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Dear ACES Team,
IVAO.aero and the IVAO Development Team were shocked by yesterdays news where Microsoft took the decision to layoff several thousand employees throughout the company and to close down the ACES team, responsible for the development of Microsoft Flight Simulator and other related products.
Latest news reports that 6 members will stay to shutdown the project, archive the code and to service existing contracts.
Some of the team members have been working on FS since it’s birth at subLOGIC. MSFS was Microsoft’s oldest product, in development since 1982.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was well known thanks to the overwhelming support of their loyal user community and the huge amount of add-ons available for the product of which our network is one of them.
Our online community would not be where we are today without the awesome work done by the ACES team over the years.
Our development team was honoured to work closely together with the ACES team during the development of IVAP for FSX.
IVAO.aero will keep on supporting the current line of Flight Simulator products (FS2004, FSX) as other add-on developers will keep on doing. There is still a future for FSX but this will only happen with the continuous support from our community.
Ofcourse these recent developments open up new horizons for other products such as X-Plane and Flightgear. IVAO.aero is and has always been open to other platforms and we will keep a sharp eye on future developments and possible spinoffs.
We sincerely hope that several of the brilliant minds which where part of the ACES team will continue to work in the FlightSim world so that this knowledge will not be lost.
We would like to thank all of the ACES team members for their work in all those years.
Our thoughts are with you and we wish you all the best in your new careers – and we hope to see you again soon in other projects.
Filip Jonckers
Kenny Moens
IVAO.aero
Software Development Team
related posts:
IGN news article
Gamasutra.com
Phil Taylor blog (ex-ACES team)
Steve Lacey blog (ex-ACES team)
Tom Allensworth blog (AVSIM)
After a whole day working at Liege Airport approach radar station I came home, checked my mailboxes using Thunderbird which has been (again) my default e-mail client since I bought my new notebook last year.
But I was missing a few details I was used from Outlook like the “old school” styled “>” quotes when replying. Below are a few tweaks I made to accomplish this.
In Options – Advanced – Configuration editor:
- mail.quoted_graphical = false
- mail.quoteasblock = false
- mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support = true
- install the quotecolors extension (http://quotecolors.mozdev.org)
- mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new = true
- mailnews.headers.showUserAgent = true
After last weeks sim check this movie sounds really familiar – great handling of the emergency by ATC
Birdstrike during take-off Thomson B757
Last week I had the opportunity to get in the seat of the Boeing 737 simulator of one of Europe’s biggest airlines. It was an awesome experience being able to try out all those techniques I learned until know. Especially as we were going to do the -non normals- or in other words: emergencies!
Working daily in providing a safe radar environment in Europe’s busiest airspace this gave me a great inside view of how safety is handled inside the cockpit and how crews work together in solving safety issues if they occur.
Check the Photo Gallery for an inside view…
I’m not at all an Oprah fan, but this tube cought my eye…
The best pictures from this years fly-in are now posted in my photo gallery…
After two years of bad weather we finally got sunshine again this year !
It has been a while since I watched a movie on tv… maybe because when I get into my sofa – which is btw a big, blue, cuddly one in which I often fall asleep – I’m too tired to watch tv or simply keep zapping the little box without finding anything to watch. Ok, I must admit that the only channels worth while these days are the educational ones line Discovery or History channels…
But tonight was different! I stumbled upon “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Surprisingly Carrey wasn’t playing his 23th version of Ace Ventura but a sad, lonely looser. The combination Winslet/Carrey simply works in this tail of bizarre logic. Simply said: Love has nothing to do with logic.
Strange that sometimes one can recognize himself…
butterflies…..
It has been a pretty busy week – time to enjoy the nice weather this weekend – after weeks of rain finally 3 days of sunshine !
Today we opened the registration for this years IVAO BE FS Lanparty. A new location this year – in the neighbourhood of Brussels Airport and Leuven.
The restricted page containing all the pictures made during the SUR-RAD course in Luxembourg and the participants contact list are now also online.
Yep – Stefan passed the Ab-Initio exams and will be going to Maastricht UAC where he will join the DECO (Delta Coastal) sector!
Congratulations Stefan – see you in Leuven in a few weeks 
Today Stefan Zimmerman, IVAO DE staff member has finished his ab initio controller exam at IANS Eurocontrol training centre in Luxembourg. I met him during cofee break today as I’m also attending a course at the IANS. Before I forget, I want to thank him again for helping me out last week when my car broke down.
If all goes well tomorrow, a new Maastricht Eurocontrol controller graduates, coming from the IVAO.aero network!
This evening will be my last evening in Luxembourg.
If you wonder what I’ve been up to lately… Well I’m currently in Luxembourg at the Eurocontrol IANS following the Radar Surveillance course (SUR-RAD).
Lot’s of exciting subjects like the internals of Primary Radar (PSR), Secondary Radar (SSR), Mode S, ADS-B, ADS-C, MLAT (multilateration), etc….
