Open letter to ACES regarding FSX

[Guest Stoopy]

"I strongly feel that the project leader(s) and/or executive(s) of this project should be held accountable for this "oversight" and I urge Aces to improve those issues and oversights buy making the appropriate personnel changes in regards to the executive or project management team."Good gravy. I'm sorry but how reprehensible IS it when you're so unhappy with your lil' entertainment title that you end up trying to kill someone's job. I'll tell you what, I sure don't want your karma, after doing the above. Microsoft had a refund policy and there are so many other things to go do in your spare time. Like maybe send the above to Microsoft privately if you have to, but not use AvSim or anyone else's website as your sounding board when you don't speak for everyone in this case.And I've enjoyed this last year of FSX so I hope they keep the same great people for a long time to come.Erich

[Kosta 122]

>Microsoft had a refund policy and there are so many other>things to go do in your spare time. Like maybe send the above>to Microsoft privately if you have to, but not use AvSim or>anyone else's website as your sounding board when you don't>speak for everyone in this case.My opinion to the original post is simple, I don't like FSX simply because of it's degraded performance, and I agree to most of things the original poster said.But what made me jump at the keyboard is your answer. The public has the right to know if he wants to express his opinion to the public. It's a free country, and if he desires, he sure can do so. I don't see anything faulty in it.

[aerdt 0]

That "lil' entertainment title" is a hobby and plays a significant part for numerous flightsim enthousiats and also brings food on the table for countless add-on developers. This has nothing to do with revenge, but I feel to steer the franchise in the right direction a change has to be made.Yea, I could just shut up and "play" X-Plane, but I do care of the franchise that has been with me for a good 20 years and I strongly feel that the project management when it comes to Vista and FSX has been an utter disappointment and that the appropriate people should be held accountable for it.Pat

[GHarrall 494]

Pat,I can appreciate your frustrations, howver the 'magic screenies' were never released by ACES in the first place. Microsoft marketing dept. cooked that one up. Phil has already stated that in hindshight, this was a bad move.SP1 apparently took a LOT of the development time away from the DX10 patch. Again, I can understand frustrations here. If I had gone out and purchased Vista and a DX10 GPU I would be very dissapointed right now, but I didn't and that's because I never believe marketing hype when it comes to most things, especially PC software.IMHO, if ACES had done nothing else in the DX10 patch than offer FPS increases, I would have been sold on DX10. As it stands I now quite happy to continue with XP, FSX SP2 and DX9 until FS11 hits the shelves.I truly believe that ACES have learned a lot from the FSX project and that FS11 will be what FS2002 was to FS2000. i.e a major improvement. Am I happy with FSX performance? (even in SP1/SP2) no, not really but it is acceptable until some major hardware changes come through such as Intel's 'Nehalem' platform. By this time we should have about 12 months of FSX to deal with before FS11 hits us.I have decided that FSX is an example of a tough learning experience for ACES, especially with the change in PC technology that has happened all at roughly the same time: Multi core CPU's, DX10 and Vista have all played a part in the FSX story.I firmly believe FS11 will come back stronger, wiser and leaner due to the FSX project. Dropping backwards compatability ENTIRELY is a must for FS11. A complete upgrade of the engine is required and I think the only way forward is to start fresh, especially if we want to see visuals of the like that have been mentioned in the forums latley: Crysis, Ace Combat 6 etc.Let's give Phil and the team a chance to put things right with FS11 and understand that at this point, FSX is what it is.We can always use FS9 if we are still unhappy......Glenn

[MatthewS 761]

>>I strongly feel that the project leader(s) and/or executive(s)>of this project should be held accountable for this>"oversight" and I urge Aces to improve those issues and>oversights buy making the appropriate personnel changes in>regards to the executive or project management team.>I think your anger would be better directed at Microsoft marketing and not the ACES team.I think ACES should all get pay rises for a job well done and having to put up with so much stress from the community! I say congratulations to ACES, I'm very happy with FSX and have pre ordered Acceleration (btw $39.95 from EB in AUS).

