Microsoft Flight: Hawaii Only

[Mike T 220]

Companies absolutely do not owe anything to potential customers. Rather, they owe it to themselves.Whether as a courtesy some type of engagement with non-customers is professionally warranted is another question.

Perhaps you should tell that to our CEO at Cisco, John Chambers, as well as the rest of the 65,000 of us at Cisco Systems who would beg to differ with your assessment. It would make my job a heck of a lot easier - oh...wait I wouldn't have a job as a PRESALES, Systems Engineer. Amazing that our company sees the PRESALES Engineers and Account Managers as the heart of the company. Apparently to grow our business year over year, we seem to think that paying customers aren't the only people we invest in.

[turner112 52]

Hi Mike,I'm not debating whether proactive engagement with potential customers is valuable - only that it is not "owed".If I could have a conversation with your CEO I certainly would (can you arrange that?), but I guess we're talking semantics of the concept of "owed" here. I never said the only focus should be on paying customers, but that nothing in this sense is "owed" to non-customers.Most companies exist to make money, and pre-sales engagements are conducted to generate business, not due to some external obligation. A responsible company should act primarily on behalf of its owners, employees, and shareholders. Those are the people who are owed the process of non-customer engagements taking place in the interest of growth.What does Microsoft owe us? I can't think of anything.

[daru1 0]

Let's put it this way:If you see a man with a bone jutting out of the side of his arm, do you think, "Hey that guy has a broken arm," or do you think, "Let's wait until we can hear from a doctor that he has a broken arm?"Pretty easy answer for me.

[Tierborn 203]

Companies absolutely do not owe anything to potential customers. Rather, they owe it to themselves.Whether as a courtesy some type of engagement with non-customers is professionally warranted is another question.

This is absolutely incorrect and the opposite of how big business works .......

[bonchie 2,305]

10GB just seems like a mighty big chunk of space for a sim that just has Hawaii in it (considering all of FSX's world was only 14gb), especially since it's obvious the Hawaii is using much of the same rendering and texture methods of the past games (i.e., it's not photoscenery taking up all that space).Something has to give. It's both a bad thing and a good thing in my opinion. It no more points to it just being Hawaii then it points to it being the entire world.I think it's in between. Like Hawaii + "insert large populated area" such as North America.

[turner112 52]

Let's put it this way:If you see a man with a bone jutting out of the side of his arm, do you think, "Hey that guy has a broken arm," or do you think, "Let's wait until we can hear from a doctor that he has a broken arm?"Pretty easy answer for me.

Daru1... not really a good analogy.Tierborn: I work in "big business". Read my follow ups. I assure you, most companies are not operating out of goodwill.Again, I believe some are getting caught up in the semantics of what "owes" means.

[daru1 0]

The point of the analogy is that some here have open eyes, and have made -- what I believe -- are educated conclusions regarding this game (until I see evidence otherwise, this is a game). The same way, there are others who insist that it will "get better" in terms of info released about the game itself (showing scenery that isn't Hawaii, ATC, weather, etc...). That's fine, but most, in looking at Microsoft's recent past with Flight Simulator, are not waiting for Godot on this one.

[ManuelL 0]

If I remember correctly XPlane 6 was sold as base sim with a small high detail area and a separate package with global scenery. As long as there is no further information, I think this or a similar approach might be possible. Selling a sim with a limited area at a reasonable price and give the option to add a global scenery later on might actually be quite fair towards the customers, as they can test the potential of the sim and then decide if they want to put additional money on it (depending on the price for the base sim and add scenery of course).Holding MS by their word we should expect an (optional) global scenery as they stated they will retain the full fidelity of the sim. In my opinion not being able to fly around the world would be a significant reduction of the fidelity. In addition Hawaii, while it might be a logical destination for people in the US, is rather unatractive for many European users. I for example fly the FS even more often in Africa than Hawaii, as it has an interesting landscape and is much closer to Europe.

[slashed2 53]

Have'nt posted in awhile here on Avsim, but thought I'd throw something out there amongst all this speculation. Could 10 GB Hard Drive space reference the amount of free space on the machine? Looks like they're testing different CPU's, RAM, OS but the HD space remains the same. They don't say anything about installation requirements, just what the machine specifications were, which leans me more towards free space more than required disk space. Or it could mean required disk space. Who knows?Just thought I'd throw another conspiracy theory out there and add to the mix.Ian.

