P-12C

A LAN connected MP session does not require Gamespy. We fly on LAN all the time in the office (or as much as we can anyway).

I just wanted to publically thank the people on the FSX team that made the missions and the mission system possible. I won't mention everyone by name, especially considering everyone on the team played critical roles in one way or another, but I do want to call out the mission designers Justin Wood and Brandon Seltz for the hard work and creative enthusiasm getting all of the missions finished. They did an awesome job!I also want to thank Mike Singer for the great scripts and Jon Seal for getting the ball rolling on scripts as well. The audio was/is critical for the missions and David Henry did a great job with the scratch audio as well as organizing and completing the recording sessions in Hollywood to bring the scripts alive. The artists did an amazing job creating all of the special objects for the missions (and all of you can use them too)!Lastly the dev team created a great system for the missions and the test team did a tremendous job getting them all tested, which isn't easy with over 50 missions to test and about 40 hours of flying for each test. Several of the testers are much better pilots now after all that flying, and can consistently beat any of the times I was once proud of...Oh, and I suppose I should thank the management team for their support and enthusiasm throughout the design and creation of the missions. Without that support it wouldn't have ever happened.I really hope all of you will enjoy at least some of the missions (actually ALL of the missions) and I can't wait to see what you come up with on your own. I know some of the beta testers have already built some including custom actions using Sim Connect, so don't hesitate to ask for help once you get going (after reading the SDK).

>The required targets, are they those which are pointed out by>that high green post? (The first one seems to be under a>bridge?)The "high green post" is pointing to the same thing as the mission compass which is the gauge in the top left corner of your screen. On that gauge there is text which says what it is pointing to. If it says "required" then it is one of the ones you need to fly through. I'm pretty sure the one under the bridge is optional.BTW, you can hide the green post by pressing the U key. Press it again and the mission compass will be hidden. One more press and they will both come back.

>Great blog. Really enjoyed your writings about the "slider">debate.>Very well stated. >To me that has always been one of the BIG reasons I update to>the newest version of FS the day it comes out (and I too have>been a fanatic since the SubLogic days). With FS I can be>guaranteed a big increase in detail and performance of the>previous version from day one. Then, as I upgrade my hardware,>I can "ease" the sliders to the right a little and get a brand>new simulator experience.>>Thanks for all the hard work that has given me thousands of>hours of enjoyment over the years.Thanks, but I must say that was an excerpt from someone elses post on Avsim... Great post though!

>Just out of curiosity whatever happened to the oil rig fire>rescue mission that was shown in early videos? I was looking>for it but couldnt find it in the beta. Has it been dropped>for some reason?Oil Rig Transport should be in the list near the very bottom.

>Yes!>>That one is tough! The first attempt was a failure, but the>second time I made it!>>Descending to the airport without any reference at all +>everything else that happens during the last minutes was>really challenging!>>How many of those green circles around Seattle do I have to>pass through to fulfill the mission? All of them or are the>majority enough? Do I have to land at BFI before the time runs>out or can I make the landing afterwards?>I haven't been able to sort that out yet!>>And it's lucky for me to be able to use the save function even>in the missions. Then I don't have to start all over again!>Besides, some missions will take longer than those dreadful 30>minutes!>>>>Haraldh>Don't be too much of a spoiler ;) Yakutat is one of my favorites as well and even after flying it several times, it's still a challenge for me. I won't ever forget Hal9000 biting it in that mission...As for Jet City, there are a bunch of required targets and several optional targets. The mission compass indicates which are which. All of the required targets must be flown through before landing back at BFI. Once you have flown through all of the required targets the voice over dialog will prompt you to return to BFI. BTW, don't trust your save game in this mission, as it may cheat you a bit... (sorry).

>WOW where did all this come from :-lol It's called sitting at home with time on my hands. :) Usually if I have time for one post, I have time for others as well.

>... and when you went up close to the hot air>balloons the pilots in the baskets were moving about and>waving.>>The mission where you have to learn to taxi in the ultralight>had a problem where once you reach the cub parked and you swap>planes, the cub would automatically once you switch to it, go>tail first into the ground so you would get a crash error, so>you would lose the mission and the other mission I had a>problem was with the glider mission, one of the first glider>missions that is, not the swedish gliding mission. There are 7>gates to go through but for some reason the last gate was>invisible and you couldn't see it so that was abit annoying as>well. >The problem in tutorial 4 has been fixed, but I haven't seen the problem you noticed in tutorial 7 (sailplane). Nice that you noticed the people in the hot air balloons. I had actually forgotten that I placed them in there...

