Mike T,Did you speak face to face with the ACES staff as I did in Seattle about their feelings towards their experimental participation? No, you did not.People can and will post what they will, but the general disrespect shown by this community towards the ACES staff has caused them to stop participating ON THEIR OWN TIME.

Jim.Come on... your statement is totally invalid. HOW could I speak to Aces face to face in Seattle? Did I miss the meeting invitation? Did I miss my flight to Seattle for the meetings? Did I fail to read the meeting minutes that were sent to me? NO so OF COURSE I DID NOT. And neither did 99.9% of the other people who went out a purchased FSX. When Aces finally "voluteered" to speak to the "rest of us" the anger surrounding the release of FSX was running high. So we "failed" to meet the criteria for continuing their "experiment"? What criteria was that Jim? Speak to them in a manner of their liking? I tell you what. If you were a developer for Blizzard Entertainment and botched the next version of World of Warcraft. I invite you to volunteer to show up on the Blizzard forums after a bad release and scold the rabid WoW'ers for not talking nice to you. Tell them that they didn't live up to the expectations of your "expriment" and see how well such a elitist statement would go over.Tell me if you were an employee of a chemical company that just spilled chemicals all over a neighborhood and volunteered to go down and answer questions how you would be received. I invite you to tell the people that you are a volunteer and if they don't treat you nicely you will leave. Tell the people that they don't know anything because they weren't in the 9 am meeting.You may have noticed how well the Chairman of BP did when he "volunteered" to walk around down in the Gulf of Mexico and speak to the residents. Look, FSX is just a game, its not going to kill us or end our livelihoods. Its just a stupid computer game for geeks to most people looking in from the outside. HOWEVER, FSX solicits PASSION from those who have made it their hobby. FSX is a part of many people's lives. People use it in their spare time and make time out of their busy schedules and family life to enjoy it. Tens of thousands of people rush home when a new addon they have been waiting for has been released. Thousands of people take the day off when the new version of FS is released. It is a part of our lives in many ways.So, you who WERE at the meetings can blame the messengers of bad news for not presenting it in a way that is pleasing and refreshing to the ear, but I'm too old to put wrap BS in a bow and present it as a pretty gift. I'm not a "FSX sucks kind of guy", but I will be frank and straight with what I have to say. I don't start my emails off explaining how great something is when its not just so someone can feel good about themselves...volunteer or not. Only children need to hear "great job on your test...sure you failed to answer any questions correctly - but great try...keep up the good work."I said it before and I will say it again. Passionate negative feedback is GREAT. Passionate positive feedback is GREAT. Both are valuable to drive YOUR PASSION step up your game and try harder next time or continue doing well. Got a horrible response to your product, get mad and show them what you can really do. Whining about your volunteer time not being valued simply doesn't fly (no pun intended) in this case.Passion comes when your customers want you to HEAR what they are saying. You can't remove negative passion without removing positive passion. Love and Hate are opposite sides of the same coin. Those who don't understand that from either a personal or business perspective will find that BOTH portion of their lives are equally lacking in it.Is hiding and refusing to talk to them going to make everything better? I don't know, but the "ignore it and it will go away" thing has been proven to be a very poor mantra.

That's all nice Mike.

Even six years later, this is fascinating stuff Bill. Many thanks for posting this. Interesting to note the level of computer hardware MS was using at the time. And lastly, it looks like Strategic Goal number 2 backfired big time in that it divided the user base (Well...at least many of the more hardcore folks on the various forums) in my opinion. Again, thanks :(

Yes, they most certainly did miss that goal, didn't they? :( From my POV though, the totally unprecendented level of access that was finally gained seems entirely unlikely to be ressurrected for MS Flight. In a very real sense, the door has slammed shut again and may not ever be unlocked again, which is a real pity... :(

Yes, they most certainly did miss that goal, didn't they? :( From my POV though, the totally unprecendented level of access that was finally gained seems entirely unlikely to be ressurrected for MS Flight. In a very real sense, the door has slammed shut again and may not ever be unlocked again, which is a real pity... :(

Sadly, you're probably right, but I think a lot of it was self-inflicted in combination with angry posters (non-constructive).My impression from Phil Taylor's posts was that he was very good at keeping expectations realistic. Mike's "tdragger" posts seemed like marketing speak that only added fuel to the flames once everyone bought the game and realized it was a performance mess out of the box. People had a right to be upset with a $70 piece of software that performed terribly at release. One only needs to look right now at the train wreck that's IL-2: Cliffs of Dover to see pitchforks and torches after six years in development. There's a prime example of dishonesty (marketing videos), misleading the public(features) and badly broken code by the development team at Maddox 1C.I have that game, it's a performance disaster on my system, but I try to be constructive in my disappointment with the game even though I loath it at the moment.

Interesting points by all...enough even to get me out of the read-only shadows and add my own!I'm enough of a "hardcore" flight simmer that I'm excited by ANY new release, but especially something in the MSFS series. By sheer community involvement I think it's outdone everything else on the market. Having said that, I haven't seen enough about Flight yet to get "really" worked up about it. It looks good (from the screenshots and videos), and the few comments by the dev team seem to show it's heading in a progressive direction. BUT, giving that the MSFS francise has been putting my best computer builds to shame for 10 years now, I won't be totally convinced about Flight until I give it a try. FSX is better than FS9, but I've only been able to run it now- five years after release. Flight may look better, but it better run. I'm hoping it is to FSX what Windows 7 is to Vista- faster, smoother, more stable.Josh

Getting back on topic (somewhat), I'm not sure how anyone could expect their 5-6 year old (older if they started in FS9) addons to work with a new sim and new engine. Perhaps they'll have tools that can quickly convert some things, but I agree with the other posters that to hold back progress that is desperately needed in order to continue to keep some addons on life support would be a mistake. A lot of the addons that are key now hopefully won't even be needed. If textures, weather, aircraft, and vector data are done right the need for older addons becomes lessened.That's not say we won't need new ones that improve on things even more, especially for complex airliners, but I'm hopeing we won't need REX, GEX, UTX, etc. in their current form. Of course those companies will come out with new addons but I'm praying that Flight makes their current incarnations wholely unneccesary. As for the store, it could be a good thing. The price of addons has gotten ridiculous. When you have some single airports costing more then the entire sim something is screwed up. I understand the need to profit in a limited environment drives up prices, but if a mass marketplace that every person who buys Flight sees is setup then we could perhaps see addon prices drop dramatically. Imagine a sim where Orbx style airports only cost $10 a pop or that LDS 767 is only $15 simply because the customer and buying base is so much larger that it dictates prices drop in order to sell to a wider audience. It's the same concept as DLC on consoles.Such a price drop would also lessen the "need" for backwards compatability. If you can be back where you were for just a few hundred dollars (as opposed to a few thousand considering most addons are $40+ these days) all while having a new engine and redesign, then what's to complain about?Such a marketplace also wouldn't dictate the end of freeware. Apple's app store has thousands of free programs in it.