They say change is good. So after 6+ years of working in the simulations group I've decided to tackle some new challenges. Today is my last day with Aces. It's been a fantastic experience working on some great products (FS8, CFS3, FS9, FSX and TS2) with a great group of folks. I will miss it. I've also really enjoyed blogging on my work and interacting with the sim communities. Best wishes. I hope you like what you see when TS2 is finally released.
As for the blog, I'll be closing it down and eventually deleting it. It arose as part of my "tdragger" persona during the FSX development cycle and somehow it seems the right thing to do to retire it as I make my transition to other pursuits. I may pick up blogging elsewhere so perhaps our paths will cross out on the informaiton superhighway at some future date.
Cheers,
mike
It's been a very busy week around the office. Most of the team have been engaged in getting ready for a program review with senior management. These periodic meetings are a normal part of the development process. The folks writing the big checks want to know how the product is coming along and what changes we're making in order to meet our shipping criteria. Part of the homework for us is to look closely once again at our schedule and available resources to see what's hanging over the edge. And, yes, it means we'll decide not to do some of the things we'd origninally intended to do. We're committed to doing "fewer things well" with this release. While it means some people will be disappointed that we didn't get to a particular feature, it should deliver and more robust experience and provide a better foundation for future versions.
Part of the presentation will be a demo of the current build and we'll been meeting daily to view progress. If you've ever been through an efffort like this you know that people often get a bit silly after they've seen basically the same thing a dozen times in a row. One unplanned result came during a part of the demo where we had to uncouple the locos from a consist in order to pick up some other cars. Once, just by accident, the person doing the demo uncoupled while the train was still moving (although apparaently this does happen in real life--it's called a "Dutch drop"--though it's frowned on by most railroads for safety reasons). With the mass of the consist no longer there the locos accelerated and the person continued to the switch and stopped in preparation to pick up some more cars from another yard track. It was then we noticed that the consist was fast approaching from behind, driven on by the momentum of several dozen freight cars! It then became a race to see if the person could throw the switch, reverse the locos, and get out of the way before colliding with the consist. Everyone had a good laugh and now this is a requested action during our group demo reviews.
And intermixed with all of this is the occasional update on Kuju's Rail Simulator from the online forums. I don't have time to read every post but there's lots of buzz. Reminiscent of past releases of Flight Sim, the community is being pretty harsh on Kuju as they get their first looks at the product. Everyone was their own idea of will and won't be included and it's only when they get their hands on it that they're either amazed, disappointment or a mix of both. We're hoping to get our copies pretty soon so we can start playing with it. It's hard to draw many conclusions from forum postings. In the end, though, I'm sure everyone who bought it will find something they like and feel that the price was well worth it. I hope the same holds for TS, too.
Copies of Kuju Rail Simulator has finally started to make it into customers' hands. UKTrainSim.com has created a
screenshot forum. Have a look. Some of the shots look really nice. I especially like those showing some of the urban areas. Well done!
Yes, I have to admit I was caught up in Halo mania this week. Those of us who work at Microsoft Game Studios got our copies of Halo 3 at a Monday afternoon celebration in advance of the public release and I played through part of the single-player campaign that evening. Every other night this week I've been teaming up with our TrainSim lead developer, Jamie, for late night co-op campaign sessions. We started out playing on Normal difficulty but got shamed into playing on Legendary by one of our star devs and avid gamers the next day. We cheated a couple times and reverted to Normal in order to get past particularly tricky sections. Our VOIP dialog would inevitably run something like this:
Jamie: Wow, a lot of bad guys.
Mike: Yeah.
J: I'll try to take out that turret.
M: Okay.
J: And...oh, I'm dead.
M: Okay, I'm going to...I'm dead.
<respawn>
J: Alright, this time I'll...I'm dead.
M: Just hang on and I'll...I'm dead.
<respawn>
J: Okay, this time...
M: I'm dead.
J: I'm dead.
<respawn>
J: And...I'm dead.
M: Me, too.
So, could you blame us? Anyway, we finally finished the fight last night (though I must say the final level was a bit of a let down). Saving humanity and all that. Now, it's time to sleep...
