Is the Dream Really Dead?Well, is it? Why would MS be advertising for this position if it were?My informed opinion is that MS has simply decided to "clean the slate" and rebuild a team centered on MS's long-term goals...Note the bolded text below to put at rest any supposition that it will be an "XBox360" title... :( http://members.microsoft.com/careers/searc...;SortOrder=DescJob Title: Art Management Job Category: Game Design Product: Games Date Posted: 01/30/2009 "Join the team responsible for building the most fun and rewarding flying experiences available on Games for Windows Live. Does working on a small, innovative team that delivers the most immersive flight experiences available today on the PC intrigue you? Our technology makes available entire continents - potentially the entire planet - for a detailed and dynamic 3D experience. We are looking for a Project Art Lead who can define, refine, and extend the visual elements while balancing the need for fun and approachability for a broad set of users."

Is the Dream Really Dead?Well, is it? Why would MS be advertising for this position if it were?My informed opinion is that MS has simply decided to "clean the slate" and rebuild a team centered on MS's long-term goals...Note the bolded text below to put at rest any supposition that it will be an "XBox360" title... :( http://members.microsoft.com/careers/searc...;SortOrder=DescJob Title: Art Management Job Category: Game Design Product: Games Date Posted: 01/30/2009 "Join the team responsible for building the most fun and rewarding flying experiences available on Games for Windows Live. Does working on a small, innovative team that delivers the most immersive flight experiences available today on the PC intrigue you? Our technology makes available entire continents - potentially the entire planet - for a detailed and dynamic 3D experience. We are looking for a Project Art Lead who can define, refine, and extend the visual elements while balancing the need for fun and approachability for a broad set of users."

Yeah,, FlightSim might live on in Xbox, but they can keep that..I'm too busy playing the drums on the WII.RJ

Yeah,, FlightSim might live on in Xbox, but they can keep that..I'm too busy playing the drums on the WII.RJ

What part of "most immersive flight experiences available today on the PC" was unclear? :(

To put it simply. I think they may see that a fairly long term plateau has been reached. "It's time for a break and let's save some money too". It may be that they feel that there is a lot of catch up that has to occur before this sim can move foreward with significant changes.

I disagree. Although FSX is very good I don't think it's anywhere near what's possible on today's hardware.I tried the latest X-Plane demo recently and was impressed, with some reservations. Whatever your take on the flight model, control input handling etc. it is very smooth and gets good frame rates at high settings. Overall I would say it's less pretty than FSX, but I get the feeling that's more to do with the quality of the content (by which I mean the scenery, airplane models, etc.) than with the quality of the engine or the hardware we have available to run it.I reckon a great deal of the effort that went into FSX and its predecessors was involved in creating high quality content; the X-Plane development team is a lot smaller, and probably focuses more on the engine, therefore it is less "developed" in this regard. I'm guessing (hoping in fact) that it wouldn't take long for them to catch up, especially if third party developers start switching over.Colin

Is the Dream Really Dead?Well, is it? Why would MS be advertising for this position if it were?My informed opinion is that MS has simply decided to "clean the slate" and rebuild a team centered on MS's long-term goals...Note the bolded text below to put at rest any supposition that it will be an "XBox360" title... :( http://members.microsoft.com/careers/searc...;SortOrder=Desc

This is strange indeed. If they wanted to keep developing FS immediately you'd think they'd have kept a few more of the original team rather than get rid of almost all of them and then hire more.

"Our technology makes available entire continents - potentially the entire planet - for a detailed and dynamic 3D experience."

"Potentially" the entire planet? FSX already renders the entire planet. Are they even talking about the same technology??Colin

FS 11 more then likely will be on the Xbox 360 and maybe then to Windows. Ala Halo and a few others. Microsoft has not been doing to well of late in the gaming world. The Xbox 360 is a hardware dud (a failure rate of one in six according to a study by SquareTrade 2/08, plus a class action suit concerning the "Red Ring of Death" in California) and is losing ground in world wide sales to the Sony PS3 which costs twice as much and was released a year later. Bungie "we made you a billion bucks" developers of the Halo franchise, could not wait to get out and were very vocal about how Microsoft treated them. HD-DVD is going under due to Blockbuster and adult films being wowed by Blue-Ray, Microsoft backed the wrong horse and with no upscale media player on the Xbox 360, the console is at a disadvantage to one of the PS3 selling points. Vista is now Mojave or something but they won't call it Vista anymore, due to the all the bad press it already has. Plus it is costing millions in support and damage control. So with all this going down hill and the company still needing to make it's investors happy. They took the lazy way out. Aces got the axe because at that moment in time, they cost more then their product was making. Good people lost their jobs for 4% percent on the senior leaderships bonus check and for investors who could not quote yesterdays stock price for Microsoft.Brandon

Planned features included voice recognition with air traffic control, first-person mode, a full fledged career mode with a job board and a currency system, a lighter-then-air aircraft class, and skydiving. "We were starting to focus more on the game aspect of it than just the simulation," the ACES insider told us.

Am I the only one concerned about this?granted with the demise of ACES this scenario will certainly not play out, but if that is the direction FS would be moving into (which they already tried a bit with FSX), then they sure as heck would have lost at least one custommer.just my 0,02$

Am I the only one concerned about this?granted with the demise of ACES this scenario will certainly not play out, but if that is the direction FS would be moving into (which they already tried a bit with FSX), then they sure as heck would have lost at least one custommer.just my 0,02$

Although that may drive you and others away, it may very well bring more onboard or keep those of us already onboard spending more time using MSFS than we currently do.The whole idea, rather you take it as a serious hobby or just for fun, is to simulate, mind you not real, world of flying; just as much as many people take train sets as a hobby knowing all along that it is nowhere close to the real thing.Why would you think that by adding the ability to use your real voice to talk to the tower make it more like a game? Why would adding a career mode be more game like? Is that not what a lot of real pilots do in the real world?I personally have loved MSFS since the commodore 64, but just like my real world pilot friends say, flying, especially the heavies, can be a little on the boring side at times. Maybe that is why in the real world you have choices as in flying for leisure, acrobatic flying, and as emergency response piloting, red bull anyone?Even if you are a real life pilot, you should truly enjoy your work and have as much responsible fun as possible :)

Agree with snekgiant. Although I may not use some of these features, I don't mind at all that they would be part of the package. It would widen the user-base and more copies could be sold which means more funds could flow back into development.

Has Toshiba's dropping of HD DVD made sales of HD DVD titles increase?

Yes, initially and for a whole year after the announcement, because people looked for bargains. In fact, before the HDDVD demise announcement, I used to watched them only on the Xbox, but after that, I was able to buy the top of the line Toshiba XE1 player (which also plays regular DVDs beautifully) for a very low price, and shopped for about 60-70 titles, all under 10$, with many of them at 5$...However, the parallel doesn't apply here: it's not that HDDVD had a monopoly on the market or was supported by all the majors, even when it was alive. There was an alternative, Bluray, with more or less the same quality, and already had more titles and support from the majors, even when HDDVD was at its peak.