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Demo Lesson Learned: Seagulls Must Work!

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Ya know it's funny. Before we released the FSX demo the online forums where flooded with posts decrying our decision to include "wildlife" in the game. Posts like, "why are they including elephants when they won't improve the flight model's dual-gizmo-thing-a-ma-whatsit!!!" Yeah, we thought about letting the artists program flight models, but...

 

Of course, now that folks have had a chance to try the demo they've apparently turned into an army of birdwatchers with threads on both AvSim and SimFlight trying to figure out where the seagulls are. In truth there are probably some missing textures in the demo and the birds are dependently on scenery settinfgs. They should be much easier to find in the final product. In the meantime, it's heartening to know you really did want animals after all! <sniff><sniff>

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  • Anonymous
    August 23, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 23, 2006
    Just out of curiosity....

    What happens if you hit this wildlife?  The question arises because of a post in the VATSIM forums that showed the new version of X-Plane having bird strikes.  I hadn't considered that particular effect previously and it made me curious.

    Chris

  • Anonymous
    August 24, 2006
    Tdragger - you're looking in the wrong places mate! If you want to see some lively, incisive, in-depth analysis of the FSX-Demo take a look in the Simviation forums. The other forums are pretty wet in comparison. We found the birds yonks ago - and the first posted FSX scenery posted by yours truly has em over the cruiseliners and the cargo ships included in the scenery

    ;-)

  • Anonymous
    August 24, 2006
    Hey, I keep reading about how there's "45 detailed airports" and such, but which 45 detailed airports?  Is there a list of that stuff somewhere?  The official site is sorely lacking in the details.

  • Anonymous
    August 24, 2006
    Yeah, the seagull texture files listed in the relevent scenery BGLs are missing. (ANI_Bird_Gulls.dds, ANI_Bird_Gulls_LM.dds) Along with many others. (Some of which I'm sure were left out on purpose.)

    What's been driving people loopy though is that fact that some people will see them, untextured, and post pics while other people can't see them. It becomes an issue of "Why can he see them while I can't? Is his system better then mine? Is something wrong on my system?" :)

    And of course there are people who've seen them once or twice, but when they go looking for them (to show that they have seen them) they can't find them and start wondering what happened.

    But that seems to be due to people having videocard problems who may get grey untextured birds/objects and people experiencing odd graphic glitches causing the surfaces with missing textures to show up black. :)

    People want to know what is working, what isn't working, and why. Ideally, by the time FSX comes out, there'll already be user FAQs made with answers to the 50 most common issues. (Like "Why can't I switch to the the 2D panel using S?")

    Of course, some things we seemingly will just have to wait to find out about. (Like "Will we have a replacement program for AFCAD2, or will we have to edit airports via XML in Notepad?")

  • Anonymous
    August 26, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2006
    Are ther going to be deer in the FSX?

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