>Good god! :-eek I also am appalled your attitude Chock and>James!This place is turning into a pit of vipers!

>Now time to move on to the future..imho..And I don't think anyone disputes this but in order to move to this 'future' they must be given proper tools. If you read carefully what they are saying (btw, all 3 major scenery devlopers) they are lacking tools to cope with this new round-Earth effect.Michael J.

>doesn't automatically mean that someone's gripes are well>foundedYou should really be concerned about their 'gripes' because all 3 of them are top scenery developers and are in full agreement that the situation regarding their ability to create quality airport sceneries is serious. Don't expect any new (brighter) developers to fill their shoes and carry on unless you are prepared to live with mediocre airports. My only explanation for your mean-spirited and rather ignorant reply is the fact that you did not even bother to read carefully what sort of technical issues are at stake here. My only hope is that Microsoft will equip them with proper tools/SDK otherwise the situation looks bleak indeed.Michael J.

I don't think you can ever call FlyTampa lazy. They make some of the finest, most detailed Airports I've seen, as do OSS, and not only that actually seem to extract better FPS in the Seattle area than the default.Even Francois Dumas has indicated that Orcas Island won't be updated for FSX, and Emma Field, which he loves, is going to be hard work. The UK2000 airports are also under review, with the developer toying with putting them to bed altogether, so you see it's not just a couple of devs 'whingeing' here, it's a lot of Airport developers who are finding it hard to work out where to go.For now I'm sticking with FS9 because of the bland desert that seems to have popped up everywhere, or at least in places where there is no desert, somebody said even Norway is desert in FSX.

Calm down, calm down.Lets face it none of these designers give their wares away for free, they are a commercial going concern. Things change, that is inevitable. Out of change will come innovation and eventually what was once considered difficult will become de rigueur and openly accepted as the norm.If a commercial company decides that they no longer want to participate in a market place because the development costs start to outweigh the returns then that is their commercial decision, but please do not think for a second that any commercial organisation is irreplaceable. Into those spaces will come new companies with new innovations.MS have release a product which in my opinion appeared to have a lot of consultation and early sight for a large chunk of the interested parties and I have no doubt that the new way of doing things is going to require some new innovations to deliver the same quality but I'm afraid that is the real life world of software development.Now before you flame me for being inflamatory, I'm not questioning the quality of any 3rd party products nor the developers of these products, I'm just saying that things change and those that innovate survive, which I'm sure these companies will do just that.And before I get the "have you ever tried to develop some scenery" sort of comments - no I haven't, but I have been in the IT industry for 20 years and these days am a project manager in a company that create software that is definitely considered bleeding edge.Neil

In the real world living with changes and learning completely new tools, hardware and projects is a very common thing (I work as a developer who is mostly working with middleware tools). It's ok to whine about it and then get over it and then do something constructive about it, but to just quit because some changes (Arguably for the better) forces you out of your comfort zone is just...weak.

>>If a commercial company decides that they no longer want to>participate in a market place because the development costs>start to outweigh the returns then that is their commercial>decision, but please do not think for a second that any>commercial organisation is irreplaceable. Into those spaces>will come new companies with new innovations.Quite the opposite is the case. In FSX, airport scenery development (according to what is described in the post) has been greatly simplified which means much easier and quicker development. That is great news for commercial developers whose primary focus is making money. Quicker development, more products, more money.What we are questioning (or pointing out) is at what cost the simplification is taking place. We would love to have a more complex/flexible SDK that would enable us to create better looking Addons within a 6+ month timeframe, rather then the simplified tools we got where "as good as it gets" is already achieved after 2 months.Call me a stupid businessman, but I do care primarily about the visual quality of the products.

