Interesting Job Openings...

[Lord Farringdon 477]

Of course these speculations are interesting and depending on your point of view may hold a glimmer of hope for the future of the flight sim franchise, but I think we often read too much into these things. For example whatever happened to the Cascade Game Foundry? Formed in April last year by some ex Aces Studio folk, they put out a very promising press release in October 2009 and on their web site stated "Stay tuned for more exciting announcements in the coming weeks!". Well all I can say is that these guys must have switched freqs because they're not transmitting on this one anymore! In the end we know as much about what they are doing as we do about what MS is doing. I just hope someone is doing something! :( Terry

[mgh 89]

Exactly! Let's wait until someone, somewhere, actually delivers something. As they say, words are cheap!

[mgh 89]

He might be my father-in-law, and we both got out over ten years ago, but I still call him sir. Just to be safe! :( Cheers, SLuggy

A Regimental Sergeant Major at a UK officer training academy used to tell new entries of officer cadets "I call you Sir and you call me Sir. The difference between us is that when you say it you mean it!"

[n4gix 4,947]

A Regimental Sergeant Major at a UK officer training academy used to tell new entries of officer cadets "I call you Sir and you call me Sir. The difference between us is that when you say it you mean it!"

That's precious! Technically though, since they are still only "cadets" and not yet "commissioned officers," they have in a very real sense considerably less "command authority" than the enlisted training cadre... IOW, even a lowly Lance Corporal in the cadre "outranks" 'em! :( In the U.S. Army, it wasn't at all unusual to have even a gruff Sergeant Major in an OCS program having to submit to the "command authority" of even a lowly Private First Class, if said PFC were assigned as a member of the training cadre!!! :(

[Guest jonthedoors]

All I hear are rumours, so far.I've heard that Flight1 were going to make a simulator to pick up where ACES left off, that google were going to make a full sim.It's all just word of mouth until someone proves what they're doing.Personally I think the guys who did IL2 should pick it up. Use the same game engine, but add commercial and civil aircraft, and revamp the scenery. I think that'd be a winner.

[ccaughie 0]

I've heard that Flight1 were going to make a simulator to pick up where ACES left off, that google were going to make a full sim.

Don't you mean Aerosoft? Or are Flight1 working on one as well?I've been following the Aerosoft forum for their fledgeling project, but there hasn't been any actual news for a while. Last I heard they seemed to be trying to make the numbers add up. Here's hoping they do.Colin

[WhiteKnight77 0]

[Tabs 2,790]

Just want to point something out here for those of you who aren't general gamers aside from FS. When Microsoft uses the term "Live" they're only referring to Internet-enabled software. Yes, the multiplayer part of the Xbox 360 is called Xbox Live, but they also have Games for Windows Live, Office Live, Windows Live, etc. "Flight Live" would in no way mean that something is an Xbox 360 game. A civil flight simulator on 360 doesn't even make sense - consoles are the realm of military style games like Ace Combat, HAWX etc.

[dmaher 0]

I

[Computermensch 0]

Yep, you can speculate or wait for any announcements allthough professional announcements are rarely made before you are good to go.So I prefer to speculate to understand what to expect :) It is also interesting to see if those features will be there or left out. Software products must at least be state of the art in terms of features and technology just to enter the competition for market and cost. So I hope for something exciting taking all of those legacy software infrastructure features beyond the flight simulation application itself to modern technology.Must of the stuff I have read about including the job postings mostly dealt with new stuff for the software infrastructure and probably HD content. But hopefully we will also get cutting edge features for the application itself bringing something new like machine based vision to help "touch" the controls in the aircraft. Microsoft has that technology around for cutting edge user interaction (touch screens is an old thing mates) so they should use it. You could also have voice recognition with ATC - and this time you should definitely be able to fly anywhere in space. Then the models from Orbiter can go into that environment as well. So even more immersive hopefully making it more interesting for everybody beyond flight simmers. Now Microsoft is concerned with the potential for this kind of game - the software services and new game infrastructure is just the "simple" upgrade and secondary features (technicalities). The complex upgrade and primary features should still be to expand the possibilities and potential of the game itself i.e. vision, speech and the most important enhancement: vehicles leaving the ground should now be able to go beyond Earths environment. So hopefully Microsoft also understands the competition and will do more than just a migration to a new software infrastructure and a resolution switch for the content.BTW I also forgot to mention that the scenery feature will probably (logically) be organized into something like the domain of Virtual Earth - for space we will need something a bit more major than just the Earth environment. It would make sense for models to be deployed in that kind of environment and used for other simulations as well. FS is just one application of the World - but it could become the one that transforms a model environment like Virtual Earth into something fun as the scenery stuff has done for all of us here. Virtual Earth or Google Earth integration is not a new cutting edge feature though but just state-of-the-art by now thus a must have automation feature for the product. I already know of modellers who locate those models in Google Earth and Virtual Earth.For interests in Cascade Game Foundry started by some former ACES employees they are looking for a new kind of market according to themselves. No announcements made yet. They have made an interview around december though presenting a little more about where they may be going for game titles concerned with simulation.http://www.incgamers.com/Interviews/228/ca...undry-interview

