Looks like the winners for September's screenshot competition (scroll to bottom of page) have been announced over on Simflight.com.
October's competition has a theme: General Aviation, Winter Sunset.
You probably won't be suprised to hear that this link was making made the rounds here at work. Happy to see a third party version already started...
One wag here wanted to see this chasing right behind it...
If you plan to be near Amsterdam the first weekend in November, you might consider dropping by the International FSWeekend held at the Aviodrome, Lelystad (about an hour's drive from Amsterdam) For more information: http://www.fsweekend.com/uk/index.htm
Aviodrome information: www.Aviodrome.nlAirport information: www.lelystad-airport.nl
And finally, from the department of "I have no idea what to make of that" comes this wmv
A blogpost, that I might add, which has nothing to do whatsoever with free money in any way shape or form.
In the bunco squad we call this "bait and switch."
Sim-Outhouse got a few screenshots of FSX the other day, and one of the fellows who frequents over there (MCDesigns; aka "Michael") noted...
"Still concerned with the prop blur on the bell..."
...which is in reference to the fact that the Bell 206B we model has two blades, while in the screens it looks as if it has four. You can see a different version of the "more than two blades effect" at the FSInsider site. In the example just linked, it would appear that there are five blades...
So what's up with that? In an image from the previous version of FS you can see that we modeled the two blade effect. (hat tip to Avsim for the image).
Here then is the repy I gave to Michael:
"Hi Michael,We've done several versions of the Bell over the years, and one of the things that's felt particularly anemic to my eyes has been the prop effect.We've always used a two prop blur effect, and the thing is, it just doesn't look like what you see in real life. Sure, when you see a photo of a 206 prop, you see two blades. We've tried a few different effects, and have settled on the effect you see reflected in the shots floating around. I know that it looks a little off in a static screenshot, but I hope you'll like the result when it's in motion, in the sim."
So what do you think? Should we model to what people might expect-- the reality as seen from a photo? Or should we err on the side of what we think looks more real in action? I think that there are valid reasons to do both, but at the end of the day customer expectation has to play a part.
In the next couple of months I'll get some video out that shows the effect in motion, and that should help folk make up their minds. But in the meantime, don't be afraid to chime in. What do you think?
PS:
Here's Michael's answer:
"Very true Jason, a real pic looks pretty much like 2 blades with even less of a blur than in the current texture and when spinning, looks like the new blur. I am a heli fanatic and have repainted nearly every model that has been in FS since FS2002 and the rotor blur has always been something I am very critical off. If the new one is still based on a texture, then we can alter it for personal preference once it's released, so no worries."
And you can read the whole thread here.
We recently got permission (in the last 3-4 months or so) to both blog and reply in some small way in the forums of Flight Simulator enthusiast websites. Because I already have a a lot of work to do, :) I find it hard to do both with regularity.
Anyway, since I'm lazy, I thought that I'd post an answer I gave at a thread over at Avsim as a new blog post. So forgive me if you've heard this one before... :)
Some background; as part of our announce during CES, ACES released 60 or so screenshots showing various degrees of development on Flight Simulator X. You can see many of them here:
FSX screens
Like a lot of what we (MSFT in general, ACES in particular) there were mixed results .(mostly very positive). A couple of shots showing a wet airport environment...
1 and 2
...got some attention, some good, some negative.
A thread over at Avsim is indicative of the sort of comments that were seen about this particualr feature. For those who don't want to wade through the thread, here's my reply to a customer who wasn't so impressed...
Bob, I know that it's a bad idea to argue with customers, but I'm going to do a little of it anyway. :) Let me put up a bit of a disclaimer: You and every single other customer is entitled to your opinion on every aspect of what we do. You've got every right to like, love, and or hate the things we do in each version of Flight Simulator. I realize and recognize that you can't convince someone that they like something that they just plain don't like, and I aint gonna try. Anyway, allow me to respond. :) To set your expectations: What you've seen in the released screens as far as the "wet" surface effect is effectively what we're going to ship. You’re not the only person who has commented negatively on what’s been seen so far (there’ve been a bunch of positive comments as well), but I figure your post is a good place to stake an answer. To put the screens in the proper context, I'll say that the precipitation settings seen in the shots are set to the very highest level-- that's the [b]most[/b]"reflective" the scene'll get. (The effect increases as precipitation does) The time of day in this and the other shot is later in the afternoon, so the sun is relatively low on the horizon, which gives a bigger specular effect. Having seen a heck of a lot of wet concrete and asphalt in a variety of conditions (light drizzle to heavy downpour), at different times of day and season (we do live in the Pacific Northwest after all), I'd disagree with you about both the amount of reflection and resulting specularity with overcast conditions. To be sure, light is diffused by overcast conditions, but it is [b]not[/b] totally blocked (it doesn’t become night). Instead there exists a spectrum of fully diffused and partially diffused light conditions that are hard to capture in real-time CGI. We have to settle on a solution that covers a broad range of the real world possibilities. A few samples to show that you can have pretty hot specular, and/or high reflection in a variety of wet conditions: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~mhtang/dscf0052.html
I know that it's a bad idea to argue with customers, but I'm going to do a little of it anyway. :)
Let me put up a bit of a disclaimer:
You and every single other customer is entitled to your opinion on every aspect of what we do. You've got every right to like, love, and or hate the things we do in each version of Flight Simulator.