It would appear that many people haven't read the article in the link. Summarising it:1) FS9 uses a flat earth model2) "FSX introduces a "round earth" model"3) FS9 airport designers used methods "never officially intended for the purpose of designing whole airports"4) FSX "airport addons developed with the former method are not being rounded. The resulting effect when using a (large) airport addon from FS2002 or FS2004 within FSX is that, depending on your location on the airport, aircraft wheels' sink into the ground, shadows don't render properly, ground markings float above the ground and a slew of other problems."5) "Unlike most airport addons made for FS2002 and FS2004 using the unofficial method, anything created with the official method suffers no problems in FSX".Airport designers who chose to use unofficial methods to design airports in FS9 shouldn't complain when those methods no longer work in FSX, especially as FS9 airports created using the official methods do work in FSX. Those designers took a chance and now have to face the consequences of taking that chance. I don't see that Microsoft has any obligation to support unofficial methods.

Precisely. New unofficial methods will be required is all.Allcott

Official methods are called DEFAULT. Not much point in making addon airports at all by your logic.

>Airport designers who chose to use unofficial methods to>design airports in FS9 shouldn't complain when those methods>no longer work in FSX, especially as FS9 airports created>using the official methods do work in FSX. Those designers>took a chance and now have to face the consequences of taking>that chance. I don't see that Microsoft has any obligation to>support unofficial methods. The post isn't complaining about the fact that pre-FSX addons won't work or maybe hard to update.What the post is complaing about is the prospect that udpates as well as new airport sceneries will have to be made with simplified methods resulting in default runways, taxiways and so on, where in FS9 costum runways and custom taxiways were the norm.PS: Unless you consider a single AFCAD file download from the AVSim library to be an airport addon, then I am quite sure every single airport scenery that is large enough to suffer this "round earth" effect will be affected.

lol...to be honest i feel sorry for the developers of FSX. i am a developer and put up with the same whingeing and complaining that you hear on these forums. someone isnt happy about the sdk, someone isnt happy with the virtual cockpits...blah blah. you cant make everyone happy so when the complaining begins you just let it go over your head.

Well the good news is that

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Frankly, I think it is laughable that someone could be 'appalled by my attitude'. And it's ironic to the point of hilarity that these people are complaining about the world being round don't you think? So if anyone is appalled by the fact that I have no sympathy for a developers who are going to have to get off their asses and do some work, instead of porting over their old airport scenery with a few tweeks and then charge the same as they did for a 'from the ground up' redesign, as is no doubt the real reason for the complaint, then that's great, go ahead and mop their fevered brows if you wish.But I would like to point out that I, and indeed many others, have created scenery for various iterations of FS and stuck them on AVSIM and other sites and not charged a penny for them, and will continue to do so.I too have worked in the computer games industry, specifically for two major software developers in the past, and still occasionally do consultation work for them, so I have actually got some idea what I'm talking about here. Nevertheless, I choose to do add on stuff for FS and not charge for it. That's my choice, I don't object to people charging for their FS work if that's their choice, but I never charge any of my clients for anything that doesn't involve hard work.Among the many jobs I do which I do charge for, is when I train people to use many graphic and 3D design packages, and if I started crying every time I had to learn the latest version and its nuances, and then find ways to push it and get the best out of it, instead of accepting the fact that if I want to do that job, I have to learn it all, then that would be tough for me, nothing more. I'm under no illusion that if I don't want to do that job, there are plenty of people who would be more than happy to do so in my place. So if your contention that these people are the 'best scenery designers in the business' is true, why don't they prove it instead of throwing their toys out of the pram?I stand by my statement that the original link is nothing more than a whine about the fact that some work will have to be done, and when and if anyone chooses to do that work, it will mean better quality.And if you don't believe that, I'll tell you how it can be done:FSX has the capability to load highly detailed textures, and it has the capability to load meshes of extremely high fidelity. On realistic settings, you can land on any reasonably flat area in FSX even if it isn't a designated runway. So, what is stopping developers from creating an airport as a texture placed onto a mesh instead of using a built-in runway creation method? All that remains is to plonk buildings in place and provide a file which will delete any offending airport/runway graphics files which clash from that location and keep the navigational beacons in place. There's your undulating runway surface right there.More realism, less files required, and a better appearance, but, unfortunately, the requirement to get off your #### and create a runway texture instead of using a built-in feature which has been the same since the early versions of FS. It's these developers attitudes you should be appalled at if they can't figure that one out.