J. Howard Joshua Howard Interview with AVSIM

[ViperPilot 81]

None of actually have a single clue as to what the budget for Flight might be. "Guessing" is pointless.

Just like 'guessing' about the direction Microsoft Flight is heading. Let's face it; the only folks who really know the direction that this... title is heading are Mr. Howard and his merry band, and they're not fessing up anytime soon.Wishful thinking + speculation = disappointment, bitterness and anger... just like the result from two years of speculation and misinformation prior to Release. Be patient. Use Flight, or whatever you have. Get out and fly. Practice, practice, practice!Life goes on... even after the 'death' of FSXI, or FSEleven, or whatever 'it' wanted to call itself.One can't mourn and brood forever.

[RoboRay 126]

If going into a towered field and you want decent ATC services, find someone to act as ATC. This would mimic RW sim use. I saw someone post, "I do not believe it is possible to model ATC on less than 100 DVDs and that ain't happening. You want ATC? Figure out some way to do it live through Multiplayer." I think Overshoe is spot on.

I think allowing players to enter an ATC Mode, giving them access to the tower views and perhaps an overhead view, based on the one already available but showing player positions, would be an effective way to accomplish ATC with minimal effort.

[Great Ozzie 101]

I think allowing players to enter an ATC Mode, giving them access to the tower views and perhaps an overhead view, based on the one already available but showing player positions, would be an effective way to accomplish ATC with minimal effort.

This just begs for a (new) title "FLIGHT - ATC" (or add-in as you say) where aspiring (sim) controllers could do precisely this with FLIGHT pilots.

[n4gix 4,961]

This just begs for a (new) title "FLIGHT - ATC" (or add-in as you say) where aspiring (sim) controllers could do precisely this with FLIGHT pilots.

Amen! That and expand the total number of players to 40 or 50. Let the "tower" host the session...

[Longranger 148]

Just like 'guessing' about the direction Microsoft Flight is heading. Let's face it; the only folks who really know the direction that this... title is heading are Mr. Howard and his merry band, and they're not fessing up anytime soon.

Not quite. They only know where they want to go! If companies would know where they are going many decisions would be different.

[RoboRay 126]

Amen! That and expand the total number of players to 40 or 50. Let the "tower" host the session...

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of letting different players "sit" in different towers on the various fields, with the ability to "hop" to currently empty towers, if they chose. The (still zoomable) overhead map view for that tower would be aligned north, with players position marked and their altitude, course and speed indicated alongside them. They could still look out the tower windows, too, of course, and have the same information tagged alongside each player's positon marker.But yeah, the MP limit needs to be raised, and MP changed so that a new host is automagically negotiated when the current host drops, perhaps selected from whoever seems to have the highest bandwidth. This would probably require a "standby host" (or two) to be maintained at all times to handle sudden drop-outs of the "primary host."Flight Team... make it so!But seriously... I doubt you'll find the towers filling up, but organized groups of players will have the ATC they want. Even one or two players acting as controllers could probably handle most "events."

[Bumblewoot 0]

Yeah! woohooo!ATC mode and 40-50 players... I agree.. awesome idea!

[kama2004 74]

But I do object to JH trying to convey that Flight Simulator was a "dead" franchise that they have now somehow resurrected. I think the truth is, Microsoft knows that FS is a truly long-standing, very profitable franchise and one of their most successful products EVER! And, they now wish to cash in.

Doesnt make sense to me. I remember that the ACES team was dismissed at some point in the past. This reality is inreconciliable with your point of view that FSX was a very profitable franchise. Very profitable franchise just goes on business as usual. They are not disbanded and abandonned for years ...Why they want to cash in right now (as you say) if they were already cashing in with the previous business approach.... They shut down the whole thing several years just to be able to make more money now ???? Well, thats an opinion but I certainly dont share it...

[Arwen 289]

The thing is the Flight team does not have an unlimited budget, both in terms of dollars and in terms of man-hours (the two being very closely related). Every man-hour spent on developing a 'sim' feature is a man-hour that can not be spent on developing a 'game' feature. The correct business decision is obviously to devote your man-hours to the features that will provide you with the greatest source of revenue. Obviously Microsoft (presumably following extensive market research) has decided that focusing on 'game' features will offer them a greater return on investment.