I realize and recognize that you can't convince someone that they like something that they just plain don't like, and I aint gonna try.
Anyway, allow me to respond. :)
To set your expectations: What you've seen in the released screens as far as the "wet" surface effect is effectively what we're going to ship.
You’re not the only person who has commented negatively on what’s been seen so far (there’ve been a bunch of positive comments as well), but I figure your post is a good place to stake an answer. To put the screens in the proper context, I'll say that the precipitation settings seen in the shots are set to the very highest level-- that's the [b]most[/b]"reflective" the scene'll get. (The effect increases as precipitation does) The time of day in this and the other shot is later in the afternoon, so the sun is relatively low on the horizon, which gives a bigger specular effect.
Having seen a heck of a lot of wet concrete and asphalt in a variety of conditions (light drizzle to heavy downpour), at different times of day and season (we do live in the Pacific Northwest after all), I'd disagree with you about both the amount of reflection and resulting specularity with overcast conditions. To be sure, light is diffused by overcast conditions, but it is [b]not[/b] totally blocked (it doesn’t become night). Instead there exists a spectrum of fully diffused and partially diffused light conditions that are hard to capture in real-time CGI. We have to settle on a solution that covers a broad range of the real world possibilities.
A few samples to show that you can have pretty hot specular, and/or high reflection in a variety of wet conditions:
http://www.ramblers-wilts.org.uk/050519l.htm (bottom of page) http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0935078/M/
All show varying degrees of specular/reflection effect on overcast days. That being said, I don't disagree that hazy/overcast days change lighting conditions-- they do. If we were building a track or level based game and there was an overcast scene we'd massage our environment to match our desired effect. With our current open ended, go anywhere, any time, have conditions change on a regular basis, world we often have to accept less than optimal solutions so we cover the broadest scenarios. You are also correct that there are shadows being cast by all objects in the scene. As you can see in one or two of the examples above, overcast conditions don't necessarily get rid of shadows-- it can make them more indistinct, but not necessarily [i]gone[/i]. We (MSFT) have discussed and investigated trying to dynamically modify lighting/shadow conditions based on cloud coverage, but it's a pretty big kettle of fish to tackle, and it's not going to happen this time. Like nearly all things we do, there will be some mechanism by which you can adjust or delete the effect if it truly bugs you that much. I realize that based off what you wrote that you are likely to be disappointed with our upcoming release in this regards. I figure that you'd like to know that now as opposed to being disappointed later. Cheers, Jason
All show varying degrees of specular/reflection effect on overcast days.
That being said, I don't disagree that hazy/overcast days change lighting conditions-- they do. If we were building a track or level based game and there was an overcast scene we'd massage our environment to match our desired effect. With our current open ended, go anywhere, any time, have conditions change on a regular basis, world we often have to accept less than optimal solutions so we cover the broadest scenarios.
You are also correct that there are shadows being cast by all objects in the scene. As you can see in one or two of the examples above, overcast conditions don't necessarily get rid of shadows-- it can make them more indistinct, but not necessarily [i]gone[/i]. We (MSFT) have discussed and investigated trying to dynamically modify lighting/shadow conditions based on cloud coverage, but it's a pretty big kettle of fish to tackle, and it's not going to happen this time. Like nearly all things we do, there will be some mechanism by which you can adjust or delete the effect if it truly bugs you that much.
I realize that based off what you wrote that you are likely to be disappointed with our upcoming release in this regards. I figure that you'd like to know that now as opposed to being disappointed later.
Cheers,
Jason
I thought I would be able to get some work done tonight but am so amped from the announcement at CES that I'm likely to spend the rest of my time cruising forums, and monitoring reactions.
So far they're mostly good, although there are a fair share of skeptics and outright naysayers.
The only thing I would tell people to think about as they look over what's been released is that the images shown represent a body of work over time--- the screenshots were'nt all taken at the same point in time, and all screens, no matter *when* they were taken represent work in progress--- things are bound to change until RTM. On the other hand, some stuff in the shots is pretty much finished. We are building a whole planet here, some parts are more finished than others.
I'm not allowed to comment on much more than what's been made available to the public, but I will say that y'all haven't seen everything yet... ;)
Maybe more later,
{Edit}
For those who saw the webcast of BillG's keynote, that wasn't a video. That was a live demo of a product.
{EDIT #2}
I do want to be clear: a lot of what you see in the screenshots shown is finished work. Some shots a from awhile ago, and some are more recent. Not everything shown is finished yet-- if it was I could go home, and everybody'd have a copy in their hands...
I'm from New Mexico, and the beginning of October means it's Balloon Fiesta time.
It's funny to me, considering that we're a flight simulator and all, but we've never really dealt with balloons very well in Flight Simulator, beyond a static scenery item in Phoenix of all places.There's a 3rd party version of a hot air balloon for Flight Sim, but apparently it only works (properly) in FS 2002.
Which is a shame. You could give it a whirl and see if it works for you... (scroll down a little to see the download link)
If you're interested in a Balloon Fiesta Flight Sim style you ought to check out this video by Adrian Musto.
It's a hefty 21 MB file, and you'll need to navigate an ad, but I swear it's worth it. (I just watched it again. It's brilliant. Pure gold. I've been playing over and over again 'cause of the music alone) looks to me like there's at least couple of third party sceneries used in the video: A Georender scenery maybe? , and Venice.