[Computermensch 0]

Finally, since this is flight simulation Microsoft should add more realism to the aerodynamics allthough they may intend otherwise considering "flight simulation for all". Anyway with a little software factory and some design patterns those algoritms can be switched in the game to satisfy anybody. I.e. you could pratically switch algorimths.In fact may be Microsoft should buy some of the physics from Lamar Research and breed the two. X-Plane also goes beyond the Earth but they probably do not have the money to make everything in FS available in a shorter term. It will take Lamar Research many releases while users keep waiting for X-Plane to become FS in terms of most features except for the realism and out-of-Earth thing.Let's see how fast Lamar Research can go ...In a new FS you will be able to fly out of the Earth - so will FS get more realistic aerodynamics? Doubt it but hope it. It could be done with a compositional software design for the algorithms controlling the aerodynamics.

[Murmur 3,941]

Oh no... Not another X-Plane vs FSX hijack please...

[Guest LCSims]

Let's see how fast Lamar Research can go ...

Your pontifications would hold more water if you correctly named the developer of X-Plane, Laminar Research.

[Computermensch 0]

BTW My point was not to do a FS vs. X-Plane here ... I am not interested in that but rather interested in Microsoft also managing more than the technical side of the next FS (new software infrastructure). I have not read about any upgrade to the application business quality yet (flying). Only about changing the technical quality.So I went into some more specific details about the applications quality itself in the previous post. That FS could be enhanced like going into space as well as in flying - since a new release also should bring something new to the application. That would be nice.So I just happened to think about flying some aircrafts or vehicles out of the atmosphere and so happended I was researching whether to just try X-Plane out because of the aerodynamics. But except for those features FSX and ESP is a strong platform. I have developed for ESP and would not be able to use X-Plane just a cheaply to configure the software.Yesterday I just happened to take a look at X-Plane and noticed that the virtual physics could allow you to go into space and something about the aerodynamics. However, except for that X-Plane lacks almost any other feature ... traffic, AI, VC's and so on. So it is rather far from FS and I did not want to buy it. But I think the two features are important to bring to FS, especially that you can leave the atmosphere which would require some new simulated physics anyway. Anyway, that's why I just added the part about X-Plane in the post. In the long term, the business of flying will be more important than technical upgrades. So the problem for Microsoft can be if they never decide to bring that quality into FS. Meanwhile if any simulation gets there people will start switching. Looking for nice aircrafts yesterday as well I also stumbled across this post. I offers another view on the XBox side presenting visuals from different recent flying games:http://indiafoxtecho.blogspot.com/search/label/Xbox%20360So it is really not a matter of FS vs. X-Plane ... but there are coming more and more flying games (simulations). So it is about positioning FS. If FS is still supposed to be the have-it-all solution ... it really has ... I just pointed out that the only important flying features that is not there at all to my best of kowledge is the possiblity to switch aerodynamics for the world and flying into space. Both lacks have been pointed out through the years so it is not about X-Plane suddenly got a great idea. So finally bringning those 2 flying features in will make it super complete.Then everything can be migrated into that enironment - and the application infrastructure could even be used to wrap up more games - i.e. release a configured FS gameengine for a simple war game with 2-3 fighters, a second world war scenery and different algorithms for the aerodynamics. Possibly FSX already have it but may be used as an internal feature to reuse the platform for game creation like the example just above.Lets see ...