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Microsoft Lays Off Entire Flight Sim Team
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Jan 24, 2009 03:55 AM
from the throttling-back dept.
from the throttling-back dept.
Dutch Gun writes "Microsoft has just laid off the entire Flight Simulator development team. This continues a long-running trend of terminating or severing relationships with game development studios, such as the Bungie split, FASA, or the closure of Ensemble Studios. While one would presume that core Xbox development is not currently in jeopardy after Microsoft spent up to a billion dollars to pay for Xbox 360 repairs and salvage its reputation with gamers, does this signal a reversal from Microsoft's recent focus on internal game development? And what are its plans for Flight Simulator, a twenty-seven-year product with an extremely loyal user-base and a multitude of externally developed add-ons?"
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Technology: Microsoft Phasing Out ESP Simulation Platform? 101 comments
Ian Lamont writes "Overlooked in last month's news about Microsoft laying off the entire Flight Simulator dev team is the news that Microsoft's ESP development team has been gutted as well, and the future of the platform is in doubt. ESP is oriented toward industrial use, and lets companies build 3D simulations for flight and other applications. Late last year Microsoft announced big plans to expand ESP to other verticals, such as real estate, city planning, and law enforcement. That looks increasingly unlikely. Even though Microsoft declined to comment on ESP's future, companies which invested in the product are angry, judging by some of the comments on an MSDN thread. As noted by one user, 'my company used it for a solution and invested time and money into getting it approved and purchased. Microsoft sure handed us a raw deal for taking a gamble on their platform.'"
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Who frigging knows? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you'd probably be surprised at how many people buy Flight Simulator. It's not a traditional game, so it probably doesn't sell well among those you know and game with. There are many, many non-gamers with PCs who spend a lot of money on this game, expensive peripherals, and software add-ons.
When discussing this among my co-workers today, most of us were under the impression that Flight Simulator had been a consistent money-maker for Microsoft. I couldn't find any corroborating evidence for this (a
Re:Who frigging knows? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I really need to run Microsoft Office, I do that using CodeWeaver's Crossover Office under Linux.
Microsoft's decision to drop Flight Simulator means that I won't have to even consider Windows 7. I'll just disconnect from my network whenever I want to fly so there is no risk to an abandoned XP partition.
I'm one of those that has bought every copy of Flight Simulator even before Microsoft bought it from Bruce Artwick and SubLogic. I flew it when it was a wire frame grid with the profile mountain range to the north. I even wrote a shareware application for it that still can be found in various software repositories on the web. It has evolved into an amazing platform and some enthusiasts have built amazing motion cockpits and even full simulations of jet airliner cockpits.
I also thought every release of Flight Simulator was profitable. For all of Microsoft's other ills, Flight Simulator has been one of the more popular offerings that people preordered, snapped up on release day, etc. there were flawed releases, but Microsoft would release updates that fixed them.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was really a flagship product for them. I don't know what they are thinking. If any of the team read this, I really appreciate all of your fantastic work over the years. You people made magic.
It really has been an amazing product and extremely useful. I know lots of real pilots that use it to stay sharp and/or used it to make their training more effective. I can count myself among the ones who had a flight instructor get frustrated that I was flying more by instruments and less by seat of the pants, doing coordinated procedure turns, holding heading and altitude first time out.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the Linux flight simulators (X-Plane and FlightGear) pick up all the slack. The hard core people will go nuts putting in the hooks for realistic cockpits, added inputs, etc.
It's an end of an era. For me it totally cuts the cord to Redmond, Gates, and Allen.
I'll sure miss updates to Flight Simulator but in a way am kind of relieved that I will never buy another copy of Windows again.
Parent
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Microsoft Clippy is the ONLY reason I still keep an XP partition on one of my computers.
If I really need to run Microsoft Office, I do that using CodeWeaver's Crossover Office under Linux.
Microsoft's decision to drop Clippy means that I won't have to even consider Windows 7. I'll just disconnect from my network whenever I want to clip so there is no risk to an abandoned XP partition.
