Newsletter + NEW PHOTOS

[mmann 72]

At the end of the day, Flight (as in all other computer programs) is just 0's and 1's. It really doesn't matter what the source code looks like, it is how the program performs on a persons computer that matters.Regards, Mike Mann

[alainneedle1 97]

Having said that, it's evdent from what past and present ACES members said, and the peliminary screen shots that they are indeed rewiting some core aspects of it.They are not just puting s fresh coat of paint on it. They are doing major structural work on it also.

I agree, that is something they should have done before releasing FSX with their DX10 preview and we would not be having that discussion today......:(

[MatthewS 761]

Mathew, what part of "we’re still early in the development cycle" do you not understand?

So they are meant to release Flight this year (2011) and yet they are still early in the development cycle? How are they going to rewrite Flight from scratch and still release this year? FSX took over 2 years and that is based on FS2004. They reason they can still release this year is because they are basing Flight on the FSX code-base, and not completely writing Flight from scratch.

Wait until he finds out all the photos are a result of changes they made along time ago to ESP. And they haven't even shown any "flight" stuff yet.

So we haven't actually seen any Flight specific enhancements yet? You agree then that if what we have seen is really Flight then it must be based on the FSX and not a rewrite from scratch.

Having said that, it's evdent from what past and present ACES members said, and the peliminary screen shots that they are indeed rewiting some core aspects of it.They are not just puting s fresh coat of paint on it. They are doing major structural work on it also.

What's evident from the screenshots is that they are predominately just putting a 'fresh coat of paint' on FSX and calling it Flight. Of course they are adding some totally new features like the Live/Marketplace integration, and this is the primary reason MS is developing Flight in the first place, to cash in on the "AppStore" craze. What past ACES members said is irrelevant to what the current Flight dev team is doing. Show me the URL where current ACES members (ie current Flight devs) have said anything outside the Flight website News section. Look at this quote from the Flight Website:-"the fact that you comment on the similarity to FSX is great! This comment alone should ease some of the arcade concerns."Why would they say our "arcade concerns" are eased just because Flight looks like FSX? It doesn't follow that just because Flight looks like FSX it will not be "arcade" unless Flight is also based on the same FSX code-base.

[dmaher 0]

I think because we're using the same terms to mean slightly different things we’ll have a hard time agreeing - like built from ‘scratch'.What the heck is that supposed to mean? ;)I’ve worked on many games from ‘scratch’ – I assure you they weren’t actually built from ‘scratch’. They’re always prototyped from working engines…even when we have a long-long way to go.Yes working components are stripped away and replaced.But, even for a new game it is vitally important there is a working build throughout production.The idea of a scratch built engine is a bit of a myth as far as I’m concerned.It’s something for the PR folks to chew on.If you look at the development of Flight, we may very well be getting a substantially new, if you like ‘scratch built’, engine – not my term of course.It's been published, up until the closing of Aces there was a very strategic plan to leverage one engine for three products.The engine team was split off and I can only assume was making substantial changes with an eye for new hardware, new methods.Pulling the engine folks away from the production team is a great strategy if you can afford it - because innovation itself becomes a major goal for the engine team….not just production support.Sure there is a debate about how much Flight will actually benefit from that strategy.And there is absolutely no way we can tell – today – if they are using elements from that ACES core engine team.But my opinion is there has been no evidence to indicate Flight isn’t a direct continuation of that work.Generally I think people don’t like going backwards to go forward…so I suspect every possible effort was made to secure that work.

I have my doubts that they are doing such a major rewrite. It's obviously not being rewritten from 'scratch' because we still see the same 'bugs' in the Flight screens/movies as we see in FSX, namely:-

• Stars brighter than sun
• Wheels sinking into ground
• Auto-gen building heights far too tall making every house look the size of a small warehouse
• Distant rivers/roads still sticking out like a 'sore thumb' because the autogen doesn't extend that far and no attempt has been made to partly obscure the rivers/roads using some type of texture overlay.

The first three are aspects of the art…the data not the engine. As you know, data is re-exported to suit changes in the engine. So I’d absolutely ignore the art. It would be a ham-handed move to orphan the art. The last item is an aspect of real-time color by vertex lighting…CBV alpha is used to make distance objects fade away. There’s no reason to believe the FSX engine couldn’t be made do this- it's trivial. So it could be an FSX ‘tweak’ - as it’s been called. The only evidence I’d look at is the in-game video. We’d don’t know what sort of PC they were using, but they are drawing a lot of auto gen. Much more than my quad-core could draw.

[JoeD 0]

Neither MS or the developers ever said (or hinted) when Flight would be released. The fall 2011 date is a pure guess by some and has no basis in fact. Can we at least put this to rest?The anouncement of "Fight" was made just to publically anounce that work has resumed on a new sim with a new name......that's all.Why a Flight web site? It's pure marketing designed to keep public interest high.Also, keep in mind that ACES was working on a new sim for a substantial period before ACES was disbanded.

[frankla 45]

What's evident from the screenshots is that they are predominately just putting a 'fresh coat of paint' on FSX and calling it Flight. Of course they are adding some totally new features like the Live/Marketplace integration, and this is the primary reason MS is developing Flight in the first place, to cash in on the "AppStore" craze.

Matthew, MS has told us in their Q&A section that their priority is making Flight work on "Today's Hardware" so that it can be used by broader public. FSX's flaw was that it only utilized multi-core processors for texture loading which reduced stutters but did not give you extra FPS. They must write the code for Flight so that it could fully utilize multi-core processors. If they, indeed, do write it for multi-core then it will be a lot more than "fresh coat of paint" as you claim. IF they don't program Flight for multi-core, then it might as well be obsolete and dead on arrival.