Mr. Musto has a site here, and has some more videos, some screenshots, and is apparently going to be working on his ppl.
Also, if you have the time (20 minutes or so) check out another video (beware more ads) of his...
Great stuff.
Now if we could just get him to work on compression and a more user friendly hosting scheme...
And apros pos of nothing, but cool nonetheless: Neat
I'm hoping we get more than one post out of this fellow... :)
http://blogs.technet.com/p-12c_pilot/archive/2006/02/21/420153.aspx
Also added to the blogroll (and Lacey has been moved to the alumni roll)
The guys at Sim-Outhouse find the best links...
Car facing a 747 backwash - Google Video
I can't remember the most recent time I've seen this posted (or where), but I've seen it crop up a bit in the major Flight Sim forums:
Microsoft should use Google Earth for Flight Simulator.
Leave aside for the moment the fact that Microsoft has a rival product gaining steam, the point is people like the idea of highly detailed and accurate satellite imagery-- especially of the sort Google Earth provides-- all streamed over the internet.
At first blush it sounds pretty cool, yeah?
"There's my house!" (speaking of the here's my house thing, check this link out for the ultimate in here's my houseness)
"There's Grandma's house!"
"There's the The Champs Elysées!"
"There's Yasgur's Farm!"
And so on.
I've been a fan of Google Earth when it was still Keyhole, and I think what we're doing here is pretty cool too. Having been involved with scenery/terrain design for multiple ACES games studios titles, I'd be really excited to see streamed satellite imagery appear in Flight Sim (although it could apply to just about anything if done right...), but truthfully I think people underestimate the problems the idea presents. To be clear, none of what I'm about to list are unsolvable, but they do present a barrier to implementation. The list below is not comprehensive, just what came off the top of my head:
1. There's not full coverage of the globe yet.
True, you wouldn't need to have *everything* to make it happen, but I can already read the e-mails when it turns out (fill in the blank here of your favorite spot on Earth) isn't in the product... This means that you'd have to have some sort of hybrid between what you do have covered and some sort of generic default. This currently works in Flight Simulator (witness VFR scenery, here too, Megascenery, etc.), with specific locations, but not streaming. The progress on what is available changes daily, and I can say that I'm amazed at what's available now as opposed to even just 2-3 years ago...
2. What is covered is inconsistent in color, quality, and season.
I believe that the joy of flying over highly accurate real world imagery would be offset by the immersion break of flying from one inconsistent area to the next, and that it would happen pretty fast. I think people are way more forgiving of a how Google/MSFT might use imagery for mapping versus how they would view it's use in a game/sim. To get consistency you'd have to have a massive effort of color correction/adjustment, or a freakishly advanced automatic system.
3. No good night imagery exists.
At least that I'm aware of. And when I mean good, I mean same level of detail as day stuff. Which means that you'd have to come up with a good way to fake it. (like Megascenery)
4. All the time information is stamped into the image.
Flightsim, for example, ships with Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Hard Winter, and Night variations of our landclass textures. We drape these textures over DEM, light them, and render shadows into the terrain. Much aerial/satellite imagery has lighting from when the image was taken already present-- strong lighting too. This makes for great screenshots, but it does mean that you'd lose one of the neatest things about Flight Sim-- we model the march of time: leave your computer running Flight Sim, and you'll see seasons and time of day change. To replicate that with Google Earth Tech, you'd have to increase the amount of imagery by at least 5X, *and* start to track time of day/seasonal change.
5. Autogen tech isn't designed for massive aerial/sat scenery
Right now autogen tech works pretty well for what it was designed for: default scenery and small (100-400 tile) imagery areas. But as many 3rd party imagery people'll tell you, there's not enough "auto" in autogen. :)
There are mechanisms that can be used to generate buildings and the like, but designing and implementing such a system to do what is necessary in Flight Sim is not a small task.(scroll down the page)
6. Streaming, like that used in Google Earth is not a magic bullet approach for imagery display.
Even when all it's doing is displaying imagery, it's easy to get the "blurries" in Google Earth. Tack on a lot of other systems and simulation stuff, and... well... if you think it can get bad in Flight Sim...
Let me reiterate: I think the tech and potential results are very enticing, and the problems above are are solvable in one way or another.
I've linked throughout this post to some great large scale imagery solutions available already for Flight Sim, so you can see the possibilities in action. And I should note: this is something we look at periodically. Jason Dent and I talked a few years ago about what it would take to do aerial imagery for the planet at 8 meters per pixel (Flight Sim currently uses a resolution of approx 4.8 meters per pixel), and we came up with a figure of around a terrabyte (for just one season/time of day, if I remember right). Sounded pretty bluesky in 1999 (when Jason and I first talked about it), but way more doable now. Technology changes pretty rapidly these days, so who knows?
It would be neat to see my house...
Our illustrious studio manager sent out a link to an article on videogame aesthetics and the idustry's push for "photo realism." I found it interesting, especially as it gives a shout out to some favorites from my former life in the comic book industry: Jim Woodring, Chris Ware, Paul Pope, Peter Kuper, Mary Fleener, Kyle Baker, Scott McCloud, and Frank Miller. I've worked with at least four from that list (well... I did production work on their books anyway...).
If you haven't read Scott McCloud's seminal work on comics Understanding Comics yet and you're involved in any media industry, you're missing out.