The past couple of weeks have been pretty interesting. For starters, in that time we have moved into a new building in Redmond. We had been due for a move for some time as we've been growing our staff to support a number of product initiatives. The result was a lot of double-booking of office space, something that runs counter to the long-time Microsoft cultural ideal of one employee, one office (at least for full-timers). It's not too uncommon to double-up contract staff who are only on board for short assignments but we had many, many--some senior--full timers sharing space and it was only a matter of time before we burst our seams. Plus, the space in the building we were in was not very condusive to collaboration. We were basically arranged along two very long parellel hallways with no "common space" for impromptu meetings or just hanging out.
Our new space is quite a radical change. Perhaps it was just because we were so deprived but I, for one, think it's HUGE. We now have space for everyone (and room to grow) as well as several large open areas stocked with a conference table as well as less formal seating. These spaces also include whiteboards, corkboards and A/V equipment and we've started to use them for many of our previously "closed door" meetings. Each space is more-or-less surrounded by offices of folks from each product team (one for TS, one for FS, etc.) so there's a natural gathering point for team meetings and folks wandering by can catch a glimpse of what's happening. Fortunately the space is partitioned in such as way that we should not have random visitors who might see or hear things they shouldn't. So far, so good. It's far and away the best space I've worked in during my tenure at Microsoft. (Speaking of which, I also celebrated my 10th anniversary with the company over the same weekend that our offices were being moved.)
Coincident with the move was the annoucement of a big reorg within the studio. This had been brewing for quite some time so I think only a few people were caught by suprise. One goal of the change was to align reporting structure with product deliverables to establish a clearer line of authority and responsibility for decisions. (For those of you playing "Business Buzzword Scrabble" I think that last sentence scored a Triple Buzzword Bonus. I thought of going for a Synergy Multplier Bonus but thought that might sound too contrived.) What that meant for me was that I got a new boss. Victor was formerly the studio Development Manager (meaning all the programmers reported to him) and he and I worked together as project leads on FS2004 and FSX. Victor's been around Aces about as long as I've been at Microsoft and is a great guy. (Trivia: he also holds the patent--along with Jason "Pixelpoke" Waskey--for the first version of Autogen.)
And, lest the product team loose momentum, the past two weeks have seen a lot of progress on TS2, most notably the initial audio implementation. Up until now we've been running the game with no sounds. Having them in game really makes a difference and adds to experience immensely. It brings back memories from running trains in Vancouver, BC, back when the project was just getting started. Several of us had the chance to get some instruction in train operations (classroom, simulator and the real thing) north of the border. We all got a chance to drive a GP-9 and practice coupling and uncoupling to cars. For me there were several signature sound experiences that stood out. One was the sound (and feeling!) of throttling up the diesel engine. You really got a sense of the power at your command, even if it was a measily 1500 horsepower in my case. The other memory is of the bang associated with coupling. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, even if you've only just driven past a rail yard. Our instructor suggested a coupling speed of 4 MPH or less and even that resulting in some big noises. Then at one point he decided we were "babying" the train too much and decided to demonstrate a "hard coupling" at (and I'm guessing) 8-10 MPH. Whoa! So having these sounds in game is really bringing back memories and making the experience really start to take shape.
If you haven't seen it yet, Kuju posted a video of their route editor. you can find it here: http://www.railsimulator.com/images/Rail%20Simulator%20world%20editor%20V2.wmv. This is the first video of the editor they've released in awhile and I have to say it's looking pretty good (and the rest of the folks at the office agree). Of course, I'm a developer first and a rail enthusiast second so I tend to notice the way the software has been designed and build. 3D editing in any context is a trick design problem and it's interesting to see some of the choices they've made.
Realism...
It's a term that's used often in the context of our simulation titles. Of course, realism is often in the eye of the beholder and this fact leads to seemingly endless debate over whether our simulations are "real" or not. Well, sometimes they are even better. Consider the feature of simulated failures. With FS, for example, you can program the sim to fail a variety of systems and then test your skills at coping with the aftermath. The best thing is, though, that when you're bored with that you can restore the failed component by clicking a couple of controls.
That's not the case in the real world, as I learned last week when my car refused to start one morning. Since I didn't have a friendly dialog box to consult for the cause I had to resort to opening the hood and performing a manual inspection of the engine. It cranked, and the distributor generated spark, so I assumed a fuel issue. Of course, verifying this required the right--what's the word? Ah, tool that I, naturally, didn't have. That meant a call to the repair shop and towing service, which, by the way, do not really sound like cool features to add to our sims. A call back the following day confirmed my suspicions (a ha!) of a faulty fuel pump and repairs were scheduled--the equivalent of "unchecking" a failure option in the FS UI. But wait! It could not be that easy. Removing the bad pump, which sits inside the fuel tank of all places, led to snapping off rusted bolts and another call to the parts supplier for a brand new tank. Another $175 and day in the shop. Simulated failures, even if they aren't real, are so, so much better!