I'm one of those that has bought every copy of Clippy even before Microsoft bought it from Bruce Artwick and SubLogic. I flew
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Microsoft's "strategy" moves have not seemed to make any sense for years now.
Ok, I could come up with a bunch of anecdotal support for your comment, but MS has been into the subscription software idea for years. Part of their press on this mentions the possibility of Live based flight sim options.
So this particular move seems to fall right in line with the push to move customers to a greater everyday dependency on MS for the products they used to have the freedom to do with as they pleased (after lawful purchase of said product of course).
Re:Who frigging knows? (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, Microsoft is suiciding.
The backlash against any attempt to turn Flight Sim into rentware will just push people over to Flightgear [flightgear.org].
With this sort of arrogance, the Vista/Win 7 debacle and sluggish Office 2007 adoption, Microsoft is digging a very deep trench for itself. It'll be interesting if they can find a way out.
Parent
Yes, this one does as well (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer X-Plane (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully they'll spend their spare time contributing to X-Plane -- a much better simulator if actual flight simulation is important to you. I was very disappointed to learn that the helis in MS Flight Sim are actually just fixed-wing aircraft with unrealistically large flaps and other such hacks. X-Plane uses a much more realistic flight physics engine. And since I fly RC helis, I have to say that MS's sim always felt strange, not like a giant RC heli at all.
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Hopefully they'll spend their spare time contributing to X-Plane
Are you serious? Contribute to a competing commercial product!? So that they'd have tougher competition if they get to continue working on MSFS. If they want to continue working on related stuff, they'll apply for jobs at companies developing third-party addons for MSFS.
I take it that you're disappointed with the simulation of helicopters - I'm quite disappointed with the simulation of advanced fly-by-wire aircraft. The 777 is fine since the system in the real thing is coded to behave very much like hydraul
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MSFS is worth the entry price for David Maltby's exquisite (and free) models of classic 60s British jets.
Superb graphics and models. Check out this pic:
dmflightsim [dmflightsim.co.uk]
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But if they are no longer employed by MS, then X-Plane is no longer competition. Unless MS are going to let them start up their own outfit and hand over all the code and other IP. Sure, they might get a job for MSFS add-ons, but that's hardly a certain thing -- some of them may not even want to do that.
As for good FBW simulation, "X-Plane's flight model can handle flying wings and fly-by-wire systems". I have no idea if that covers what's needed for the 777, but worth looking into if that's your thing.
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Re:I prefer X-Plane (Score:5, Informative)
If you're searching Amazon it seems you're only looking for paid or official products, but why? Most X-Plane add-ons are free.
The biggest X-Plane enthusiast site is x-plane.org [x-plane.org], which lists over 2500 aircraft and hundreds of scenery/airport packages.
X-Plane also runs on Mac and Linux, not just Windows. A stripped-down version even runs on iPhone.
Parent
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X-Plane is great, but not in all areas. The super-sonic flight model sucks, there's a lot of improvement to be brought in areas that are just a let down (I haven't played it in a while, but I'd say things like roads in the sky, no reflective textures (non-shiny matte airplanes? The 1990s just called..), a feeling that it could be all optimised a bit, have some better graphics on things like smoke (individual rounds of smoke? come on..), rain (the rain looks awful), crash effects, and so on...
My point is, X-
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LOMAC. Lock-On Modern Air Combat
Drink one glass of your favorite 80 proof adult beverage, turn off the lights and fire up LOMAC and you will have a hard time discerning it from reality (at least with respect to visuals.)
The combat is also absolutely amazing.
Pick it up for under $20 in the bargain bin - it's worth it.
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The main issue with X-plane is that nobody actually uses it (comparitively). The flight model is clearly superior in most situations. However, it lacks quite a bit of polish (voices sound robotic, graphics aren't as nice, flight-planning/etc isn't user-friendly, etc). It also lacks the MASSIVE library of add-ons. Many people stuck with FS2004 just so that they wouldn't have to give up their $500 libraries of add-ons (there was some compatibility, but generally not with super-advanced expensive payware a
Contract it out (Score:5, Insightful)
Inflight recorder results (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Somewhat disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
I've been feeling for a while now that Microsoft should probably just drop everything and become solely a games developer (with a possible exception of MS Office, their only real successful product, put that on the Xbox or something).
