Thanks Tom, AVSIM, Goodbye!

[Guest United]

After 30 years of flightsimming with Microsoft products, it's time to go. I last flew FSX back in October 2008 on my favorite route, KPDX to KOAK using a Wilco 737, Southwest Airlines. I've always loved final approach, about one minute to touchdown. When my system crashed just at that moment, one minute before the wheels screeched, I realized I'd never fly on my computer again and have not. In fact I had only flown two or three times in the whole year prior to the moment. After hundreds of hours of trying, over 3-4 years, to adjust this and that and reading all I could on CTDs and such, I was finished. Too many hours tweaking, too few hours flying. The best moments have been here on AVSIM, I am or was a long time member and was the one to suggest a separate CTD forum at the time and Tom, you implemented it and I was kind of proud of that. The best time overall was that weekend was in Denver when some of us used the United Airlines simulators, that was the best, the peak, the ultimate for me and could never get more real or better than that. The worst moment, Aces Studio closing and finding out that Microsoft is hoarding FSX code against an offer from the real enthsiasts to take it and made it better, the wondereful add-on folk whose products I bought by the thousands of dollars over the years. Microsoft's "business" decision taught me that you should never let a corporate entity dominate your hobby. Well, I've fixed that. I am now utilizing my hobby time to write amateur fiction for the internet and even have my own fans for it now and I control everything about my hobby and it is inexpensive and treats my mind and imagination to scapes that no other company or entity could ever control or change and ruin. And, my computer never crashes because of it.Besides Tom Allensworth and his staff, there are those like the Flight1 folk and Ron Hamilton at Eaglesoft, true pioneers and hobbyists, all of which I wish to thank for their undying efforts to forward this hobby. I will certainly understand if the moderator of this forum moves this post. It's not really about FSX or FS9 funtionality per se, it's just after so many years here on AVSIM, I thought I would at least bring closure first to the main forum, the one that brought me so much pleasure over my years here, and if the post is moved, that is OK.Randy JuraKPDXGod Bless You All

[David Roch 1,953]

Very touching testimonial, thanks a lot Randy!The door remains open :-)And good luck for your "new" hobby Best wishes,David

[BimmerCop 332]

I want to wish you the best on your new hobby! I understand completely where you are coming from, and I too have been simming since the mid-late 80s and I can concur with the fact that sometimes we simply need some time away from it all. Maybe in the future, you will feel much renewed and decide to give flight simming another shot. In the mean time, good luck Randy!

[ahuimanu 50]

A break'll do you good. Never say never until you are gone - flight simming, in some capacity, will be around for you if you decide to come back into her arms.

[Guest rdg]

Hi Randy,I could hear you speaking the words your have written, and although they say that emails are difficult to interpret, and one should refrain from doing so, I still think that you still have more enthusiasm and love for the hobby than you do disappointment. You never know what the future will bring!!Whatever you do I hope it brings you as much or more pleasure than you have had here!RegardsBob G

[kjackson 0]

After 30 years of flightsimming with Microsoft products, it's time to go. I last flew FSX back in October 2008 on my favorite route, KPDX to KOAK using a Wilco 737, Southwest Airlines. I've always loved final approach, about one minute to touchdown. When my system crashed just at that moment, one minute before the wheels screeched, I realized I'd never fly on my computer again and have not. In fact I had only flown two or three times in the whole year prior to the moment. After hundreds of hours of trying, over 3-4 years, to adjust this and that and reading all I could on CTDs and such, I was finished. Too many hours tweaking, too few hours flying. The best moments have been here on AVSIM, I am or was a long time member and was the one to suggest a separate CTD forum at the time and Tom, you implemented it and I was kind of proud of that. The best time overall was that weekend was in Denver when some of us used the United Airlines simulators, that was the best, the peak, the ultimate for me and could never get more real or better than that. The worst moment, Aces Studio closing and finding out that Microsoft is hoarding FSX code against an offer from the real enthsiasts to take it and made it better, the wondereful add-on folk whose products I bought by the thousands of dollars over the years. Microsoft's "business" decision taught me that you should never let a corporate entity dominate your hobby. Well, I've fixed that. I am now utilizing my hobby time to write amateur fiction for the internet and even have my own fans for it now and I control everything about my hobby and it is inexpensive and treats my mind and imagination to scapes that no other company or entity could ever control or change and ruin. And, my computer never crashes because of it.Besides Tom Allensworth and his staff, there are those like the Flight1 folk and Ron Hamilton at Eaglesoft, true pioneers and hobbyists, all of which I wish to thank for their undying efforts to forward this hobby. I will certainly understand if the moderator of this forum moves this post. It's not really about FSX or FS9 funtionality per se, it's just after so many years here on AVSIM, I thought I would at least bring closure first to the main forum, the one that brought me so much pleasure over my years here, and if the post is moved, that is OK.Randy JuraKPDXGod Bless You All

Sorry to see you go Randy. I think we all understand the journey you travelled to get here. Good luck in your future endeavors. Drop in once in a while to let us know how you are doing, okay?Take Care. Best of luck!

