end of flight

[jankees 917]

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/7/25/3187649/microsoft-vancouver-lays-off-staff-cancels-projects

oh well...

[mutley 4,487]

oh well...

I feel sorry for the staff and the customers who may have purchased extras.

[jaydor 345]

How come the rest of the sim industry knew that it was going to head this way and Ole'Bill and his gang took no notice??

Well it's up to LM and P3D from now on..

"RIP Flight"

What will AVSIM do now? ("Quick"! "Hide all the ropes")..

[mutley 4,487]

It's not official until Allensworth says so!

[Jess-b 420]

So the end has come. I can't say i'm shocked. When I downloaded the beta in January it became clear to me that ms had made a miscalculation on its target audience. They went after a market that didn't exist. The casual flight simmer doesn't exist. Dropping the word 'simulator' from the title and adding a more 'gamey' feel to the whole thing like flying through gold rings, did little to get more players in. In the end, flight was to much of a simulator for the casual Xbox player, but not enough of a simulator for the existing FSX/FS9 audience.

It's marketing was crazy, headed up by a guy who choose to tell existing fs users that they were 'crazy' for wanting a full world with 25000 airports. We should have been flight's greatest asset, instead we were cast aside. What's really sadis that it looks like ms never really got behind the product. Development has slowed to a crawl in the 6 months or so flight has been with us. Although Alaska was released last month the bulk of the work would have been completed prior to the end of febuary release of flight. Then there was the 'cockpit less' aircraft disaster. Ms really misjudged the demand for these to the point where the excitement of a simple cub with a cockpit reached almost fever pitch.

But perhaps the biggest mistake ms made was releasing flight for free. In one sense it was a god idea. Being free it could be downloaded by more people than ever. But It also lead to a sense of entitlement, to a certain extent. For example. The average cost of a ORBX scenery, like pnw is what, around $40. The price of Alaska on release was $15 or $20 (can't remember at the mo) It's a great price, but for some it was a bit much. The new cub the same. $15 for the carbon cub, cheaper than A2A's but for some, it was to much. Being free to begin with Meant that people expected cheaper add-on content than they would if they'd paid $30 to begin with.

In the end, ms took what money they could and ran. Many people paid full price for the cub yesterday only to fine a 25% off discount for it on steam this morning, plus the news that flight development has come to an end. It's a bitter pill to swallow and a huge slap In the face for the users who supported flight and enjoyed it.

Fortunately, FSX is still here as is P3D and XPlane 10, so let's enjoy what we've got whist ms try to work out what they want.

Jess B

[ddavid 149]

Well, what a parlaver, eh? All that effort, and then just binned. And I don't think many of the Vancouver team knew the end was so close. A "difficult" management decision - cut our losses and terminate project. I guess other major sim players like Aerosoft, PMDG, etc are glad they had minimal involvement now.

I expect there will be plenty of post-mortems posted on why this came to pass. Personally, I think the whole Flight strategy was flawed.

Apart from the dev people looking for work, I'd say 'Rest In Pieces'. It's a shame, but I won't be crying into my beer.

Cheers - Dai.

[ShrewsburyFC 215]

A great game, but the news is no surprise to me, as the development was a complete disaster from start to finish.

Sam.

[allardjd 1,853]

I read something very profound on the AVSIM forum this morning about MSF - - -

The simmers asked, "Where's the cockpit?"

The gamers asked, "Where are the guns?"

That pretty much sums it up.

John

[Tim_A 995]

John: Absolutely spot on. They had a product that nobody wanted, aimed at a market that didn't exist.

[jaydor 345]

Read your AVSIM link Mike. Wonder if one is allowed to butkick Flight now without being shot down in flames on the Flight AVSIM site.

Read this link also from A2A

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/380808-flight-cancelled-flight-simulator-x-remains-strong/

[Jess-b 420]

Mike, I'd say my favourite is FSX (I don't even have FS9 installed at the moment) however I'll be moving to P3D soon once V1.4 comes out. The one to really watch is XP10. It has massive potential and from what I've heard on the grapevine (rumors only at the mo) many ex FSX developers looking to develop for the platform. The move to 64bit will be the big thing.

