was going to leverage. I wish them good luck.Group 2 is in MGS and is of more interest to FS fans. The charter of this group is again not completely clear, but it is centered around a flying game. So the public responses from MS have a backing in reality. No, it does not sound like a "magical restart" of FS11 to me yet; but yes it is flight oriented. Exactly what it is we will not know until MGS tells us more. In terms of resources, Group 2 has something like 30 heads this year, and potentially 15 heads next fiscal year. And yes, in my opinion 45 heads is enough to do a credible job.Yes, the job opening for an Art Lead that various folk have posted and commented about is in Group 2. However, I didn't see a lot of other job openings. That leads me to believe that specific job listing is tailored to enable hiring a specific individual, perhaps one with past history on the team. And the other heads will be filled from the talent pool of the former studio hence lack of other openings.So thats what I know. Now its speculation time.My opinion is that this is a serious change in the hobby. No one should doubt that. Anyone who tries to play this lightly is just fooling themselves.With that said, the resolution of where FS is going in the future is not clear yet and will only play out over time. Until MGS actually states what the parameters of this new "flying game" are, it is impossible to tell how different from the deep simulation known as the FS series "the new thing" will be.It could be great, so lets remember that. Plus, given FSX clearly has years of life in it, there is no need to see this as a 'chicken little' event yet. In that vein, I do think its fair that the community should give the new team, given it is going to be largely ex-Aces, a chance before weighing in with a judgment. I know these people and they truly care about the product and the community and will be committed to doing a great job.And even if, according to some peoples' worst-case fears, the "new flying game" turns out to be a "play for pay" Windows Live experience that does not provide the full-planet experience and deep flight simulation that the community wants - would that mean the death of the hobby? No, some other provider would likely step in and fill the void if MS leaves such a large gap.So my best suggestion is that for the immediate future people stop thrashing and have fun. There is plenty of flying to be done on FSX, and plenty of high-quality add-ons are queued up for your enjoyment. Go back to flying and stay tuned for future announcements from MGS and let's all agree to "wait and see what happens".With that in mind, I also think its worth stating that until we get clearer data the community should try to avoid random speculation, acting rashly, and savaging each other on the forums. That surely has no real benefit to the community.I'll avoid singing kumbaya and asking for a group hug now. :-)
Link to PTaylors blog: http://www.futuregpu.org/2009/02/end-of-er...re-updates.html

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Guys, isn't it time we all started to move on? By their actions I would venture to suggest that Microsoft (NOT ACES) have demonstrated very clearly what it thinks about the FS community. Yes FSX and FS9 still have some life in them, but FSX has had the rug pulled from under it and it's really difficult to believe that Microsoft will resurrect the franchise in the future. Why should they? They are just not interested because currently, and for the foreseeable future, there are few financial reasons for doing so. Let's stop kidding ourselves and start the process of moving towards pastures new.Time to encourage other developers to take over the mantle until a product emerges as being the true successor to MS Flight Simulator.Mike
I totally agree, it's been almost six months since ACES was disbanded and MS hasn't written a single line about this yet unanounced 'flying game' :( .Compare that, to Aerosoft attitude, clearly announcing its intentions of building a new FS and asking for input, community input. I'm sure we'll be talking ASFS ( Aerosoft Flight Simulator ) more & more in the future.

Francisco Aguiar

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Well, that lengthy quote from Phil Taylor is pretty clear: some of the ACES staff were re-hired for a new team, and will be working on a "flight-oriented product," but it will not be a restart of FS11.In other words, MSFS is dead. There will be some sort of "flight-oriented product," but it will not be Flight Simulator. End of story.


James David Walley

Ryzen 7 7700X, 32 GB, RTX 3080

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Well, that lengthy quote from Phil Taylor is pretty clear: some of the ACES staff were re-hired for a new team, and will be working on a "flight-oriented product," but it will not be a restart of FS11.In other words, MSFS is dead. There will be some sort of "flight-oriented product," but it will not be Flight Simulator. End of story.
Can you not READ. I posted links to the art job listing, and they said they are looking for an art manger for a new flight SIMULATION. It doesn't mean Microsoft Flight Simulator is dead, and Phil Taylor never said it was dead. He said he does not know what type of flight simulation game it will be, and he doesn't know if it will be a continuation of FS11, becasue before ACES got cut there were developing FS11 SECRETLY (MS does not always tell everyone everyhting), and they had a sort of "career" like mode in it and other great features, like passengers in Train Simulator 2. So he doesn't know if they will CONTINUE what has already been developed for FS11, or if they will make a WHOLE new game with completley new code without code from FS in the 1990s (since FSX still has code from ages ago). I think the correct conclusion is just wait and see what Microsoft releases, and stop speculating that FS is dead when it is clearly shown that they are making a new Flight Simulation game. Maybe it may not have the same name and code, but it could be better.I am so tired of all this FS is dead, the future is over, Microsoft doesn't care, etc, just enjoy FSX or FS2004 and stop worrying. There are so many more great add-ons for FSX to come, and we have just explored LITTLE of what is done with Simconnect in FSX. :(

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Well, that lengthy quote from Phil Taylor is pretty clear: some of the ACES staff were re-hired for a new team, and will be working on a "flight-oriented product," but it will not be a restart of FS11.In other words, MSFS is dead. There will be some sort of "flight-oriented product," but it will not be Flight Simulator. End of story.
Exactly. Phil Taylor chose his words very carefully.