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I've been feeling for a while now that Microsoft should probably just drop everything and become solely a games developer (with a possible exception of MS Office, their only real successful product, put that on the Xbox or something).
You give up on that idea of selling an OS?
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Yeah when you have a total market dominance and put your product on 90% of all computers sold you know it's time to quit before you make too much money.
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Yeah when you have a total market dominance and put your product on 90% of all computers sold you know it's time to quit before you make too much money.
Look out for that chair, talking like that.
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Last time I heard of MS SQL (about a year ago), it was called by the person I was speaking to "As an utter waste of money, just go for Oracle for something good"; paraphrased, but the enthusiasm for MS SQL was lacking obviously.
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Google Earth (Score:5, Interesting)
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Right now Google has a VERY good opportunity to hire and release a Google Earth-based flight simulator.
Flight sims take years of tweaking to get working well. Google do have a history of selling applications (sketchup comes to mind) but the things they do sell seem to be mere outlines of a mature product.
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Why write a Google Earth-based flight-simulator when your users are already writing flight simulators on top of your platform? I think they should just let their users create the cool content and the cool apps, and just stick to the monetization of all that good stuff.
Re:Google Earth (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like this?
http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html [google.com]
ps
Parent
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FS isn't an ordinary "game" (Score:5, Insightful)
FS doesn't really push any game sales. Someone playing FS doesn't necessarily buy any other game, I know a few FS enthusiasts and they're anything but gamers. They're living room pilots. You have people that turned one of their rooms into a cockpit for "total immersion". They don't play any FPS or RTS games, and they certainly don't buy consoles.
MS might have decided they're not interested in this kind of market. It does not push any sales of any other products of their line. It certainly won't push sales for any consoles, since FS enthusiasts wouldn't be caught dead with a console controller in their hands. And unless they manage to publish a full scale cockpit addon for their console, they certainly won't move from the one they have already. FS might have been a seller for new OSs, when the new FS didn't work out with the earlier model anymore, but the number of dedicated FS customers isn't really a customer base for MS. FS customers also don't really need any of their office products or their server line products.
So MS might just have decided that this is a dead end, nothing that sells any other products of theirs.
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I would love to have a console flight sim on the Wii. Let me use a decent USB flight stick and include a control pad for the other controls (flaps, throttles, gear, ...).
I do NOT have "Flight Simulator", because it only runs on M$-Windows, and I use Linux (with a touch of OpenBSD).
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MS might have decided they're not interested in this kind of market. It does not push any sales of any other products of their line. It certainly won't push sales for any consoles, since FS enthusiasts wouldn't be caught dead with a console controller in their hands. And unless they manage to publish a full scale cockpit addon for their console, they certainly won't move from the one they have already.
Do you realize how far back in time you have to go to find a console that doesn't have USB? Two generations, now! In video game time, that might as well be eternity. They all have networking options for generations now, too. You could have a cluster of consoles, and USB hubs. They don't do this now because they don't want you to know the console is just a computer. But there's room for it in the market. I for one would be pleased as punch to dropkick PC gaming forever. And then, to dropkick PCs forever. Jus
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For what we know it could just as well have been the pet project of someone who happened to be important for some reason for the higher ups at MS, it was profitable, so they kept it running. Now he left and someone who hates him now gets to call the shots and thus the beloved project of someone he hates get shot down. I've seen something like this happen before, in other companies, I wouldn't call it too far fetched.
Just because MS is a large corporation doesn't mean it doesn't suffer from petty rivalism.
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I had heard that FS was one of Bill's pet projects from back when he was trying to get his pilots license. I'm not sure if thats true or not but several of the high level people at Microsoft can fly their own planes.
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Just out of curiosity - wasn't this series originally put out by Sublogic, and then bought by MS (in the mid to late 80's)?
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Well, they already sold Train Sim (Score:3, Informative)
MS already sold off the Train Simulator long ago, judging by the amount of shelf space stores allocate to addons for it and the flight sim there's probably a pretty big market for stuff like that.
