Hi

I was just surfing the web, looking up flight-sim-related stuff, and I stumbled across the Wikipedia article on MS Flight Simulator. http://en.wikipedia....light_Simulator

The article has a section about the closure of ACES Game studios. I read it, and there was a quote that caught my attention: "Microsoft Flight Simulator X will remain available at retail stores and web retailers, the Flight Sim community will continue to learn from and encourage one another, and we remain committed to the Flight Simulator Franchise for the long term"

This made me think. I put myself in Microsoft's shoes. They were committed to keep flight simulation alive, and decided that it would be more economical for them to make a game which expands to wider audiences. Two years later, Flight comes out. A few months later, Flight is cancelled. Microsoft realises that it was not a good approach to flight simming. Still committed to genre, Microsoft now goes back to the Flight Simulator series, realising how successful it will be, or they will try another new approach, and see how that works. They will either find something new that sells, or they'll just go back to MSFS.

The point that I'm trying to make is that I don't think that MS has stopped making their contributions to flight sims. In fact, I bet that they're planning or developing something new as we speak. Will it be Flight Simulator? I hope so, but I can't be sure. But what I can be reasonably sure of, is that they are working on something. It just seems like the most logical thing for them to do.

What you read on that article is the art of political speech brought out of the political sphere.

M$ would get a barrage of flak out of a honest but unpopular declaration of: "We couldn't care less about this crap, not to say you that still want it, but we'll keep selling because there's still a market for it, we already recovered the costs of its [poor] development, and so it's all gain we would be crazy to miss out".

They simply put together two words of circumstances, "Oh yes, we'll keep supporting it [as long you pay for it], don't worry. Buy it. Buy it a lot".

Oldest trick in the book, really. A nothing for someone who's been living in a nation like mine, where promises from above last just the time the ones above get something out of it and all have a well hidden out clause (when this out clause is not simply a "NO!", sometimes but not always followed by some lame excuse, brutally stated in your face should you be so naive go to cash on the promise, that is).

In fact NOWHERE you can read real commitments of any sort, especially towards a ephemeral V11 of FS in that article.

The Art of The Word and how much you can twist it to make it sound like you're saying a thing while instead meaning, promising and swearing your very soul on the exact opposite. This is it.

Sorry Fozzer... they started the downward spiral with that crap called Flight. With that manure they showed that THE ONLY THING they care about is the bottom line, even IN SPITE of what the FS enthusiasts THAT PAID THEM FOR FS (it never was a freeware project) thought about it.

If you have an enterprise that gains money because of the satisfaction of a customers base, you should at least FAKE a little interest about what those that pay you say. M$, even in times of great success, never even faked to fake the slightest interest in what their customers would have liked.

All right, FS was not the total of M$'s income... yet... look at what they're doing with Win8... the most incompatible version of Windows yet, EVEN COUNTING Windows NT before and up to V4. Are you going to say the same about WINDOWS?

Flight was the start of a trend. Mark my words.

For what I've gleaned out of it, either Apple went after M$ or the other way around... the policy of getting out a new software and/or hardware that has VERY SLIGHT improvements than before, but that are PUMPED UP TO ELEVEN THOUSAND as revolutionary step forward by biased, if not outright bought over advertising that officially always declares itself to be independent and honest... yeah right, pull the other one, it has a bell on it... just look at the i-Phone 5... two or three dashes of a newer paint and is trumpeted as a revolutionary new conquest.

Shameless. And every time I am astounded at so many IDIOTS falling into this INCREDIBLY STUPID trap.

And M$ is THE VERY SAME... or at least is attempting to be the very same... shame that non-Apple users are on average less idiotic and the attempted coup, at least with Flight, showed not to work...

And now they're crying misery... "oh... how ungrateful of our milk cows to refuse to become like Apple's, to be happy, even elated to part with ENORMOUS amount of money in exchange of little if not nothing..."

A little self-criticism, M$ dear, would do you SO good. Especially would do you good not to put your customers on the same level as Apple's. Personally I feel BASELY OFFENDED to be compared the THEM in any way, shape or form.

I agree with Fozzer.
The word is MONEY.

And Stratetic, talking about Win8, they are again going the wrong way, putting that OS up first on the iPods aso and not on a update Win7 and letting the rest being an addition to it!

If MS did want to start up the FS series again, they would have to build an entire new engine, correct? They sold the rights to Prepar.

"Keeping Flight simiulator alive" simply means that they will contine to sell  FSX and milk it as much and as long  as they can. 
IMO, FS will no longer be developed by MS as the MS bean counters have no interest in it believing  that people just want to exersize their  thumbs on a smart phone. and that the PC is dying 

The only way this can change is if Gates takes full control of MS again and wants a new FS which will never happen given his riches and advancing age .   

The real question is: is P3D really a step forward? Isn't it, after all, FSX without its bugs?

Isn't it FSX HOW IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN?

And if it is... is it a step forward from someone coming from FSX?

More a sidestep, in my opinion. Sidestepping the crap coding reserved to the commercial version to have the better coding of the professional version.

Hi!

Thanks for the post.  I personally didn't really enjoy Flight.  It seemed to me more like an exercise in marketing thought up by some MBA than a great flightsim.  It was like a newer vesion which offered less than the older version for more money!  No wonder it didn't sell well! (Sorry I'm being cynical, it was quite fun for a little while I guess).

These days I see software kinda going in two directions for me.  There are the big companies pumping out more and more bloatware and upgrades (even for stuff which you don't even pay for which amazes me!).  And then there are the open source/portable apps/oldversion.com etc. guys going for smaller/faster/leaner etc.

Recently I was using a lot of stuff by an Australian company called NCH who make tons of great audio/visual applications which have lots of features and work well and are incredibly small in filesize.  For example they have a multitrack music sequencer with lots of audio tracks and effects and mastering supporting all the formats too and the whole program comes in at about 700kb if I remember right!  Unbelievable!  Just goes so show what people can do when they care about programming and not just making cash!

I hope personally someone else takes over flightsim from MS.  Fsx is awesome but I feel like a change after all this time!

Many thanks,

P.