TheSultanofScud

Various individuals and gaming sites are indicating that Microsoft's 5,000 worker layoff at Ace Studios included the Flight Simulator development team.

It's a turbulent time when a pilot on the streets can't even fire up his desktop jet. Take a look at the link below and draw your own conclusions...


Gamasutra - Microsoft Makes Big Cuts At Flight Sim Studio

rotorhead1026

I'll use this fellow's instead:

Aaron Harris 23 Jan 2009 at 12:36 pm PST

Well, here's the thing. Flight Simulator X barely touched on the capabilities of DirectX 10 and Shader 4.0. (see High Level Shader Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) for comparison between shader capabillities.

Flight Simulator X's engine was based off of their antiquated 1998/2002 engine, and it seemed as though ACES studio was just going to recycle the same engine for Train Simulator 2 and Flight Simulator 11. I would love and prefer to see what a "fresh approach" and a next-gen engine coded from scratch could do for Flight Simulator.

If a team isn't contracted to make a new Flight Simulator within the next year or so, X-Plane or some other new competition will likely make efforts to fill Microsoft's void, and embrace the wayward FS community.

Never fear; somebody will step in - especially with several thousand experienced folks on the street.

free2fly

The MS flight simulator franchise is a historic success. Someone will pick it up, right?

flywithjohn

It's just a layoff not dead a thing. I doubt MS will kill something that makes money permanently. It'll be around don't worry.

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Always blue skys, John Witcher

hotshot

Microsoft's Flight Simulator series is older than Windows and it's made them loads of money. It'll be back.

atpwannabe

I currently use MS Flight Sim X.

I have blast with it. As a matter of fact, recently discovered that speed brakes causes the nose to pitch up and in some cases depending upon power setting and flaps, maintains a steady rate of descent.

It's a great tool. No worries. It'll be around for awhile.



atp

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...Adversity truly introduces us to ourselves.

withthatsaid182

it'll be back...i thought that after FS9 that they were done...

i'm still using a heavily modified version of FS9 i won't bother with FSX yet....

with a good computer and the right add-ons you can keep using FSX for years to come....

i think flight sim is just a platform to build off of with add-ons....

a new one every few years with upgraded environments and scenery is nice though

block30

Can a person download upgrades to their MS Flight Sim online? For example, I have MS 2004, can I download something to update all the NAVAID/Airport changes to my sim?

Regards

mshunter

Negative. Not as far as i have found. Close to 2k logged on vatsim. To bad it dosent count towards the real thing.

jmcmanna

Sure you can . . . if you're using an add-on aircraft, go to www.navdata.at for your updated nav databases. For the default nav database without any add-ons, I'm sure somebody has compiled something.

Airports can be updated as well, go to www.avsim.com or www.flightsim.com and you can download all sorts of updated scenery, free airplanes, etc . . .