So how did FSX ever get made?Microsoft certainly has the resources to invest in a full civilian flightsim.The problem with the current gaming content focus, is that I'm not convinced that it will actually draw in enough gamers. And many simmers (like me) are already getting bored with the lack of flightsim content. If they expect Flight to last, it is the simmers who they now have to start wooing, yet based on Joshua Howard's answers, they seem to be doing the opposite. I've supported Flight, but I'm not going to keep supporting it unless there's some definite indication that more flightsim aspects will be added at some point. And I think a lot of current users have similar feelings about Flight. Yes, the initial investment will be higher, but their marketing approach will work just as well with a full flightsim (actually I believe that it would work better).

[Attila 2]

Doesnt make sense to me. I remember that the ACES team was dismissed at some point in the past. This reality is inreconciliable with your point of view that FSX was a very profitable franchise. Very profitable franchise just goes on business as usual. They are not disbanded and abandonned for years ...Why they want to cash in right now (as you say) if they were already cashing in with the previous business approach.... They shut down the whole thing several years just to be able to make more money now ???? Well, thats an opinion but I certainly dont share it...

It's like this...you have 50 people taking up space and they make you X million per year. This is, let's say, normal profit margin.Then you look at the other side of the street and see another company with 50 people making 50*X million per year. You want your 50 people to make more money. They were cashing in before, but greed is a powerful motivator for some people, even to the point of betting the farm by wiping out a profitable crop and plant something entirely different in the hopes of hitting the jackpot.The crop could be a failure and for smaller companies it could spell the end and for some game companies it did. MS isn't going to live or die by Flight's success or failure, which is all the more surprising why they would want to take such a huge hit in the goodwill department by going down this road.It seems to me that MS had a few people it didn't know what to do with. Someone made a presentation about an idea to get 20 million people back into this field and management gave them some money to see what happens. JH ran out of time and or money and now hopes that what they have is enough to keep selling enough DLC and keep the project going.

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

JH ran out of time and or money and now hopes that what they have is enough to keep selling enough DLC and keep the project going.

How do you know that?

[Great Ozzie 101]

How do you know that?

Huns are known to be clairvoyant. :LMAO:

[trevorbee 0]

The problem with the current gaming content focus, is that I'm not convinced that it will actually draw in enough gamers. And many simmers (like me) are already getting board with the lack of flightsim content. If they expect Flight to last, it is the simmers who they now have to start wooing, yet based on Joshua Howard's answers, they seem to be doing the opposite. I've supported Flight, but I'm not going to keep supporting it unless there's some definite indication that more flightsim aspects will be added at some point. And I think a lot of current users have similar feelings about Flight.

Agree with you on this Arwen. I think Flight is entering an identity crisis. If the developers concentrate on the gaming angle without enhancing the simming capabilities I doubt that Flight has much of a future.

[ahuimanu 50]

Flight is both a game and a flightsim. I'm not against the gaming aspects, if that is what it takes to attract more users. What concerns me is that improving the simulator aspects appear to have been put on hold, so that they can focus on improving the gaming aspects, since this is what the majority of users want. If all MS is focused on is making the most amount of money from Flight's DLC, then they will never spend money to make Flight a better flightsim.

In all of my ranting and raving recently (stages of mourning and all that), this probably all I was really trying to get at. I just fail to see why MS/JH seem to believe that these ends are mutually exclusive. I just don't think he's being a good steward.

[kludger 7]

The sad part is even the gaming part of Flight is not that long or compelling compared to similar "gaming mission" titles such as Take On Helicopters, heck I was recently reminded in another discussion that even the Wii game "Endless Ocean" that I play with my daughter has a better mission, geocache hunt, award collection and compelling career storyline.I'm enjoying the landing challenges and unique missions for each of the planes, but I can definitely see myself quickly getting bored of transporting 500lbs of chickens 250 miles to a nearby island for the nth time.Hopefully one of the ways JH referred to that they are working on "growing the experience" for gamers, that is keeping them too busy to work on TrackIR, will be some enhancements to the career and missions to keep the "gamer" part of Flight interesting and not so short and too soon repetitive, leaderboards alone are not going to keep the gamer part fun for most people.