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Might wanna be sitting down for this one...

I know I will get flamed for mentioning the unmentionable, but...........

Perhaps Aces needed to be scrapped and rebuilt and now was deemed the right time with the recession and the talent pool that will likely be available?

I for one did not feel FSX was cutting edge for flight modeling with the hardware available at release, and don't get me started with the bloated overhead with the coding that made the latest greatest computers of the day run it at 4 FPS if you wanted any trees, buildings, or textures.

Sorry, but 150 people * ~$100,000 / year = a lot. This smells of a house cleaning, and could be a blessing in the long run. I for one feel MSFS was lacking innovation with the last release and needed to go a new direction.

This is not to say Aces wasn't filled with great people who knew their sheet, but perhaps it wasn't a great TEAM of people. Wow, I'm really gonna pay for typing this. :typing:
 
MCDesigns said:
Is this true?? They just let many talented people go and are looking for replacements? Someone at MS needs to pull their head out of their :censored: !!!!!
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Keep in mind that (nearly) every former ACES employee have "first dibs" on securing an interview for whatever positions open... :whistle:
 
SkippyBing said:
They need to ditch Balmer, he's almost a legacy now and his inability to 'get' emerging technology and fields or change direction is doing MS no favours.
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They can't, because he invented the

2922438953_af290741f7.jpg



:costumes:
 
I guess it's out with the old and in with the new. Perhaps using the old team to build an Xbox title to port to the PC wouldn't be a good idea. :whistle:
 
Major_Spittle said:
Sorry, but 150 people * ~$100,000 / year = a lot. This smells of a house cleaning
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well if thats the case then why didnt they get rid of the zune team?? it obvious their not gonna make any money competeing against the Ipod :kilroy:

quicki comparison:

Zune - 120GB, 30 hours music playback, 4 hours video playback, £171 (at current $ to £ conversion, allthough if it ever does come out over here MS would prolly charge £249.99, ya know normanl trick of just changeing the $ to a £ ...)

ipod - 120GB, 36 hours music playback, 150 hours of video, £175.00 - plus it looks better and is actually avialable outside the US!

It just makes no sense even trying to compete ... and as they've said, it actually lost money, so why the heck bother to keep it??
 
Major Spittle....


This is not to say Aces wasn't filled with great people who knew their sheet, but perhaps it wasn't a great TEAM of people. Wow, I'm really gonna pay for typing this. :typing:



You are a braver man than me.......LOL :eek::horseshoe:
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harleyman said:
Major Spittle....


This is not to say Aces wasn't filled with great people who knew their sheet, but perhaps it wasn't a great TEAM of people. Wow, I'm really gonna pay for typing this. :typing:



You are a braver man than me.......LOL :eek::horseshoe:
<!-- / message -->
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What I mean, and I have seen this first hand, is that you can have group of great programmers with great ideas but the team doesn't organize in a way that produces a great product. Be it lack of consensus or so many ideas and thoughts that it slows actual progress or causes too many changes during production.

I have no idea what the group was like, but I do have my thoughts on FS9 vs FSX. What was released was not the FSX that was advertised. Small upgrade in visuals at a great cost to computing overhead. No DX10, then just a DX10 " preview. A few bells and whistles. Advertised Scaleability for the future, which was little more than a promise that some day a home PC would be able to run the game.

Perhaps if the core group of Aces could regroup for a different developer and make something without MS's scheduling and atmosphere. I do feel they know what most people want in a FS and they care about the FS community.
 
Interesting take on this Major_Spittle and I have my own take on it, but again, all this is pure speculation. As for what was released wasn't what was advertised, I don't see that. Other than a more living world, much of what was advertised to me I do see and use in FSX. Yes, DX10 functionality became a fluke, but I feel that has more to do with MS at large with lack of coordination of Vista more than with ACES. As for FSX being just a small upgrade in visuals, it is much more than that from what I have experienced. I think many just see it as that since they don't really go beyond what they see. To be completely honest, if FSX was just an upgrade from FS9 to give more performance headroom, better AI experience, better flight dynamics, better accusim type programming by default, better weather, etc without the increased autogen, higher res textures and features like bumpmapping, etc I would have probably stayed with FS9 as none of that interests me.

