I promised customer mgh that I would follow up on some issues regarding the FSInsider site.One of those issues revolved around the Terms of Use link at the bottom of the page.
Well Mr.h, you should expect the TOU to change to a more MSFT consistent TOU sometime around Nov 30th...
[UPDATE]
It's now Dec 5th, a week paast what I was told. Mike Z and I are applying pressure...
News soon, I hope.
Today's the 7th. The TOU has been changed--- but is still different from th erest of MGS games' TOUs. My understanding is that other games' TOUs are supposed to change...
Sigh.
Proving that I actually read the blogs on my blog roll, even extending to their links, I've added another former ACES alumni to my blog roll...
The new Johnny Cash bio-pic opened last night. Which caused me to take a look at my Cash collection of music. To make a long story short, after coming across a great version of "cocaine blues" from the greatest live double album of all time, I wondered what sort of mix I could put together in five minutes with drugs as the theme...
(Sadly?) turns out it wasn't hard, and I didn't even scratch the surface...
01. Sweet Jane-- Velvet Underground
02. Drugs are good -- NOFX
03. Mirror in the Bathroom -- English Beat
04. Cocaine Blues -- Johnny Cash
05. Don't Sniff Coke -- Pato Banton
06. I Wanna Be Sedated-- Shonen Knife
07. Heroin -- Velvet Underground
08. Mexican Tar -- Manic Hispanic
09. Heroin -- Lou Reed (Animal)
10. Sweet Jane -- Cowboy Junkies
There's a twisted logic to the arrangement, but I refuse to explain it.
Don't try this at home.
Who knew they were active this late in the season?
Anyway, whatever your interest in flight is, those little suckers can fly.
http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/faa/
Robert's giving a talk at Macworld this year...
tracksessions
bio
...ACES blogging has jumped the shark.
I think I can name the moment when it happened. First there were a few brave souls (Steve, Mike, Sebby), but then Hal and Jason crashed the party ("ummm... our invites didn't come in the mail? But we're here anyway? You guys are so cool....").
That was pretty much the moment.
Oh to be sure, there've been a few gems that have popped up along the way--Adrian and Susan to name a couple. But still and all, 11!!!?!!! 11 bloggers? yikes.
One nice thing about missing a few posts, you can let the new bloggers pile up and add them to your blogroll all at once...
Welcome aboard. :)
Habibi
SkyHawk
Norah
Note to Hal:
Recovering from the shock of a new Hal Bryan post quite nicely, thank you.
Note to Brian:
Thanks for the promotion. I'm just an art lead though, not art director.
Note to Mike:
'Bout time sucka!
In fs9 why can't an airplane fly inside a cloud?
Poster Cindy_Zoonan responds:
“ Clouds are not true volumes in FS9. That's why we can't get cloud shadows on the ground, and why clouds seem to 'pop-in' and 'pop-out' of view, even when the 'percent 3-d clouds' option is set to 100. I hope the next installation of FS will have volumes instead of 2-D planar bitmapped pictures of clouds. As beautiful and convincing as the weather depiction is in FS9 right now, not having volumetric clouds really sucks the living, breathing life out of a simmer.”
Ummm…. Actually, clouds in FS9 are true volumes. Yes, they are planar bitmapped sprites . But they are arranged within a volume . This video (part of Niniane 's Siggraph presentation) shows off how they're constructed.
The only real difference between what FS 9 does with its clouds and what you could create using a higher end particle effects system is the number of particles/sprites used.
The simple truth is that if you want to draw more than one cloud you're going to have to play certain tricks.
To answer the poster's original question, we have to play certain games to mask the number of sprites used. The amount of alpha needed to draw clouds well leads to weird Z-fighting issues .
We rotate sprites up to a point, and then lock them so you can fly through ‘em. From a 2D cockpit or VC, you should be able to get the idea that you're flying through a cloud. From a spot plane or tower view, we play Z bias games and draw the aircraft on top of the clouds.
I would never argue that we couldn't improve the implementation. I for one, would love to see a better in-cloud experience. And cloud shadows, and virga, and…
And cloud shadows, and virga, and…
2. Still at over at simflight, poster psykie asks about Jumping mountain tops. As several other posters surmise, the issue is indeed one of view distance. The issue happens beacause the sky color behind the mountains and the color of the mountains themselves are different. When the sky cylinder/clip plane comes in contact with the mountains, there's a hard edge, and/or z (depth) fighting (that sort of lined tearing look). To get rid of that effect, we use fog, with the gaol being that the mountains are fogged to the same , or nearly the same, color as the sky, so you never notice the intersections.
Depending on settings (view distance, visibility as set in the weather dialogue, time of day, sky variation, etc), this problem can become more pronounced.
