Following up on vote results, I thought this might be of interest to everybody. I just found this on the insider site:quote startWhy don't members of the Flight Simulator team participate in forums and newsgroups?In the last several years, the growth of the Internet has allowed thousands of Microsoft Flight Simulator enthusiasts to share their hobby via Web sites, Internet newsgroups, and online forums. Most of us on the Flight Simulator team visit those Web sites, newsgroups and forums daily, but for several reasons, we don't post messages or respond to questions. First, the ephemeral nature of forums and related media make it hard to deliver information consistently. Forums are a lot like talk radio -- entertaining and informative, but also freeform. Even forums that are supposed to focus on specific topics contain many off-subject postings, and threads tend to meander, much like conversation. An answer posted today quickly gets lost in the flood of messages that follows tomorrow. It's also hard to find specific information in a busy forum. As enthusiasts who participate in forums well know, the same questions reappear frequently because newcomers don't search archives or don't recognize that the question they want to ask has already been answered. And many users still don't participate in forums. Finally, time and accuracy come into play. Keeping up with several forums is a time-consuming job (and to be fair to the entire Flight Simulator community, we could not restrict our postings to just one Web site). It's also critically important that we thoroughly review questions and post accurate replies instead of replying off-the-cuff. It's much more efficient for us to read postings and articles on popular Web sites, review email sent directly to us and our product support team, and then get together to discuss the issues that the community is raising. We can then prepare articles, tips, etc., to address those questions and comments. We've decided that the best approach for communicating with the Flight Simulator community is through this Web site. We can consolidate answers to common questions, pass along the latest news from the Flight Simulator team, and keep extensive, organized archives of information in one place. Enthusiasts can submit product suggestions directly to the Flight Simulator team via the [email protected] e-mail alias. (Please note that although the team reads every message sent to the [email protected] alias, we cannot reply to those messages. If you need technical support or have a question about Flight Simulator, please follow the instructions in the Customer Service and Help article on this Web site.) We're committed to responding more quickly and effectively. We hope that you'll find this Web site a useful resource for news, tips, fun activities, and help, direct from the Flight Simulator team. quote end

Where did you get this from??? I went to the Insider site and couldn't find this article...

Hello, Well this was available for fs2002 also.http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimul...02_readback.aspBestEric

Thats why threads like the below are so important for us users to reply too.NPhttp://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search

Hi,They may have a point ot two, but most of that sounds like they are trying to come up with excuses to me. The most relevant point they had that I saw is..."Keeping up with several forums is a time-consuming job (and to be fair to the entire Flight Simulator community, we could not restrict our postings to just one Web site)."The point of the poll is that MS doesn't treat customers to the same kind of customer service that many other game developers do, with responses to questions, be it forum based e-mail or whatever, patches, ect. But, at some point, you have to get your butt in gear pick your turf and get the ball rolling! IMHO the best example of this within our own MSFS community is the PMDG support forum. While maybe not as complex as MSFS itself, it is a pretty complex sim within the sim, and is a shining example of forum based customer service. I do have some understanding of reluctance too though. For example with PMDG again, the founder Mr. Randazzo threatened to shut the forum down at one point due to bashing. But they're still going, and going strong. Oh, and they answer support questions via e-mail too btw.Regards,Jim

Frankly, I can't blame MS for its approach. It sells millions of copies of its FS program, vs thousands at a firm like PSS or PMDG. Yet the team is not proportionately bigger. This would be an extraordinary burden for them.I can't fault MS' customer service. I complained about the flashing with the radeon cards and received prompt, personal attention (most likely from India, I imagine.). They did suggest the only solution to the problem at the time (use the 3.2 drivers) and made a real effort to help me solve the problems. That said, it was a bit disapointing to hear their costomer service rep tell me that the multi-monitor set-up was the same in 2002 as it was in 2004, despite the obvious fact that it isn't. He clearly had never loaded up FS2002 and tried it with more than one monitor.I think that MS is reasonably responsive to this community. FS2002 evolved directly in response to complaints about smoothness and performance. FS2004 did so again, responding to complaints about weather. The other thing to remember is that the community on AVSIM is under the very thin part of the curve. Most users of computer games log about 30 hours and that's it. That is where the money is. It's a bit like elections. We are the base that they can pretty much count on year in and year out and we are not a huge market. Look at the number of accounts at AVSIM. Between 5,000 and 7,000 discret users if I remember correctly. Compared to the millions of users world wide, we are not significant from a financial point of view. Just my thoughts.

This, as pointed out, is exactly what they posted in the early days of release for FS2002. And indeed, nothing since has changed with their support since the early, early FS days (FS4, etc) outside of the above website.Unfortunately, that web site provides little of value to real developers needing real inside information on FS innards. Nor does it provide any type of guidance to general users who wish to know where their time and investment is headed.I think the gist of how out-of-date the above policy is, is the snippet from it above: "and threads tend to meander, much like (a) conversation". That, indeed, is the whole point. Its exactly the lack of conversations with Ace Game Studio developers that is required in this day and age of customer support.The proof of this is simple to quote: IL2, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, Quake, Unreal, Fly!, etc, etc. Those end-user game communities had and have thriving "meandering conversations" all the time with the inside developers. This makes a massive difference: there is little of the bashing your head against a wall for months trying to solve something on your own or in small end-user groups that an insider could point an answer to in minutes.Nobody expects Ace Game Studio insiders to think of all possibilities concerning what the end user designers and general community members might need post release (specially after an SDK release, whenever that might be as usual)... Thus, having direct (but controlled) access to inside developers to fill in important gaps in understanding and design is exactly the point.The fact that the "insider" site has provided extremely little of the "insider" access, information and answers requested for three years throughout the community just proves how bad the above policy is. Indeed, MS Game Studio's is way behind most other successful gaming houses in this regard.Take care,Elrond

