MS Flight Simulator Dead?
 

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

updating MS Flight Sim
 

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

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

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 . . .