[Guest Stoopy]

Not buying either answer, sorry. There's a lot more than "opinion being expressed" above, so don't try whitewashing it now. You're asking for someone (perhaps multiple people) to be canned. Period.And like it or not, it most assuredly is a "lil' entertainment title". It's sold in the game section of the retailers - get the hint! Also, it's my hobby too and has been since the early 80's ('83 to be exact) and at least I see it for what it is - luckily, as opposed to going around the bend and thinking it's the end of the world as we know it. If you're fortunate enough to make a living at it, you should count yourself lucky, and if you really do so, then you have nothing to fear when there are so many threads here pointing out the "lack of add-ons". Sounds like you've got a great opportunity so why not roll up your sleeves and get to work, as others have been doing already? I bought UTX and FEX and maybe I'll buy your add-on too.No, sorry, what's been said above by y'all just doesn't wash and I'm sticking with my response. My opinion too, hope ya like it as much as you expect others to like yours...and you have a nice day now!

[victorwest2 0]

Yes you are disappointed with FSX.Yes, I'm sure it doesn't work how you want it to on your system.However, why do you APPEAR to word your "letter" to show that we are ALL disappointed. We are not ALL disappointed. Some of us are very happy. For us it runs how WE want it to on OUR systems. We don't claim that everybody is happy. We know they are not. And to call for someone to lose their job because the game you bought doesn't work how you want it to is most unfair.

[Guest Stoopy]

>And to call for someone to lose their job because the game you>bought doesn't work how you want it to is most unfair.>Putting it mildly. Going after a man's bread and butter beucase you're unhappy with your game...well...."unfair" is an entirely far too kind way to put it I think.

[aerdt 0]

I never claimed in the letter anything about a "We", nor did I generalize.Yes, I do call for some people to lose their job, because of sheer incompetency. I am not directing this to a particular person, but I strongly feel that FSX has been a similar disaster like Vista and that some people should be held accountable for it. This is how it works in real life and sometimes for much less "reasonable" reasons.I do hold the project management accountable for misinformation, delays and a lot of deeply-rooted conceptual and factual errors when it comes to designing a strategy and road map for FSX. A lot of it was not thought out or very poorly planned and if you re-read some of the various blog postings from the developers, you get the hint that noone apparently had any idea where the path to DX10 will lead, but in return it was advertised (and sold) with the perception that is would be the key improvements of FSX.Pat

[Guest stpierce]

Stoopy, I don't quite understand your way of thinking. I do not agree with the original poster saying that someone should lose their job over this because I think it will be straightened out very quickly. If FSX DX10 continues on this route however, then I think changes should be made. Just because it is a man's bread and butter does not entitle him to hold a job if his performance is subpar. If this is ACE's bread and butter, why are you belittling their job importance by calling this a "lil" entertainment game. I think FSX is a very important and serious matter to all of those people.

[LAdamson 240]

I still use both....But if it came down to just one. FS9 would get the boot! FS9 just isn't near the "joyful experience" ---- as you'd say. L.Adamson

[Geofa 108]

I am locking this thread with a couple of explanations.1) To answer Word Not Allowed-it seems we still need to emphasize that avsim is not a government that guarantees freedom of speech-but a club with a set of rules clearly stated for all to read.2) One of the things in the interests of this club-and I believe also a high number of visitors to this site-is to keep an open dialog with the Aces team.Therefore:I submit that calling for the removal of the project manager and said team is not in the interests of this site-comments like this will tend to drive such people away-which again is not in the interests of this site. Therefore I am locking this thread.Your letter most appropriately should be addressed to Microsoft with a request for a refund. ..and yes-the "we" in your first sentence should be changed to I-as many of us don't share your concern.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpgForum Moderatorhttp://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[aerdt 0]

