Sad News About FS2004- Please Read

[Guest]

I wouldn't be surprised if an X-Box version is the ONLY version in the very near future.If I were the MSFS team and I'd read these constants rants and flames about my product where people blow minor things and cosmetic flaws way out of proportion I'd call it quits and create the next doom clone instead.Easier to make, shorter time to market, higher sales volume and thus far more profit.

[Guest]

Of course your reasoning is flawed...How many of those people would have bought the 15 million dollar sim instead, that's the real question.Indeed for every 237000 copies of MSFS sold one could buy a single full motion sim. Given a sales volume of about a million copies that's 4 FMSs.I don't think Microsoft would sell 4 units if each cost 15 million in this market. They'd not sell a single one.

[Guest otter55]

"The new flight model really sucks ! "simply amazing!there must be 2 versions of 2004 being bought because the default ac that i have been flying (cub,172, caravans) all have greatly improved flight models. so good in fact, that i will not be modifying them in any way.btw, i log at least 10 hrs a week in the real world. i do have some idea what a real ac feels like.don

[Guest]

>The interesting thing to me is 98% of the people who will buy>FS2004 - including many hardcore simmers in our community>correct flight model from an incorrect one. It took a group>of very talented people to identify the bug - and I bet 90% of>the general simming public (myself included), had no idea what>they were discussing.>Well said, and at least 90% of the people who are now screaming it's a terrible problem don't have the first clue as to why or what the problem is in the first place, and wouldn't know the difference if it weren't there.>But what bothers me more than anything is the general attitude>that MS is "out to screw us and can't do anything right." In>case you missed the last 5 years, go check out some of the>AVSIM reviews from FS98 and see how much this product has>progressed in the last 5 years. Is it perfect? Of course>not, but it's pretty darn impressive.>Well said. It's only because "as real as it gets for the price we charge you for it" that that's not the marketing slogan.>At the risk of sound like some of the more "mature" members of>our community that always blast the impatience of the younger>generation - I remember how much fun I had with FS3 where I>happily tooled around 5 geographical areas in cotton ball>clouds and no add-on aircraft. I was amazed that I could>simulate flight for $50.>You ARE the more mature crowd.Not just in physical age but definitively mental age as well. I class the whiners and complainer as mental babies, the type of kid who whines constantly to his mummy to get a sweet until she gives in.They expect Microsoft to be just as easy to get to do their bidding.

[Guest Len]

Thanks for the post. I missed it other times so at times thoughtful messages need to be reposted. I don't understand the whining about reposting. People actually miss some of these posts. But maybe the solution is to keep bumping it.

[Guest]

ah, the wisdom of the schoolkid who never had to earn a living.Guess what, there's hundreds of people and tens of thousands of hours of work gone into producing the product.Then there's the cost of transportation, marketing, support (yes, someone IS reading all your rants and flames and deciding based on who's most civilised what problems and suggestions will be taken into account when deciding on a service pack and features for a potential new version (and those rants may well play a role in deciding if there will even be a new version!).Development of the product cost the company probably around $10 million.Marketing, production and sales of 1.5 million copies (an optimistic guess but not unrealistic) is another $30 million.That makes $40 million cost to get the product to us the customers.Of the $100 million those customers pay for the product (given the higher prices outside the US), roughly 50% goes directly to taxes (salestax and taxes on corporate income).That leaves Microsoft with a grand total of $10 million for support issues, investment into R&D for the next release, as well as profit (before taxes...).For a team of 200 people earnings of $10 million over 2 years is appallingly low in the software industry.That's $25000 per person per year, or about $10 a day per person (not counting weekends).After setting aside half that for R&D, and some of the rest for taxes, that leaves Microsoft with a net profit on MSFS sales and support of roughly $3 per team member per hour.When I was employed as a consultant I made a lot bigger profits than that, and that in an environment where consultancy fees are less than half what they are in the US.

[Guest Len]

>MS won't try to kill the very market that makes FS sell so much.Actually not. We people who are the die-hards, who purchase the add-on payware, design planes, sceneries, etc. are the minority by far considering the amount of people who purchase the flight sim series. A POTENTIAL huge market maybe. But the FS series hasn't grown significantly because of the addons and third party developers and purchasers. It's grown because it has delivered a better base product than its competitors (the Fly series for example). The latter have been reduced to almost 0 by MS - the only game in town X-plane which really is not a mainstream commercial competitor. Makes you wonder.

