FLIGHT is dead as a serious sim, long live FSX!

[mutley 4,498]

Posted over on AVSIM, not everyone likes that place and thanks M31 for the initial link.

Quote from John Venema CEO Orbx

We've had Flight alpha code running in-house for well over a year; about 25 of our team installed a few builds. We've been talking to MS for over two years about Flight.

I have to apologise to this whole forum because I sent Alain Needle a PM about a year ago since he was pestering me so much. And I let him know a little too much info. Oops, you guys have suffered for that lapse, sorry.

Long story short, we spent a lot of time working with MS on white papers and looked at the code, gave them copies of all our products, told them how to do it right. They even used screenshots of our 1S2 Darrington in their mission dialog boxes, so they must have installed our scenery into Flight at some point, LOL!

About March 2010 everything went quiet despite promises of new builds. Later in 2010 we were told to go away, no SDK will be shipped.

Thanks MS, for all the fish.

I've been a good NDA citizen and kept my lip zipped as best I can, although I saw there were some leaks last year from other disgruntled devs.

Bottom line for us is that a closed environment with an in-game app store does not appeal to us since we cannot generate income from such a proprietary arrangement. I doubt that a belated SDK will arrive quickly enough for us to hold any interest now. The studio IMHO should not have stopped talking to third party developers but a decision at VP level must have been made to internalize the project.

As for Orbx FSX will remain our core platform for at least 5-10 years and we will run Prepar3D as a parallel platform. We're porting all our stuff to P3D over the coming months. P3D V2.0 looks crazy cool, although I am under NDA with LM. We will release about 30+ products for FSX/P3D this year alone, including about 5-6 new regions including some in Europe. We're doubling our regions team and investing in FSX/P3D R&D as quickly as we can. We see no reason why anyone would walk away from 5 years of FSX addons investment to a new simulator. The future from our perspective is very bright.

He continued:

MS don't know what they have in the FSX engine source code, or they would not have licensed it to LM. It is by far the most capable and impressive 3D far-horizon engine ever coded - bar none. Nothing, even in 2012 comes close to the number of pixels and terrain the FSX engine can push at a locked 60Hz. Problem is, the code needs a little loving and MS won't fund that. So good thing we have a dev team at LM who are doing just that. Can't wait for that engine to be running close to the metal and off the CPU and onto the GPU. Yes, that's coming and it will rock.

As for making our own engine? Been there, done that, talked to a bunch of suppliers. Again, nothing comes close to the FSX core code, it's that good. There is a reason why code from 26 years ago was retained. It would cost us about $30 million to start from scratch, maybe more. Better to just make content for an engine that is working and being developed forward.

When asked about X-Plane he went on to say

We're not interested in X-P. It has too many warts for us to justify the time and effort, and far too small a user base. We can make FSX/P3D look and perform better than X-P even with current engine limitations, soon to be solved.

[M31 0]

Cheers mate

This is all very interesting developments to me as a passionate Flight Simmer.

Looking back into the past again, we had some fantastic competition against MS FS ... they are not unbeatable, anyone who remembers Looking Glass Flight Unlimited will remember that in many aspects it was far far superior to the MS Flight Sim of that day, but they made the mistake of trying to make their series modular like FS are trying to do now with Flight by concentrating on individal area's ... ignore the early stunt plane DOS Flight Unlimited 1 for now, though it was great in its time.

Flight Unlimited II was Looking Glasses first stab at serious GA PC flight simulation around San Francisco, it also beat MS FSX by many years by including interactive missions ... but thats another story

Then a year or so later we had Flight Unlimited III, this time for Seattle, it was indeed much improved but also needed Flight Unlimited II patched, not only to look as nice ... because graphical advances always continue, but to be compatible too, then we needed Flight Unlimited III patched to be even more compatible.