And on a random note. Here are a few railroad-related commercials that our lead designer, Rick Selby, found while searching for, er, I don't really know:
GE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_88z3qzTZY&mode=related&search
Norfolk Southern: http://www.nscorp.com/nscportal/nscorp/Media/Television%20Commercials%20&%20Video/
"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 Simulator X!
First is the consternation over the OS platform--Vista. We expected the reaction of some, knowing that many folks haven't yet upgraded their systems. But we also know that system upgrades are periodic events and that there is a long way to go until the game is available. Plus, that time includes an ever-so-important holiday buying period. While it might be a bit early yet, I'm sure the papers will be filled with new PC deals in time for <insert appropriate year-end holiday here>. True, there are some that simply won't be able to afford a new system in the next couple of years. That's always a tough judgement to make for us. But in the end the data we have predicts enough people will to make the game a success. And, as many people on the forums have pointed out, we need to keep focussed on the future, not the past (or even the present!). Keep in the mind that TS2 will likely still be store shelves 7 years from now!
Another similar wrinkle in the TS2/FSX story is the confusion over DirectX. What I told journalists in Leipzig is that we're targeting both DX9 and DX10. Vista supports both and what you get depends on the hardware you have. Admittedly this can be confusing but as I found out with FSX, trying to explain it in simple terms isn't completely effective. I just hope folks will eventually get it sorted out in their own minds.
One other parallel is the group of folks who have declared, based on a few screenshots and blog posts conerning a game still over a year from shipping, that, "I'm not buying it!" I commend their resolve but, if FSX is any indication, a few of those folks will be converted before all is said and done. My thoery is that in any hobby where people invest a lot of time and passion the first reactions are the strongest and if those reactions are negative the impulse of many is to cry out. But we have a long road yet to travel with time for more revelations and discussions.
Lastly, one thing that has no analog with FSX is the hot debate over which routes will be "included" and how that will dictate someone's buying decision. We predicted that reaction and believe it represents the first step in a mental shift that will take place as people wrap their heads around the "World of Rails" concept. WoR forces you to ask, "What is a route?" Is it the terrain and scenery? The track and signals? Rolling stock? Signifcant landmarks? We are striving to supply many of these attributes through our data-based WoR. What else is required before you believe we've "included a route"? The question is only partially rhetorical. I look forward to seeing who we--collectively--answer that in the months to come.
Well, it certainly is good to be able to talk more about the project after all these long months. I'm finally getting re-aclimated to Seattle time after my trip. My first night home I began to really feel the travel during dinner and lasted no more than 30 seconds after my head hit the pillow.
The team has made great progress in the meantime. We took the first drop of processed rail data for North America from our data team just before I left. Since returning I've enjoyed loading up the sim, going to a random location, and driving along. The hunting and rocking of each car in the consist seems so real--just like I've seen in railfan video. The thing that's not quite real is the contour of the track. The first pass of data processing does not include normalizing the grade or curvature so the ride is more like a roller coaster at times than a rail simulator. Still, with derailment disabled, it makes for a fun tour of the countryside (we have no virtual motion sickness feature--yet). Since we inherited the new camera system from FSX I can create custom cameras attached to nearly any point on the train and experiment with different points of view. I particularly like a spot at the rear of the lead locomotive. It provides a good forward view and I can turn around to see the other locomotives and rolling stock bouncing and jostling as we move along. Good times.
Well, I'm back on American soil. (Actually, living in this modern society I don't think my feet have actually touched "soil"--just lots of concrete, asphalt, wood and carpet!) The week in Germany went well. From my little "office" in the Leipziger Messe Business Center:
I spoke with 30 journalists from 9 countries and we're already seeing a lot of "buzz" about the screenshots and videos we released. There are many spirited discussions on the UKTrainsim forums:
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?t=72821
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?t=72795
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?t=72954
I also managed to see some of the show:
When I wasn't at the who I hung out in Leipzig, including it's amazing train station:
Even the trip home was exciting when the pilots had to shutdown one engine due to low oil pressure and we got a visit from these guys after landing:
All in all I had a great time and would recommend the show (and the city) to anyone who's in a position to go.