The one thing I've nevere got though, through the whole flight release or xp10 for that matter is why people want to stick solely to one sim. There were many posts on forums all over the place say things like 'ive completely removed FSX from my system because x,y or z is so much Better'. Never understood why they had to. Personally I have on my main pc FSX,p3d, xp9, xp10, dcs black shark, dcs a10c, hawx (stop sniggering),falcon 4 allied assault and coming soon, aerofly fs and dcs p-51. If I can fly it, I'll try it. I'm even going to look at the latest version of flight gear when it comes out next month.

Best wishes,

Jess B.

[ScruffyDuck 0]

I think it is important to separate the folks who developed Flight from those who had responsibility for the strategy, marketing and financial management. I know some of the developers personally and they may now be looking for a new job through no fault of their own. If your company asks you to build a three legged camel to cross the Atlantic then you may well think they have lost it - on the other hand you may consider that your responsibility to your family, mortage and so on means that you will do your best to make it work within the parameters set you.

Personally I don't think Flight is a waterproof three legged camel. There is a lot of good stuff in there that will now not get a chance to be developed. Nevertheless it does appear to be a grand and misguided attempt to move a niche market (flight simulation) into a new area. There are an awful lot of 'I told you so' posts out there and I am sure folks will have as much fun picking over the entrails as they did when Flight was launched but I just want to go back to where I started in this post and remind myself of the guys who did the coding and grapics and designing and testing and who may well now be unemployed.

[britfrog 180]

I am afraid it was obvious to everyone, except those responsible for launching flight, that is was going to be a giant flop from the start , in fact they were informed it would be a flop before they launched it and still they wouldnt listen, I cant even imagine what sort of a mental midget could conceive that Flight would attract a customer base, kids these days are far too savvy to get a kick out of something as dummed down as flight was, no doubt those responsible for the idea and launch will be given multi million dollar bonuses along the lines of the failed bank investment teams.

,

so hello microsoft take a tip from me save yourself billions, BIN windows 8 because that will be another big failure as that is also a dummed down product, and put them all the devs to work on what people will buy FS11

[Jess-b 420]

Jess, thanks for that - I didn't know there were quite so many. don't know how you find the time.

Oh there's never enough time I find. Btw there are still a few more I could name, but that would be showing off a bit (or looking a bit to nerdy! Lol)

Regarding aerofly fs. It looks beautiful, but a few caveats before you purchase. If I remember correctly, there are no nav aids so navigation via instruments may be tricky, and of course it's limited to switzerland. However until I pick it up (sometime next week I'm hoping.) I can't Be more definitive.

I don't think we've reviewed this, but if you drop rob or joe a line, I'm sure they can sort someone out to look at it :-)

Best wishes,

Jess B

[SEATAC 400]

Glad I didn't waste my time on it.

I feel sorry for the staff. It's a tough job market out there.

[M31 0]

I don't want to open up old wounds and I'm basically reminiscing here.

 

But my recent thoughts on MS Flight are ... it was basically FS11 early code polished a bit and shoved out the door for a quick buck, as I recall MS Aces team did make a start on FS11 after FSX and for a little while things were progressing nicely then it was announced it was canned, a new Train Sim 2 was announced as canned at the same time too, the second time they canned it.

 

I remember reading posts about how a couple of MS Aces staff were kept on to archive current MS flight sim code and that would include the then current work in development for FS11.

 

Fast forward to MS Joshua days and the first time MS Flight was announced to the public, it looked like we were back on track again, but as the months passed on it became apparent there was something Very very wrong, there was much denial in many area's and so on and so forth and eventually we got the truth.

 

But I still reckon it was early FS11 code that was a successor to FSX polished up and thrown to us for a quick buck that ended up as MS Flight, you just have to look at Flight and FSX and all the older MS sims too to see the linear progress, but at the same time never realising what the full potential of a new MS could be, the propaganda of JS and the MS spin machine was pretty clever too, classic divide and conquer tactics, they had half the traditional Flight Sim community tearing at each others throats with at first the tactics looking like Josh had got his way but over time and now that the dust has settled I think most of us see the bigger picture.

 

I seriously think this would have never happened in Bill Gates MS days, Bill despite all the bad things said about him was a fan of this MS series.

 

Sorry for ranting again, but I think I've finally got it all off my chest as a passionate Flight Sim enthusiast and can now move on at last.

 

We have what we have.

[britfrog 180]

I don't want to open up old wounds and I'm basically reminiscing here.

 

But my recent thoughts on MS Flight are ... it was basically FS11 early code polished a bit and shoved out the door for a quick buck, as I recall MS Aces team did make a start on FS11 after FSX and for a little while things were progressing nicely then it was announced it was canned, a new Train Sim 2 was announced as canned at the same time too, the second time they canned it.

