>Backwards compatibility has been publicly acknowledged in the>blogs if I remember right.Has it? I dearly hope you're correct.

I can't wait to see the faces of the nay-sayers in a few weeks from now :-lol

like I said a few mins ago, nobody outside the MS building is a beta tester. You are a marketing tool and an extra set of eyes. All testing is done inhouse. With the scope of the game, though, they have used external testers in the past. I remember a game I worked on, we released a beta multiplayer build to the public as a demo just so we could test the multiplayer stability, our in house testers only numbered about 100 for all the games we were working on.My moneys on the fact microsoft knows the second they release an external test version to people, it will go up on the pirate sites, just like FS9 did. I am sure they have hired more testers to rely less on external testingPeople who do not understand how software companies work should not comment and try to scare off the rest of us!

>I hope this is true. FS9 has been around for 18 months ...>time for a change :)Add a year! FS9 was released in mid-2003, with most internal files dated April and May 2003, so it's been out for 2 1/2 years now!Doug

>The PC Gamer mag title highlights version 11... so whatever>happened to version 10?FSX is version 10. (X is the Roman numeral for 10.) The FS11 thing was a joke.

>>Those who talk about some sort of secret in house beta have no>idea of the open source of MSFS and this programmes special>needs to beta outside.Umm since when FS is open source? That might be good idea though ;).Read Alex post above about how beta-testing works in real life. I'll rephrase it in shorter way: external beta testing is mainly for marketing and cheap hardware compatibilty check. In other words, little to no importance in developement, 0 importance when it comes to features. Unless MS operates on the moon, they do 99% of betatesting and QA in house.Big companies like MS have hundreds on beta-testers in house under very strict NDAs, they have proper QA procedures, QA leads, departments and a lot of different computer configurations, bug tracker systems etc , not to mention free snacks and free pizza at 1 am during crunch time - if you happen to have a good management ;).Beta-testing a game is very hard work.

while working on a popular video game for the consoles, I was a network lead on the ps2 version, we got free breakfast, lunch, and dinner. granted we worked 6am-12pm mon-sunday but it was fun while it lasted.

>Beta testers are in house and work sometimes up to>100 hrs a week, doing checklists over and over and over,>whether or not they understand the concepts, they are>following the guides of the QA leads who do understand it.> Doubt that any tester ever worked 14 hours, 7 days. Or 16 hours, 6 day a week. And 20 hours 5 days a week? Ive worked 14hrs, 7 days a week, but only in combat in Korea.... No one could ever pay me enough to work such hours, unless my life depended on it.... Once we had 5 days without sleep, and by the fourth day, we were hallucinating. Such hours would not be of much use to any company.... Quality of work would not be worth all the ovetime pay.

You are so sure of yourself...absolutely amazing!!!

Well, I also don't believe that MS will drop XP support, but I have to make an adjustment to my previous post.The DirectX 10 preview contained in the downloadable SDK only runs on Windows Vista. I just installed it and tried to run the demos.Here is an excerpt from the docs:The Direct3D 10 December 2005 Technology PreviewThe Direct3D 10 Technology Preview showcases the newest set of graphics API's for games and other high-performance multimedia applications on next-generation graphics hardware. This technology preview provides reference material, conceptual content, developer libraries, tutorials and samples that demonstrate how to use Direct3D 10. Additional content will provided in upcoming SDK releases.Samples and applications built with the Direct3D 10 December 2005 Technology Preview require the Windows Vista December 2005 CTP to run. The Windows Vista December 2005 CTP is available to MSDN subscribers.EDIT: It seems this only applies to demos with NEW DX10 features. Other DX10 demos run fine. I assume DX 10 will install and run on XP machines, but the new features just won't be available. So if anything came out in February, it should at least support DX9 features, like shaders, etc.

"People who do not understand how software companies work should not comment and try to scare off the rest of us!"Al,Actually (I've worked in the software business since 1989) I find many of the comments regarding beta testing spot on for people who don't know the industry. Some aren't even close, while I suspect some have been "phishing" for inside info on the past FS2004 beta and its workings.There is no "gold standard" for how the software development process is handled. I've worked with IBM and Microsoft on commercial projects, and both have their own definitions of critical steps in the development cycle--and sometimes even different divisions use different terminology for those steps.If you choose to say those who beta'd FS2004 for Microsoft "weren't" beta testers, that's your choice of words. In my definition they were (and I was). I put sixteen plus years of development life cycle experience forward to qualify my remarks. And mind you, sixteen years ago the development life cycle in most businesses was much less organized than today. Change Management was a very loose term indeed.. :)If anything, this thread has been a place for everyone (including myself) to share their "expertise". But nobody is scaring off anyone--I think the thread has stayed civil for the most part and I admire everyone for keeping it that way.-John

>Anyone remember all the articles about Duke Nukem' 3D ?!?>Where the heck is THAT product? Just goes to show that not all>articles will pan out correct or accurate. (Extreme example,>but it still holds true)You mean Duke Nukem Forever? ;) (Affectionately known among fans as "Duke Nukem Whenever")This is a very good point though - magazines like PC Gamer work on hype, not necessarily on factual information. I'm sure the basic content of the article is factual from MS, but they are actually almost always wrong on release dates, not always right. I remember them placing a firm release date on Half-Life 2 that was off by a year plus.

Right on Peter. Come back on February 28th and join me in saying "I told you so" :-) .Doug

Remember Microsoft is a HUGE corporation - and one division's testing setup might not be the same as another division's.Microsoft has also put a lot of money and effort into creating Microsoft Game Studios as a developer and publisher - separate from the OS software side and the business software side of the business.The FS team moved there over a year ago according to several MS org announcements posted around the internet.Our alpha/beta testing in my company of MS Systems Management Server 2003 and Windows Update Server and Software Update Server all had different protocols, guidelines and goals.They were also completely different from testing of Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Outlook 11 or NT 5.0 for that matter - which became Windows 2000.My personal belief is that the majority of proof of concept of features is done in-house and integration testing is done externally.To some extent - everyone could be right.My fondest hope is that the conferences which MS has been hosting with addon developers were to help them understand and integrate their products with the next version.I'd kind of like to see the new version soon - if for no other reason than to kill the speculation threads.

>Read Alex post above about how beta-testing works in real life. I'll rephrase it in shorter way: external beta testing is mainly for marketing and cheap hardware compatibilty check. In other words, little to no importance in developement, 0 importance when it comes to features. Unless MS operates on the moon, they do 99% of betatesting and QA in house.