Interesting Topic.The only issue I have is...the good addon vendors (For sceneries) like Flight Tampa and Flight scenery have dropped out.Now, Imagine Aerosoft dropping out too! To the people who are saying/assuming/insinuating that the ones who are complaining are people/vendors with no talent, GET A CLUE!Manny

I dont understand what you are saying.SP2 isnt released, Acceleration is. If there is a feature that works in Acceleration and not in SP1, then the add-on vendor could tell the customer that an SP2-compatible update will be available when SP2 is.However, I do not believe there is ever a reason for an FSX add-on vendor to recommend against using an FSX release. Mentioning what your product is compatible with, yes. Recommending against FSX release x or y, no.

It should have been named 'Deceleration'.

>I dont understand what you are saying.>>SP2 isnt released, Acceleration is. >>If there is a feature that works in Acceleration and not in>SP1, then the add-on vendor could tell the customer that an>SP2-compatible update will be available when SP2 is.>>However, I do not believe there is ever a reason for an FSX>add-on vendor to recommend against using an FSX release.>Mentioning what your product is compatible with, yes.>Recommending against FSX release x or y, no.Agreed Phil, seems it's the reponsibility of developers to educate their customer base rather than tellings folks not to use Acceleration.Eaglesoft builds to FSX SDK and of course more homework needs to done with regard to SP2 and DX10 "preview" but the point is that we all must to a better job at educationg ourselves and the public or we are simply adding to the confusion factor:-)

No issue on my end Phil, I understand and share the "wording"! i.e. don't "blame" but "encourage". I know the forum medium is not a good one to properly convey the "mood" or "state of mind" behind a writting (otherwise, there would not be such "science" around body-language).What I'm saying is that it may appear (may? might?) that SP2 release, is not compatible with some of the Accel features (can't say, because it is not released yet, and for the rest, I'm under NDA). If that is the case (just hypothetically) and an addon capitalizes on this feature, then it is true that a vendor cannot developp a product compatible with both SP2 and Accel at the same time (NB: my post was not exactly in reply to yours directly, it was to complement your answer to the poster you have responded to).Just hypothetically, I'll take an example to illustrate as it can be easier: what if the shared cockpit functionality between SP2 and Accell is not compatible, because Accell is not an update, is is also an addon (changing core product features). Then what if a vendor creates an addon that capitalizes on this particular FSX feature: shared cockpit. We would end up with a product that works either with SP2 for all customers trying to use the product for its shared cockpit features, or Accell for all customers trying to use the product for the shared cockpit features. Now, unless everyone runs the same, and we can expect not everyone purchase Accel pack (I can tell you only 1 out of 6 of our beta testers really runs FSX still today...), the vendor will have to promote its shared-cockpit centric product in a difficult way: either the vendor tells: it only works with Accell (this way he lowers support and ensures he sells a good shared cockpit experience to his customers), or, it only works with SP2 (same reasons), or he says it works with any of SP2 or Accell, but the very reason you are purchasing this addon (shared cockpit) may not give you the experience you have purchased it for, because there is a random number of chance the other person you will use it with, will have a non compatible FSX version.What would you recommend then?

Fly Tampa not developing for FSX has nothing to do with Acceleration.The new world model doesn't support their methodology and there was a problem which they knew about in beta with making photo real textures fit on airports which are no longer dead flat.The ACES team wanted to keep working on that issue - but was overruled by the higher ups.

"Agreed Phil, seems it's the reponsibility of developers to educate their customer base rather than tellings folks not to use Acceleration.""Eaglesoft builds to FSX SDK and of course more homework needs to done with regard to SP2 and DX10 "preview" but the point is that we all must to a better job at educationg ourselves and the public or we are simply adding to the confusion factor"This post from Ron Hamilton over at Team Eaglesoft is right on. I'm totally overwhelmed reading these positive statements from this post and the other posts he has written. Reggie Fields is right on too. It would be nice if the whole FSX commercial addon community were thinking in the same direction (I'm sure most are). I'm the proud owner of several Eaglesoft products, both for FS9 and FSX, and now I can understand why I like there products so much!Jim

Jean-Luc,Thanks for the extra data, that helps me formulate a response.In the specific case you cite, the plan is that Shared Cockpit will work, although it might not be 100% perfect unless you are in the exact same aircraft due to the expected aircraft substitution issues. Yes that was concern we shared with the beta team, in that we were not sure how far we could go with that feature to work due to the extra sim features in Acceleration for the new aircraft and scenarios - engine damage, ADI/supercharger support, multi-turbine helo engines, tailhook and launch bar, etc. So we did get Shared Cockpit to work between SP2 and Acceleration in the final version of SP2 even though it did not work with the beta.Yes, we had not gotten back to the beta team to clarify and dampen concerns and I apologize for that - in the heat of trying to get SP2 out we have not clarified that for the beta testers.So SP2 will add both basic MP compatibility with Acceleration SP2 as well as enable Shared Cockpit between SP2 and Acceleration. This should enable you to recommend SP2 with a clean conscious :-).In this specific case, I believe your approach of being cagey and waiting "until the fat lady sings" is the right approach. We at Aces do try to do the right thing, even if we sometimes do not reach that goal. Now, if we had failed to get Shared Cockpit to work, even there I believe the correct approach is still to tell the customer what will and wont work and explain the limitations. And then let the customer decide what product and features to favor and not recommend against an FSX release.Phil