Big news in the 3D industry. As mentioned over in Steve Lacey's blog, Autodesk is up to some movements (shennanigans?.)
Yesterday they announced "Autodesk will no longer offer Gmax® software as a stand-alone product." Considering how many add-ons for Flight Simulator 2002 and 2004 are made using gMax, I expect that the add-on community will be err... alarmed at a minimum.
Today several ACES studios members including (but not limited to) Mike Gilbert, Steve Lacey, Adrian Woods (our Technical Art Lead), and myself met with a representative from Autodesk to talk about gMax and the recent acquisition of Alias. I can't talk too much about the specifics of the meeting, but we (ACES) certainly conveyed the depth of usage gMax has in the FS community alone, and that Autodesk needs to make sure they don't leave their thousands of gMax users in a virtual backwater.
We don't have a concrete (or official) statement or plan of action at this point, but the ACES team is very committed to making sure that there's a solution for current users of gMax in the FS add-on community and a great solution moving forward.
As you may (or may'nt) have noticed above, today we welcome Adrian Woods to the growing number of ACES studios bloggers. Welcome aboard Adrian! Adrian's take on the whole Autodesk/gMax thing can be found here.
Hal Bryan, has a very nice post on his blog about the Flight Simulator "mod" community and how it gets no respect. Hal wants more readers.
Speaking of Hal...
We have a lot of space nuts here in ACES studio (Hal being one of 'em), lot's of us tracked the Ansari X-Prize and were ecstatic when SpaceshipOne made history. So as a New Mexican and space cadet, can I say how jazzed I am about the idea of the X Prize cup?
I recently went to the optometrist to get my prescription updated, and if you have glasses or contacts, I'm sure you've gone through the little dance: "Okay... which is better, the first one? or... the second one?" as he or she flips through various lens strengths until you find your sweet spot.
The new version of Flight Simulator is going through the same sort of thing, as far as our terrain system goes. Since this is an area near and dear to my heart, I'm happy get a new prescription, so to speak.
In the coverage of Flight Simulator X seen in the February 2006 PC Gamer magazine they mention a 16X increase in terrain detail. Where does that number come from? And what does it mean?
Well, in previous versions of Flight Simulator (like the current version Flight Simulator 2004) we used 256 pixel X 256 pixel sized squares that cover roughly 1 kilometer square area of space. That represents a resolution of roughly 5 meters per pixel.
From altitude that's not so bad.
It looks a bit like this from a hundred meters or so:
If we move it up a notch and use a 512 pixel X 512 pixel image to represent the same 1 KM of space we see a lot more resolution:
By going all the way up to a 1024 X 1024 image we get 16 X the resolution (16 256 X 256 images fit into one 1024 X 1024 image):
So which would you choose, number 1, number 2, or number 3?
Not sure?
Why not take a look at all three in this link (~500k file) :
EYE CHART
Mike Gilbert (also affectionately known as Tdragger) riled a few feathers talking about how nice it is using the x-box controller with Flight Simulator X
I've seen some negative reactions at the very idea of using such a controller. Below is a representative quote (a comment from Mike's blog post):
"yesss flight simulator and x-box controler...sorry Mike but I`m disgusted...you product manager are trying tell us, that using arcade game controler is better in Flight simulation ...yes it`s for sure but for babes .Please stop looking on it like arcade game only , because there is lot`s of simmers which takes it more seriously... "
Well now Mike's gone a step further and offered up steps for getting the controller to work for people who have Flight Simulator 2004 right now.
With regards to the negative reactions, I commented on this on somebody's post once already, but I'll be durned if I know where that is, or I'd point you to the link. My short take on the subject is that this boils down to the "is it a sim or game?" argument that's been floating around since before I got involved with ACES. It would seem that folk are worried that supporting an Xbox controller means that somehow the taint of consoles is spreading to their simulation
(hey! you got peanut butter in my chocolate!).
Hooey.
Yeah, that's right. You heard me. Hooey.
The input control mechanism doesn't define whether or not something is a sim versus a game. Your brain defines it.
A good deal of our users rely on the keyboard alone for flight. That aint exactly a flight yoke, is it?
What about a joystick? That's not very real. Heck, it's certainly nowhere near Hal Bryan's set up: yoke, pedals, radio stack, and trackIR.
If you're worried that a controller will somehow ruin the game, bear in mund that none of the old modes of input are going away. We're just extending the control matrix to allow a bunch of new (or old!) users an easy (especially if they have an Xbox) way to experience the sim.
But even if the argument fails to persuade you, I've got the trump card.
You *do* know that Flight Simulator has already supported a game pad controller for *many* versions, don't you?
:)
I've been at Microsoft, working on video games, for 10 and a half years. For 10 of those years I've worked on one Flight Simulator title after another, lastly holding the Art Director position for ACES studio-- makers of Microsoft Train Simulator, Combat Simulator, Flight Simulator and now ESP. I've met and worked with great people, and I'm proud of the work that we've done.
All things change though, and so it's my happy opportunity to tell y'all that I'm leaving Microsoft (my last day as a full time employee will be Friday December 21, 2007) to pursue my first love:
Fine art.
I realize that may induce a few 'hunhs?!!?' in the audience, but before I started pushing pixels around, I was a traditional artist.
So, yep. I'm going home to paint pretty pictures, and hopefully to sell enough of them to buy food and pay the mortgage.
