Arno Gerretsen : ACES

International Flight Simulation Consortium

arno — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:16:00 GMT

You might have read about the International Flight Simulation Consortium on the internet already, for example at Avsim or Francois Dumas' blog. I don't so much to add to what has been said there already, except that I was also present at the meeting and that FSDeveloper is thereby involved in the initiative. Once there is more news to report I'll certainly do so.

Nick has a question...

arno — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:44:00 GMT

Nick is at the MVP summit and has a question about the tools for FSX, see his blog post. I would encourage everybody to share his thoughts on this one.

Is this the end?

arno — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:53:00 GMT

The recent developments of Microsoft shutting down the ACES studio are making me a bit sad. Let me try to explain why.

When FSX was released it included some great improvements over FS2004. I am talking from a scenery designer perspective of course, so I was most happy about the improved terrain engine, that allows more resultion that 4.8 meter on the photo scenery, a better autogen system and the improvements to the modelling SDK, which means that more things can be done without tweaking the code. In my job I am also working with visual simulations and I can assure you that most of these systems can simulate the entire world with the ease that FSX can, so from that point of view it is a great product.

But from a developer point of view FSX is also a big step backwards. Personally I think developing for FS2002 and FS2004 was most fun. In these two versions you could really build anything you imagined. The scenery design techniques were very flexible. Want to make a completely working docking system, of course you can. Want to make an animation of a hangar door that is trigger by the approaching aircraft, of course you can. I have great memories of how we were searching for those limits in the community.

But in FSX that is all no longer. The scenery format is so restricted that I don't even have to think about a conditional scenery object, triggered hangar door animations or seasonal textures on my object. And then I am not even considering a completely working docking system, which is much more complex. The progress on the points I mentioned above have removed all the flexiblity to make interesting and nice things for the developer.

All this time I was hoping that this step backwards with FSX, would be the price we had to pay to make three steps forward again in the next version. I believed that if we would use the product we might find some work arounds and in the same time we could make sure ACES knew about the flexibility we wanted, so that the next version would be better again.

Now ACES is closed, the development of a next version will at least take longer. And personally I am not sure if I can keep motivated to develop for FSX given all the restrictions it puts on the developer. I have always enjoyed most to find the edge of the product, make realistic and complex objects, like working docking systems. FS2004 was great for that and FSX makes that almost impossible. Maybe it is time to move back to the FS2004 techniques and start making those interesting and challenging objects again? I guess the future will tell...

100.000 Microsoft Flight Simulator Fans

arno — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:27:00 GMT

If you are on Facebook, consider joining this group that Francois Dumas has started to show your support of FS.

Some more news

arno — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 07:23:00 GMT

Over the night some more news on ACES has appeared, I'll just post the interesting links here:

http://www.futuregpu.org/2009/01/end-of-era-aces-studio-and-flight-sim.html

http://pc.ign.com/articles/947/947737p1.html

Microsoft closes ACES studio

arno — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:11:00 GMT

Yesterday while driving home I heard on the news that Microsoft would be cutting jobs. But at that time the thought never came into my mind that the consequences of that would be as big as we learned today. While looking at some simulation related news at work today, I suddenly came across the message that the Microsoft job reduction would have big influences on the ACES studio, which makes Flight Simulator, as welll.

After looking around the web for more information, things became more clear. Former ACES team members posted more information, like Steve Lacey on his blog or Phil Taylor on the AvSim forum. All the current information seems to indicate that all development on FSX, Train Simulator 2 and ESP have been stopped at this moment. I guess the coming days will make things more clear how things will evolve.

But how this affects the people that worked at the ACES studio is of prime importance at the moment of course. I hope they are all well and will find other employement soon. All I know is that they made a very clever simulation product, that is capable to simulate the entire world in great detail. Something they can be proud of.

Phil Taylor is leaving ACES

arno — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:17:00 GMT

If you have not heard it already, Phil Taylor is leaving ACES, check out this post at Phil's own blog.

I wish him luck and a lot of fun in his new job. And a big thanks for all the work he did for FS in the past. Especially the role he played in opening up the ACES team more to the public is something that should be much appreciated. It must have been hard sometimes for him to deal with the community, especially the part that are never satisfied with the product, but in the end it is great that we have more interaction with the team now. So once again a big thanks for your part in that Phil.

Are they listening?

arno — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 07:21:00 GMT

Complaining about the SDKs has been a favourite thing to do among developers for years. With previous versions of FS we always had to wait for ages to get them and of course it never told us what we wanted to know for our project (how could MS forget to include what I needed to know). I am sure you can all remember those good old time.

But that is enough sarcasm for now. With FSX things have improved a lot already, the SDK shipped with the initial release and I think I can say that the quality and usefulness of the documentation has also improved a lot. And things don't stop there, no it gets even better.

The ACES team wants to know your feedback about the FSX SDK. For that purpose we have created a special subforum at the FSDeveloper site. You can use this forum to tell the ACES team about features you would like to see, about bugs in their current tools (not bugs in your files, really bugs in the tools) or about paint points, thing that are possible with the tool but just hard to do or inconvenient.

These forums were made on request of some developers of the ACES team, so you can be sure that they will be looking at your suggestions. Of course nobody can promise that they will also implement them all in future SDKs.

Jason leaves ACES

arno — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 23:05:00 GMT

You might already have read this on his blog, but Jason Waskey is leaving the ACES team (and MS as well). This happens more often of course, so why do I blog about it this time? That is because Jason was the first ACES team member that I ever had contact with. A few years ago now, I suddenly got a PM at a forum if I was interested to betatest FS2004. This PM was send by Jason and of course you can understand that I was very happy with this offer at that time.

So Jason, good look with your new job in art.

And a few extra bloggers again...

arno — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:36:00 GMT

And again an ACES team member has entered the world of blogging, this time it is Mike Singer. Also it seems that Hal Bryan has moved his blog to the Live Spaces.

I must say that I am very excited about all these new bloggers, I am really looking forward to reading their backgrounds and stories about FS. As Paul Lange already mentioned, it seems the blog draught is over...

Updating some links...

arno — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:58:00 GMT

If you have been reading the blogs of Jon Patch or Nick this is not really news anymore, but I updated the links to MS blogs.

Tim Gregson has a new blog location, and I added the blogs of Brett Schnepf (community development manager), Rick Selby (lead game designer trainsim) and Pat Cook (design director ACES).