I'm not joking ... shortly afterwards Looking Glass went belly up

Before that even, in DOS Combat sim times we had Gilman Louies Falcon 3, then Fighting Tigers as i recall, but then a Mig 29 add on for his envisaged Electronic Battlefield Series ... lots of patches ensued, then we had the Hornet add on, more patches ... then Computer hardware took a big leap and Gilman went to Falcon 4 to hopefully continue ... it never happened, if all this sounds familiar, just look what's happening with the military Eagle Dynamics DCS series right now, discounting FC and FC2, Black Shark was supposed to be the first, then we got DCS A10, then the patch dance came up again ... oh, DCS A-10 is now so far ahead, you need to pay for an upgrade to DCS Black Shark to be truly compatible ... and I paid for the Black Shark 2 upgrade ... the rumour is its a DCS FA/18C next, and you can be sure it will be pay for updates to A10 and Black shark to keep up. They are clearly struggling just like indie developers were before to produce the same modular concept.

Coming back to current Global FS again, the only way it could work (IMHO) is with a global stable non changing platform in the first place IMHO, then let developers build on it or if MS think they can do it, do it themselves, then do it, but I lack faith in their upper managment commitment these days.

The more I think about it, Prepar3D if we can lose the strangleholds seems to be the way ... unless MS change their mind ... again

[SEATAC 400]

Well, that's all fine and dandy from an Orbx perspective.

It's good for the near term future of flight simming, but it seems rather dismal once you get beyond 5 years or so. By that time FSX will be nearly 10 years old and a little long in the tooth. Who knows how well it run on whatever OS Microsoft is pushing in 2016 (Windows 9?).

As far as Prepar3d, from what I understand, it's for professionals and people with a lot of dough. $499? That is a bit beyond my budget.

[M31 0]

As far as Prepar3d, from what I understand, it's for professionals and people with a lot of dough. $499? That is a bit beyond my budget.

I think we need a Prepar3D FAQ.

About £322 UK quid at the current exchange rate.

If we can get over the current legal hurdles and my vast FSX add ons will work with it, its a possible purchase here ?

The Guy from Orbx is hinting we might be able to turn this around away from what we now know Flight is ... I've not checked, but I expect the guy from Aerosoft to be saying something soon too.

For sure, everything is a changing, and its probably because of the poor global economy in recent years too?

Microsoft game division are panicking because profits are not as much as they were before ... we're an easy target.

For sure, If Microsoft continue in this course, hundreds of developers that relied on them will cease to be, they are not all Orbx or Aerosoft that could survive without them ... I've always thought the best way to get out of a recession is not to panic or panic others into not spending?

No matter what way I look at it, MS have culled again, but they have bit very hard on the mouths that fed them this time ... at least with the FS Series.

[PanzerFodder 0]

As far as Prepar3d, from what I understand, it's for professionals and people with a lot of dough. $499? That is a bit beyond my budget.

It's beyond mine as well, I can just imagine what my mrs would say .

But it will more than likely sell very well to the megga keen simmer market that's out there, just as Adobe Photoshop did with the amateur photographers when it first came out .

Cheer's...Graham...

[Tim_A 997]

A follow up from JV pretty much confirms what I suspected:

What I can say is that the developers on the MS team I spoke to were really nice guys. They believed in their work, and at the start really did want to adopt many of our ideas and really offer up a true simulator. So please, don't tar the development team with an evil brush, since the impression I got was that they wanted to create something special, and early in the project I was excited by the potential, based on what code we were given and the direction our discussions were heading.

However, at some point the suits got hold of the project, and decisions were made at management level. At that point we and other developers were frozen out. I don't think the core developers wanted this to happen, but they are not the ones paying the bills or the salaries. You can likely blame the fact that the studio is part of a division run by the VP of XBox that has ultimately influenced the outcomes.

[ddavid 149]

I gues you all know that you can download Prepar3D for a 30 day trial? PC Pilot readers will have noticed this in the latest edition. See here:

http://www.prepar3d.com/pcpilot/

Mind you, have you got 30 days to spare...

Cheers - Dai.

[mutley 4,498]

I had forgotten about that and I had read the article as well.

Thanks for the reminder Dai I might give it a try!