 

I remember reading posts about how a couple of MS Aces staff were kept on to archive current MS flight sim code and that would include the then current work in development for FS11.

 

Fast forward to MS Joshua days and the first time MS Flight was announced to the public, it looked like we were back on track again, but as the months passed on it became apparent there was something Very very wrong, there was much denial in many area's and so on and so forth and eventually we got the truth.

 

But I still reckon it was early FS11 code that was a successor to FSX polished up and thrown to us for a quick buck that ended up as MS Flight, you just have to look at Flight and FSX and all the older MS sims too to see the linear progress, but at the same time never realising what the full potential of a new MS could be, the propaganda of JS and the MS spin machine was pretty clever too, classic divide and conquer tactics, they had half the traditional Flight Sim community tearing at each others throats with at first the tactics looking like Josh had got his way but over time and now that the dust has settled I think most of us see the bigger picture.

 

I seriously think this would have never happened in Bill Gates MS days, Bill despite all the bad things said about him was a fan of this MS series.

 

Sorry for ranting again, but I think I've finally got it all off my chest as a passionate Flight Sim enthusiast and can now move on at last.

 

We have what we have.

 

I think we all wanted fs11 from flight and it was not to be sadly. The base program (ESP) was created for all sort of simulation scenarios it can be used for train sims , car sims and many other things, as i understand it  problems arose from this continued insanity of backward compatibility being considered necessary for whatever reason. L.M. are using ESP to take FSX to the next level however they have to get to an understanding of what does what etc as there is only one or two ex M.S. guys with experience in fsx that moved to LM.

I still maintain hope that S.Bullmer will be pushed aside by the returning Bill Gates, and that could be the catalyst to M.S. resurecting FSIM after all B.G. just did things from a gut feeling, S.B. doesnt fart if the pen pushers say he cant.

 

[allardjd 1,853]

Shoot him again, Sheriff, he's still crawling...

John

[M31 0]

Shoot him again, Sheriff, he's still crawling...

John

 

LOL ... I hear what you say John, but at the same time its still our flight sim enthusiast history here and we will always look back fondly or not so fondly as the case may be, there is absolutly no danger of things getting out of hand unless overbearing moderation chimes in, and I'm sure you wont do that.

 

I was talking with fond and less fond memory's on the hardware forum about old Intel DX33 chips, surly its OK to talk about old software too? I'm not trying to wind you up here, honestly, also why are you so defensive on the old MS Flight? I've seen you rip it to shreads too in your own posts.

 

I admire you very much John ... but you have a very dismissive attitude that borders on rude with folk who don't see eye to eye to you and who might be polar opposites for many reasons.

 

Sorry..

 

[M31 0]

I don't want to open up old wounds and I'm basically reminiscing here.

 

But my recent thoughts on MS Flight are ... it was basically FS11 early code polished a bit and shoved out the door for a quick buck, as I recall MS Aces team did make a start on FS11 after FSX and for a little while things were progressing nicely then it was announced it was canned, a new Train Sim 2 was announced as canned at the same time too, the second time they canned it.

 

I remember reading posts about how a couple of MS Aces staff were kept on to archive current MS flight sim code and that would include the then current work in development for FS11.

 

Fast forward to MS Joshua days and the first time MS Flight was announced to the public, it looked like we were back on track again, but as the months passed on it became apparent there was something Very very wrong, there was much denial in many area's and so on and so forth and eventually we got the truth.

 

But I still reckon it was early FS11 code that was a successor to FSX polished up and thrown to us for a quick buck that ended up as MS Flight, you just have to look at Flight and FSX and all the older MS sims too to see the linear progress, but at the same time never realising what the full potential of a new MS could be, the propaganda of JS and the MS spin machine was pretty clever too, classic divide and conquer tactics, they had half the traditional Flight Sim community tearing at each others throats with at first the tactics looking like Josh had got his way but over time and now that the dust has settled I think most of us see the bigger picture.

 

I seriously think this would have never happened in Bill Gates MS days, Bill despite all the bad things said about him was a fan of this MS series.

 

Sorry for ranting again, but I think I've finally got it all off my chest as a passionate Flight Sim enthusiast and can now move on at last.

 

We have what we have.