Then again from what I heard the Train Simulator was a flop in the US...
Good memories... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes. Many people forget that some of their mice are actually pretty nice little devices. And their implementation of Solitaire is world class!
it was an outsourced product to begin with (Score:4, Informative)
the MS Flight Simulator was initially the product of subLOGIC, and written by Bruce Artwick. It's just that MS chose to brand and market the product. After a while, they just 'took' the source code, and started to develop it in-house. subLOGIC struggled to release its own versions, but unfortunately they failed. (For this ugly business strategy, I chose not buy MS FS ever.)
Anyway, they might just chose to outsource again.
Re:it was an outsourced product to begin with (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:it was an outsourced product to begin with (Score:5, Informative)
Tensions rose, and one day Stu Moment basically fired the entire engineering department (I never heard what the precipitating event was).
subLOGIC owned the rights to all products except Mac and PC flight simulator (this was pre-windows as I recall), but Bruce and/or MS owned the rights to MS Flight Simulator on the PC and MAC. Bruce then opened an office a few miles away (the creation of BAO) and since Stu had fired all of us, he hired us.
subLOGIC tried to take the code base for the Amiga, Atari, MSX, etc etc and form a viable product for the PC with limited market success. BAO produced several versions of Flight Simulator (plus Scenery and Aircraft Designer, Tower Simulator and a few other products) before Microsoft decided to move the development in house (or closer anyway). I was no longer with the company at this point, but my understanding was that they initially did not bring over most of the staff as they issued a "move to Redmond or here is the door" edict. Most of the staff decided to leave, but once MS tried their hand at development several of the key engineers were rehired and allowed to work remotely. At that point, FS source was 100% x86 assembler. While it was a high quality piece of code, it was extreemly complex and required talented developers to work with it.
I assume the original BAO people eventually left and went on to other projects, I have not heard from any of them in the last 10 years or so.
So, in summary: MS did not "take" the Flight Simulator source, it never belonged to subLOGIC. I assume that Bruce sold the remaining rights to MS at the breakup of BAO.
Dean
I still remember a question from the BAO pre-interview screening test, amazingly enough only 5 candidates (out of a very large number) ever got this right:
Write a small code fragment (language of your choice) to calculate the internal angle between adjacent sides given the number of sides of a regular polygon. As I recall, scenery and aircraft designed actually had code to do this calculation.
Parent
Twenty-seven years? (Score:3, Funny)
I graduated from college in 1978 and moved to Silicon Valley. In a short time, I owned an Apple II, an Advent VideoBeam projection TV, and a copy of Bruce Artwick's original Flight Simulator. With a nominal 64" screen, it seemed as immersive as any commercial flight simulator of that time (even if it was low-res black-and-white wireframe). And when you bought it, you got a second floppy with the source code! I'm saddened to see the franchise end after 30+ years. Yes, I know that they'll probably farm it out, but it's lost its continuity.
Hey, you kids, get off my tarmac!
Well I guess the Flight team (Score:2)
MSFS was the original PC compatibility test (Score:4, Interesting)
For the first 2-3 years of PC history, the original Microsoft Flight Simulator was _the_ PC compatibility test:
If a machine could run MSFC, then it would also run retty much every other PcDos application on the market.
The first stumble came in 1984 with the PCAT, since the 6 MHz 286 cpu in this box meant that all the carefully tuned sw timing loops ran too fast and the simulator ran about twice as fast as it should.
Terje
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Its terrible when people get layed off- but come on? Who ever fucking uses this thing?
I've got a copy, but then I am a bit of an aviation geek. The last time I used it was ten years ago. I was feeling a bit down and committed suicide. It made a nice crash.
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The last time I used it was ten years ago. I was feeling a bit down and committed suicide. It made a nice crash.
I never hit that bug.
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The hijackers didn't care about takeoffs or landings and instead cared only about the flying. It's what raised suspicions at The Airmen in Norman, OK and caused them to contact the FBI.
If they could have only been put in contact with the CIA who knew that bin Laden was planning an attack using airliners, 9/11 could possibly have been prevented. But that's a complete