[TedG 0]

Hi folks,

Perhaps you might find this interesting as well-from Robert Randazzo at PMDG (again culled off the AVSIM forums)....I would suggest all is not doom and gloom:

Captains-

I've let a few days go by without commenting on the topic of MS Flight not because I haven't anything to say, but because I have been rather engrossed in all the year end/year begin administrivia required to keep both PMDG and my aviation consulting business in compliance with all the various regulations and tax codes... (Translation: If you want to know how to have fun, hang out with someone else. )

The topic of FLIGHT has been an interesting one. When I was a kid, I recall watching a movie or TV show about the airship Hindenburg catching fire. I was fascinated that the participants were enthusiastically waiving even as you could see their ship beginning to consume itself in flames. The image was horrible- and it left me wondering how those aboard could have been so happily distracted that they remained blissfully unaware of their impending doom...

I find myself equally curious about the topic at hand.

Let's just get something right out on the table: If you are reading this, then you are not likely to be the target audience for FLIGHT- and this is why the reaction by this community has ranged from tepid acceptance to outright bewilderment at the unveiling of MS's newest game.

You see, FLIGHT has gone through a number of changes during the course of it's development. I was initially "briefed in" on the project that would eventually become FLIGHT all the way back in August of 2009. At that time, it seemed to me that a good faith effort was being made to get MS back in the genre, and that a significant amount of effort was going to be put into creating the simulation that FSX should have been when it was prematurely released in 2006.

Since that time, I have watched (at times in dismay) the project transitioned from "modest proposal" to "green-lit console-style game" to "resurgent FSX replacement" and back to the console-ish game that the product seems to have become in it's final format. Love the idea, or hate it, it appears to me that the marketing people have once again won the battle of demands and the end result is a fast-action point-and-score type game that is envisioned to ring in unit sales by appealing to those who are interested in action, leveling-up and point scoring rather than true simulation as it is known to all of us in this community.

Again- you are likely not the target audience, so any similarity between FLIGHT and the hobby we know as flight simulation is purely coincidental.

I mentioned that we have been watching this process in earnest for quite awhile now. Early in the process, our opinion was solicited on a wide range of topics, and semi-occasional updates seemed to indicate that strides were being made on a project that had some potential to give us all a next generation platform to work with... Something all of us in the development and sim-consumer community would LOVE to see.

But there were undertones that caused us some concern. Namely, there was a theme that continually floated to the surface that seemed to indicate that MS was looking to "monetize the secondary development market" in order to increase the long term revenue stream upon which development of the platform would be based.

To put it a bit more bluntly: It became obvious to me very early-on that MS was looking to get a piece of the secondary market in which companies like PMDG, Aerosoft, Flight1, Level D and the like make our living. This idea has been looming over the horizon since at least late 2005 when a gaggle of FS developers were invited to Redmond to view the upcoming FSX. There were hints dropped at the time, and behaviors that, to me indicated a growing desire on the part of MS to learn just how much money the secondary market was generating.

There could only be a single reason why they would want to know this information...

I am not generally swayed by fear or hysterics, so when the same behaviors were present at the 2007 meeting hosted by MS, I began to expect that whatever version followed FSX would come with some licensing requirement in order to help MS generate revenue from the secondary market. This in and of itself wouldn't be a terrible thing, especially if it kept the platform vital and moving forward- but as we all saw there was a decision to cut ties with the ACES development team, followed by a brief period of quiet, and then the word of FLIGHT came along.

In our conversations, the inevitable discussion of "monetizing the secondary market" finally came about. The talk was faint at first, but approximately a year after being initially briefed into project, the talk became more solid, more definite. Requests for information were not immediately answered, or they were answered obliquely in a fashion that any negotiator will tell you is designed to mask the true answer.

Then the product details began to dribble out. I won't repeat them here as many of them changed and many other details have already been published in other places, but a couple of developers, including PMDG, were asked to make a strong commitment to FLIGHT in order to help get the secondary market up and running in a manner that would generate buzz and entice users to move to the new platform. At PMDG, we demurred....

You see- we nearly put PMDG out of business by adopting our entire development process for 2006/2007 around the release of FSX. When that platform proved to be unready for the market it had disastrous consequences- and while we were very much excited by the idea of a new and more capable platform- there remained the obvious fear of "going down that road again" with FLIGHT.

Eventually we were presented with a picture of how our lives would have to change in order to support FLIGHT:

• All commercial products would be marketed exclusively by MS and we would not be allowed to sell our own products from our own sites.
  