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Well, that lengthy quote from Phil Taylor is pretty clear: some of the ACES staff were re-hired for a new team, and will be working on a "flight-oriented product," but it will not be a restart of FS11.In other words, MSFS is dead. There will be some sort of "flight-oriented product," but it will not be Flight Simulator. End of story.
So why waste time hammering on about what might and might not be? If Microsoft haven't the courtesy to keep us in the loop then I suggest we should challenge them by redirecting our attentions elsewhere. It would appear that there is a serious contender right now: I say again, look at X-Plane. That sim could turn out to be much better than FSX were it to be given serious support from our community. As it stands right now I can turn on most of the bells and whistles and still see frame rates between 40-60fps (anchored to my LCD monitor frequency) on my less than stellar system. Clearly that fact alone is demonstrating the unused headroom and consequently the enormous potential of this sim. The scenery is impressive, albeit needing much attention to improve the accuracy; the autogen is amazing but appears somewhat random in its placement. Again all of this can be fixed. I can, for once, see full autogen with very little hit to the frame rates. The quality of the a/c panels in many cases leaves much to be desired and certainly could do with the devoted attention of our panel designers. The ground textures are very good to look at but it would be amazing to see everything from Ground Environment ported over, if that is indeed possible. The GUI needs some work but once you get the hang of it, it's really not bad at all. What is evident is just how flexible and configurable this sim is with loads of options and assignments galore.Yes, with all the resources at our command we could through down the gauntlet and challenge Microsoft to come clean. Third party development can, of course, continue for FSX as it remains a creditable sim, albeit mainly restricted to users with machines that can cope with it plus all the resource hungry addons. Let's not forget that FSX retail with the service packs installed runs pretty well, but has very little headroom for any addons before performance starts to suffer. Whether this will apply to a sim like X-Plane remains to be seen, but if we don't give it a chance we'll never find out. All I can say from my relatively brief experience is that right now X-Plane runs apparently effortlessly with no stuttering under OpenGL compared to FSX under DirectX. It costs less than FSX and installed occupies 71.9GB of HD space. It does not involve the Windows registry and consequently, as I discovered, can be moved around to other locations. At first I directed the friendly installer to locate X-Plane under D:\Program Files. After the installation had completed (took quite a time) I then read that the recommended location of the installation was at the root of your drive or partition. No problem, a simple cut and paste resolved that one and everything continues to work! All you 3rd party developers should take heed - makes life so much easier. No, I'm not on the X-plane team nor do I have any monetary interest in the success of the product. I'm just impressed by what I have seen and its evident potential as a viable replacement/successor to FSX.MikeASRock 939Dual-SATA2 (AM2CPU Board), AMD Athlon 64X2 6400+ (BE,3200MHz,Windsor), Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro, 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC2-6400 4-4-4-12(2T) (Dual Channel), NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB (DDR3) (ForceWare 182.08 WHQL), SB Audigy2 ZS Platinum (Drivers version 5.12.0001.1196 WHQL), Antec NeoHE 650W PSU, Windows XP Home Edition (SP3), DirectX 9.0c

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maybee instead of cutting the little employee they should get rid of the unnecessary top people who make buckets of money and or cut their salary this way the have a more efficient company that costs less to run

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Guest micky1
maybee instead of cutting the little employee they should get rid of the unnecessary top people who make buckets of money and or cut their salary this way the have a more efficient company that costs less to run
Hello all,You're right man, i'm with you, by this way they really will save lots of money.Thanks, micky Simulation pret

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I am so tired of all this FS is dead, the future is over, Microsoft doesn't care, etc, just enjoy FSX or FS2004 and stop worrying. There are so many more great add-ons for FSX to come, and we have just explored LITTLE of what is done with Simconnect in FSX. :(
Yeah, but you're the one that started the hoop-la that ACES, is in-fact, not dead. So it would seem obtuse of you to suggest for people to "stop worrying". FS, is dead killer. Your original post came back from around June - tell me, what has materialized? Move on little one, move on.

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Yeah, but you're the one that started the hoop-la that ACES, is in-fact, not dead. So it would seem obtuse of you to suggest for people to "stop worrying". FS, is dead killer. Your original post came back from around June - tell me, what has materialized? Move on little one, move on.
I see you Blake as the one who should move on and cease with snide little attacks on forum members here. Why post these comments months after a post was made? If your post was made to point out nothing has happened since June, a lot has happened. Maybe not via Aces, but there's been several great add-on's released which makes the franchise alive and well from my POV. As long as add-on developers keep contributing, we have a hobby. Why does it seem members here under safety of a keyboard and anonymity, must enjoy injecting their snide insight in threads regardless of the context and timing? -John

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Yeah, but you're the one that started the hoop-la that ACES, is in-fact, not dead. So it would seem obtuse of you to suggest for people to "stop worrying". FS, is dead killer. Your original post came back from around June - tell me, what has materialized? Move on little one, move on.
There's no need for the personal insults. Let's call this a friendly caution to keep it civil.

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