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mention of FS11 SDK

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I don't know if any of you read this, but in the information about FSX and FS11 and moving forward with the sim that Phil Taylor wrote, it was mentioned that the backwards compatability chain that we (more or less) have had between FS2002/FS2004/FSX (somewhat) is going to be not there for FS11.

At least that's the way I read it. Certainly a brave new world...

Anyway, and this is the main point I'd like to make, there was also mention that while the backwards compat will be broken, there will be "new ways" for third party designers to do what they previously had done using legacy methods.

To me, the first thing that came to mind was: FS2002 gamepack and ground textured polygons with asm tweaks. To me that implies that FS11 mdl's will be friendlier to us using ground polygons--that is, assuming Microsoft chooses to have that sort of thing in FS11.
 
Rhett, its an interesting point.

The question that interests me is whether MS will be successful at defining the boundarys for 3rd party developers to stay within. In effect, to say that strict adherance to sdk is necessary, but that will be ok cuz 11 will provide what you need, suggests that what we need is known by MS.

Point is, the best 3rd party folks are the ones that persistantly break thru whatever boundaries MS presents, by having great ideas that no-one thought of before and finding a way to accomplish it.

I'm not aware of any way to stop people from doing that. The problem is that once someone creates a new level of art, at least for payware, anyone who chooses to ignore the breakthrough eventually is viewed as behind the state of the art.

How many times have you seen users define the high resolution ground plane as a basic quality required for a scenery to be acceptable as "worthy", and yet that alone broke the boundaries of the sdk for both fs9 and fsx. Imagine trying to market a scenery without a nice ground and explain that "I'm doing this so you will more likely be able to use this product after the versions change". And rather than less valuable to you than my competition, my product should be MORE valuable to you. LOL

I'm guessing that won't overturn the bad reviews for your product lacking a high-res ground.

It seems that this cycle is now at a point of change. From what I read, the most creative developers will REALLY have a problem at transition time. Perhaps that's already happened, so I may be stating the obvious.

ok, prattle over.

Bob
 
bob5568 said:
Rhett, its an interesting point.

The question that interests me is whether MS will be successful at defining the boundarys for 3rd party developers to stay within. In effect, to say that strict adherance to sdk is necessary, but that will be ok cuz 11 will provide what you need, suggests that what we need is known by MS.

Point is, the best 3rd party folks are the ones that persistantly break thru whatever boundaries MS presents, by having great ideas that no-one thought of before and finding a way to accomplish it.

I'm not aware of any way to stop people from doing that. The problem is that once someone creates a new level of art, at least for payware, anyone who chooses to ignore the breakthrough eventually is viewed as behind the state of the art.

How many times have you seen users define the high resolution ground plane as a basic quality required for a scenery to be acceptable as "worthy", and yet that alone broke the boundaries of the sdk for both fs9 and fsx. Imagine trying to market a scenery without a nice ground and explain that "I'm doing this so you will more likely be able to use this product after the versions change". And rather than less valuable to you than my competition, my product should be MORE valuable to you. LOL

I'm guessing that won't overturn the bad reviews for your product lacking a high-res ground.

It seems that this cycle is now at a point of change. From what I read, the most creative developers will REALLY have a problem at transition time. Perhaps that's already happened, so I may be stating the obvious.

ok, prattle over.

Bob
Click to expand...

I just want to know how far back they're talking. Are people going to buy FSX addons if they won't even work with the very next version of FS?
 
As I understand Phil's comments:

FSX is done... no more updates after SP2.
FS11 will be DX10 ( Vista ) and will NOT be backwardly compatible with any previous version... no BGL or aircraft compatibility.

Dick
 
rhumbaflappy said:
As I understand Phil's comments:

FSX is done... no more updates after SP2.
FS11 will be DX10 ( Vista ) and will NOT be backwardly compatible with any previous version... no BGL or aircraft compatibility.

Dick
Click to expand...

That's what I got out of his post as well but I want to hear him say it and quit speaking in generalities.
 
rhumbaflappy said:
As I understand Phil's comments:

FSX is done... no more updates after SP2.
FS11 will be DX10 ( Vista ) and will NOT be backwardly compatible with any previous version... no BGL or aircraft compatibility.

Dick
Click to expand...

I'll have to read it again. I interpreted that SP2 starts doing away with backward compatibility - particularly pre-FS2004 SDK, and SOME-FS2004 models/scenery may have problems (even early FS-X SDK).

FS11 would do away with pre-FSX SP2 compatibility.
 
rhumbaflappy said:
As I understand Phil's comments:

FSX is done... no more updates after SP2.
FS11 will be DX10 ( Vista ) and will NOT be backwardly compatible with any previous version... no BGL or aircraft compatibility.

Dick
Click to expand...

That's how I read it and I think it's very brave of them. I do consider it the right thing to do, the FS engine is getting so bloated it desperately needs re-writing into nice neat efficient methods.

Since I won't ever be using FSX I personally have no problem, by FS11 I will be on a new PC and had as much fun as I could get out of FS9 and my add-ons.

So for me, good plan though I know others will disagree.
 
Hi,

Interesting discussion, I will have to reread Phils post in more detail once I get home again.

In theory I am in favor of dropping the support for the really old code. I mean why still support some Fs5 commands as it is now? That will never encourage people to use the latest SDKs, because their old stuff still works. I had hoped they had already dropped more in FsX.

But on the other hand I am not very happy with it either. That is because the FsX SDK techniques maybe only allow me to do 25% of what I could do for Fs2004, when it comes to making complex (and realistic) scenery objects like docking systems or other more interactive things. Unless they make the MDL format a lot more flexible, I think dropping this backwards compatibility will reduce the quality of scenery a lot. So IMHO MS will have to add a big amount of new features to their MDL and XML formats before they can even consider dropping the old code. If they don't do that, all scenery we can make will look like the default one. That would certainly not encourage me to make any new scenery, as doing those advanced things is the most interesting.
 
