MS FS2002 annonsert

[Gjest]

Jeg mottok nå siste nummer av FSMag FSNews

Her er det en god analyse av FS2002 + historie. Er FS2000 en beta for FS2002 som FS95 var det for FS98???

Klippet under er skrevet av Mike Clark (den er lang!)

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FS2002 - Special Report

Occasionally Microsoft's range of simulators get stunning reviews but at the same time receive harsh attacks from their hardcore critiques. Yes, TheMag holds its hands up to that one. However, Microsoft Flight Simulator is considered to be a fairly decent and stable title. It must be because the US Navy use it to train their fighter pilots AND it does have the seal of approval from John and Martha King. But seriously, will FS2002, announced earlier this week, surpass all previous releases and will we as flight simulator enthusiasts get the usual raw deal on performance? We take a look at the facts...

It is a fact that MS plan their simulators in two's. Take a look at Microsoft Flight Simulator 95 and 98 for example:

When it was released, FS95 (V6) was considered to be a complete mess by people in the industry. It was fairly advanced for its time but it was soon discovered that the sim that "just couldn't handle it". It suffered terribly from rendering and frame rate problems but more noticeably hardware conflicts. Not surprising really because people were still using 166 machines and serious 3d graphics cards were still on the drawing board. Nobody seemed to be able to create add-ons for it either for fear of killing an already sick sim. Microsoft in their wisdom said nothing at the time but LISTENED intently to what public had to say and soon started taking notes. The crazy thing about it was that FS95 sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide. I bet there are still people using it today and having a whale of a time in the process.

A couple of years later Microsoft released Flight Simulator 98 (V7). There was a lot of hype about this release, and rightly so. With a similar look and feel to FS95, FS98 was very much improved upon. Even though it contained a lot of components found in FS95, the bugs and hardware conflicts were all but ironed out. Apart from two official updates; a patch that fixed a couple of minor issues and a converter that allowed people to use aircraft created in BAO's Flight Shop, virtual pilots started happily, if somewhat h-h-h-hesitantly filling up their flight logs. Even the commercial sector got a jump start and finally got around to taking serious orders for flight sim add-on products. Many people still use FS98 to this day and swear blind that it was and still is the best flight sim ever created. The only near rivals to FS98 were ProPilot, the Flight Unlimited series and later Fly! by Gathering of Developers. We mustn't forget to mention Xplane that has always been underestimate!

d and under marketed in our view.

More recently, FS2000 (V8) has had a relatively new "engine" (program or .exe) designed. It does contain some old, outdated but reliable code from FS98 and even FS95. One of the reasons behind the inclusion of old code is backward compatibility. By that we mean that add-ons created by for previous versions can be used within FS2000. But the main reason in our view is that FS2000 is a BETA version of Flight Simulator 2002 (V9). Can you see a pattern emerging now?

As we say above, FS2000 consists of various bits of code stripped out of other MS sims and had newer routines added to it. Fine! we hear you cry, what's wrong with that? Well, nothing at all. But we believe that the newer routines found in FS2000 are experiments for Flight Simulator 2002. If you are familiar with both versions of the simulator you will know that the Weather System, GPS, 3D Mesh Terrain, Aircraft modeling etc are all new "Features" not incorporated into FS98. If you read Internet Newsgroups, Forums and our FS Ground School feature each week with Ray (below) most novices and hardcore users say that these features are far from perfect and work differently on various machines. Some don't work correctly at all!

Now then, the only way that Microsoft can use these new features in their next simulator (FS2002) is to get that new code tested thoroughly in the current one (FS2000). Now we all know that testing a new product on every machine in the world is totally impossible because there are quite literally millions of combinations of hardware configuration. So, what Microsoft does first is to use what's available to them. First they have a team of testers that spend hours and hours flying around on PC's (Joy! Paradise!) and take notes of the problems they find with the sim. The results from these tests give the programmers a hot list of technical issues that must be addressed. The tests also give an understanding of how the sim will perform within a small cross section of the PC market. These tests do not give the developers the whole picture though. So, what MS does is make an announcement a few months prior to release asking for external BETA testers. This is when a group of lucky, s!

elect, privileged, elite, macho, tanned [i hate them with all my heart [image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif'>http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif'>http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif[/image]] group of experienced FS pilots get the chance to have their say in the performance of the product. These results are quickly analyzed, issues are ever so roughly addressed and then the product is released into the market. By this point they still don't know if the new code will work on the majority of machines so what MS then do is rely on us - the end user to provide them with the results they need.

We then buy their "beta" product, install it on our machines and then phone their technical support with our individual problems. We provide them with a host of information including our PC specs, configurations, the serial number of the product CD (remember that) and everything else we can in the hope we will get an answer. Most often than not our issues are addressed there and then. If not we are provided with a fix in the form of a Patch at a later stage. We also write in frantically to Newsgroups and Forums to express our viewpoints. All during this time MS are quietly watching, learning and collecting information about their newly implemented code (with possibly different versions of the new code distributed around the world) and how its performing out in the field. The information we provide Microsoft during our technical support calls and forum visits is invaluable for their next flight simulator version. Without it, there would not be another version.

