Come see the new and disproven " Coincidental Floss " at its new URL: http://halbryan.spaces.live.com/ We're mildly apologetic for the inconvenience.

Posting here after two and a half months feels a little like coming home after a vacation and discovering that you left your front door open . . . there's just so little actually here! That should change, for the better, here pretty soon. It seems...

There was another interesting post at AVSIM the other day, that the author also emailed to us at tell_fs@microsoft.com , in which he offered suggestions for a "Wife Edition" of Flight Sim. It was full of jokes about shopping, shoes, housework, hair and...

The Walrus was Paul! Welcome Paul Lange, FSX Lead Designer , to the world of blogging. Paul is a pilot (lives on a private airport, just like I . . . used to) and brings some great enthusiasm and interesting perspectives to our world. Not to mention...

Take a Little Trip, Take a Little Trip With Me To the cool, cool water of the semi-pirateless Caribbean . . . In reality, my only excursion to the region was a week on St. Martin / Sint Maarten for my honeymoon, most of which was spent lounging at...

That hasn't already read it on Jason's ridiculously prolific blog , that is? If so, then run for your life on over to Pixelpoke, and read a great and generous bit about some of my work on FS2004 . Jason, you are too kind. In writing, anyway....

A lot of people have posted wish list threads and sent in suggestions for things they'd like to see in the next version of Flight Sim. Most of us that work on it do the same thing. Our internal wish lists usually, but not always, start with bugs that...

Gone Tropos? There was an interesting post in the new FSX forum on AVSIM the other day expressing hope that the airport environments in FSX will look as good as those seen in a promotional video for commercial flight simulator builder CAE’s Tropos...

Now that I’ve explained exactly what a Software Test Engineer does , the question burning in most minds is certainly “How could I learn to be a Software Test Engineer? I want to earn big money, play the piano, and eat steak!” That’s a great question...

If you really want to see what the life of a software tester isn't like, you could dive into the nearest cultural dumpster and flush 87 minutes of your life down this cinematic low-flow toilet . . . No, I haven't seen it, but in the tradition of self...

It occurred to me that I don’t spend a lot of time here talking about what I actually do for Microsoft on the Flight Simulator team. It has occurred to a number of people, especially my unbelievably dedicated and vaguely effluvial next door neighbor,...

Justa short note to say "Hoi" and "Dank u" (I hope those are correct - if not, I'll try to get it right next time) to our new friends at FS Magazine in the Netherlands - check out their site, especially if you read Dutch . . . They were kind enough to...

I am an attention miser (perhaps a distant cousin of Heat and Snow ) . . . . I tend to pay it out in very small doses (as my friend Knat said in her brilliant article, How to be Distracted , "Hey look, a squirrel"), measure the value of things in my...

. . . that this man killed this one . That was, and is, sux. This is not a happy anniversary for me. T he Beatles, more than any other band before or since (despite some spirited competition), inspired me, entertained me, comforted me, and provided...

What's that smell? Oh, I know . . . it's "old blog". Sorry about that. The last post seemed to be pretty well received, and a number of you have asked if we get other email messages like that. Unfortunately, almost all of our customers are sane...

Every day, we get a number of suggestions sent to our tell_fs@microsoft.com email address. And, when I say “suggestions”, I mean letters from the widows of Nigerian finance ministers, offers for discounted Viagra, complaints about our copy protection...

Taking a cue from Jason's music listings , and a more direct theft from my friend and semi-retired colleague Bruce Williams' excellent site, here's a list of books that I'm currently picking at as time allows. Having been sick for the last two weeks ...

A good pal of mine, when I was floundering around with muttered apologies for not having written in so long, offered to loan me an excuse, which I'll reuse here: "I'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control." Normally, I wouldn't quote...

It was a lousy way to start a week, and a terrible reason to get back to posting here after an 11 day absence . . . I found out this morning that two students from Seattle’s Aviation High School, Brittany Boatright and Kandyce Cowart, were among the three...

No, I'm a Mocker . . . First of all, for the record, I don't consider Flight Simulator to be a game. I do believe that it can be used as such, but, like so many other aspects of the product, that is up to the customer - you get out of it what you put...

An interesting new debate on AVSIM today - or, at least, a new debate on an old topic: Will 3D virtual cockpits replace 2D instrument panels? Read the thread here . In my opinion, our vision, our design for each release of Flight Simulator could...

As of next month, I will have been working on the Flight Simulator franchise for 7 years. As of next year, I will have been a customer of said franchise (the longest continuously published piece of software I know of) for 25 years. One of the very few...

I'm a terrible role model. You see, 20 minutes ago, MS Flight Simulator art lead and artist extraordinaire Jason Waskey came into my office and refused to leave until I transformed myself from someone who wasn't sure if "blog" was a noun or a verb...