"We've decided that the best approach for communicating with the Flight Simulator community is through this Web site. We can consolidate answers to common questions, pass along the latest news from the Flight Simulator team, and keep extensive, organized archives of information in one place. Enthusiasts can submit product suggestions directly to the Flight Simulator team via the [email protected] e-mail alias. (Please note that although the team reads every message sent to the [email protected] alias, we cannot reply to those messages. If you need technical support or have a question about Flight Simulator, please follow the instructions in the Customer Service and Help article on this Web site.)"We're committed to responding more quickly and effectively. We hope that you'll find this Web site a useful resource for news, tips, fun activities, and help, direct from the Flight Simulator team."Herein lies the fundamental source of the complaints. Sufficient information is not being provided in a timely fashion. Correcting that will go a long way towards keeping the community happy and the third-party developers moving forward rather than stumbling in the dark.If the team doesn't want to have a forum or directly answer questions, that's perfectly fine. Collect silently if you wish but provide the community more information more quickly.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

Well, yesterday I typed in my comments for about half an hour. Unfortunately, avsim was in a 'sleep' phase when I pressed the send button and every thing was lost. mental note to self: make a copy before pressing send!I'll try again:>Forums are a lot like talk radio. An answer posted today>quickly gets lost in the flood of messages that follows>tomorrow. Yet, as Elrond pointed out, many other game companies do this successfully. What we are asking for is indeed that FS team members take part in this freeform communication. However, no one expects FS team members to run the show. Just the occosional reply where need may be.>It's also hard to find specific information in a busy forum.>As enthusiasts who participate in forums well know, the same>questions reappear frequently because newcomers don't search>archives or don't recognize that the question they want to ask>has already been answered. Not a problem. The community should take care of that. The point we are trying to make is that we'd like to have _some_ (inoffical) feedback. That the feedback indeed reaches everyone who may be interested is up to the community, not FS team members. That's how forums work. No one wants FS staff members to answer questions that have been answered already. Hey, we want you to develop new and exciting features for the next FS release instead of wasting your time.>It's also critically important>that we thoroughly review questions and post accurate replies>instead of replying off-the-cuff. As a cynical answer, I could say that many officially published SDKs contain severe omissions and mistakes. So what is the point you are trying to make? The non-cynical answer is that we don't care too much if an answer is "off-the-cuff" in a forum discussion. It will be taken as being inofficial and mistakes on behalf of the FS team will surely be forgiven. To me it seems to be a better approach than releasing flawed official SDKs.>(and to be fair to the entire Flight Simulator community, we could>not restrict our postings to just one Web site)Indeed a problem. I would still suggest that forum participation would be limited to just one forum for practical reasons. There would have to be a disclaimer that the web site has been chosen for practical reasons only, not as a preference over other web sites, every reply is to be taken as highly inofficial, etc, etc. FS team members would have to be clearly marked as such, otherwise we'll get those jokers replying "I'm a FS staff member and ...".Another solution would be an addition to the Insider site which would be something like a "FAQ for the _real_ insider", where specific technical answers that only the FS team can answer will be posted. However, this FAQ would have to be updated FREQUENTLY, more so after a new release, but probably it would become less active over time (as the number of unanswered technical questions would die down).Or create a private forum, where people have to apply to get in (not that I would necessarily think it's the best solution), but certainly better than what we have now.To summarise: What we envision here is an occasional reply from an FS staff member to a very specific technical question or problem that has not been answered already by anyone and most likely can't be answered by anyone else.Example:me: "the terrain vector data SDK is incomplete in regards to the VTP lines. In VTPWidePoint uReserved is sometimes not set to zero and the following data structure doesn't follow the SDK. I have done some poking around and found that some part of the structure seems to be made up of struct{ UINT24 uX:12 UINT24 uY:12}but I still can't work the complete data structure out."FS team member: "The uReserved is a counter on how many "sub-points" follow VTPWidePoint. The sub-point struct looks like this:struct{ UINT24 uWidth:1 // if this is 1, a VTPWidePointWidth follows UINT24 uX:11 UINT24 uReserved:1 // this is 0 UINT24 uY:11}"BTW: this took me over a YEAR to work out, and if it wouldn't have been to someone elses ideas, I'd still be biting my teeth out.I would urge you to reconsider your position on dynamic user interaction. I think that both sides can benefit immensely from this. At least give a second thought and possiby a trial run... Cheers, Christian

Exactly right Christian. Right on the head in fact. That example shows perfectly what the problem is and how much direct developer interaction could help this community. And not help just the developers, but all users: because better and direct technical answers provides better and faster improvements in third party addons that *all* users want.A policy change to match existing norms would be good for third party developers, good for users, and indeed good for the reputation of the company and their bottom line with better and faster addons that grow the market.Take care,Elrond

So restricting themselves to one website would not be `fair` on the community? How so, if that website was their own, staffed by both MSFS development team members AND specialists from the aftermarket industry and particularly so if the alternative is what is happening now, which is no interraction whatsoever. Is that `fair`?Discussions - meandering or other - could take place on forums outside of the FS-run forum. Their forum could be restricted by moderation or function to specific and up-to-date guidance or summary of current knowledge. But at least it would enable feedback, directly, in BOTH directions and might go a long way toward overcoming the criticism of their aloofness which is not in keeping with what the market now demands.In the short term they should also update their Insider site at least once a week, just to keep US up to date with things. We are owed that much, surely?Allcott

"A policy change to match existing norms would be good for third party developers, good for users, and indeed good for the reputation of the company and their bottom line with better and faster addons that grow the market."... Amen to that!Mike