Arno, this brings things full circle.

I agree with you, that if we're reading this correctly, then new scenery design will either be limited to what the sdk permits, OR be the result of creative boundary expansion to the temporary delight of customers and to the temporary advantage of that creative designer.

B
 
arno said:
Unless they make the MDL format a lot more flexible, I think dropping this backwards compatibility will reduce the quality of scenery a lot.
Click to expand...

What I gathered from the statement was an implication that the new mdl format is proposed to be much more capable than it is at present.

They will almost HAVE to make the mdl better, if they drop backwards compatibility. Otherwise it will really be bad.
 
Hi all.

I think the problem will be DX10. I believe the Acceleration pack will be OK for DX9 and WindowsXP, but older objects and aircraft models may not be working for DX10 and Vista.

And I think there will be NO backwards compatibility for objects or aircraft in FS11... not even FSX stuff will work. I do not know if terrain, clouds, weather, etc. will work, but at this point, I would assume it will not.

So everyone that is developing for FSX will need to save their source data for FS11.

Phil Taylor sometimes cannot give an absolute "yes" or "no", so we need to cut him some slack here. He is indicating a probable path for FS11, some 2-3 years from now. FSX is now done. The train sim will now eat the resources of the Aces crew.

Dick
 
Hi Dick,

Of course, we should not start to be scared and shout around too much until we know more details. Things are still far ahead at this moment.

But on the other hand we much make sure the ACES know are wishes, so that they might be able to add some features we really want. If we wait with that till the new version is there, we are too late.

I do very well understand why they are moving forward and I agree with that in general. I am just a little worried that the new techniques will limit developers much more in what they can do. You can already see this with the FsX MDL format, there is no way to add conditional display to such objects for example. I find that a worrying development, as that means making interactive and high quality scenery is a lot more difficult now.
 
Hi Arno.

It does seem that Aces don't put much value on conditional display of objects or their animation. I also hope that changes for FS11... but of course I'm still hoping for CFS4. :D

Dick
 
Hi Folks

rhumbaflappy said:
FS11 will be DX10 ( Vista ) and will NOT be backwardly compatible with any previous version... no BGL or aircraft compatibility.
Click to expand...

As I understand it,
products which are fully FSX SDK compliant will be supported.

HTH
ATB
Paul
 
Well, here is what I asked Phil and the answer that he gave me:

Skydvdan1 said:
“The second is practical, in that continuing to provide the backwards compatibility we do is a huge drag on forward progress. Spending time on 4 or more code paths (FSX DX10, FSX DX9, FS2004, pre-FS2004)”

So what does this mean literally? Does it mean that all backward compatability will be eliminated? FS11 will be a new, fresh sim with no ties to prior sims or can people still buy addons for FSX knowing that they will be able to use them in the next sim? If all backward compatability for FS9 and prior is cut then it’s no big deal. But if you’re including FSX in the compatability cut then aren’t you cutting the throats of you’re addon developers for FSX? When word of FS9 addons not working with FSX came out a while back the addon market slowed way down. Won’t this announcement do the same for FSX development and sales? Can you please be more specific on the backward compatability issue?
Click to expand...

Phil Taylor said:
Dan:
FS11 needs to be designed a bit more before we can talk to details about back-compat so this is early thinking and means just that, it can change.
FSX SDK generated content will likely be the only content we will enable on FS11, and that may also require a use of the SDK and a re-export to be compatible. We are actively considering going that far, yes.
Click to expand...
 
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As I wrote, everyone that is developing for FSX will need to save their source data for FS11.

Dick
 
Hi Dan,

Thank you very much for posting that response from Phil.

Its a bold move to be sure, but as long as we voice our opinions to the ACES team and make sure we let them know what we want in advance, I'm pretty sure that it could be a good move.

One of the things that has always attracted me to development is...well...development.

We should always be pushing ourselves to be on the cutting edge, if we are tied to the past then, in my opinion, that is a hinderance.

If the new (DX10/FS11 etc) formats require that we drop some of the old then, as long as we don't loose vital functionality, then that's fine by me.

Backward compatibility isn't always a good thing, as long as whatever is taken out is, where appropriate, replaced by something slicker and more efficient, preferably with the end user in mind.

Alex
 
Alex, one thing that will be "better" is that folks using really old techniques will be unable to provide bad council to newbies. It is hard today to politely advise folks that are comforted by using fs2002 techniques (exception for ground polys, of course) to switch when the work they do really shows up.

Bob
 
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My 2C: I have no problem with ACES dropping all backwards compatability with pre FSXI code. I'd much rather that they spend their time building new and improved functionality that is optimized for DX10 than trying to shoe-horn ancient code into the sim that will likely hobble it for years to come.

Dropping backwards compatability will, if nothing else, eliminate the immense time now required to test for backwards compatibility - time that could be better spent elsewhere, IMO. :)

- regards, Jed
 
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I agree with Jed,

Think about the change in technology with, for example, cameras... Autofocus SLR's came in and most every manufacturer changed their old systems for new ones. No-one 'hates' Canon for dropping 'FD' for 'EOS', or Minolta or ... or ...

So many people rant about the limitations of the existing API systems for development, but if a wholesale change - for improvements sake' - is suggested, the same folks are 'up in arms' because it might not be backwardly compatible.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

Go for it, say I.

Oh, and I will be SOOOOOO gutted if I don't get 'frothy waves' visible from 3 miles at 5'000 ft. I mean, WHAT kind of simulator IS THIS ???? ;)

B
 
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