What Really is needed in Flight

[n4gix 4,947]

Gerry, I do believe you've got the long and short of it. Although, to be honest ACES was neither fish nor fowl, since although they were a wholly owned MS studio,......and they where technically under the ageis of MS Games Studio, they weren't under the direct control of MS GS, which frankly was -from their point of view at least- an entirely untenable situation.

[dmaher 0]

Gerry, I do believe you've got the long and short of it. Although, to be honest ACES was neither fish nor fowl, since although they were a wholly owned MS studio,......and they where technically under the ageis of MS Games Studio, they weren't under the direct control of MS GS, which frankly was -from their point of view at least- an entirely untenable situation.

Yeah, and the question is why have ACES in the corporate structure to begin with?From MS's POV...it served to confuse the chains of command and increase overhead. (?)With ACES there was a layer of middle managers between MSG and FS.That complicates communication and management as well as adding expense and risk.In the atmosphere of MS-2008 this would have been a good opportunity do some streamlining.The upshot of ACES (for us) was these managers were real advocates for FS and the ACES simulation engine.I think MSG management will have a broader corporate view and be more risk adverse.And if the promotional material for Flight is any indication, they are taking a low risk strategy.Look at FSX, particularly the introduction material on the CD, it reads exactly like Flight...almost to the word.The new target market is the old target market...and that’s as low risk as you get.Bottom line, if FSX appealed to you - so will Flight.

[Toys_R_Us 0]

While I have done some pretty complex things in FSX, I later found myself mostly enjoying the simpler aspects of the game. I find myself quite happy just flying around in places I'd like to explore in real life, in a relatively slow airplane, enjoying the scenery. Manual touch and go's are always fun too. And I especially like flying around at night in a very dark room (pitch black if possible, while using a lighted keyboard such as my Logitech G15. I wish all second screen windows could be on a black background and extremely dimmable.Most of all I enjoy a good second screen navigation program with autopilot "fly to" features. The old FSNavigator and FSCommander both fit that bill very well. And yes, I really enjoy doing full IRS landings at times. All those little cars buzzing around on the interstates at night when coming into major airports is pretty neat too.Pretty simple these days for me !!!Bob (Las Cruces, NM)PS.... Short of a good navigation program capability, I'll probably go back to FSX now that even cheap computers are cranking out at nearly 5 G's on O.C.

[SamYeager 244]

As I see it a key requirement is for MS to enable 3rd party developers to add greater value to Flight. I realise that previous FS versions already allowed this to some extent through the SDK and the associated APIs. I'm merely saying that they need to further build upon this. To my mind the last article in PC Pilot hinted at this.I don't particularly expect MS to add much in terms of additional features as such. I fully expect them to look at existing features, sort out the worst of any outstanding bugs and possibly enhance them. Its possible that they may cull the odd feature depending on perceived popularity and MS support cost.

[Jeff 0]

I agree with opening up Flight more to third party developers. Important things will be 3rd party aircraft, AI traffic, scenery, ATC and weather. These all need to be fully open to developers with guidelines the developers need to follow properly.I feel the ACES team missed the mark big time with FSX. It was FS2004 with more eye candy. We are almost 6 years into FSX and still can't really run it smooth. I have a high end system and still am not happy with FSX. I am still using FS2004. It will be important that Flight run not good but great out of the box with full features. It has to be realistic out of the box to satisfy everybody. It has to be completely new code that is efficient to run on current hardware.

[JSkorna 137]

Why does everyone think that FS has been so closed off to third party developers? FS 2002 is open, FS 2004 is open, FSX is open. I just don't get it!

[SamYeager 244]

Why does everyone think that FS has been so closed off to third party developers?

I don't think that and I never said that either. I merely said they need to enhance further so that 3rd party developers can create even better add-ons.

[JSkorna 137]

Sam,You used the words "some extent" and "need to build upon". The tools are there, though they may not be the easiest to use at times--especially with FSX, that I will agree with!

[mgh 89]

Flight is new and it seems likely to involve an on-line market so what happened in the past may not be too relevant. Microsoft's approach to 3rd party developers could change. For example, it could contract/licence selected companies to develop for that market place Such evidence as I've seen (job advertisements including the word SDK) would are equally applicable to that approach as to any other.

[Jeff 0]

Jim,Never said they were so closed off. I just said they need to open up more. Reason why is take two third party ATC programs. They both have problems interacting with AI. Expecially on the ground handling. You have said before that ASE has limitations because of the weather engine in FS2004 and FSX. If they open up more to third party developers then those limitations will be fewer and easier to work with.Jeff

[JSkorna 137]

Jeff, It's not that I disagree but I experience both sides. It can be %100 open, documented, supported, featured, and so on, but down below the SDK's there is still a base program that you need to interact with. When that base program has limitations, and all software programs do have limitations, then it doesn't matter about how open the SDKs are. The limitations are not in the SDKs, but in the base programs themselves.