Dear Aces FSX development team,I think that we don't make a secret about being disappointed with the recent developments of the MS Flight Simulator series. Flight Simulator X has been released for exactly a year and has been broadly advertised to include feature and performance enhancements for DX10. Fact is that it seems at the time of this advertisement none of the DX10 code was implemented and not even evaluated to work with FSX.If I may quote fsinsider.com, a website that is copyrighted by Microsoft Corporation: "The next generation of video technology comes with Windows Vista: DirectX 10. This is the "high performance 3D technology in Windows." Your games need to specifically be programmed to take advantage of the new features in DX10-capable video cards. A DX10 video card will give you both great DX9 performance and the ability to take advantage of the DX10 update that we'll be releasing for FSX, probably in the fall of 2007. What does DX10 bring you? Much better performance, and the ability to crank up the graphics settings (improve visual quality) without sacrificing frame rate (performance)."The fact seems to be that DX10 for FSX does not show any performance improvements or feature enhancements, but on the contrary, a decrease of features and performance on most reported systems.When FSX was released a year ago, the franchise was plagued by performance issues that made it impossible for the majority of enthusiasts to experience a joyful, recreational experience, because of a significant performance loss compared to the previous release.Certainly, the efforts of the development team cannot be praised enough when it comes to the enhancements made in SP1, but weren't those features that were supposed to be made available in RTM in the first place? Even by standards of October 2006, a lack of multi-core support in a CPU-intensive application like FSX cannot be ignored.I strongly feel that the project leader(s) and/or executive(s) of this project should be held accountable for this "oversight" and I urge Aces to improve those issues and oversights buy making the appropriate personnel changes in regards to the executive or project management team.Aces continues to state that backwards compatibility is a major factor in the design process with the additional strain to maintain numerous code paths. However, those code paths seems to the end-customer to to be all incompatible and by far *not* backwards compatible. On the contrary, developers report that add-ons for FSX appear to be a complete rewrite. I have yet to experience a report where I can use an FS9 addon in FSX, so the backwards compatibility argument seems to have been invalidated.One of the main reasons that adds to the disappointment is, again, the lack of vision and leadership in the development process, because we continue to see releases that apparently have not been tested on a broader scale. In case of DX10, I consider it to be a lost case for FSX. By the time of the public advertising of DX10, it seems that not one piece of DX10 code had made it into FSX and now, one year later, we continue to see the decline from the "magic screenies" to an almost non-existent state of DX10 in FSX.I am disappointed in the leadership and project management capabilities of the FSX team and consider the project management team to be a complete failure in their efforts to fulfill promises and to manage the project and team so that the final outcome is a joyful experience for the customer. If the outcome cannot come in line with the expectations, then something is wrong with the management and execution of the project.Personally, I have never come across a similar project that has been riddled by so many issues when it comes to performance, compatibility and ongoing issues, especially from a company that is directly affiliated with Microsoft, which historically claimed to strives for excellence. FSX has been haunted since Day 1 by problems that most of us flight simmers have not experienced in the past and the Flight Simulator franchise seems to have lost its focus as MS showcase for excellency. As a result, addon developers have either jumped ship, delayed their development processes in the light of the before-mentioned patches and incompatibilities and frustrated customers that have lost confidence in products from Aces. The end result are frustrated customers and frustrated developers.Phil Taylors blog regarding DX10 is more a constant stream of apologies, because apparently the DX10 strategy has failed. While it certainly has looked good on paper a year ago, Aces has been misinforming its customers regarding the capabilities of DX10 in FSX.In the future, I urge the executives at Aces to follow a more cautious approach in selecting and advertising features without any apparent concrete evaluation in how those features and enhancements can be implemented in the first place and by bringing back the usability and "joy" of flightsimming from a end-customers point of view.Sincerely,PatP.S.As for my personal story with FSX: I bought FSX on Day 1 and despite having purchased a state-of-the-art computer (for the time), the performance of FSX was unacceptable compared to FS9. Five months later, SP1 enabled me to "use" your product and get enjoyment in anticipation of DX10. Now the DX10 Update (now merely marked a "preview") has once again disappointed and I am ready to completely go back to FS9, because FSX from my end-user experience does not add anything to my enjoyment factor - on the contrary. Granted, FSX looks better, but FS9 with all the add-ons adds more to my recreational pleasure. Isn't that what a company should strive for? Now that DX10 seems have flopped, there is really no apparent reason to use FSX anymore. A lot of users held on FSX, because of DX10 and I anticipate that a lot of users (like myself) will revert back to technology from 3 years ago, because "it just works".

[aerdt 0]

The bread and butter must be *earned* first.Pat