 

I think we all wanted fs11 from flight and it was not to be sadly. The base program (ESP) was created for all sort of simulation scenarios it can be used for train sims , car sims and many other things, as i understand it  problems arose from this continued insanity of backward compatibility being considered necessary for whatever reason. L.M. are using ESP to take FSX to the next level however they have to get to an understanding of what does what etc as there is only one or two ex M.S. guys with experience in fsx that moved to LM.

I still maintain hope that S.Bullmer will be pushed aside by the returning Bill Gates, and that could be the catalyst to M.S. resurecting FSIM after all B.G. just did things from a gut feeling, S.B. doesnt fart if the pen pushers say he cant.

 

 

I'd love to see Bill Gates come back to Microsoft, but I don't think that will ever happen unfortunately Brit.

 

[allardjd 1,853]

Nigel,

 

First let me say I'm happy to see you back at MH.  I always find your posts and points of view interesting.  You're miles ahead of me technically on the hardware end of things, and your postings are thughtful and thought-provoking.

 

I wasn't trying to open old wounds - in fact I don't have any old wounds.  I happen to agree with most of what you wrote here, including wishing Bill Gates were back.  As much as I liked to bash him, he was on the side of the angels with respect to FS and really was a pretty smart dude.  My comment was more in the line of taking a little joy from you having another whack at the MSF carcass - think of it as a piling-on comment; "+1" is so humorless. My response was intended to be funnier than that and in no way dismissive of your statement.

 

I suspect that many Americans, being a bit less reserved, more outspoken and possibly more opinionated than those in the mother-lands, often are seen as rude when we have no intention of being so.  I have a tendency to state my opinions as clearly as I'm able and sometimes they differ with the opinions of others.  That's not meant to be dismissive, that's meant to be the beginning of a discussion of ideas.  If you state an opinion and I disagree, support yours and the discussion is on.  I'm quite capable of disagreeing with someone without disrespecting them or disliking them.  Neither do I interpret failure to engage on such a topic as meaning someone has been "dismissed".  To me it just means he chose not to engage.  No blood - no foul.  Two opinions stated - no more to see here - move along.

 

John

 

 

 

 

[M31 0]

Nigel,

 

First let me say I'm happy to see you back at MH.  I always find your posts and points of view interesting.  You're miles ahead of me technically on the hardware end of things, and your postings are thughtful and thought-provoking.

 

I wasn't trying to open old wounds - in fact I don't have any old wounds.  I happen to agree with most of what you wrote here, including wishing Bill Gates were back.  As much as I liked to bash him, he was on the side of the angels with respect to FS and really was a pretty smart dude.  My comment was more in the line of taking a little joy from you having another whack at the MSF carcass - think of it as a piling-on comment; "+1" is so humorless. My response was intended to be funnier than that and in no way dismissive of your statement.

 

I suspect that many Americans, being a bit less reserved, more outspoken and possibly more opinionated than those in the mother-lands, often are seen as rude when we have no intention of being so.  I have a tendency to state my opinions as clearly as I'm able and sometimes they differ with the opinions of others.  That's not meant to be dismissive, that's meant to be the beginning of a discussion of ideas.  If you state an opinion and I disagree, support yours and the discussion is on.  I'm quite capable of disagreeing with someone without disrespecting them or disliking them.  Neither do I interpret failure to engage on such a topic as meaning someone has been "dismissed".  To me it just means he chose not to engage.  No blood - no foul.  Two opinions stated - no more to see here - move along.

 

John

 

 

LOL Trevor, you are something else mate

 

If I was going over the carcass as you say, it was merely because I never had the chance to comment on this closure before I took leave the last time, that to be honest was because of you.

 

Best wishes.

 

Nige.

 

PS: I'm all for forgive and forget mate, just cut me a little slack please.

[allardjd 1,853]

Colin,

 

CRAP - I'm sorry - the name error was utterly unintentional - my sincere apologies.  I'm not that subtle.

 

John

[M31 0]

Its Cool John and no worries mate, I think and hope it was the icebreaker to make us forget and move on, if you were here right beside me I'd shake your hand and buy you a beer.

 

This site is too good to have fall outs with like minded members.

 

Peace..

[allardjd 1,853]

Amen to that - On that happy note I'm going to knock the cork out of a tall cool one right now so as not to miss the spirit of the occasion.  I've done my quota of airport diagrams for the day, so I'm allowed to drink now.  The quality control goes all to hell if I start too soon.

 

John