[MatthewS 761]

Guys, if you believe all the PR spin on the Flight website well then lets hope you're not disappointed and Flight meets all your expectations.I prefer draw conclusions from what I'm seeing in the screenshots/movie. What I see suggests that Flight is using the FSX code-base. I think they will just 'tweak' the existing code (ie change less than 25%) and hopefully fix the performance issues/bugs. Others think they will rewrite large parts of the existing code (more than 50%) so that its effectively a new engine.Either way I hope the Flight devs are reading this thread and the next news update will give the community some clarity rather than just more PR 'waffle'.

[frankla 45]

Guys, if you believe all the PR spin on the Flight website well then lets hope you're not disappointed and Flight meets all your expectations.I prefer draw conclusions from what I'm seeing in the screenshots/movie. What I see suggests that Flight is using the FSX code-base. I think they will just 'tweak' the existing code (ie change less than 25%) and hopefully fix the performance issues/bugs. Others think they will rewrite large parts of the existing code (more than 50%) so that its effectively a new engine.Either way I hope the Flight devs are reading this thread and the next news update will give the community some clarity rather than just more PR 'waffle'.

If there was any 'tweak" for improving performance on the existing FSX code, they would have done it in the two service packs that they worked on, during course of a whole year. The service packs could only help achieve 'up to' 20% improvement, which is nothing if you are getting 8 FPS on all setting maximized. There is nothing left to extract from the old tired code. FSX, as is, gives the best over-clocked PCs hernia. Adding features on top of the tired FSX code will only make it perform even worse. I wish you would not make conclusions on programming a game based on hand full of pictures.

[simmerhead 885]

If Microsoft had any balls we wouldn't be having this discussion. I think the X-Plane guys are really generous sharing their progress http://www.x-plane.com/blog/. They also seem to be very aware of what users want and answer many users requests in their blog.

[MatthewS 761]

If there was any 'tweak" for improving performance on the existing FSX code, they would have done it in the two service packs that they worked on, during course of a whole year. The service packs could only help achieve 'up to' 20% improvement, which is nothing if you are getting 8 FPS on all setting maximized. There is nothing left to extract from the old tired code. FSX, as is, gives the best over-clocked PCs hernia. Adding features on top of the tired FSX code will only make it perform even worse.

We know they are reusing the existing FSX code base, that's what the screenshot evidence proves.If like you say SP1/SP2 extracted as much performance out of FSX that was possible then lets hope they do some major rewriting of the FSX code to make it more performant.

I wish you would not make conclusions on programming a game based on hand full of pictures.

What then shall I base my conclusions on if not the screenshot evidence.

If Microsoft had any balls we wouldn't be having this discussion. I think the X-Plane guys are really generous sharing their progress http://www.x-plane.com/blog/. They also seem to be very aware of what users want and answer many users requests in their blog.

Absolutely! The X-Plane developers are to be commended with their open approach to the community. Ben Supnik in particular goes into great details with his blog posts and actually makes the effort to respond to individual questions left by community members. :(

[mmann 72]

If Microsoft had any balls we wouldn't be having this discussion. I think the X-Plane guys are really generous sharing their progress http://www.x-plane.com/blog/. They also seem to be very aware of what users want and answer many users requests in their blog.

If you are an X-Plane sized company, you try to please your customers.If you are a Microsoft sized company, you try to please your stock holders.Regards, Mike Mann

[frankla 45]

We know they are reusing the existing FSX code base, that's what the screenshot evidence proves.If like you say SP1/SP2 extracted as much performance out of FSX that was possible then lets hope they do some major rework of the FSX code to make it more performant. What then shall I base my conclusions on if not the screenshot evidence.Absolutely! The X-Plane developers are to be commended with their open approach to the community. Ben Supnik in particular goes into great details with his blog posts and actually makes the effort to respond to individual questions left by community members. :(

Matthew,A major rework of FSX code to improve performance, as you suggest in your reply, is indeed what I and others have been calling a "new code". If there is a major rework of the code, then its not a 'fresh coat of paint' as you suggested earlier .You say you base your conclusion on Flight because you don't find it visually much different than FSX. Furthermore, you claim that they will add very few minor features; mainly the improved on-line gaming. So let me ask you a question. Why would anyone buy Flight? My friend, people need reasons to pay $70 for a new version of a game. Otherwise they will all buy FSX in the bargain bin.

[tgibson 11]

They didn't give me many reasons to buy FSX over FS9 and I still bought it, and apparently you did too. You don't need much for a new version to sell. The fact that it will be on Windows Live will bring a whole new group of newbies into the game, er sim...I think this argument will be settled later on when we hear about compatibility with FSX:No compatibility: all new engine, started from scratchLimited compatibility: old engine, but major reworkMostly compatible: old engine, just tweaked and graphic tricks added

[JoeD 0]

A former ACES member who is also woking on Flight has already stated that he was pleased that backwards compatability was no longer required.It's a new sim and it's time to move on.http://polypoke.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/why-fsx-has-rough-performance-2/

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

I prefer draw conclusions from what I'm seeing in the screenshots/movie. What I see suggests that Flight is using the FSX code-base. I think they will just 'tweak' the existing code (ie change less than 25%) and hopefully fix the performance issues/bugs. Others think they will rewrite large parts of the existing code (more than 50%) so that its effectively a new engine.

You prefer to make conclusions off of 10 screenshots and one 1min 10sec video showing one location in the world of a flight simulator in early development? :rolleyes:To make Flight run on today's hardware, more than 25% of the code is going to have do be rewritten. Screenshots and videos cannot tell us what they have done with the code, or what it will be, especially this early on.please don't reply to my post with the same crap about "the only difference is that Flight will use Windows Live."