We recently had an opportunity to chat with Hal Bryan, Flight Simulator Community Evangelist at ACES Studio, developer of the Flight Simulator franchise. He touched on what it’s like to work at ACES, the research and development required to master a flight simulation engine, and what’s new in Flight Simulator X.
Shawn Snider (GamingExcellence): Thanks for taking the time to answer a few of our questions. To get started, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, and your role in the development of Flight Simulator X?
Hal Bryan (ACES Studio): I’m glad to do it, and appreciate your taking the time to ask them. A little bit about me would involve explaining that I’ve been involved with flying essentially all of my life, I grew up on a private airport, I’ve been a licensed pilot for about 20 years, and a Flight Simulator geek for more than 25 years. I followed the typical path for someone my age into the software industry – working my through college as a day care worker and postal employee, then spending seven years as a police officer, communications specialist, and emergency medical technician, before stumbling into a two-year stint doing phone-based product support for Windows 95. From tech support, I moved into software testing, and spent a year working on some part of Windows 98 that I still don’t understand, then it was on to the Flight Simulator team where I’ve been for 8 years as of this month.
Actually, that was quite a lot about myself – sorry.
So, very quickly, I worked on Flight Simulator 2000, 2002, 2004 and FSX, as well as Combat Flight Simulator 1 and 2 as a test engineer and/or test lead, which was a great fit for someone with a strong attention to detail and a tendency to complain. Over the years, I took on additional roles, including Beta Coordinator, Museum/Education Liaison, and one of the team’s de facto Ambassadors. These last bits, combined with my penchant for working trade shows and air shows and consistently failing to turn down opportunities to talk about Flight Sim have recently allowed me to make the transition from Test Engineering to my current position as the “Flight Simulator Community Evangelist”.
Shawn: Can you briefly describe the highlights of Flight Simulator X? What makes this edition better then previous outings?
Hal: FSX features a number of new aircraft, including the de Havilland Canada Beaver, the Air Creations trike ultralight, and the Grumman Goose among others, a new view system, and dramatically improved worldwide scenery including a new emphasis on “living” elements – moving traffic on the roadways, ships in shipping lanes, support vehicles moving around airports, even birds and animals. The online experience has been completely redone, with the addition of new roles including air traffic controller and co-pilot. In addition, we’ve introduced a series of missions, ranging from basic entry-level tutorials for new users who just want to get in the air quickly, up through racing challenges, emergency scenarios, and advanced “full procedure” airline flights with a virtual copilot.
Shawn: What is the most challenging part of working on Flight Simulator X? What is the most rewarding experience you've had thus far in its development?
Hal: The most challenging part of any software project I’ve ever worked on is unquestionably the constant need to balance what is sometimes called the “quality triangle”, with resources, schedule, and feature set (or scope) at the three points. Even though we’re Microsoft, our resources are finite, and, while we have a great deal of say over our schedule, eventually, we have to stop what we’re doing and put something in a box and sell it, or else we don’t have jobs. This leaves scope as the point with some slight flexibility – we have to set reasonable goals for ourselves, because the only way we could do everything we wanted to do is if we had an infinite number of people (or at least monkeys, well-fed every step of the way) and a schedule with no end date. Not even our friends down the road working on Halo get that.
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