This is not a happy day; there is no joy in people losing their jobs in this economy. And having your product canceled really hurts. I have worked on programs that have been killed after I left the team, and I have worked on programs that have been killed while I was working on them, and either way, it really, really sucks.
What does this mean for X-Plane? That is something we are trying to figure out now. Halting development on MSFS is an earthquake within the flight simulation world; it was not a scenario we were planning for last week. In some ways, it changes everything, but in others it does not.
In particular, a lot of things have become high priority that were always important, but are now on a much shorter time table. Improving our documentation, simplifying the user experience, etc. Our current users have already learned the quirks of X-Plane, but we now have more people trying X-Plane for the first time and tripping over those stumbling blocks.
We are only a few days away from going beta with X-Plane 930. 930 was a huge patch for us already, with lots of new features "saved up" over several months, but now it is even more stuffed, since there are also last minute features to make the sim easier for new users, and to add in new capabilities that we are being asked about.
So to current X-Plane users, I ask two things:
* Please be patient with us, and with new users - this is a very busy time and a lot is changing very quickly.
* As always, don't panic. The first beta always has a few problems with certain video cards, and one or two really gross bugs. The quality of the betas will improve very quickly in the first week or so. Squeamish users should simply wait a few weeks, or skip beta entirely. Third party authors: please test your add-ons as soon as you can! The sooner you report the bug, the sooner we can fix it!
Our mission with X-Plane has not changed: it always was, and still is, to make the best flight simulator we possibly can!
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