Perhaps if the core group of Aces could regroup for a different developer and make something without MS's scheduling and atmosphere. I do feel they know what most people want in a FS and they care about the FS community.
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I do agree with this though. I feel that many of FSX's shortcomings are because of the company involvements in the product development and their budgets on resources and not due to what ACES did. I mean, who do you think can provide a better FS experience, developers that are pilots, or bean counters, LOL.
 
I'll repeat this here because it made such an impression on me. A couple of years ago, Arno put on a presentation at the MS DevCon in which he did a slideshow comparing screenshots of the same stock scenery, taken from the same angle, in as many versions of FS as he could get to run. Visually, it was a real eye-opener... by far, I thought the biggest improvement in graphics in a single version was the jump from FS9 to FSX. There was incremental progress all along the timeline, of course, but FSX really stood out as an enormous imrovement over the others. I just can't agree that we only got a minor improvement in graphics... it was huge.
 
Quote:perhaps if the core group of Aces could regroup for a different developer and make something without MS's scheduling and atmosphere. I do feel they know what most people want in a FS and they care about the FS community.

I do agree with this though. I feel that many of FSX's shortcomings are because of the company involvements in the product development and their budgets on resources and not due to what ACES did. I mean, who do you think can provide a better FS experience, developers that are pilots, or bean counters, LOL.
__________________
Regards, Michael
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I agree with this also.

I think if Aces had what they needed, alot of FS would be different.

Famous saying; 'A camel is a horse designed by a committee'.

A product needs vision. A visionary in a product line or company can, if given control and he is competent, can go amazingly far. For instance, Bill Gates. He took a small firm with a few people and with that, became one of the most successful people on Earth. If Aces had carte blanche in their 'needs' and direction (scheduling, parameters, core design, work group/team members/help), I think we would never had heard about frame rates, and other issues.

Vision, vision, vision.....


Bill
 
And, of course, an unlimited budget and guaranteed recouping of costs, which is where the "vision" falls over, because reality is that accountants have to run a commercial entity. Otherwise it ceases being a commercial entity, because it very quickly ceases being an entity altogether.
 
Lionheart said:
I agree with this also.

I think if Aces had what they needed, alot of FS would be different.

Famous saying; 'A camel is a horse designed by a committee'.

A product needs vision. A visionary in a product line or company can, if given control and he is competent, can go amazingly far. For instance, Bill Gates. He took a small firm with a few people and with that, became one of the most successful people on Earth. If Aces had carte blanche in their 'needs' and direction (scheduling, parameters, core design, work group/team members/help), I think we would never had heard about frame rates, and other issues.

Vision, vision, vision.....


Bill
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Well said, Bill :applause:

I totally second that!
 
Thanks Warrant.

IanP said:
And, of course, an unlimited budget and guaranteed recouping of costs, which is where the "vision" falls over, because reality is that accountants have to run a commercial entity. Otherwise it ceases being a commercial entity, because it very quickly ceases being an entity altogether.
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Ian,

I see your point too. Business is business.

Here though is a classic example, talking of bean counters, product vision, and product line success in a huge corporation filled with products.

GM started a brand new company from scratch. New factories, new management system, new cars made from the ground up, even with their own new engine designs. Saturn car company. They were 'off limits' to GM. That company (Saturn) was so successful, they could barely keep up with sales.

Now, Saturn has been basically integrated into the GM shadows, the product lines no longer reflect new advancements and neat, intriquing qualities. Instead, they look amazingly 'inexpensive' compared to what they used to be. (In their big days, they competed with Honda, which is huge in the car world).

I hate to put down a product, so for all Saturn enthusiasts, my apologies. I wish GM would leave you guys alone and let Saturn make their cars their way.

Same with FS. I wish MS would leave Aces alone and let them make their sim.




Bill
 
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