I of course have a website:
http://www.jasonwaskey.com/
And while I haven't been blogging regularly here, I have been doing a bunch of blogging here:
http://jasonwaskey.blogspot.com/
Please stop by, and take a look. Sign up to have paintings delivered to your e-mail inbox as I post 'em!
Heck, while you're at it, buy a couple! :)
Happy Trails,
Jason Waskey
PS
I'll still pop up at ACES now and again to do some side work for the studio, so y'all haven't seen the last of me yet...
*Lyrics
Based off much of the feedback seen from our autoresponded alias: tell_fs@microsoft.com,
and at forums like those at Avsim, Mike Gilbert wrote a very nice article: Where Am I? that's worth a look.
Even if AI aircraft isn't your bag, he does dive in to how both our systems are interelated, *and* how some underlying assumptions we make when we create features can limit us.
Is that "bad" coding?
No.
It's what you *have* to do. We have to edit both complexity and realism to maintain a balance between what's real and what's possible----like trying to run at Frames Per Second, as opposed to Minutes Per Frame, which is fine for Pixar when they render, but not so much for Flight Sims.
Not everything boils done to that kind of choice. We're limited by all sorts of things--- time, resources, data, money. What is amazing is what we're able to accomplish even with those limits.
And heck-- we do improve all systems and features, on a regular and steady basis...
One final shout out for this post.
Although the ACES team members are pretty much stuck here in Redmond (with one or two telecommuting exceptions), we build a product that simulates the whole planet. Team members come from all over, and we've done a lot of world travelling, but we still spend an inordinate amount of time doing research on the web.
Recently Flight Simulator has seen the number of people who do terrain texture add-ons explode. I think a lot of that has to do with the amount of aerial and satellite imagery coming on line. When I started (way back in the Dark Ages) I had to make a trip to Juneau to go through a company's archive of a million or so aerial images. I then had to make my selections based off looking at reversed negatives, and a few weeks later we got color photoprints. Contrast that to what's now available, and you can understand the renaissance Flight Sim is undergoing.
It's not just terrain of course, it's also landmark objects. So it's always nice to come across great reference sites that show a bit of both:
http://www.arounder.com/
http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/faa/
Robert's giving a talk at Macworld this year...
tracksessions
bio
Happy Valentine's day...
http://www.allsaintsbrookline.org/celtic/saints/valentine.html
As we move into the six month of ACES team members writing blogs and interacting on Flight Simulator user community boards, I thought it appropriate to point people to this gem from Guy Kawasaki (former Apple evangelist):
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_art_of_crea.html
(found via Scoble)
For an entertaining read, check out the comments...
One of the thread posters has a quote from a PM lead here in ACES, Mike Gilbert. Here's the quote:
"Anyone who knows our third-party community is aware that they are ones creating the truly masterful individual aircraft and scenery. So, when we hire for an aircraft artist, for example, we don't really want the person who can create the best possible aircraft with the current technology. We want the person who will help us create the next generation of technology. " (emphasis added by the thread commenter)
The full blog post from Mike can be found here: Workin' for a Living
I'd also like to add a comment by Sean James, found on a post by Steve Lacey, graphics guru extraordinaire:
"I would hope that the default aircraft textures and virtual cockpits are looked at. 3rd party add-ons appear to have an edge over MS in this department. We all eagerly await the next release."
The thread and comment swirl a bunch of different responses from me.
Let me spew a few reactions forth--- but before I go any further, let me just state, I'm speaking about visual quality here. I'm *only* talking about visuals. Not flight models, or FMC, or drag coefficient. That hoohaw is way outside my baliwick. Just art. That's my area. I'm an art lead.
With that being said...
Now, I disagree a bit with Mike Gilbert's statement.
See, when we hire folk we do look for those "who can create the best possible aircraft." We want (and I believe we get) people on our team who can produce stellar results in the most economical fashion.
I have yet to see one third party add-on product that I thought we'd be unable to reproduce with our in house talent.
I have seen third party people produce work that is better than what we shipped.
I see a lot of third party work whose work I don't think is necessarily better than our default offerings, but is certainly different, and over the course of the lifetime of a product sometimes "different" is confused with "better." (and I will say, sometimes different is pretty spectacular!)
Please don't misconstrue what I'm saying here. There are add-on products, like PMDG for example, that produce a product that is radically different than what we shipped. They serve a different, more high-end market. Their panels are more complex, more detailed. The exterior model of their 747 for example is *much* more detailed than our default offering. People constantly compare our default version of a plane like the 747 with efforts by folk like PMDG. And in their eyes we come up short.
But let me let you in on a little secret: the default Microsoft 747 as offered in FS 2004 is the same model as what was offered in 2002. Different (and better) textures, but the model is the same one worked on nearly five years ago. (Again I'm just talking about the visuals here. There were code changes that made it a different aircraft than what we shipped before)
I can already hear the chorus: "I've been robbed! Those cheapskates wouldn't even give us a new model! They charged us for a whole brand new version and didn't even work on it! M$ sucks and even though they have billions of dollars they're out to rob me!"
Sorry. Not true. Honest.
Go back and look at a past version.
FS 2000 (professional version) had 12, yes, 12 aircraft.
FS 2002 (professional) had 16 (some of them untouched carryovers from FS 2000)
FS 2004 had 24.
24 aircraft.
