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Nexgen flight-sim has finally folded

M

Midflight77

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unitedkingdom
Stephen Borick emailed me to say that his Nexgen flight sim project is no more, which surprised me since there has been no official announcement from Stephen to this effect, and lots of followers of this project have been checking into facebook and the NGIS site these past months/years still hoping that he'd be able to deliver on his promises.

Here's the email

-----
June 22 2017

From: ********@nexgenflightsim.com

Re new sim

Hi ***,

After two years of negotiating with Diamond Visionics for use of their engine and never coming to an agreeable point, I felt we had lost our window of opportunity with the likes of Prepar3D v4 and X-Plane 11 (as well as others) being released, so we have closed up shop.

There are, in my opinion, two simulators available that you should keep an eye on and support any way that you can. The first is X-Plane 11, arguably the best current simulator out there and their plans for the rest of 2017 and beyond are only going to make the simulator that much better. The second is Flight Sim World (DTG)... no, I'm not kidding. The potential for FSW is absolutely amazing and more importantly, DTG is turning to us, the flight simulator enthusiasts, to steer them in the right direction. Time will tell with FSW, but if DTG is true to their commitment to us, FSW can be one amazing flight simulator. Plus the price is right! And if you already have FSX or P3D addons the FSW community has figured ways to install them into FSW.

My suggestion is to purchase both X-Plane and FSW and enjoy the ride!

Thanks for your interest in NGiS.

Sincerely,
Stephen Borick
-------------------------------snip-------

All that time wasted by so many of us. Oh well, at least Stephen tried I suppose. But the 'naysayers' were right all along. The Nexgen sim was vaporware right from the start!
Its like Luke said, "Talk is easy, coding is hard".

BTW. I see Stephen is now promoting X-plane and variants of FSX, despite these past years denouncing these sims as being 'old code' and 'obsolete'.

-Rob

Stephen said in 2015:

"The Future of Consumer Flight Simulation is secure...
just keep in mind, when the Next Generation Flight Simulator is
released... and you're friends are busy flying around... it's still
just vaporware... until you install it on your computer... and then
it's just an installed program, until you actually use it".