[Fsau 0]

Hawaii? Does a Chevrolet commercial show you the inside of the transmission?

Nobody is asking to see under the hood of Flight so I could flip this around and ask does a Chevrolet commercial show you only the front half of the car?

They don't say anything about installation requirements, just what the machine specifications were, which leans me more towards free space more than required disk space. Or it could mean required disk space. Who knows?

Free space and required disk space are one in the same right? But possibly the 10GB is just a place marker just to share the performance specs with us... but then again, if that was the case they could have left the disk space out completely.

[MikeT707 1,181]

Please explain. I don't see how MS owes me more info on the upcoming sim...

There have been a few comments regarding a company's owing the courtesy of important information, or anything for that matter, to potential customers. In my experience, both as a customer and a business/IT consultant, creating and managing a good relationship with a company's customer base, even if the company has little to no competition, is critical, and I think most reasonable people will agree with that.The point I am attempting to make is the majority of the people that contribute to or visit Microsoft Flight Simulator-related forums have been loyal customers, and even advocates of Microsoft's FS series over multiple release purchases. Many of us have been eagerly anticipating the purchase of Flight soon after the title is released. As a customer constituancy, we are a fairly sophisticated group of users, and we depend on information pertaining to a future release so we can make decisions on future significant purchases related to current version add-on software and hardware upgrades.With these customer segment characteristics in mind, it is expected that MS would owe this group of users the courtesy of being more forthcoming with information than they have been. (By the way, we all know that they have provided us several pictures and a few videos of Hawaii, but how Hawaii looks is not the point anymore.) With software development being somewhat unpredictable, I think most people can understand Microsoft's not releasing information too prematurely by stating features that may or may not be included in the final product, but whether or not Flight is to be a global simulator is absolutely a feature that they should know by now.

[shivers9 1,174]

There have been a few comments regarding a company's owing the courtesy of important information, or anything for that matter, to potential customers. In my experience, both as a customer and a business/IT consultant, creating and managing a good relationship with a company's customer base, even if the company has little to no competition, is critical, and I think most reasonable people will agree with that.The point I am attempting to make is the majority of the people that contribute to or visit Microsoft Flight Simulator-related forums have been loyal customers, and even advocates of Microsoft's FS series over multiple release purchases. Many of us have been eagerly anticipating the purchase of Flight soon after the title is released. As a customer constituancy, we are a fairly sophisticated group of users, and we depend on information pertaining to a future release so we can make decisions on future significant purchases related to current version add-on software and hardware upgrades.With these customer segment characteristics in mind, it is expected that MS would owe this group of users the courtesy of being more forthcoming with information than they have been. (By the way, we all know that they have provided us several pictures and a few videos of Hawaii, but how Hawaii looks is not the point anymore.) With software development being somewhat unpredictable, I think most people can understand Microsoft's not releasing information too prematurely by stating features that may or may not be included in the final product, but whether or not Flight is to be a global simulator is absolutely a feature that they should know by now.

Very well put. I visit forums on camping and fishing as well as motor homes and travel trailers. You can bet that those companies pay attention to their customers.

[AAfan 49]

I still wonder why all you guys still run Flight into the ground, you have no info to prove yourself otherwise, remember that Flight could be using a new system that better store data then FSX so the data difference comes from that, I think y'all will change your minds when it comes out and you see what it can do...

[slashed2 53]

Free space and required disk space are one in the same right? But possibly the 10GB is just a place marker just to share the performance specs with us... but then again, if that was the case they could have left the disk space out completely.

Yes, depends on whether or not that 10 gb represents the amount of disk space on the machine when they were running flight or if represents the amount of free disk space required for installation. Well, only the devs know for sure at this point and I don't think they realized the number of hypothesis that would be derived from that simple nugget of information.Ian.

[AAfan 49]

Yes, depends on whether or not that 10 gb represents the amount of disk space on the machine when they were running flight or if represents the amount of free disk space required for installation. Well, only the devs know for sure at this point and I don't think they realized the number of hypothesis that would be derived from that simple nugget of information.Ian.

I believe it is for install