Microsoft is shutting down ACES!

[Bill Von Sennet]

PC Magazine article about the effect of Microsoft layoffs on Flight Simulator.

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339520,00.asp

[Joe]

So much for Microsoft's "Games for Windows".

They're killing off their entire PC line it seems. I wonder if I can connect my stick and pedals to an XBox360 . . .

Bill, is there some reason I can't have a capital "J"? I even deleted and recreated the account and it's still "j".

[Chris Ross]

Ouch!!

[Tom Goodrick]

Joe, when signing up, you are asked for a user name and for a screen name. The username must be lower case with no spaces. Mine is tomgoodrick. The username is only used when you log in. The Screen name is what appears with your Forum entries. It can have upper and lower case and spaces. Mine is Tom Goodrick.

As for the closing of the ACES, it is unfortunate but is not the end of FS. Some other company may buy the rights to FS from Microsoft. Even if they don't it simply means there will be no new versions to worry about.

I intend to fly FS9 as long as my old computer (Dell) continues to run. I will soon be giving it a "tuneup" with a larger new hard drive. It runs FS9 just fine as far as I am concerned. It also runs my boating sim just fine. That sim won't run at all under Vista. I also enjoy using my old versions of Word and Excel. These grand old versions have never heard of Auto Correct and Auto Continue that interrupt you at each key stroke with worthless garbage.

Recently, I dumped MS Office from my new laptop before having to pay $140 and replaced them with the free Open Office. But even Open Office has these Auto Correction and Auto Continue features that drive me nuts.

If I buy a new desk computer it will be a Mac and I will run X-Plane instead of FS. That will be after the Dell dies and cannot be resurrected.

[hanspetter]

I just tried to fix my screen name but didn't find how to do it. I'd like to have "Hans Petter" (two caps -- two words).

Regarding auto correction / word completion it's a pain. I still haven't found how to type a cell phone message without starting out in word completion mode. You start typing a word and the phone changes it to something its dictionary lists as a common word. However, these things can be disabled and I have figured it out for PC applications.

Regarding ACES it might certainly mean that MS will put less emphasis on developing FS. In any event, we should keep in mind that the current financial crisis may be the reason to put a lot of things on hold. When the future looks brighter they're likely to pick it up again. This being said, it might have been a marketing mistake to release an FS version that requires way more computer power than most of us can afford.

Regarding new versus old computers, OSes and sims there's a lot to be said and a lot of different opinions. Like Tom I'm a "lagger" when it comes to FS. FS9 suits me fine but it was a relief to start running it on a state-of-the-art processor / video card. I'm also enjoying X-Plane v9 (latest version). Regarding Vista it's manageable. But then, we don't have to have Vista even though we have more recent hardware. A legal copy of Win XP can be bought at EBay and the price will drop further once Win 7 is out. Old applications are great but more power under the hood for sims / games is always nice :-)

Tom, you might want to check whether it's possible to "up" the processor too while the computer is in the shop. And, get the fans changed -- their bearings are likely to be worn and they must have collected a lot of dust by now. Fans are quite inexpensive.

[flaminghotsauce]

Tom I don't remember what processor you have in your old machine, but you might be able to upgrade that for cheap. Those older motherboards and processors are in low demand. I bought a dual core 1.6 AMD Turion in an effort to resurrect my wifey's laptop for about $20

I reinstalled X Plane on my new machine and it's finally worth having on there. The sim uses the video card a lot harder than FSX, I think, and having upgraded there, I'm getting tremendous results. I've upped the screen to full size, 1650x1050, and turned up the trees, roads and objects to INSANE, increased the visual distance to 20+ miles, and it's cruising. I might have to go find some better aircraft, though. I like the Cirrus Jet, 172 and the Piaggio, but they go downhill in quality after these.

[Allen Peterson]

Thr real test, Flame, is when you fly with a heavy overcast and rain.
It's been a while since I've looked at the planes available, but I downloaded a Twin Comanche and a Cessna 340 RAM from X-Plane 8 that flew pretty good.

[flaminghotsauce]

Yeah, I'm not going to keep the settings all the way up like that. My little town is not filled with 3 story buildings!

But to be fair, FSX is brought to it's knees by clouds and rain, too.

[Tom Goodrick]

My CPU is a 1 Gig Pentium. I could use 256M more ram (to 512 from 384).

I have been flyhing a lot lately in clouds and rain. FS9 does that just fine!

[budsbud]

If MS is trashing FS, just maybe Google might pick it up and combine Google World
with the Flight sim. They, (Google) had been working on their own flight sim thing so
it would be a natural. Think of the scenery then. Boy.
Just dreaming folks
Bud

[Joe]

"We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise, which has proven to be a successful PC-based game for the last 27 years," Rericha added. "You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great Live experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time." -- from the page Bill linked.

They aren't talking about selling it, they're talking about dumbing it down, either in some console form or in Windows Live.

You gotta love it though-- "We're committed to the Flight Simulator franchise . . ." (That's why we just fired everyone who works on it!!)

And don't forget all the people who earn a living in the FS 3rd-party markets. The impact of that ripple will take longer, but it will hit.

Long live GFS! (Google Flight Simulator) That really would be something.

[Andrew Godden]

Do not underestimate the power of the FS community in continuing to support or keep MSFS alive.

In a similar example back in 1998, Falcon 4.0 by Microprose (remember them) was released and with numerous bugs. One giant final patch was released and sudsequently the entire development team was sacked and support official ceased. An entire community of developers sprung up and, without the source code, started doing some amazing stuff with the hexidecimal code, including a new theatre of operations. After a subsequent "source code leak", they got to a SP3 release with massive enhancements on the original product. The community eventually acquired the licence rights and the end result was the commercial release of Falcon 4.0: Allied Force in 2005 which incorporated most the communities developments and more. I believe it is still reknowned as one of, if not the, most accurate fighter flight sim ever. The engine start-up procedure alone is unbelievable with a checklist that goes for pages.

Silent Hunter III was another example of community development with the Grey Wolves Expansion.

There is hope yet.

[Joe]

At least this is encouraging (I think from the makers of Ground Environment X):
www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=30107

Basically, they are talking about correct placement of buildings and roads. Apparently there are a lot of photoreal local sceneries around, but you give up autogen if you use them. (Which I'm not willing to do, being mostly a low-n-slow type) This would make fairly realistic scenery while still retaining autogen.

I don't keep up with flightsim anywhere near like I did a few years ago, but from what I can tell there is still a lot of interest in the 3rd party community (duh). I could care less that people are still repainting airliners ad nauseum, but this seems important, as close to improving the core engine as anything I've seen.

[Joe]

While I'm at it, it would be nice if this also fixed what I see as a landclass issue. I always grumbled that the Ozarks got overlooked but FS Genesis virtually solved the terrain issue. However, around here wooded forest-type areas are seriously under-represented in favor of farmland. To put it simply-- more trees, less wheat, please.

[Ed Burke]

I wonder if Jeppesen will pull the plug on WX info, assuming that they make some monetary gain from Microsoft by supporting MSFS. Not a good scenario.

Ed