You found a bug that we have since fixed. Glad you are liking the missions!

>One other thing - we've seen several posts and "reviews" that>there will be some accent voices in FSX.The accents you hear (or will hear) in FSX are in the missions. They sound great, but they don't use the ATC system.

I implore you to reconsider this decision.>Please don

I should probably add one more thing here. I don't see those of you that are passionately expressing what you do and don't like as whiners. That moniker I reserve for those that make assumptions we are dishonest, greedy, and closed-minded or that simply assume the negative without a discussion or weighing of the facts.The vast majority of posts I've read and the comments I've received on my blog are not from whiners.

>Yeah..I agree.>>Now, we can't fly by ourselves.... (i.e. if they remove the>ATC functions) and force us to fly with others.... I added this comment to my blog post: "These are good points, and as I mentioned we are not going to abandon the single player experience for people that want a solo experience. I suspect that some users wouldn't buy the product at all if it required on-line interaction. What is important about this discussion is that we are having it, and that the ATC system is difficult and expensive to maintain (much less significantly improve)."For an on-line solution to work we would have to reach some kind of critical mass so that the session(s) would have the level of activity to make it interesting. I wouldn't expect that to happen overnight. I also wouldn't expect the ATC system to be abandoned overnight either.I was just chatting about this thread with our developer that coded the ATC system. He expressed that he would like to see us develop voice recognition for ATC. I'm sure I will now read a post that says the next FS will have voice regnition in ATC because it was mentioned in passing here. We will not easily be able to have a dialog about ideas and features, if what we say is taken out of context or taken literally or as hard facts when posing hypothetical scenarios.Don't read into my blog post where I say that I question how long the ATC system will stay around as a blanket statement about how the entire team feels or what will actually happen. We will explore many different options and opinions (including those posted on forums like this one) and then make decisions.As for my comment about whiners and M$, it didn't take long to manifest... :)

>Thanks, now all I need is an answer. :-pThe mission system does have access to some of the variables related to aircraft systems and performance data (enought to build all of the missions we are including and then some), however the real power will be when third parties tap into our new API SimConnect and access a much greater number of variables (such as individual switches on the panel). There are very few limits when using SimConnect in conjunction with the mission system.There are third parties starting to do this now and I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Pixelpoke told me about this question and I couldn't find the thread. Now that I have found it, I will elaborate slightly on his answer.The system uses XML, but most (if not all) of our missions will be compiled into a binary form in the box. We will provide some sample mission XML in the SDK and may just use some of the missions we ship as the samples (don't know for sure as we could create special samples).I'm sure many third party add-on developers will also compile their mission XML, but a lot of community add-ons probably won't. If someone provides their mission in XML form, you could edit it all you want.

My pleasure. It's fun to read the ideas especially when they are in-line with what we are doing or want to do. It validates our efforts!

Most of the missions shipping in FSX are realistic with real-life scenarios forming the basis for the experience. I would expect most add-on missions to be based on real-life scenarios as well.I personally take "As Real as it Gets" pretty seriously and even the game-like missions that have generated so much debate are built on a simulation foundation and require stick and rudder flying skills that are far from arcade. Airline sim pilots may not be too successful in these types of missions if they have come to rely on an autopilot... But as others have said, if you're not up to the task (or not interested), then don't fly them.

>I am curious as to the differences between>ABL and the new xml system as far as complexity and what type>of things can be done.I haven't actually used ABL, but I know it's powerful but not user friendly. All of our Lessons in FS9 were done with ABL. The beauty of the new system is that it's relatively easy to work with and powerful at the same time. This should mean mission downloads from the community will be frequent whereas ABL adventures are almost non-existant (there are a few of them).Most (maybe all?) of what can be done in ABL can be done in the new system.

>Will it be possible to finish one FSX session and save>the current state-of-the-world

I should have mentioned the language involved for the missions. We are using XML and our mission editor generates the XML for you. Of course if you want to poke around in your XML directly you can always do that.We plan to release the editor in the SDK along with all of the details you will need to create your own missions.