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Guest Calb

Developers in bed with MS?

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Guest Calb

Yawn...Just another conspiracy theorist.Yawn...Cal (CYXX)

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Guest Shalomar

Donny AKA ShalomarFly 2 ROCKS!!!A few years ago, console games filled 80% of vid game stores, now it's often 100%. Several sims used to grace the shelves of Staples, Walmart and Kmart, now just one. And the company producing it made more in the first few weeks after Halo was released than most movies make in their entire run. Simple economics scream for more effort to be put into shoot-em-up console games than PC sims. Sublogic could resist that pressure well, but they were squelched- sued by MS for copyright infringement for software Bruce Artwick had developed in their employ Sublogic had intended for other sims to be able to use for the betterment of the hobby as a whole.Committed as MS devs are, they are a small division in a huge corporation where bean counter's opinions matter.If the plug is pulled on the MSFS series and no viable alternative exists, will you still be yawning?Best Regards, Donny:-wave

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I would hope that any beta team would represent a cross section of the total users of the product. I was a beta tester and am not a developer(commercial that is). Seems like a good balance of both developers (commercial)/non developers would be and is very favorable to the end result of a beta test. Looking at the end result I would say something must have been done right,and I think all of us reaped the benefits. :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

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In an ideal world that would be so.But beta testers should have some expertise to know what they're doing, something most of your average users don't have.And especially the younger crowd can't be logically expected to have the sense of responsibility to take their task seriously, nor to keep to their NDA (and for minors, they can't even legally sign that NDA so they're automatically excluded).As someone else said, if I create a product that will either use other products or be used by other products I'd want to have the creators of those products on my beta team. I'd likely even invite them for meetings during all stages of development in order to hammer out potential interfaces and get a feel for possible conflicts that will need to be smoothed out either by ourselves or by those 3rd parties in order for the changeover to the new version of our own product to go smoothly.There's no conflict of interest there at all. We get to have the best assurance we can that our product will work with those of those who we rely on and those who rely on us, and so do our suppliers and users.It's not as if Microsoft forces beta testers to sign a contract to never use anything but Microsoft products...In fact I'm pretty sure Microsoft WANTS their testers to use other products, in order to get a feel for possible compatibility problems with that other product.As an example of why cooperation with outside partners is a good thing:During an early test of a version of DOS (I think it was a 3.x version, could have been 2.x) by someone from Lotus corporation it was discovered that their 1-2-3 product no longer worked.Microsoft and Lotus investigated and it was discovered 1-2-3 relied on a piece of code in the older DOS version which had been removed in the new version so that a command worked slightly differently. This was an undocumented API call, so 1-2-3 should never have used it in the first place (such uses were extremely common back then, more so than now).In order to prevent possibly tens of thousands of users from having problems with 1-2-3 Microsoft decided to revert that code to its prior working despite the bug being in 1-2-3. Had Lotus not been invited to partake in that testing cycle a great many customers of both products would have been extremely unhappy a few months later.

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Yeah this happens in almost every industry... if I'm a guitar maker designing a new instrument, am I gonna want some kid that just started playing testing it? No way, you get a big name skilled player in there to tell you what works and what doesn't.Boeing has done exactly this by inviting airlines to help design and test the 777 and now the 787 as well...


Ryan Maziarz
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There have been some really BIG changes in the way Microsoft is approaching Flight Simulator and other games in the past year.They have moved to establish Microsoft Game Studios as a brand name, with it's own web sites, it's developers hitting the web and being public about their work and how they develop the games, etc.When the FS9 patch was released, for the first time in my memory, Microsoft not only acknowledged an addon - but recommended a specific version - FSUIPC. Though many of us voluntarily contribute to Peter to keep him working on the module, most do not. That's fine and it's good that most of the functionality of FSUIPC is available, and will continue to be available for free.I've talked with some of the people in the FS2004 beta test. Frankly I don't think many of them have a clue how to test a piece of software. Most focus on their one small area of interest and made no effort to explore the product.For too many people a new version is FS is not an opportunity to grow, expand their knowledge and technique - rather an opportunity to complain about why older aircraft, panels, scenery and techniques do not work.Unfortunately, that is how the real world and most FS users work / think. I'd say that 75% of the beta testers I talked with spend hours and hours on trying to get FSNav to work and never explored the new GPS. They never considered the possibility that MS could produce something as good, or possibly better, then their favorite addon.I'm lucky because in my real world job I get to participate in some MS Beta testing cycles (server and software/patch distribution oriented stuff). When we test something, there are specific goals about what the new product should do, and what it should not do.Beta testing should not be just an opportunity to play with a new game first. It should be a structured review of the program, does it work as advertised, what does not work, can you replicate problems. The one try and it broke is basically useless to everyone. Just as useless is the my favorite aircraft or scenery is perfect approach.Like it or not - one of the main reasons Flight Simulator still exists is addons. Though Microsoft's survey reports that the majority of FS users fly completely default - the group which keeps buying and will make the big initial purchase of the next version are addon users.The reaction upon the release of FS2004 was extremely negative compared to many of the other games.I didn't see a single thread for almost four months which did not complain about some scenery, some aircraft, some gauge not working.AI traffic was basically useless for three months because we could not edit or add parking.The first SDK was not released until November and the critical ones not released until April.I sincerely hope MS has learned and is working now with key developers - and yes - the majority are payware.The success and future of Flight Simulator (in my opinion) depend on an acceptable level of compatability between versions.Microsoft has already made it very clear they intend to move to XML for all scenery elements. The move of about half the code in FS2004 caught many people, many developers of both payware and freeware, by surprise.There is a tremendous amount of great scenery which will probably not function in the next version without extensive redevelopment. Giving the developers a head start and insight into what changes they need to make is very good in my opinion.The future of gauges is XML. Think how many of your favorites will not work if legacy support goes away. Developers need to be working for that change.The company which made gMax has announced the end of their support for that modeling technology - how long before all the gMax aircraft are no longer supported by Flight Simulator ?The FS2004 rollout / release was poorly done in my opinion.It is greatly in Microsoft's interest to make the next release smoother and less traumatic.Does this benefit certain established developers over newer, smaller developers? Yes.That's the way the world works. If you as a developer move forward, make your mark, put out the high quality products, learn to work with Flight Simulator's strengths and gain the community acceptance - I'm sure Microsoft will be talking to you.Having the developers involved at a pre-Beta technical level will be a greater long term benefit for Microsoft - and the FS user community.