[Guest]

Yes, GAME.You'd be surprised at the number of people who never land themselves.I've seen questions on why the frequency for the autoland is missing on so many airports, people can't land there (they of course mean there is no ILS, think it's a bug that there isn't an ILS on every runway in the world).In other forums there are regular questions about the "land me" feature they heard about (or had) in FS98 and where can they find it in FS200x.People don't know how to navigate, if they have no GPS coupled autopilot they get lost when they loose sight of the airfield.90%+ of users doesn't have a clue about what you can do with FS, and 90% of those wouldn't care if they did.To them it IS a game. They WANT aircraft that are dumbed down so they can show off to mummy and friends that they can fly a 747 (clicking on the autopilot on takeoff and letting it fly itself to a perfect landing of course).If you want something more than a game, either get yourself a full motion sim or a real aircraft.

[Guest]

FSEdit was so bug riddled as to be almost useless.I guess the team got a load of questions from people who had messed up their aircraft using it and went complaining to Microsoft that their product no longer worked.Attitudes like that are the cause for closing down the sytem more and more.The less people can change, the less they can mess up and blame the manufacturer.

[Guest]

>Amen !>>My anger was caused by the impression I got from the original>post: i.e. that Microsoft deliberately and intentionally>"downgraded" the product in order to handicap the competition.>Which of course is as far from the truth as you can get!It's a typical anti-Microsoft conspiracy theory, just like the "Microsoft is stealing all your personal data and giving it to the NSA when you use Windows" that was floating around the net 2 years ago.1) there IS no competition between Microsoft and others to create addons simply because Microsoft isn't even in that market (it's way too small for them).2) there is no dumbing down, just some changed defaults and some things moved between the airfile and the aircraft.cfg. If you check the latter it's now a lot larger, and AFAIK textfiles are far easier to edit than binary ones...3) Microsoft did not make the FDEs less realistic to prevent terrorists from learning to fly using their product. In my experience so far the FDEs seem better than the ones in FS2002, and many people agree with me.>>If this is a false impression based on incomplete information,>I will be the first to apologize (humbly !).>Good. That's what we want to hear.>For once I wish that I misunderstood the whole issue and that>the SDK will reveal a new and innovative way to tweak the>flight model... >I think you misunderstood. It seems this entire issue is just someone who wants to harm Microsoft (maybe a wannabee competitor??? It wouldn't be the first time) and/or misunderstands something they see or read somewhere posting a flame in order to further their agenda.

[Guest]

>If you want something more than a game, either get yourself a>full motion sim or a real aircraft.O.K. You have convinced me! I will do that! Just send me the necessary money. Shall I email you my account number or do you like to send me the money by cheque/international money order?

[Guest Len]

Since when has the goal been to NOT have a realistic flight model? Or NOT APPROXIMATE true flight physics. The "it's just a $50 sim" crowd would like to aim for the lowest common denominator. All that is being advocated by those who know about aerodynamics and flight physics is that you DON'T need a multi-million dollar sim to APPROXIMATE real flight dynamics. If the intent is to merely criticize those who want to bring a closer approximation to true flight dynamics on an economical basis because, well gee, MS is being criticized (again), than you've lost your crowd. If you don't think it's possible (to bring such an approximate model) than take up your argument technically with those experts who say you CAN approximate without a multi-million dollar sim. These guys have got my vote.

[Guest]

According to your calculations Microsoft must be bankrupt already!

[Guest]

>>The interesting thing to me is 98% of the people who will>buy>>FS2004 - including many hardcore simmers in our community>>correct flight model from an incorrect one. It took a group>>of very talented people to identify the bug - and I bet 90%>of>>the general simming public (myself included), had no idea>what>>they were discussing.>>>Well said, and at least 90% of the people who are now>screaming it's a terrible problem don't have the first clue as>to why or what the problem is in the first place, and wouldn't>know the difference if it weren't there.That

[Guest gasebah]

Jeroen,it is very rarely that I adress someone in the way I do now. But your posts really stick out in this and other forums. I can just remember a post where you stated that the serious simmer goes windowed mode. They are almost all inapropriate and not contributing to any of the threads they appear. This not a minor cosmetic flaw. I am sure that you did not even take the time to read what was written above. And even if you had I doubt that you have any expertise to speak up in the way you did here or in many other threads of the verious flightsim forums. And if one day their is only an X-Box version of FS it is especially people like you that are contributing to it. Not everybody who has a problem or is not completely satisfied with FS9 is a whiner. The troll here is you. To all other simmers I apologize for this OT post. But I really cannot stand this anymore without sayin sumpn.Alex