A good deal of this is a side effect of the fact that a) in Flight Sim you have a wealth of variables to play with, and b) we simulate the changing of light over time.
3. Meanwhile, we're still at simflight for poster Hartley, who asks about Desert & Rock Textures, and about figuring out which is which to replace.
There's a table in the Terrain SDK (TerrainTextureNames.doc) that lists all the terrain texture names and the modified Olsen class they map to.
For the most part, desert textures in Flight Sim fall into two classes; 1) those in an area near(ish) the Grand Canyon in the USA, also used in the Australian central desert area, and 2) the rest of the world. It is possible for all textures to interact with a wide variety of textures, but you can be confident that replacing the following will replace ~90% of the desert textures that have a "lepoardy" look:
Textures with the prefixes 002 (for example, 002B2SU3.BMP, or 002C2Wi7.BMP) and 003 are desert and semi desert shrub.
Textures with the prefix 051 (shrub evergreen) are the most lepoardy.
Also potential culprits:
009C (grass and shrub)
027C (mixed forest)
052B or 052C (semi desert sage and hot and mild grasses, if I remember correctly)
Rock textures start with 056
I'm reciting this from memory, so I may have missed a couple. I'll double check tomorrow. In the meantime I hope that helps.
Cheers,
jason
I saw this video internally a couple of months ago.
Check out the link Dean has in his blog.
As mentioned in Item #4 yesterday, I tried to address to some degree the doubts held by an FS user who posts at Avsim under the name "mgh."
Mgh is, as I've said before, quite properly sceptical of the FSinsider site in particular and some of the ACES team efforts in general. I believe that he probably represents a portion of our customer base, which is why I've gone to some detail to try and address some of his stated concerns. My intent here is not to single out mgh, but to try and answer his questions, and hope that by proxy I am able to answer others at the same time.
Part of the intention of the new Microsoft wide blogging effort is to connect with customers using an authentic and personal voice. I personally (not speaking for the corporation) hope that'll engender more trust and respect for MSFT amongst our customers, and vice versa, more trust and respect FOR our customers FROM Microsoft. I don't expect that trust to be handed out just 'cause we say it ought to be so. I fully understand that if there's any change to be made it has to be earned, and that that only comes with repeatability over time. I understand that not everyone will like us or like what we do, but hopefully people'll know that there are a good number of us "behind the walls" so to speak, who do in fact care about our customers.
I think you'd be surprised to realize that that number is the majority, and the rule rather than the exception.
I think that I read mgh clearly in a follow up post in the aforementioned thread that he believes the FSInsider site is *probably* authentically from Microsoft, or at least the ACES team, but that it's certainly not up to MSFT snuff. All I can say to that mgh, is that your criticism is taken to heart, and we'll continue to try and improve.
There's another sentiment given in that post which I think bears mentioning. Mike Gilbert has covered this before, but it needs to be said that we are altogether too human here at MSFT, and we do make mistakes. Sometimes events out of your control conspire to make you look like right dunderheads, sometimes it's because we just screwed up to begin with.
We'll just need to be better in the future.
One final quote, and then I'm prety much done.
"None of this has enhanced Microsoft's or the MSFT's image. Maybe MSFT should stick to its day job of developing FS and leave websites and challenges to others, especially when "finding the *time* to address them is another issue"?"
Well, the website is partially handled by another internal MSFT team, and partially by ACES. The "time" comment comes directly from me, as I am trying to get closure and/or resolution on some of the issues mgh raised. I'm doing that in addition to my regular duties, which keep me quite busy, because I said that I would in my blog. :)
The pun may be a bit of a stretch, but nonetheless, lots of ground to cover, dear reader…
Item #1
Over at Steve Lacey’s blog there’s a nice post about what our users call err… affectionately, the blurries. Be sure and read the comments section.
Item #2
Also noticed at Mr. Lacey’s blog, is another new Flight Sim related (not affiliated or employed by MSFT) blogger, who has a very nice post. Thank you Mr. Bruce, and you’ve been added to the blogroll.
Item #3
There’s a big brouhaha post over at Avsim regarding the 777 challenge. This has been covered to some small degree in an earlier post of mine, and also by Mr. Gilbert, as well as on the FSInsider.com website. Doesn’t seem to have been an issue over at Flightsim.com, while over on Simflight.com, poster westv (victor) beats us to the punch with a timely link. Cheers Victor!