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>>I've talked with some of the people in the FS2004 beta test.>Frankly I don't think many of them have a clue how to test a>piece of software. Most focus on their one small area of>interest and made no effort to explore the product.>>snipped>Beta testing should not be just an opportunity to play with a>new game first. It should be a structured review of the>program, does it work as advertised, what does not work, can>you replicate problems. The one try and it broke is basically>useless to everyone. Just as useless is the my favorite>aircraft or scenery is perfect approach.>Just as in real flight, NO one is going to have a dedicated interest in ALL aspects of flight. And this is why Microsoft, as well as other developers I'm familiar with, use a wide spectrum of beta testers with varied interest's. A "forced" down the line structured beta test would soon become a bore to many. But on the other hand, there certainly IS noted problems, testings, repeats, fixes, fixes again etc. Basically, the two above quoted paragraphs are incorrect.L.Adamson ---- MS beta tester, among others

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>>Just as in real flight, NO one is going to have a dedicated>interest in ALL aspects of flight. And this is why Microsoft,>as well as other developers I'm familiar with, use a wide>spectrum of beta testers with varied interest's. A "forced">down the line structured beta test would soon become a bore to>many. But on the other hand, there certainly IS noted>problems, testings, repeats, fixes, fixes again etc.>Basically, the two above quoted paragraphs are incorrect.>If you don't want to participate in a structured testing process maybe you have no business in that beta program at all.As stated, too many beta testers among amateurs are only interested in having a new toy before the rest of the world and not really in making that toy as good as it can be. After all, what would there be left to complain about which indeed seems to be the REAL hobby of many people here, rather than have fun with that product.

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>Beta Testers aren't exactly... "allowed" to disclose that>they're testers.>http://www.kthxdone.com/images/kw_ft.jpg>Ken Weik> [link:maam.org|MAAM-SIM]>[link:library.avsim.net/search.php?CatID=root&SearchTerm=kenneth+weik&Sort=Added&ScanMode=0&Go=Change+View]My>AFCADsWhen the product is complete.................... they sure are!L.Adamson

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>>If you don't want to participate in a structured testing>process maybe you have no business in that beta program at>all.>>As stated, too many beta testers among amateurs are only>interested in having a new toy before the rest of the world>and not really in making that toy as good as it can be. After>all, what would there be left to complain about which indeed>seems to be the REAL hobby of many people here, rather than>have fun with that product.What a crock..........My interest's are in topography, flight surfaces, and electrical systems, such as a basic Cessna type battery/alternator switch, or perhaps ammeter loads, shunts, auto-pilots,etc. If I was told to check a complete Flight Management System function, or turbine temp applications, I could care less, but many others would be happy to test this specific aspect. The idea, is to catch "everything" possible, that perhaps the designers havn't even invisioned. I'm a pilot who builds real aircraft, knows how they are put together, and I don't believe that fits a simple "amateur" status.L.Adamson

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>In an ideal world that would be so.>But beta testers should have some expertise to know what>they're doing, something most of your average users don't>have.Even here, you've made assumptions.................wrong assumptions!Why are you implying that "beta testers" are just average "want to have it first, game players" with little expertise ?In general, most beta testers are picked in the first place, because of their particular field of expertise. All you're doing here, is making dumbfounded accusations with little merit.L.Adamson

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>The future of gauges is XML. Think how many of your favorites>will not work if legacy support goes away. Developers need to>be working for that change.All XML code is parsed and 'translated' to pure C before execution, so this should never be a problem...>The company which made gMax has announced the end of their>support for that modeling technology - how long before all the>gMax aircraft are no longer supported by Flight Simulator ?This is a non sequitur as well, since the end product of GMax, Max, Maya or Milkshape is a compiled .mdl file (a unique form of a .bgl file). Unless the the design team changes the basic structure of the .mdl format (such as occurred between FS8 and FS9), previous models should continue to be viable in any new version.


Fr. Bill    

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That may be true for guitars but it isn't for a consumer product like FS.There's nothing like a tester how knows nothing about the product for showing you how it can be fouled up!

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maybe true, but random button pushing won't test the application as a whole. It will only test the crash resistance of the user interface and for that it's cheaper to hire a building full of illegal Mexicans.

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