"Carl Frisk" wrote

Good points all.
Indeed Microsoft had/has the money to have made an even better COF.
What they don't have is enough talent. FS is a very small part of
Microsoft, and by no means the sexy, high paying part. MS is always
hiring, and yet never seems to have enough developers to go around.
Great developers don't grow on trees and Microsoft has to compete for
them as well as anyone else.

Microsoft is known for getting the developers it wants, sometimes paying
outrageous money just to keep them from working at other firms.

Their Games Division which is a very
small part of MS (of which the FS team is a tiny island) has been
concentrating on XBox, which consequently is getting the lions share
of the budget. Quite frankly I believe MS keeps FS going just as a
local Pizza Parlor sponsors a local soccer team. Mostly PR and
because some VP somewhere is fighting for it. Sooner of later the
bean counters are most likely going to win and just do away with it.
I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised. One thing I could see
happening is FS moving over to XBox. That would remove a lot of
headaches of trying to support all of the different hardware
configurations out there.

Careful what you ask for you just might get it.

Microsoft's mode of operation to beat the competition down by flooding the
market with a minimally better product, or to impede the sales of competing
products, legally or illegally. Without Microsoft, the money would go to
competing/innovative firms like the former Looking Glass Studios. Without
Microsoft, the competition for our money would raise the bar.

The sheep would find a way to cope, probably better off.









--
...Carl Frisk
Anger is a brief madness.
- Horace, 20 B.C.
http://www.carlfrisk.com


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Reply-To: "Carl Frisk"
From: "Carl Frisk"
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.simulators
References:






Subject: FS9/FS2004: As fake as it gets?
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Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 22:28:10 GMT
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wrote in message
...
On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 11:05:34 GMT, "Carl Frisk"
wrote:

Thing is for $50 bucks FS9 gives
you IMO a really great realistic flying experience.

I have to agree with your statement here except that it provide a
fairly realistic experience but then I wonder about what FS should
be. FS has been around what 15 years? A long time anyway. There
have been some good general aviation sims compete with FS. Pro
Pilot, Flight Unlimited and Fly for example. All these sims took 1
to 2 years to develop from scratch and they were able to do as good
and in some areas better than FS. Now my point is if those sims
could be done in a couple of years from nothing should not FS be
much, much better than it is? MS has an established cycle now of
every two years coming out with an incremental upgrade. The same
time it takes to develop a new sim and all they do is an incremental
upgrade. Should not by now we have instruments that are as good as
say, the Reality XP line. Should not the long standing default
aircraft look as good as the PMDG aircraft, for example. Should not
the aerodynamics problems/errors that one reads about in the
newsgroups be fixed by now? Should not the ATC be at least as good as
say, Radar Contact? Should not there be a flight planner as nice as
say, Flightsim Commander? Should not the terrain elevations be at
least as good as those provided by 3rd party developers? These are
questions I think about when I consider how long FS has been on the
market.

MS opened up the door for 3rd parties to come along and improve it.

Yes they do let some things out in their SDKs now and it is greatly
appreciated by many. However, I still remember for years and years
the sim community was asking MS for information about their aircraft
and scenery structure. MS steadfastly refused to release or say
anything. It took dedicated 3rd party programmers to figure out on
their own how things worked. It wasn't until I believe it was Pro
Pilot came out and encouraged 3rd party developers by providing an
open architecture that MS relented and started releasing the SDKs.
It seems it has been marketing pressures that have brought about
major changes, not the kindness of MS. IMO we probably would still
not have SDKs if it weren't for sims like Pro Pilot, Flight Unlimited
and Fly to provide competition and actually encourage 3rd party
development.

Well, I'm done.

Regards all
Jack