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Vertigo Studios closing doors

Good coders are the lifeline of every software house. My friend is a graphic artist mostly doing work for gaming business and he has said that guys like him are replacable and those who game studios hang on are good coders developing the engine. Now, if you think the volumes most of the flight sim addons are selling, you really can't pay that much for a coder. Most of the payware business is not generating business that much. So, in the end you need to find some one who takes it as a hobby and is interested in doing coding in their free time. And as flight sims popularity stands today, it may be difficult at least among younger folks. If I've understood correctly, VS coder (at least one of them) practically split and refused to work more and because of that their Bearcat patch was first delayed and then canceled. And now, most likely all developement is shut down, because it is no use for modelers to continue work.
 
I'm awfully sorry to read that. At least there's a little hope left:

"...unless we can find another coder."

I hope they'll find one.

Cheers,
Mark
 
Great shame! Really sorry to see Vertigo go and I think I have all their aircraft.
 
Sure hope someone who can code looks at this as an opportunity. Coders, here is a job just waiting for you. Please apply at Vertigo Studios.
 
TheGrunt said:
Good coders are the lifeline of every software house. My friend is a graphic artist mostly doing work for gaming business and he has said that guys like him are replacable and those who game studios hang on are good coders developing the engine. Now, if you think the volumes most of the flight sim addons are selling, you really can't pay that much for a coder. Most of the payware business is not generating business that much. So, in the end you need to find some one who takes it as a hobby and is interested in doing coding in their free time. And as flight sims popularity stands today, it may be difficult at least among younger folks. If I've understood correctly, VS coder (at least one of them) practically split and refused to work more and because of that their Bearcat patch was first delayed and then canceled. And now, most likely all developement is shut down, because it is no use for modelers to continue work.
Click to expand...

Graphics and simulation programmers(who should actually be called software engineers) on the whole are a rather rare breed. Eg one of my recent breakthroughs in R&D for FSX took me a year and a half of study, much trial and error, and waiting for days on end in graphics programming forums for replies to some of my dillemas, often which i had to solve by myself again through trial and error. Doing this kind of development requires thinking outside of the box to an extreme and those guys arent easy to find and as a result, getting guidance was hell.

Not to mention the world of payware simulation development is extremely demanding, often too much for the casual hobbyist. To combine R&D with Production and still meet deadlines is not easy and as a result, most turn away from it because they dont feel they can survive the pressure.
 
I'm not surprised about that. Not at all.


Let's hope the rest of the team finds suitable use for their skills. Or manages learning the coding part.
 
Bjoern said:
I'm not surprised about that. Not at all.


Let's hope the rest of the team finds suitable use for their skills. Or manages learning the coding part.
Click to expand...

Hi,
If many recent FSX projects seem to be really "code centric" (using modern weapon system for instance) , I thought that warbirds modeling could be less "coding-dependant"...
Accusim-like system is not the standard, so I thought that expected coding skill for airplanes with needles and screws was more about FSX SDK implementation (with few c++ gauges may be...) which is easier to find.
I guess I was wrong... sadly...

Regards
Sylvain
 
This is a very sad thing to hear.....
They have contributed so much to our community.....
I sincerely hope that they can and will find another Coder.....
 
Sorry to hear this as well.

They did some nice aircraft, and had some nice new ones in the works.

I must admit, I too am often puzzled by the use of the term 'coder'.

I know a lot of the newer addons have systems and features (and with Vertigo, things such as payload editors) that require extra work, such as additional gauges to make them function (be it C++ or XML), but I generally thought it was down to the 3D modeller to do this, since I thought they would have to do the XML code for the virtual cockpit gauges, and anything else the 3D model needs to function in FS.

Anyway, hopefully someone will step foward and rise to the occasion so Vertigo can continue.

Cheers

Paul
 
Bradburger said:
I must admit, I too am often puzzled by the use of the term 'coder'.

I know a lot of the newer addons have systems and features (and with Vertigo, things such as payload editors) that require extra work, such as additional gauges to make them function (be it C++ or XML), but I generally thought it was down to the 3D modeller to do this, since I thought they would have to do the XML code for the virtual cockpit gauges, and anything else the 3D model needs to function in FS.
Click to expand...