• No freeware, not even free expansions to our own products. (Think: liveries)
  
• Unclear controls regarding pricing.
  
• The inability to market our own products in the brick and mortar retail market without purchasing licenses to our own products in advance of production. (This would increase our costs dramatically, making it impossible to support a retail operation...)
  
• All developers would be required to pay a sizable per-unit license fee on all FLIGHT products.
  

If the sales figures we were being promised were to come true- then all of the restrictions above would have been a minor inconvenience- but as one of my favorite pilot friends likes to say: "I didn't get to be this old by being stupid." PMDG has been in this business for nearly 15 years- and while we do occasionally make mistakes, I feel that we have a pretty good feel for the simming marketplace, its size and how it operates- and this new business model gave me pause.

PMDG has always had a good, honest, open relationship with the team at MS- so we provided them with open, honest and candid feedback that we felt was respectful, and candid. In spite of repeated requests for a commitment, we demurred. Shortly there-after the communication channel went dead. Calls and emails went unanswered, and advance alphas stopped arriving. Shortly there-after we received a perfunctory email advising that our input was no longer desired.

I wish I could tell you that I was surprised- but I was not. After all- we were being asked to effectively surrender years of very delicate and careful work to build a brand and a relationship with all of you. This was not something to be taken lightly...

So at the end of the day, I was surprised and disappointed to see that the developers of FLIGHT elected to bring in a bunch of people to see FLIGHT, while very noticeably keeping out many of the same folks who have supported MS and the genre for years. The message was made loudly and clearly that our input was not desired and that the strategic objectives of FLIGHT do not involve the community that companies like PMDG, Aerosoft and the like represent.

In other words: This game is not supposed to replace your FSX simulation.... You are not the target audience.

So where do we go from here?

Well- first- I'm not overly concerned. As hardware advances- FSX is really just coming into its own on the average consumer's hardware- so we intend to continue FSX development for the foreseeable future! There are a number of directions in which we can go- and PMDG has already been taking steps to sort out what platform our future products will feature. There has been some loose talk about PMDG and Xplane10- but I must tell you that while we are evaluating that product, and while we do have someone on staff helping to map out the process by which our products wind up in Xplane10- we are still some way out on that project line... From a developers standpoint Xplane10 certainly seems to be a good solid platform that will help our products to shine- but, like FSX it has some weaknesses and we need to evaluate whether it makes sense to allow XPlan10 at this time.

I don't yet have an answer to this question.

In the mean time, we continue at full steam to put the 777 together for you. I am not sweating the small stuff at this particular juncture- but I promise that whatever direction we go- you will be welcome to follow!

Happy New Year- everyone!

[mutley 4,498]

Thanks for relaying this Ted, it makes for interesting reading.

PMDG's experience concurs with that of ORBX, Microsoft cut the serious developers out ages ago and we are no longer the target audience.

any similarity between FLIGHT and the hobby we know as flight simulation is purely coincidental

In my book, end of story

[/FLIGHT]

[TedG 0]

Oh...and in a very interesting statement from John Venema at ORBX:

We also have not discounted XPX completely, but we're just not cashed up enough for a complete retooling exercise to a completely new platform. It's not a port, it's a relearning, redevelopment, retraining, and ultimately, a very expensive exercise to move away from the FSX/P3D engine. We're too small and risk averse to begin throwing money around like that. We've invested about 8 years and countless man hours in the Microsoft platform; you just don't jump ship overnight, does not happen.

I had a feeling that Mr Venema...despite the strange stuff surrounding ORBX Christmas sales and his previous disparaging remarks regarding X-Plane....would back pedal and this is encouraging as well with ORBX potentially exploring X-Plane supplementing continual FSX development. I respect the guy for at least making the above remark.

So perhaps long live FSX AND X-Plane

[Tim_A 997]

Speaking of JV, Orbx have announced "side-by-side" licensing for their FTX regions in P3D. A side-by-side licence that installs your existing PNW into P3D (DYJL these TLAs!) will cost £4.60. More regions are expected to follow.

[mutley 4,498]

There's also a free demo available http://fullterrain.com/p3d_product_pnwdemo.html#demo