It's day two of press briefings at the Game Conference. Yesterday I spoke with 19 journalists from 7 European countries. So far I haven't seen any reports on line but that's expected at a busy show like this. The only thing I found was a Yahoo! reprinting of our overall Leipzig press release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070823/aqth040.html?.v=25. I have another day of briefings and then I can explore the show floor. They are expecting upwards of 70,000 people tomorrow. It should be fun!
Last night the Microsoft contingent went to the Exhibitor Night party at the Leipzig Volkspalast. The venue is a grand, domed structure--a great choice for a big event like last night's. There was plenty of food and drink, includiing a stand serving Angel energy drink cocktails (though I stuck to the weisbier). They had a DJ, laser show, and a German "Blues Brothers" cover band. (Sorry, no David Hasselholf.) I resisted the appeal from the guys from Ensemble to party all night and did get some sleep before today's meetings. Again, I'm looking forward to see what coverage comes from this.
Sorry it's been so long since my last post but there's been a lot happening. Nonetheless I thought you'd like to hear about what I'm up to this week. I'm in Leipzig, Germany at the massive Game Conference--the biggest is Europe--meeting with journalists to discuss Train Simulator 2. Despite the conspiracy theorists that claim we're not really working on it I've been talking to press and showing screens and videos from the game. Each one walked away with a DVD of content so hopefully you'll start seeing examples of TS2 on the web really soon.
In fact I'm in between press meetings now, which run every 30 minutes from 0900 to 2000! It makes for a very long day. Nonetheless the facilities are superb and the German staff has been amazingly accomodating. I'll try to share more when I have time. But for now, I've got more journalists to amaze...
As in, "I'm back" and "Oh, my back!"
It's been too long since my last post. On the other hand, if I felt I really had stuff to say I suppose I would have posted. TrainSim has been slowly progressing. The Devs are plugging away at some of the groundwork for fundamental systems. Like anything we do, we want to make sure the technology we develop now has "legs". We've more or less finalized the design for this version but want to leave lots of room for 3rd-parties and future versions. Also, thoughtful design helps provide for compatibility as we move forward.
The Art team has also been busy. Of course I can't show you anything but the team has been treated to what we can expect in terms of visual detail and fidelity. I must say I've very impressed and excited, especially since it's all in-game stuff! Having a mature engine like FlightSim's to build on is a real advantage as it has capabilities that I've yet to see, er, competing efforts. <g> At the same time we've pretty much figured out how we're going to take the engine to the next level in terms of up-close detail you need for a slow-moving, on-the-ground simulation. If any of you remember the initial screenshots of FSX, you can imaging the type of thing we're seeing, just with a focus on being up close and personal.
Speaking of personal, another reason I've not been very active on the blog is the time off I've taken recently. Some was unplanned, after I threw my back out while carrying luggage into an inn on Whidbey Island for a supposed getaway weekend. As it happened Jackie and I spent the first night in the ER in Coupeville. A subsequent MRI showed a bulging disk and evidence of arthritis in two lower-lumbar joints. Yay. Fortunately I recovered enough for a long week in Florida with my family. We spent 4 days at Disney World where our 3 1/2 year-old daughter got her first taste of the Magic Kingdom. She even managed a private audience with Cinderella. You Disney fans out there know how rare that is! The remainder of the time was spent in Key Largo where Jackie's sister was getting married. The weather was great, the vibe was sweet and, frankly, I didn't want to come back.
But, alas, duty calls. Hopefully my duty will give me more to talk about in the near future.
Cheers!
An update.
I did get Vista set up on my dev box the other morning. The RTM version is really nice. Yes, I did get the new sounds and they are cool. <g> I've been slowly uncovering little enhancements like the new Photo Gallery and the ability to grow or shrink disk partitions. (I found that after installing a new 320GB SATA hard disk--I had run out of room for a full TrainSim development enlistment.)
Now I've decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my laptop, a Toshiba Tecra M3. This PC is my daily lifeblood since it stores my email archive and other documents that I use on a regular basis. It's also the computer I take to meetings for note taking, presentations and research. In other words, the data on it is very, very important. I'm using a new Vista feature, Easy Transfer, to make a backup of my data to the new hard disk on my dev box. Easy Transfer is basically an updated version of the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard that shipped with Windows XP. After I get the files copied I'll pave my hard drive and install Vista.