That's a pretty rich selection to offer users. I understand the person who wants what PMDG (or Dreamfleet, or other makers) offer doesn't see our 747 as nearly as complete, but I argue that it gives a great introduction to what a 747-400 represents, and that it lays the groundwork for the enthusiast who wants to delve deeper as a PMDG offering does.
For FS2004 we did a bunch of new aircraft, and reworked some older favorites. It required a ton of work and many late nights. For example, the FS 2004 Lear exterior and virtual cockpit looks pretty good, in my opinion. We constantly upgrade what we offer people, and part of upgrade means we can take advantage of more capable modern computer hardware. That generally translates into things that look more real. Keep in mind that what we were capable of making in 2000 let's say, we were not necessarily capable of shipping in 2000.
Sure, you say: "The Lear looks okay. But so and so's version looks ever so much better..." Here's where I get to my point. The one about not seeing one third party add-on product that I thought we'd be unable to reproduce with our in house talent.
We fight with one hand tied behind our backs. We have tight constraints with both people, time, and material. Material? Yep. Polygon counts and textures are an example. Some of those very nice looking 3rd party aircraft use 5,6, up to 10 (or more) 1024 X 1024 textures. (that's a whole lotta memory to shoot up to a video card)
We use 1, maybe 2. Better yet, we might use 1 1024 X 1024 texture coupled with a 512 X 512 texture. Why do we do this? Performance.
We make all sorts of trade offs to get the best blend of visual fidelity and performance that we possibly can, given that we do something very few do: we build a planet. We also make an effort to be as inclusive as possible to as wide a market as possible.
What about people, and time? Well, our team is much smaller than the picture most people have in their head. A lot smaller. And a portion of the team is devoted to either management, or quality assurance (Test). Now PMDG currently lists 9 members on it's team (about 20% of the full time employees of ACES studio) producing aircraft. They've put out 6 aircrat for FS 2004, which has been on the shelves for what? close to 2 and a half years? There's a reason that it takes the amount of time to produce the level of fidelity those guys put out. (and they are to be commended for their work)
I'll comment on one more point a bit before I close. As I said before, over the course of the lifetime of a product like FS, sometimes "different" is confused with "better." We work hard to live up to the marketing tagline "as real as it gets," but the real world is so varied, and so complex, that we have to implement solutions that cover only part of the real world version. We often have to make aesthetic choices; ten sky sets, and not a thousand. Terrain textures that look more like Somerset, than say like Lyons, or Trondheim.
At the same time, a product like Flight Simulator gets used a lot over a span of a couple of years, and seeing the same thing over and over again is boring. So yes, it's understandable that when someone releases a new version of the environment maps for water, or a new texture set for Autogen, somebody will inevitably say "why couldn't Micro$oft just do it right the first time?" To those people, all I have to say is: vive la difference! I promise that if you took whichever add-on is your current favorite, went back in time, and substituted the shipped default version, in a couple of years someone would come out with a new add-on replacing that one, and everybody would rave at how much it's better than the default.
I say, embrace the different offerings. Every now and again someone'll come along with a new twist that everyone can learn from. I know that I personally have been influenced more than a few times over the years by an add-on or two: Lennart Arvidsson's texture replacements for FS 2000 were great, and influenced my future work. Gerrish Grey's tree work was also influential.
I guess my real point is that sometimes I think people read the words "Microsoft," and think "that's all the money in the world. Rich, good for nothing S.O.B.S." But you see, I happen to work with these S.O.B.s, and know that there's a lot of passion and talent that goes into programs like the Flight Simulator series.
Maybe almost as much as exists in the third party community. :)
Okay. I've rambled on enough. Hope I haven't ruffled any feathers.
I've got nothing but respect for all the people who work on titles like Flight Simulator-- whether they work in Redmond (next to a coyote infested gravel pit) for Msft, or in the real world as part of the 3rd party community.
'night
There's a sentiment I've seen echoed on various forums regarding Flight Simulator, with regards to testing-- especially beta testing. This sentiment is captured over at Avsim by a poster who claims "...nobody outside the MS building is a beta tester. You are a marketing tool and an extra set of eyes." (part of a longer thread). The poster was previously involved in testing a console title.
Now, I'm *not* a tester. I'm an artist. We make bugs, we don't find them.[:)] But I do happen to sit next to somone who is a tester, so I feel fully qualified to shoot my mouth off about the testing process here in the ACES game studio.
I imagine that console testing might very well happen as Mr._Al describes. I don't know. My experience deals with PC titles, and even there I can tell you with confidence that testing a title like Flight Simulator is a different kettle of fish than testing Half Life 2.
PC titles have to worry about a broad spectrum of configurations (how video cards/ sound cards/ memory/ CPU/, etc interact) whereas consoles don't. That means configuration testing is a part of the external testing process-- an important part. Even Microsoft doesn't have an infinite number of machines to test various configurations on-- we use a representative sample (which is a lot of machines) instead. Having a wide variety of configurations used in the "wild" (external test) as it were, drastically increases the odds that you'll catch a major crashing or hanging bug. In a sense that might be considered an "extra set of eyes," but the feedback and input (via crash logs and written feedback) are not the only way external beta testers affect final quality, and are critical to a successful release.