[Geofa 108]

Randy-Good luck on your new venture.I understand the frustration of the situation now-I feel much the same. It seems in the quest to make things simpler things have become much more complicated and time consuming.(As I try to type this tonight my wireless keyboard does not seem to be working? Why?-of course an hour ago my internet was not either).I have to think though that a love of flight, aviation, and simming is something which one can not just snuff out. Perhaps after a break and hopefully some new positive developments you will be back.Good luck and best wishes!

[flyking 0]

Hi Randy,Your words really struck home with me. Well said.I wish you the best in all your endeavors.

[Cruachan 705]

Too many hours tweaking, too few hours flying.

Hi Randy,Now ain't that the truth! I should know, I've spent my fair share over the years. You could say that the time spent doggedly trying to make this thing work as well as it can on the available hardware has become, by default, part of our hobby. Like all hobbies there are buckets of frustration intermingled with moments of great pleasure and sense of achievement.As I see it, MSFS has always been a pioneering project which has never quite managed to reach its goal. Perhaps it never will. Indeed some would see it as an exercise in coding what's possible, but not necessarily with realistic objectives in mind.I compare FSX and, indeed, its predecessors with an accounting suite which I developed to help run the financial side of my Practice (I was a GP). I started way back on a Commodore 64 using Basic as the programming language. Over time the coding saw significant transformations as the processors of the time grew more powerful (Amiga -> Apricot Xi -> 386DX). In the end I was coding in QuickBasic and my pride and joy was running as a compiled executable. In the beginning the performance was very slow and you would wait for ever while sorting and lengthy calculations were taking place. However, by the time it was running on a 386DX the performance was like lightning! This was, as you can imagine, quite satisfying as I proudly demonstrated my software to others. Little did they know just how inefficient my coding was. It no longer mattered as the processor effectively masked all those inefficiencies. The same may be true for MSFS, including FSX which, arguably, may be proving to be the best example of how the power of the cpu can hide inefficiencies in the way a coding language was used by the developers. This is likely to have occurred of necessity as the thing grew like Topsy and time constrainst would not permit a fresh start.Please don't misunderstand me. I was as saddened as the next person to hear that ACES is no more. However, on a more positive side, perhaps this is what the MSFS franchise really needs, a time to pause and reflect following which, like the phoenix, hopefully it will rise again from the ashes as a thing of unsurpassed excellence and beauty: a fresh start with new ideas and a more modern approach towards solving that perennial problem - how to make MSFS far less hardware dependent for excellent performance.The irony is that despite the fact that further development of the franchise has been halted, FSX will continue to sell and, indeed those sales are likely to grow ever stronger in tandem with future hardware development. Inevitably there will come a time when the product can be seen in all its glory with everything maxed and the trials and tribulations of the first few years following release will be but a distant memory.I would respectfully suggest you sit back for a bit, save your cash and sanity, keep an eye on progress and, when the time is right, resurrect your hobby having built the system which you know will cope with FSX and all her quirky behaviour.Me, I'm sticking with my now 'ancient' ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 (AM2CPU Board) based system using an AMD Athlon 64X2 6400+ along with a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB and 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 and, you know what, I'm often seeing pretty decent performance within the constraints imposed by my hardware.In the end, you are right, we do all spend far too much time fiddling around rather than enjoying the simulator, Who do we blame for that? Ourselves or Microsoft? I think it's a shared responsibility. Shame the consequences can often seem so discouraging.All the best,Mike

[Guest Greystone]

OK, I admit to being a stalker-- watched this forum for years and never engaged. But the flight into KOAK (Oakland) got my attention because it hit home. I went to U.C. Berkeley and flew out of that airport and it has a charm for me. Nice approach into a scenic bay view.I guess we all have our last flights.

[Orlaam 306]

Wow, I guess I'm just lucky. I can count how many CTDs I've had. I really think it just comes down to too many add ons and scenery that is buggy. I spend way more time flying than ever thinking of tweaking.Oh well, good luck and have fun in your next hobby...