Joshua Howard interview yesterday. Grilled about third party support...

[dighost 25]

Just came across this interview with Josh Howard yesterday. http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/interview-joshua-howard-microsoft-flight/091961

[Attila 2]

We’ll be at the Xbox showcase event in San Francisco. And we’ll be showing some of what’s coming up down the road. I want our players to really understand that there’s a consistent and strong effort to continue to excite, to deliver exciting new experiences for Microsoft Flight. More places, more planes, more things to do.

Anyone have any info on this?

[armchairpil0t 0]

Very interesting, thanks!

It was one of the more difficult decisions to take with the franchise but we think to appeal to millions of people we had to take a different approach. And one of the consequences of that approach was it’s going to be a much more significant effort to reintroduce that more extensible system. So I won’t say never. But it was outside the focus around the initial product and launch to try to do everything.

Judging from the interview, there wasn't any specific plan to make it extendable by third party. What we are seeing in .pak files are probably just leftovers of FSX code.I wonder how Microsoft lawyers would react, should unofficial add-ons appear for Flight. Originally, the MSFS add-on industry appeared before any SDK was available, simply because back then Microsoft chose to tolerate third-party developments.

[snwboardn 87]

The best part of that interview was "we might let 3rd party devs in, in 2 years." I really want to like flight but there is just way too much missing right now. Hopefully they will unviel lots of stuff and then when the initial interest fades they will have a mega sale with most of the addons for $100 or less... I just hope that includes ATC, AI, and at least a majority of N. America.

[Attila 2]

It was meant to be on the 29th of Feb.http://www.metro.co....spring-showcase

Yes, I know it was supposed to be Yesterday, but Howard seems to be saying that they would be "showing some of what’s coming up down the road".We already knew what was going to be available on release a long time ago, so what is he talking about?

[JSkorna 137]

so what is he talking about?

"showing some of what’s coming up down the road".

See, you answered your own question within one post!

[Attila 2]

See, you answered your own question within one post!

You are a great help, as usual. :Shocked:

[stonelance 136]

It refers to showing a preview of upcoming DLC for Flight that is not yet released.

Edited March 1, 2012 by stonelance

[JimmiG 244]

The best part of that interview was "we might let 3rd party devs in, in 2 years." I really want to like flight but there is just way too much missing right now. Hopefully they will unviel lots of stuff and then when the initial interest fades they will have a mega sale with most of the addons for $100 or less... I just hope that includes ATC, AI, and at least a majority of N. America.

Now those developers will either stick with FSX or switch to something else like X-Plane or Prepar3d. This also has the side-effect that those who are serious about flight simming will stay away from Flight because there will be no third party content for it. Instead of hundreds of developers doing cool stuff for Flight, there will only be a handful of people at Microsoft. It's really Microsoft against the rest of the entire flight sim community now.