Simming La Vida Loca

Jarn: Any significant challenges at the time of migrating your production procedures from FS9 to FSX?
Allen Kriesman: We never really ran into any major roadblocks regarding FSX development. However, we did have to redesign most of our applications to take advantage of enhancements made to FSX. Fortunately, we were able to make use of existing bits of code written for FS9, even though the applications themselves had to be redesigned. UTX USA (for FSX) took nine months to develop. Most of this time was spent defining, developing and testing the feature set that will be used in all future UTX products (USA, Europe, Canada and Alaska).

What are your impressions on FSX?
FSX versus FS9 is a highly debated and sensitive subject. In my opinion, FS9 is arguably the most well-received product in the MS-FS series, so FSX has a difficult act to follow. Since the FSX SP1 release in particular, our beta testers have had no significant performance problems with FSX, so it’s hard for us to understand a lot of the FSX criticism. However, the fact remains that a lot of users don’t yet feel the need to upgrade from FS9. Balancing user expectations with the current technology is tough for any software developer, especially regarding something as complex as a flight simulator.

MS has taken several steps forward with FSX. The textures in FSX are simply gorgeous (they are four times higher in resolution than FS9’s). However, this improvement alone is going to put a significant strain on CPUs, graphics cards and disk access. FSX is still in its early stages, but as more people upgrade their hardware I think they will eventually move from FS9 to FSX.

I have gained a lot of respect for the Microsoft Aces development team over the last year. The competition these days in the flight simulator market is somewhat sparse (outside of X-Plane), and yet the Aces team is still very dedicated to making sure that FSX is as good as it can be. I saw their hard work and dedication first hand, during the FSX beta test period and again during the SP1 beta testing.

We are all in good hands, as long as the Aces team is given enough time and financing by Microsoft to do the job correctly. The Aces team is more than capable and they are experts in their field, but flight simulators are the most complex, difficult and expensive pieces of software to produce that I know of. Will the parent company continue to give the Aces team the necessary resources to produce the next generation of flight simulators, when most games can be produced at a lower cost ? That’s the big question.

UT is generated from highly detailed commercial sources (Navteq and TeleAtlas). Are these firms happy to sell you the data, or do you have to struggle a lot to obtain it? Is it expensive?
Commercial data is indeed very expensive, and it’s often difficult to obtain. In fact, some of our negotiations have taken months to conclude. In a few cases we were never able to work out a price that was fair for both parties. We were very fortunate to establish a good relationship with the commercial data vendors early on, because they seem to be much more selective right now about who they choose to partner with in this industry.

Ultimate Terrain has also been used by our commercial data vendors during trade shows and other public demonstrations, to show the various uses of their data. Seeing the data presented in a graphical 3D environment is a big hit. I have heard this on several occasions from the commercial vendors themselves.

With UTX USA released, it’s safe to predict the next in line will be ‘Canada’ and ‘Europe’. Or has Scenery Solutions other plans for the future?
Yes, Canada and Europe are already in development, along with a standalone Alaska product. Alaska will be a slightly different type of UTX product because of its unique geography. Many features in UTX Alaska will be provided by the very well respected Holger Sandmann. Holger has ready created many beautifully detailed products for Alaska, both freeware and payware.

We frequently get requests for new UT/UTX products outside of the USA, Canada and Europe, but the problem for us is that in order to acquire the commercial data we have to show a substantial market for the product. And quality data must also be available for that area.

At one point we planned to make Australia a UT product, but there is already a lot of quality work being done for Australia by Christian Stock and others. So we feel that there is no reason to duplicate their efforts. Christian Stock is one of the finest flight sim developers in the industry, so you know that the region will be done exceptionally well.

We also have a new product series called “Ultimate Objects” which we’ve been loosely designing over the last year. While Ultimate Terrain is mostly concerned with the flat terrain aspects of FSX, Ultimate Objects will be geared towards 3D objects. We expect that 2008 will be the year of Ultimate Objects for us, if everything goes as planned.

Thank you for your time, Allen, and keep on UTing!
Thank you, Jarn!