Simulations-- like Flight Simulator, are different than other PC titles. Flight Sim, for example, is a pretty big sandbox-- fly anywhere (except the poles...), any time of day, in a variety of aircraft technologies. You look at a game/sim like Forza, for example, and yes it's pretty realistic. Tons of cars, tons of detail. Yes, it edges into the simulations space. But...can you drive from Lillestrøm to Sørumsand? Umm... nope. You're locked into the (very detailed) areas provided. The limitation of Forza and the breadth of Flight Simulator require different testing models, differing areas of expertise. We have a great group of full time testers. They come from a variety of backgrounds, but they are certainly subject matter experts in their various areas of expertise, and yes, a bunch of 'em are pilots. That being said, we bring various outside experts onto our Beta as necessary and useful; meteorologists, air traffic controllers, pilots, and the like. Sometimes those experts are also part of our existing user community. They are listened to.
There's also the 3rd party. The mod/add-on community for Flightsim is quite large and contains both professional and amateur components, some of which have large (passionate and vocal) followings. While the team's focus has to be on the core product, we invest a significant amount of time and resources into supporting backwards compatability. Part of that back compat testing is done in house to be sure, but we invite many representative samples of add-on developers from multiple areas and "hardcore" users to our Betas to provide feedback and input precisely on those areas.
All those people have ideas and feedback. The vast majority of bugs logged are found by our internal teams (they'd better, since that's their fulltime job-- to find bugs), but the Flight Sim Beta has the highest "valid" (usually meaning "non duplicated") bugs found by external process. That ain't 'cause the code's crappy. It's 'cause the Beta testers are both informed and passionate about what they do. They care about what they're doing and give great feedback. Which makes better product.
That being said, the rap sometimes given to the testers is that they "didn't do their job, just look at this bug (fill in your own example here)!" to which I'd say;
"Hold on there Sparky! Not so fast!"
I've mentioned before this post that there are "bugs" and there are incomplete features, and that one is often confused with the other. I'm not walking some fine semantics line when I say this, it's just the nature of the beast. In part, it's why we have version numbers: we build upon what's gone before, and take advantage of new opportunities. This is not meant to excuse poor or incomplete implementation: sometimes we're guilty of that. Usually it's because time and resources don't allow for more, and we decided that something is better than nothing. That choice isn't always the right choice, but on the whole I think we've done okay.
Let me bring this post back to where I started. Here at ACES, our Beta testers (and our fulltime testers too!) have a more than average impact on the development of our products. Their suggestions and input have changed feature implementation and increased quality. Not every suggestion leads to an immediate implementation, but don't assume that because it's not in the product that it wasn't asked for, or remarked upon. (For that matter, don't assume that the team doesn't argue feature set back and forth as well. We do.) Our Beta testers are more than a "marketing tool." (we ask them to sign an NDA, and frankly would prefer them not to really mention they've tested the product at all), and certainly more than "an extra set of eyes" (although when you've got a whole planet to deliver, you need every set of eyes you can get!).
[EDIT]
There's a lively comment or two (including the person originally quoted) in the comments section of this post, and a follow up from me with a little more exposition in it, please check 'em out...
Okay, so I'm not exactly Brain, but I did find out that one of the patent applications I'm named on was approved. How did I find out? Did I get a call from Bill Gates? Nope. How about the US government ? ("uh... hey. um... one of your patents has been accepted. Have a nice day.")
Nope.
Only in the land of the Free do I find out via somebody trying to sell me something.
Sigh.
On a happy note, today we welcome another new ACES blogger: http://blogs.technet.com/engauged/default.aspx
Oh, and I came across this post today over at Avsim, in which a fellow by the name of mgh in Reply # 5 states about our FS Insider site:
"I've previously expressed my doubts about this site.Does anyone know of any other MS site that sells apparel, outerware, bags, office accessories, speciality items, and gift certificates through a 3rd party in this case eCompanyStore?"
All I can say is yes the FS Insider site is really ours, and yes, other Microsoft Games Studios have 3rd party sites where they sell stuff:
http://www.bungiestore.com/productcart/pc/default.asp and http://www.xboxgearstore.com/
Both clearly state: "This web site is operated by Sunrise Identity, Inc. and is solely responsible for its contents and operation. "
You may also note that the Bungie store is linked directly from their website: http://bungie.net/
I think it's wise to be cautious in today's world, but hopefully the fact that the Insider site is ours is now unambiguous.
I hate reusing titles, and I've used the one up above (Testing, testing, 1.. 2... 3... ) before. But ah well... I'm lazy.
Sometimes Mike Gilbert (tdragger) and I talk about various posts we intend to write. Mike, being both a better write and a faster typist, usually beats me to the punch.
He's got one of those that we've talked about here. Go read it. Great post.
Anyway, in the comments section, Nick Landolfi, who is taking a game software development class, said:
"My impression was that there was only one test plan, and its purpose was to test the finished product. I never realized that there could be multiple test plans for individual features, or feature sets..."
I thought it might be interesting to talk about how that applies to at one of the art areas.
From the visual side, we've seen a real jump in what we're able to do to make things look more like their real world counterpart.
We saw a pretty big jump in visual quality from FS 95 to, oh, say, FS 2002.
But with the advent of more stuff (exteriors, transparent parts, interiors, more vertices, extra textures, new shaders, etc.) being available to simulate objects on screen, the accuracy of what we do also has to increase.
In FS 2002, much of the beginning and middle part of our visual aircraft development process was left up to individual artists. This gave us a mix of quality and visual accuracy in our models and textures. When we got to the end game, we saw a lot of bugs. Enough bugs that what we shipped was not representative of what we were capable of shipping.
