Microsoft Kills Flight Simulator, Fires Entire Dev Team | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Kills Flight Simulator, Fires Entire Dev Team

gamasutra.com

31 pointsjoshwa14 comments

I wish companies would release the source code when they decide to kill their products. Now it is dead forever, and nobody can bring it back. If the source code was open, the dev team could try to revive it on their own dime. (If they were so inclined.)

Oh well, at least FlightGear is open source:

http://www.flightgear.org/

I dare say they have a bunch of licensed code in there that they'd have to find and remove; why would they invest the resources? By keeping it closed they also leave open the possibility of them bringing it back at some point in the future without creating a competitor to their own product.

I note X-Plane is going cheap in response to this:

http://www.x-plane.com/order.html

one of the meridian 59 devs picked the property off panasonic and revived it years after it closed (M59 a 3d MMO launched before both UO and EQ). it's now been 15 years since launch and it's still going [sort of] strong.

i'm comforted that game worlds outlive their creator's intent.

I was kind of expecting that.

I think they will move the FS franchise to XBOX. FS was not a casual game, and the player must be a sim fan.

I guess the gamers will have to buy new good (expensive) joysticks, and they will buy extra scenery as DLC. The latter puts much more money in MS' pocket than the retail system, and restricts piracy.

And you get to play on your 50" plasma screen.

A little off topic... but every time I hear Microsoft Flight Simulator, it reminds me how hardware vendors used to use the game to test the hardware compatibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible "At first, few "compatibles" other than Compaq's models offered compatibility beyond the DOS/BIOS level. Reviewers and users developed suites of programs to test compatibility; the ability to run Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Flight Simulator became one of the most significant "stress tests"."

I wonder how this will fare for X-Plane. As far as I know, it's still mostly written by one person and provides a simulation that some argue is superior to Msft Flight Sim. I just bought X-Plane a few weeks ago, but have never used MsftFlightSim, so can't really compare.

Anywho, sad to see MsftFlightSim go, I gather it had quite a following.

MSFS advantages:

-- visuals (though X-Plane 9 closed this gap a fair amount)

-- licensed scenery content (scenery library)

-- large developer/add-on community (Level3, etc)

X-Plane advantages:

-- Flight Model (geometry based, not lookuptable based)

-- Mutli-Platform (Win/Mac/Linux)

-- Networked operation out of box (vs 3rd party payware FSUIPC)

-- Developer relations (all major devs maintain blogs, etc)

-- Scenery/aircraft development tools (open-source AC3D plugin, WED, DSFMaker)

Somehow this does not have me too worried, if they'd fire the entire Office dev team, now that would be a shocker.

Wanna hear a Microsoft joke?

"What do you call it when the entire Flight Simulator Dev Team gets fired? A tragedy."

"What do you call it when the entire MS Office dev team gets fired? A good start."

(loosely based on a lawyer joke)

Indeed - although Excel used to have a working flight simulator as an easter egg.

Shame to see Flight Simulator go - was really an amazing product a way back.

I believe they can try to find a job in some other group at MS.

According to http://www.futuregpu.org/2009/01/end-of-era-aces-studio-and-... some got fired and some have 60 days to find a new job within MS:

There was an all-hands meeting, then people got 1 of 2 emails from HR:

1) your last day is Jan 23 ( 24 hrs notice ) and your badge and email will stop working at 7:00 pm on the 23rd.

2) you have 60 days to find a job, your badge and email will work until Mar 23. If you find a job great, if not that is your last day.

In any case, "You can try to find another job at MS" in no way guarantees that they will find a job.

So essentially, the members of the dev team will be competing against their old colleagues if they are searching for a new job at MS. Now that isn't a nice way to go.

I guess the entire group could be hired by a company trying to build a competing product.

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