Therefore, we have absolutely no doubt that any problems in the current release of FS2000 will be fixed or improved upon in the next version. That is guaranteed! Great I hear you scream! .. HOLD IT!!... The problem is that even though the existing problems will be fixed or tweaked, even more bugs will come to light when the new publicly untested features are revealed. You want examples? We have learned that FS2002 will include Air Traffic Control and a new FS Traffic type Dynamic Scenery. These are just two examples of routines that cause major degradation in a simulator/pc performance and have not been incorporated into Flight Simulator before. I believe that the ATC will NOT include sound, more like a text based system like SquawkBox - but we shall see. The last time I mentioned that the roads were awful in the preview copy of FS2000 MS changed the scenery engine AND then went further by including moving car lights too! [image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif[/image] I haven't forgotten that MS! So I'm keeping my mouth!

shut this time around [image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif[/image] What would be interesting to know is if anyone has a version of FS2000 with features enabled, disabled or just "different". Now that would answer your questions about MS field testing new codes within the product.

We are told by the public that they resent having to pay for a program that is constantly under development. In our view FS95 and FS2000 are very much BETA VERSIONS. FS98 and the soon to be released FS2002 are what we like to call FINALS VERSIONS. Please bear that in mind when thinking about purchasing FS2004.

Footnote

If you went to a supermarket tomorrow and asked for a BETA BANANA, BETA Palm Pilot, BETA Cucumber you would get some pretty weird looks wouldn't you? So what makes this any different? To ask the general public to pay for the privilege of BETA testing products is not fair and the public do not want to be made to foot the bill. Remember pilots - Every other Microsoft Flight Simulator is the best one to consider purchasing. We are due for that this year so watch this space!

Publisher: Mike Clark

 

[Tore Sætre]

quote:

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Egil Johnsen skrev:

Jeg mottok nå siste nummer av FSMag FSNews

Her er det en god analyse av FS2002 + historie. Er FS2000 en beta for FS2002 som FS95 var det for FS98???

Klippet under er skrevet av Mike Clark (den er lang!)

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Mye synsing og tildels misinfromasjon her. Konklusjonen på innlegget er vel at:

- Microsoft hører på kundene, leser newsgroup og tar folks tilbakemeldinger til etteretning når man jobber med neste FS-versjon.

- Ny funksjonalitet fungerer ikke alltid 100% i første versjon men blir utbedret i patcher eller neste versjon (bombe, kan nevne 200 andre softwareprodusenter som jobber på samme måte).

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Tore Sætre

Oslo, Norway

E-mail: tore.satre@iname.com

http://go.to/toreweb/"'>http://go.to/toreweb/" TARGET=_blank>http://go.to/toreweb/

[Endret av Tore Sætre 16-03-2001.]

[Roald Hansen]

Hei Tore, MEN: Det er vel bare Microsoft som kan vente med den første egentlige patchen etter vel to år, og slippe unna så billig. Og på toppen få ovasjoner når reklamen sier at kanskje begynner det å fungere, sju måneder før release! Jeg vet ikke om noen av 200 som kunne hatt overlevelsesmulighet [image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/wink.gif[/image]

Du verden for en respekt for Microsoft...

Hilsen Roald

[Tore Sætre]

quote:

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Roald Hansen skrev:

Du verden for en respekt for Microsoft...

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Må ha litt respekt for et selskap som utgir et produkt som jeg bruker så mye som jeg gjør. Hadde jeg ikke likt FS-serien har jeg friheten til å velge noe annet (Ja til frihet!!!).

Når det gjelder de 200 software leverandørene som følger samme linje har du tydligvis et annet grunnlag for å uttale deg enn jeg. Poenget mitt er at ny funksjonalitet ofte ikke fungerer 100% fra første versjon. Er den nye funksjonen vanskelig å patche må man ofte vente til neste versjon (som koster penger). Og der kan jeg vise til en del produkter fra andre leverandører hvor policy'en er den samme.

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Tore Sætre

Oslo, Norway

E-mail: tore.satre@iname.com

http://go.to/toreweb/"'>http://go.to/toreweb/" TARGET=_blank>http://go.to/toreweb/

[Endret av Tore Sætre 17-03-2001.]

[Fredrik Berg]

Prøvde de fleste FS2000 flyene i CFS2 i går, og dette gikk som en drøm i forhold til FS2K. Frames på mellom 20-30 hele veien.

Det var en stor opplevelse!!

Angrep Tarawa øyene med Concorde sammen med 8 Wingmen (også Concorde). Litt av et surrealistisk syn....:-)

Får vi denne kvaliteten i FS2002 er jeg fornøyd.

[Trond Erikson]

Hvis det er riktig at MS bruker en videreutvikling av grafikken i FS Combat er det jo bare å gleeeeede seg.

En kamerat av meg har Combat-versjonen og følgende var oppløftende:

1. Han har mindre ram (64 mb) enn meg

2. Grafikk-kortet er den samme (32 MB)

3. en 300 hz prosessor.

Og CS fløt som de roligste partiene i Glomma.

Jeg gleder meg i alle fall enormt - for FS2000 hakker jo en lille smule hos veldig mange.

 

[Sigmund Rosvold]

Microsoft har lagt ut en kort video fra FS 2002.

Dere finner den her:

http://www.microsoft.com/games/gamestock/videos/flightsim2002.avi"'>http://www.microsoft.com/games/gamestock/videos/flightsim2002.avi" TARGET=_blank>http://www.microsoft.com/games/gamestock/videos/flightsim2002.avi

[Timmy Brandt]

hei

høres jo bra ut med ATC men, jeg vil høre et litet klipp før jeg skriker JIPPI!!

blir jo kjedelig å høre "Blue Sky 737, cleared for takoff" hver eneste gang du skal ta av...

MVH

Timmy

 

[Tom Ekle]

Det blir nå ihvertfall en laaaaaaang sommer da. Det blir jo utrolig bra når den kommer ut!

Mvh

Tom Ekle