So in FS 2004 we instituted some new procedures, one in particular meant that Test (QA) got involved in much earlier stages. We decided to establish mini "test milestones." First off, we'd have a test pass on the source we were using. For FS 2004 this managed to catch the fact that we were planning on modeling the wrong engine variant for the Ford Trimotor we were doing. This saved us a bunch of time later on-- changing a modeled and textured item takes a lot longer than doing it right the first time, and heaven forbid if it means that you have to ship the bug because it was too late or too risky to change.
Next steps up tested the unskinned model, the textured model, the animations, and then finally the LODs.
This adds some extra time to the art development process, but cuts down on bug fixing later, and raises the quality and consistency bar across the board.
Take a look at the default aircraft we shipped in FS 2004.
There are some aircraft that we carried over from the previous version, like the 747, 737, Bell 206, Cessna 172, and a few others. They didn't change visually from the previous version (aside from some repaints).
But the new aircraft that we did, they're a lot better. Compare the Lear in FS2000 to the Lear in FS 2004. Take a look at how nice the DC-3 is.
Now apply the same process to Flight Simulator X's default aircraft...
And a note for those among our users who never fly the default aircraft:
Raising the bar on the default aircraft raises the bar for everybody. ;)
.
We released some new screens of FSX lately, and as I read over the reactions, one of the things I see are folk asking for shots of this and that. I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that we're not done yet! :)
We try not to show stuff off in our screens that isn't representative of what we expect to ship.
I'll quote an exchange I had with a nice fellow at Sim-Outhouse:
Avsim was kind enought to post a link to some of the ACES team member's blogs. Thanks Avsim, and welcome Avsim readers. I, of course, love Avsim as I am their "favorite arteest and lurker" ;)
I figure then, it's only fitting that I deliver up some tidbit for our dear reader(s).
One of the things I'm very proud of in the last release of Flight Simulator is our weather environment. I've linked to various papers detailing the weather system (like here) before, so I won't go into what we did again, but I did want to talk a bit about the water environment work that was done. You see, while I was fairly happy with what we shipped, there was one glaring feature that works mostly the way you'd think, but can deliver some mighty... odd results.
We created a brand new sky system, offering up a variety of color palettes to give each day a slightly different hue cast (and sunset). Okay so far as we go.
We created a brand new cloud visuals system. Added a nice little functionality to create wether themes.
Again, okay so far as we go.
The water environment maps switch out depending on time of day, dawn dusk, noon, and so on.
Okay... so we run into a little bit of trouble here. Each sky set (there are ten) can have it's own color "theme" if you will. There is, on the other hand, only one set of water environment maps. The maps mimic what happens in real life, namely the surface of the water reflects the sky conditions (clear through overcast), as modified by surface conditions (calm, glassy, rough, etc). Which means that you can easily generate a disconnect between what the environment map should look like (as described above), and what it actually looks turns out to be-- which is one texture capturing one moment, one color theme, one sky condition.
Examples of where this disconnect can be found (and where we decided that having variation was more important than having uniformly conforming color) are at sunset, where the dusk water environment map maybe yellow, but the sunset is a vivid red.
Okay, you say that's no big deal.
Here's the big "bug." Mix these three things together: weather theme, time of day, and water environment map. What do you get?
Milk.
Okay, not really milk, but you get a "perfect storm" of sorts.
What's the worst time of day in Flight Sim from an aesthetic point of view?
Noon.
The sun is almost directly above, so shading is at its most uninteresting (start out in the mountains in summer at noon. blech! now advance the time to say, 4:30 pm. Voilà! C'est mangifique!). It's also very bright.
Okay, now add in a nice weather theme. Let's put in "fair weather" for our nice sunny noon day. So which water environment map do you get? Do you get env_highnoon.bmp loaded?
You instead get env_overcast.bmp. Yep, overcast.
Why overcast? Well, the wetaher theme fair weather calls for a cirrus layer of 6/8ths coverage. We load the overcast environment map when cloud coverage gets pretty thick (starting at 6/8ths actually...), which in the real world tends to make water look a little grey. Sometimes purpleish, sometimes greenish, sometime yellowish, and so on, but not so blue skyish, that's for sure, so we load a different environment map. We don't have a seperate environment map for each sun state (morning, noon, dusk, etc), only one overcast, so it sort of has to look good at about anytime of day (don't forget, we the water gets some lighting too).
Starting to get the picture?
When you load the default flight in Flight Simulator, the default time of day is noon. Our "nice" wetaher themes all have cirrus cloud coverage of 6/8ths-- looks fine, overcast cirrus isn't exactlly overcast, if you know what I mean. So you load the overcast water environment map (already kind of a weird color), light it at its brightest (noon), and have lots of blue sky in the scene.
What do you get?
Milky water.
sigh.
So now you know.
If you haven't already, take a look at some of these neat add-ons for the sky and/or water environment for Flight Sim (some are for FS2002, but should work fine in FS 2004):
Active Sky
Bill Lyons water
Flight Environment
Environmental Water Textures Library,
Oceanfx.zip and Oceanstx.zip
in addition, you might try a library search at Avsim for any of the following names:
Daniel Buechter, Kevin Rangel, and Ed Truthan.
There are many more of course, but I can't do all the work for ya now can I?