Coders develop modules, often using SimConnect, which model systems and behaviour which the 3D model and its gauges cannot implement. Milviz's VC lighting system on their new 737 is an example: the Milviz 737 has very complex xml coding to run the cockpit animations - of which there are nearly 500 - but the lighting system is an entirely different system of custom-written graphics code which xml simply cannot do. FSX will work with external modules to provide functions and features earlier versions of FS could only dream of.

You want aircraft with complex systems? You need a coder. Modelling is just a small portion of the work with today's bleeding-edge releases.
 
hairyspin said:
Coders develop modules, often using SimConnect, which model systems and behaviour which the 3D model and its gauges cannot implement. Milviz's VC lighting system on their new 737 is an example: the Milviz 737 has very complex xml coding to run the cockpit animations - of which there are nearly 500 - but the lighting system is an entirely different system of custom-written graphics code which xml simply cannot do. FSX will work with external modules to provide functions and features earlier versions of FS could only dream of.

You want aircraft with complex systems? You need a coder. Modelling is just a small portion of the work with today's bleeding-edge releases.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation hairyspin.

I had forgotten about the importance of SimConnect in a lot of addons (and it's power to things you could not do before), and the fact that it needs to have someone write the code for the modules to work.

But having said that, I guess I was thinking more of the developers who have systems etc. modelled in their aircraft, but don't appear to use SimConnect. (And that seems to be quite a few of the addons I own).

I can't remember off hand if Vertigo use SimConnect for their aircraft (I guess they do though, hence the need for a coder, but I don't recall their aircraft having any complex systems modelling), and I can of course understand a detailed aircraft like the Milviz 737 having to have lots of custom code and animations where SimConnect needs to be used in order to achieve this. You then of course you have the likes of Accusim & Accufeel which need SimConnect in order to work.

But I guess it all depends on what level you want to model things, and how clever you are at using existing techiques and methods if you can't write code for SimConnect.

Obviously, SimConnect is an exellent thing to have in FSX, but I suppose developers could always ask themselves if their aircaft and the things they are modelling actually need to use it, hence the need for a dedicated coder!

Just a thought.

Cheers

Paul
 
Coders develop modules, often using SimConnect, which model systems and behaviour which the 3D model and its gauges cannot implement. Milviz's VC lighting system on their new 737 is an example: the Milviz 737 has very complex xml coding to run the cockpit animations - of which there are nearly 500 - but the lighting system is an entirely different system of custom-written graphics code which xml simply cannot do. FSX will work with external modules to provide functions and features earlier versions of FS could only dream of.

You want aircraft with complex systems? You need a coder. Modelling is just a small portion of the work with today's bleeding-edge releases.
Click to expand...

Truth be told (as a software engineer put it to me) we programmers dont actually like to be called coders. For me personally i see 3 levels of skill.

Coder: 14 year old kid playing monkey-see-monkey-do and cant understand what he is really doing. IOW, just scripting.(i dont despise youth here....I have met and helped out some who are much younger than me but i consider them my superiors in skill and imagination)

Programer: Midway...like myself. Knows enough about digital signal processing and memory management to do the same thing in most programming and scripting languages.

Engineer: The top. Can think in binary if need be. Assembly is nothing to him. (Exageration mode off but you get the idea)
 
Bradburger said:
Thanks for the explanation hairyspin.

I had forgotten about the importance of SimConnect (and it's power to things you could not do before) in a lot of addons, and the fact that it needs to have someone write the code for the modules to work.

But having said that, I guess I was thinking more of the developers who have systems etc. modelled in their aircraft, but don't use SimConnect. (And there seems quite a few of the addons I own).

I can't remember off hand if the Vertigo use SimConnect for their aircraft (I guess they do, hence the need for a coder), and I can of course understand something like the Milviz 737 having to have lots of custom code and animations where SimConnect needs to be used in order to achieve this. Then of course you have the likes of Accusim & Accufeel which need SimConnect in order to work.

But I guess it all depends on what level you want to model things, and how clever you are at using existing techiques and methods if you can't write code for SimConnect!

Obviously, SimConnect is an exellent thing to have in FSX, but I suppose developers could always ask themselves if the things they are modelling actually need to use it, hence the need for a dedicated coder!

Cheers

Paul
Click to expand...

SimConnect is only used for reading/writing data to the sim beyond what XML can do, as well as accessing weather, simulation state, and controlling simobjects other than the user aircraft. Most systems that dont require any of the core simulation variables to be over written can be done in XML or C++ as they are just simple logic code that can use the basic gauge system to handle inputs and outputs.
 
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