The part I'm not looking forward to is installing the applications that I need. Office 2007 gets installed along with Vista so that's taken care of but I will need things like Visual Studio, Source Insight, WinZip and so forth. Some I probably won't bring back. In a way that's good--like sprint cleaning.
I'm in early this morning--6:30 a.m. My goal is to get the Vista RTM bits on my development machine before my regular schedule of meetings begins. I started the process yesterday but ran into installation issues. I managed to get my machine in a state where the upgrade installation had broken and was prompting me to reboot. Problem was, each time I rebooted the setup program started again and I got the same error--over and over. The net result is that I've lost several hours trying to work around the problem. Personally, I blame the Vista sound designer.
You see, yesterday I listened to an archived
NPR story on the new Vista system sounds. My first reaction was, "Hey, those are cool sounds!" But then I thought, "Hey, I have Vista. Why don't I hear those sounds on my machine?" It turns out I was still running Vista RC1, not the RTM bits, but since our IT department offers an upgrade option I figured it would be a simple fix. After a few minutes, though, the setup program appeared to freeze and the screen went black. After poking my machine a few times I figured something hadn't worked right and cycled the power. Bad move. After further comtemplation I think what happened was that after the initial file copy process, setup rebooted my machine and the bootstrap code decided to use my second video card, a crappy nVidia FX5200, to which no monitor was connected. In fact, I had forgotten it was even still in my machine. If I had only though to plug my monitor into that card...
<sigh>
On the bright side this debacle has given me the chance to wipe the kruft from my machine and start with a fresh install. That's probably a good thing anyway. It also got me thinking about how our customers will be getting their first taste of Vista, now that it's publically available. In the old days (i.e., circa 1990) I remember OS upgrades being something I spent time thinking about as a consumer because back then you actually did "upgrade" your computer. That's probably because hardware was expensive and you tried to improve it using new software and lots of tweaking. Anyone who remembers
QEMM knows what I'm talking about! Today, most consumers don't think about operating system upgrades. An OS is installed when they purchase a new machine and they never think about it again. By the time a new and better OS comes around it's simpler and less risky to just buy a new PC and copy your data files over.
Soon, most OEMs will be offering Vista as the standard OS for new PCs. Dell has started and I noticed they are advertising a desktop PC with Vista Home Basic for
as low as $359US. Of course, these low-end PCs aren't the ideal gaming machines but they do have potential by upgrading RAM and adding a new video card. This has actually been a pretty common scenario for Flight Simulator customers over the years, especially those who use FS on a more casual basis. However, one problem has continually haunted us--wildly variable video card capabilities. Prior to the release of Vista and DirectX 10 it was nigh impossible for the "average" person to make sense of the disfunctional mix of card capabilites, memory, performance and driver versions. Exacerbating the problem was the propensity of OEMs to skimp on video chipsets in their budget machines. What would otherwise have been a fairly decent FS configuration would be hamstrung by an underpowered integrated video card. DX10 holds the promise of eliminating many of those problems with a consistent archhitecture and generally better card specs. (For example, I don't think any DX10 card currently ships with less than 512MB of VRAM.)
Of course, the issue of video impotence is still a potential problem for new Vista PCs since most are still configured with DX9 video cards by default. Dell offers DX10-capable nVidia 8800 cards as standard only on its high-end XPS gaming rigs. However, if history is any indication DX10 chipset prices will drop rapidly as manufacturers reach high volume production and someday--hopefully soon--even lower-end PCs will be capable of running DX10 games. (I'm hoping to see "affordable" DX10 cards by late this year. Others, like id Software's John Carmack, are less optimistic,
pointing out--and rightly so--there's not yet a "killer app" for DX10.) That'll be good news when it happens since it will be something PC buyers won't have to think about. It's also good for us since supporting DX9 cards
while trying to provide revolutionary visuals is becoming ever more difficult. In the future, games like Flight Simulator (and Train Simulator) will run well, with consistent visual quality, on all PCs. And we'll be able to do even more cool stuff by focussing solely on one video API. Ah, isn't simplicity grand?
Well, enough rumination. My Vista install is underway and my meetings are about to begin.