- Stephen Borick

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?16177-Interview-with-Stephen-Borick-NGiS/view/3
~~~~~
 
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What's also interesting is that the wares of Diamond visionics (essentially ortho-scenery) and what Aerofly is/will-be offering are quite similar in many ways, but Aerofly is the sim he did not mention.

Sour grapes?
 
Too bad... A simulator is one heck of a program. Even I wanted to make one of my own, but the volume of work is quite daunting...
 
I think it is rather sad as it was an honest try to come up with something better.
I was sceptic though as it takes more than an enthousiast to come up with something better than we already had. Look at P3D. They cannot complain about funding or interest but look at what they come up with: better (true in some aspects), buggy (true as well), more complicated (true), less for the average flightsimmer (true), less aircraft (true), more payware add ons (true), a lot less freeware (true), compatibility (poor), better hardware needed (rather true), tools have to be updated (true), SDK not much improved/incomplete/ difficult to understand (true) etc., etc.
But they are trying and advancing our Flightsim experience.
The only Flightsim that is not based on Microsoft ESP is X-plane (but I could be wrong there as well).
So my bet would be on either P3D or X-Plane.
Now that I come to think of it, somebody would have to strike a deal with Google and we would have all the photo real we want, we would have all the interesting landmarks and 3D buildings (even down to streetview), weather, and some more. Then see if you can get Flightradar24 interested and, boy, wouldn't we have a feast?
In the meantime, I will dream on :)!
 
Back when this exploded onto the scene I remember going to their website. In the section soliciting people to work on it they were expecting "contributors" to work around 5 hours/week on it. I think I am around 20 hours/week on one plane!
 
Back when this exploded onto the scene I remember going to their website. In the section soliciting people to work on it they were expecting "contributors" to work around 5 hours/week on it. I think I am around 20 hours/week on one plane!
Click to expand...

Looks like you missed the golden opportunity of your lifetime;)

Seriously, when I look at their manifest called "Golden Opportunity" I already knew it is going to be a failure. The guy having no funds was offering virtual 100K FTE positions as a promise. He was not offering even a single share in the project. All the risks were on the developers having no "ownership" on the work done. Not even a 0.0000001%, nothing. I do know how this golden opportunity to work for virtual funds having no ownership could attract anyone.

Still, the thing looked quite promising when they announced to use Unigine as the virtual engine. I installed it and played with it. It offers very nice SDK an integration possibilities. Who would not like to have a desktop sim like that ?

 
WebSimConnect said:
Seriously, when I look at their manifest called "Golden Opportunity" I already knew it is going to be a failure. The guy having no funds was offering virtual 100K FTE positions as a promise. He was not offering even a single share in the project. All the risks were on the developers having no "ownership" on the work done.
Click to expand...

Good point. Now it looks as if Stephen B. is blaming the flight sim community for the failure of the Nexgen sim, while his second in command is blaming some "specific but critical greedy people".

Here's a comment on the recent Facebook announcement that NGIS reluctantly posted, after several suggestions from myself-

24 June at 09:20 -
Next Generation iNTERACTiVE Software (said):

"We looked long and hard at funding possibilities, but in the end we
still lacked support in the development area...especially in the 3D
engine. We were all set and ready to proceed until greed took a hold of
some specific but critical people. The other problem with something
like kickstarter is that we never wanted to take money out of the
community. We reached out for help and support with development
specifically to avoid taking financial assets from them and to include
them in the process".
- Michael Chapman - Vice President NGiS

https://www.facebook.com/pg/NextGenerationInteractiveSoftware/posts/
(Michael's comment, and others, is just below his recent announcement)

And below is the email Stephen kindly sent me to explain his thoughts on the matter. I dont think Stephen will mind me posting this email, as he's obviously aware of my feelings to inform the community to help piece together how the much touted Nexgen project folded. It also gives Stephen an opportunity I reckon, to voice his thoughts on the matter at this obviously delicate time for him and the team.

6/24/17 at 10:35 PM

Rob

I'm sorry you're disappointed in my performance, but you don't know me nor do you have a clue as to what went on and the heart break after hours of negotiating and building a concept... and then learning that one of our team members was leaking our stuff to both DTG and LM.

Towards the end, when X-Plane 11 was released and P3D v4 actually came out, the entire community abandoned us for these newer releases.

But Rob, not one word from you or anybody else in the community cheering us on and standing with us. Our hype (as you call it) was centered around a community and if the community had backed us, nothing was impossible. Do I care what they are saying over on AVSIM, not really, because we did everything we could and when it was obvious that nobody cared, it wasn't worth the concessions being demanded by Diamond Visionics to keep pushing forward, we could have, but there was no support. Since we started NGiS as a community driven project and the community dumped on us from the beginning... I'm not at all ashamed of the effort that we put forth. Who knows... maybe what we were trying to do lite a fire under the big boys and the results are X-Plane 11, P3D v4, and FSW... I'm amazed how closely DTG resembles our business plan.

Again, you don't know me, so you don't have a clue as to my humbleness, or sobriety towards my efforts. What I am is disappointed, that a once powerful community who supported one another has gone the way of the rest of the world.

- Stephen Borick

----------------------------cut------------

Kudos to Stephen for baring his soul here. But I do find it odd that he is now blaming us, the flight sim community ("the entire community abandoned us for these newer releases") when it was NGIS themselves who battened down the hatches and abandoned the community as it were, by hardly communicating at all with even their own supporters on the NGIS website and Facebook page. Their previous update being over a year ago! and meanwhile his second in command blames 'certain greedy people' on the project.

Your thoughts welcome.

Rob
 
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Found this thread trying to check how these guys were doing. Stephen actually interviewed me but after an hour long interview and demos, I just didn't feel it and turned it down, but was sincerely hoping they'd succeed. I have worked on Diamond Visionics software and it is a royal pain, hence most customers end up paying them for support (at a very hefty rate!).

Oh well, so sorry to see this fail.

David
 
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