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"Hmmmmmmm....."
Release a patch on Friday, and by Sunday morning the world is coming to an end… I hadn't realized the amount of drama that a patch could inspire.
Hard to believe that it can draw some of the idiots out of the woodwork as well (i.e. I'll post this sim sucks forever, ban me, I don't care, I have a kazilion email accounts!!) (not directed at those of you with valid, constructive complaints).
For those of you who think that the passion for Fly is dead in the team - you are wrong. If you remember, Brendan (co-producer) and Jen are getting married (today) and are out of the country…. On top of that Paul Russell (Simguy) is on a well-deserved vacation… Rob just finished the potential Mac release candidate on Friday and has been working on that since the day the PC version went gold… Richard is in the hospital fighting cancer…. Craig and two artists are now working on 4x4 Evolution2… that leaves Neal in the programming department and two artists on the Fly! Team right now. Neil has never really been vocal here (although I know he lurks). I answer questions and visit when I can, but I work with the entire company and I am on no team and every team, and I am trying to make sure that we hit a launch title for X-box …
In reference to comments like "they should be working on 'bugs' rather than an aircraft...". It has been said 1,000,000 times before, but I will say it again - the same people making aircraft (artists) can't do a lick of programming. If we have artists "sitting around" and who can do the work, we would have them make aircraft until the cows come home. They can't program so they can't fix your item.
In reference to support for Terrascene and Precision Manuals - it will come. Believe me, we want all of you to be able to easily slice Terrascene. We will, for as long as it is possible, work with any valid third party to help support them, and provide them an EXE with those fixes to be distributed with their products. These will not be released as "general patches" due to the fact that they will address specific issues for third party developers.
Many of you will not understand this, but I know a few of the enlightened here will: I will state though, that some things will not be fixed without Richard. We feel that the most of the general gameplay bugs are fixed and the sim, in general, is in good condition. Some of these remaining issues could be fixed without Richard perhaps, but won't be fixed. Why? This sim is Richards's life. Even when he was getting chemo all of these months, he came into work putting his health in risk. Richard WILL have something to come back to when he is done with his transplant. If he doesn't, he has nothing to look forward to. To many, you may be saying "WTF!?!?", to a few, you will be saying "Ahhhh.. I see.". No matter if you agree or not, Richard is much more important.
For those of you with problems with the views with the Steerman, if you have FSAA turned on, try turning it off. For the rest of you, it seems to be a driver issue. Mess with your driver settings for now and see if there is a solution, and we will work on our end to see what in the heck is up. It isn't happening here, but as we all know, that doesn't mean anything
In conclusion, don't freak. Work on the slicer is not done. Work to support Precision Manuals is not complete. Vacations, marriage, life get in the way - especially when this team has been doing nothing but Fly! for 10 hours a day for a year.
I know that all of you are used to Richard being here almost 24/7, but I just can't devote that much time to AVSIM at this point. I have 42 people to worry about and a whole bunch of responsibility put into my lap.
Keep the shiny side up.
Evan
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