The nice thing is that we have a very nice group of students from all over Europe!
Although the weather could not be worse, daily rain showers.
maybe more on this later on… now…. back to the classroom (getting a cofee first though 
Just returned from a well deserved short trip to the Spanish town of Valencia !
Ofcourse it all started with a small breakfast Italian style in my home town of Leuven before taking the train to the airport. The new train connection between Leuven and Brussels Airport (EBBR) takes only 10 minutes which is finally a good initiative by the Belgian railroad company.
The flight with a Brussels Airlines Avro RJ100 was moved 2 hours but the go around (my first one) on short final in LEVC (Valencia) due to tailwind and risk of windshear due to a thunderstorm nearby made it worthwhile
From the LEVC airport – not bigger than Ostend EBOS but much more traffic… – there is a very good Metro connection (lines 3-5) to the town centre (30mins) and even directly to the beach.
Valencia is a real nice city to visit, not only the old town but especially the new town with it’s modern architecture is a very nice place to walk around. the park – Jardín del Turia – which is located in the old river bed of the río Turia is a good place to relax and to do sports (guess which one we did?)
The musea at Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias were a bit dissapointing but the modern architecture of the buildings is awesome.
Ofcourse what would a visit to Valencia be without Tapas !!
I did not even know that Valencia had a great beach – make sure you visit playa de Las Arenas !
We also visited the port were the 32nd America’s Cup is being held. Lot’s of amazing yachts – I really need to play Euromillions lottery more
Although Valencia is an old town with a very rich history, it has a very young heart !
some places to visit:
- Mercado de Colón
- Jardín del Turia
- Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (CAC)
- lot’s of nice Tapas bars in the small streets surrounding the Carrer De Ciscar
- Los Zopilotes – friendly Mexican restaurant (cocktails!)
- Taberna Sagardi – Tapas..
Hotel: Husa Llar – Colon 46, 46004 Valencia (right in the middle of town centre)
Airline: Brussels Airlines – keep an eye on the low fare deals !
Finally, Microsoft ACES studio has released FSX SP1 today !
Besides lot’s of visual fixes there is a huge improvement in performance (read: more fps) and … we are very pleased that a new version of the Simconnect library, included with FSX, contains enhancements we were waiting on since the initial release of FSX 8 months ago.
The visual effects are now fully supported while flying online with FSX, making the experience much more realistic.
Lately we are seeing more and more users coming online using FSX and I’m sure that as soon as one of the major add-on suppliers (PMDG, Level-D, Aerosoft, …) release their major products for FSX, large numbers of users will be switching to FSX.
Make sure you checkout the blogs of our friends in Seattle for more inside looks …
What can I say… Good Job ACES !
Enjoying the last sunny days after 36 days of beautiful weather.
Did a lot of IVAP development & debugging during the weekend, further testing of new simconnect code (the next ivap release will be cooool!!) and also a new voice feature in IVAP which has been lying around unfinished on my disk for a few months.
That will be a nice surprise for Kenny when he will be back from a teambuilding weekend
It was 7 A.M. when I got into bed last night … time flies when coding …
Finally, time to give you guys a small preview of the upcoming IVAC v2 Kenny and I are creating ….
NOT !!!!
(I could not resist this one… it looks so ridiculous)
Mike posted a very interesting youtube video’s on his blog, again showing the importance of correct phraseology and English knowledge during emergencies
The favourite subject of all Belgian blogs these days: the weather !
It looks like we are breaking another temperature record – 30° in April …
and not a single rain drop this month …
An early start of the “terras” season this year – I love sitting on the terras, drinking a nice cool Belgian beer or exotic cocktail while watching beautiful people
Although there are a few problems with this nice weather.. try to test weather radar data at work …
every morning during the briefing: Weather Radar data test ? … postponed: no weather
btw – yesterday Jo, Kenny and I went to Everberg to check the possible new location for our yearly LAN Party… and I can say it’s a very nice location indeed. Next step: fixing a date – probably somewhere early October!
check this nice looking addon out: RocketDock
my XP desktop looks much nicer now !
I love the FireFox StumbleUpon add-on …
Today I stumbled upon this this simple but visually very attractive web game
enjoy!
I stumbled upon this great post this morning:
My father heard about Vista coming on the news. Since he was interested in getting it, he asked me to obtain it and install it on his computer and he would give some cash in return. I told him I was going to do that, but instead I burned an Ubuntu CD and installed it.
Later, when he came home from work, I showed him his new “Vista” install, complete with the latest Office and Solitaire.
Well, it’s been a few days since that and now he says Bill Gates is better than Steve Jobs and brags about how OS X on my iMac is obsolete compared to Vista on his PC.
I will continue with the prank for some weeks, after which I’ll tell him the truth and give him back his money.
you can find the complete story at: http://www.degredo.net
keep looking »