The Little Wheel Goes in Back

Well, my last word, anyway. It seems there's quite a bit of anxiety on the FS boards about whether or not FSX will "take advantage of" multi-core CPUs. I've tried to provide some explanation but it's quickly drowned out by the waves of claims, opinions...

Now that people have had a good couple of days to experience the FSX demo I thought I'd post my reactions to, er, their reactions. At the top of my list a new appreciation of how the changes to the way we're doing business is affecting people--many of...

Not a lot, actually, but perhaps enough to straighten out some confusion about what it will do for games, including Flight Simulator. In the couple of weeks since we made our new product annoucement there's been much speculation and, having been surrounded...

Here's a few more hints on the demo that I've come across while purusing the forums. It won't help Abe, who's already given up and moving to X-Plane , but maybe it will help you. Overall performance : AI road traffic and autogen can contribute to...

With the official US street date now passed we're seeing more and more people trying to install and run FSX. Naturally the first thing we hear about are the problems. It's natural to want to overreact at first but until we know the full extent of any...

Well, the demo version is out the door and getting ready for it's debut on GameSpot later today. It's the first time we've ever done a demo and we made it even harder on ourselves by trying to do it while we were working on the full product . Not many...

Well, Flight Simulator X is starting to trickle out. Despite restrictions in the street date a few rogue Best Buy's and Wal-Mart's have been slipping boxes on to shelves. US stores aren't supposed to have the product on sale until October 17 but it's...

How 'bout milk? Got that? Well, as you've heard me say (write?) before, the Xbox 360 controller goes with Flight Simulator like peanut butter sandwiches and milk---mmm, mmm, good! I like mine so much I just had to make it work with Flight Sim 2004, too...

UPDATE : Thanks to Tom Gibson for finding the "lost" trailer video on the MS download site . Enjoy! With E3 in full swing news about the upcoming Flight Simulator X release is starting to filter out of L.A. And by "filter" I do mean it. Like patients...

Wow, talk about obscure. It seems one cause of the activation problems some people have had is a seemingly innocuous registry value placed there by another program prior to installing FSX. So far we've determined that Iomega backup software is one culprit...

A recent thread on the AvSim FSX forum generated this idea from Todd_Barker (a.k.a. "Todd Barker"): How about adding a "head turning" effect that doesnt "snap" the view but rapidly turns the view and then back, similar to how most of the racing...

Well, I guess I will pen a few words about the CES keynote experperience. I'll divide it up in installments since I don't have the energy at the moment for a huge masterpiece. It is Sunday, after all; the day of rest. Planning started back in November...

Well, I'm finally home. If you are following the Flight Simulator saga you've probably guessed why I was in Las Vegas . <g> Sorry to have to be so "cloak and dagger" about it but company secrets are company secrets! I had hoped to blog throughout...

...and then I woke up and it was August! How did that happen? Actually I think it has to do with being very busy. It's definitely put the blogging on the back burner but decided to kill some time waiting for the Flight Simulato X demo to finish downloading...

I went home after work last night and monitored the forums to see who had a chance to download and try the demo--lot's of folks, it turns out. As expected reviews varied but I think they were mostly positive. What's been facinating to me reading all the...

One of the last planning discussions I was involved with as I was making my transition to a new set of responbilities involved releasing a beta version of FSX on fileplanet.com . Not being a PC game "enthusiast" myself I admit I hadn't heard of them but...

If you're reading this blog you're no doubt up to speed on the release of Flight Simulator X. Today's the "official" release date for the US, though some parts of the world released earlier. (And some US retailers jumped the gun, too.) So far the initial...

UPDATE: Bookmark this page and check back regularly: http://support.microsoft.com/ph/11941 . A new week and more information is surfacing about installation and activation problems. Many people are confusing the activation policies for FSX with...

With the annoucement of Microsoft's new Train Simulator project it seems likely that many more new people will be visiting this site (or am I just hoping? <g>) so it probably makes sense to re-introduce myself to this new group. Here goes: ...

"It's deja vu all over again!" Now that we've made the "official" annoucement about Train Simulator the online forums are alive with comment and speculation. For me it's an eerie feeling, like I've been through this before. Oh, wait. I have--with Flight...

With the FSX demo not even a week old I want to give a "shout out" to all the folks that have tried it and provided feedback on the various forums and to tell_fs@microsoft.com . Keep it up! Most of the problems reported are known but I've discovered a...

Well, CES didn't end for me with the Bill Gates keynote. I still had two days of press meetings ahead of me. It was not a comforting thought as I crawled back into bed Wednesday night but if I was lucky at least I wouldn't infect too many of them. ...

It seems that the DX9/DX10/Vista issue is still causing much angst and confusion among the FlightSim devotees . I (and others) have attempted to explain the issues but with somewhat limited success. Well, I'll add one last word to all this (for now),...

I've spent a lot of time over the past few years reading forum posts and submissions to tell_fs@microsoft.com . One thing that consistently catches my attention is the assertion that whatever is being requested "should be simple" to do. I considered providing...

Phew! I had planned to write this when I got home but saw there was a crisis brewing over the DirectX 9/10 paradox. Now that that's out of the way ... The announcement of Flight Simulator X has spurred a flood of forum posts (like those at FlightSim...