Item #4
In the thread mentioned above, poster mgh still has some doubts as to the authenticity of the insider site. I know Mike's covered the issue once (as have I), but I thought that I’d quote some of his concerns here, and try and provide some answers. I’m willing to bet that mgh represents some number of people who quite rightly are cautious about people representing themselves as being from big corporations (phishing anyone?). So in that spirit, here goes…
“Some reasons for doubt about the site are:-The poor visual appearance. Compare it with other Microsoft sites”
I think this is really more a matter of opinion than anything else. I’ll agree that there needs to be some changes (what’s up with that serifed font on the 777 image? Ewww!!!!!), but throughout MSFT, various orgs have different looking sites. “- The absence of Miscrosoft or MS in the URL”
Ummm… what about bungie.net (the makers of Halo) xbox.com (the makers of xbox 360), or ageofempires3.com (Makers of Age of Empires 3)? Heck, try typing “mactopia.com” in to your browser. It’ll redirect you, but *someone* got the name mactopia.com…“- The inappropriate Terms of Use. They are actually an AGREEMENT for using MSN websites and include "You represent that you are at least 18 years of age and have attained the age of majority in the province, state or country in which you reside...". So no one under the age of majority should use it. Compare there with the Terms of Use for Microsoft's main Flight Simulator site that are far more appropriate”
Agreed, seems kinda weird to me too. I’ll look into it. I’ll try and post an answer in a few days.
“- The absence of any link to FSInsider from Microsoft's main Flight Simulator site- The absence of almost any original content. Almost all the links are eventually the same as on Microsoft's main Flight Simulator site “
Well, I was pretty sure that the “official” site was supposed to redirect. There may be some (good?) reason it’s not. In any case, we’re in the process of carving the Insider site off of the “official” site, and to give it more of a real “Insider” feel. For a while you can expect some of the content to be identical (or nearly so). But you may have noticed that the last time the “official” FS 2004 site was updated was September…
“- The link to the shop run by eCompanyStore without any indication that you are beng transferred to a non-Microsoft site.”
Well, I’ve called out before that both bungie.net and xbox.com send you to a non MSFT site to handle merchandise POP. I’ll also point out that both of these sites don’t mention that they’re sending you to a non MSFT site, but they do pop up a window, which IMO is just tacky. “Reasons to doubt the 777 Challenge are:- It's now 19:45 GMT on the 3 November 2005 and yet nothing promised is yet available despite the deadline of 23:00 on 7 November”
Which points to the urgency in making sure we made the community aware that the whole shebang wasn’t quite fully baked… JI’m going to skip over a bunch of other points which all pretty much just make the point mentioned above over and again; the whole shebang wasn’t quite fully baked.
“I suppose this could all be due to the Microsoft Flight Simulator Team's incompetence as some posts suggest. I do hope not!”
Umm… can I just point out that sometimes things don’t work exactly the way people expected them to? And also that, well… we’re not perfect…. J
But let me reiterate:
The FSInsider.com site is from ACES game studio. ACES is part of Microsoft Games Studio, which in turn is part of Microsoft Corporation. And we really work next to a coyote infested gravel pit.
Item #5
Again, staying with the Avsim forum theme, J giladhu is worried that blogs are from Microsoft, but are part of a calculated effort of misdirection and manipulation. Again, I think this worth speaking to, because I’m willing to bet a lot of other people think the same thing.
The thing is this, yes we are a part of Microsoft, and MSFT has embraced the idea of interacting with various constituents of its community of users. Of course, there are limitations: “Microsoft's Role: Microsoft does not offer formal support for the communities you'll find here. Instead, our role is to provide a platform for people who want to take advantage of the global community of Microsoft customers and product experts. Microsoft may monitor content to ensure the accuracy of the information you'll find, but any information provided by Microsoft staff is offered "AS IS" with no warranties, and no rights are conferred. You assume all risk for your use.”
Basically you will not (should not) find material here that’s considered truly “secret.” MSFT bloggers (not just ACES bloggers) speak for themselves, NOT for the corporation, and can be held to account for letting stuff slip or causing too much grief or trouble. We blog at our own risk, and do so because, for the most part, we are passionate about what we do for a living. Passionate people like to share that passion with others who are likeminded.
I’m proud of what I do, and what I’ve built. Do I make mistakes? Sure. We all do. Do I hope that a blogging effort will instill or generate a greater degree of trust with our customers? You bet your sweet bippy I do.
Am I fed what to say by Management ™?
Nope.
Item #6
And on a final note, as I cruised over to Simflight I saw that the October screenshot winners have been announced. (Scroll to bottom of page) Congrats to the winners! Looking forwards to November’s contest.
Trying to use my blog powers for good instead of evil...
Our (ACES games studio, part of Microsoft Games Studios) newly minted community program manager (PM for short) Michael Zyskowski has asked me to post a snippet for him regarding the 777 challenge on the fsinsider.com site. Here's his message:
Additionally, I believe that you'll see news of the same appear on the major sites (like Avsim, Flightsim.com, simflight, etc) and I know that Mike'll be starting his blog soon...
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.")
Only in the land of the Free do I find out via somebody trying to sell me something.
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.