Well put JL and Phil, while we were also concerned, we didn't want to be out there due to NDA.Glad to hear that SP2 should address that issue:-)

Hi Phil,it was just "hypothetical" of course, and you can be commended to have made every effort to try solving any possible issues for this feature as well! thank you for this, and your sound advices. They are sincerely appreciated!

>"Agreed Phil, seems it's the reponsibility of developers to>educate their customer base rather than tellings folks not to>use Acceleration.">>"Eaglesoft builds to FSX SDK and of course more homework needs>to done with regard to SP2 and DX10 "preview" but the point is>that we all must to a better job at educationg ourselves and>the public or we are simply adding to the confusion factor">>This post from Ron Hamilton over at Team Eaglesoft is right>on. I'm totally overwhelmed reading these positive statements>from this post and the other posts he has written. Reggie>Fields is right on too. It would be nice if the whole FSX>commercial addon community were thinking in the same direction>(I'm sure most are). I'm the proud owner of several Eaglesoft>products, both for FS9 and FSX, and now I can understand why I>like there products so much!>>Jim Thanks for the kind words Jim. We really do work to provide the best we can do:-)

>>To the people who are saying/assuming/insinuating >that the ones who are complaining are >people/vendors with no talent, GET A CLUE!>Talent Yes Knowledge of how a airport works, NoMany scenery airports broke FS9 with their enhanced airports and no one complained except a few of us. Just because it looks good does not mean it is suppose to be less then a FS product and they charged more for it in most cases.Many designers chose the lazy road when FS9 came out and continued on the backcourse of coding backwards. Their closing down is because they can't catch up to the future that is no longer tomorrow but here finally today. Four years has almost passed and some of you are buying what you think is FSX compatible airports. Some of the payware scenery airports for FSX are not even FS9 compatible that have just come out. Yes they will show in FSX but throw Sp1a/Accel/SP2/DX9/DX10 into the mix and look what happens.Go back and search all the post that we generated to tell these highend scenery development Company's they broke my Airport. Every single one said the same thing in post right here, It is a problem with FS9 and the way they do things and not our scenery.You believed them then and some are still believing them now. It goes back to what a lot of others have already said here. Be honest up front and say what is and what is not compatible if at all possible. Design toward SP2/DX9 and most things will work if not all. The buyer has got to do their part also and stop excepting 3rd party that breaks FS when it is not FS's fault.Stop looking at what you see and start looking at what parts of a airport scenery you can't see that makes it work.Learn how to validate scenery before pointing fingers to say who is at fault. It might surprize some of you which 3rd party highend are the biggest offenders of the unseen part of a FS Airport. I know that I would not have 12 different free downloads (AVSIM) to fix what some of you bought if others had learned how to use talent and knowledge.The talent is part of the visual to our eyes, the knowledge of FS is understanding if the visual is going to break FS or not.

>First, FSX was developed with the future in mind - both from a>software and hardware perspective. The goal was to support>multiple core hardware, DX10 graphics, and Vista.That is rewriting history just read the official Aces blogs multicore hardware was not in the official guesstimate when they defined the features for FS-X only in SP1 they did some multi core work. Blog entries before SP1 emphesise that the FS engine needs major rewrites to benefit from multiple cores and that multi core benefits where questionable.The DX10 graphics engine (now called DX10 preview) was only developed after they released the original FSX so this was also not in the original specs.My speculation is that the original target machine probabley was a high clocked (Intel/AMD never reached those clockspeeds) single core machine running Windows XP and DX9. During the project FS-X had to be made into a Vista flagship game so they probabley tried to adjust the graphics engine to be more geared to DX10.The result is an extremly messy release which only now has reached the point where they have frozen the code. Until now 3rd party add-on maker where building upon a game engine that could still change major features that might braek their add-on.On a more positive note. FS-X 'final ever not going to tweak or fix anything else this is it' is out now. 3rd party add-on makers can finaly get on with releasing their add-ons. Meanwhile older hardware is getting replaced with improved machines that have processor speeds and graphics cards better suited to FS-X. In a year from now whe finaly might know how FS-X works for us.We will probabely be debating the needed features for FS-XI at that time though ;-)

> It should have been named 'Deceleration'.:-lol

>> It should have been named 'Deceleration'.>Oh, how original. :-erks