The future of Microsoft's long running Flight Simulator series has been cast into doubt, after the software maker US laid-off the entire development team.

Microsoft says it is "committed" to the series, despite shutting the Aces studio when it cut 5000 jobs.



But third party developers say Microsoft needs to outline its plans for the game in more detail.

MS Flight Simulator is arguably the longest running computer game series ever, first launched back in 1982.

Nels Anderson, founder of enthusiast website FlightSim.com said the studio closure was a "dark day" for the flight sim market.

Speaking to the BBC he said he was baffled by the decision.

"Microsoft have apparently cancelled a 27 year franchise. Flight sims were one of the few things about Microsoft people actually liked. It made them money and had an enormous following.

"To cancel something like that is an amazing thing to do," he said.

Just Flight's director, Dermot Stapleton, which publishes third party add-ons for MS Flight Simulator, told the BBC that as Microsoft had only announced the studio closure, people would have to draw their own conclusions as to what future plans the firm had in store for the game.

"It's the end of the line for their in-house development studio, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the line for the game.

"All Microsoft did was name a group of developers working on the game Aces Studio and now, as they've laid them and a load of other developers off, they have been somewhat hoisted on their own petard.
Flight Simulator 1.0
The Flight Simulator series made its debut back in 1982

"My guess is that Microsoft will now licence the code to a third party developer and then cross that "cash bridge" when they come to it."



Deja vu

But Nels Anderson was more pessimistic, saying Microsoft had done something similar with its Train Simulator series.

"Microsoft announced a sequel to MS Train Simulator back in 2003. A year later, they shelved the project. Three years later, they announced a new version, that too was cancelled.

"I think this gives us an indication as to what is in store for Flight Simulator," he said.

Most people agree that the latest incarnation, MS Flight Simulator X, has at least three to four years use before it starts to show its age. Even today, many still use the five year old Flight Simulator 2004, rather than FSX.

Speaking to the BBC, Derek Davis, editor of PC Pilot magazine, said there was a silver lining to the bad news.

"I don't know what the eventual fate of Microsoft's Flight Simulator series will be, but I think we're going to see a rise in sales and an increase in third-party development.

"There is now some stability to be had - we're all going to be using FSX for some time - and that is going to make it far easier for developers to produce new aircraft."

It is enchanting, spectacular and - at 3.5m in diameter - it will soon become the biggest telescope mirror in space, surpassing that of Hubble.

The great 18th Century astronomer William Herschel would have been astonished by the silver sensation that now bears his name.

The design keeps Herschel's critical detectors in an ultra-cold state

More details


The European Space Agency (Esa) is certainly very proud of its new observatory. It has been working on the venture for more than 20 years.

"The mirror is an enormous piece of hardware," enthused Thomas Passvogel, Esa's programme manager on the Herschel space observatory.

"It's a ceramic mirror; it's the biggest piece ever made from silicon carbide. It's very hard but much, much lighter than glass and the performance is excellent."

This week, the finished observatory will be flown to Europe's Kourou spaceport in South America. There, it will be bolted to an Ariane rocket and hurled into orbit.

It will take up a vantage point a million-and-a-half kilometres from Earth, to open up what scientists expect to be an utterly fascinating new vista on the Universe.

"Very simply, the science pillars of Herschel are to understand better how stars and galaxies form and how they evolve," Göran Pilbratt, Esa's project scientist on Herschel, told BBC News.
Herschel (BBC)
Hubble has viewed some near-infrared wavelengths. Its "successor", James Webb (2013), will seek infrared light also but with an even bigger mirror

Unlike Hubble, which is tuned to see the cosmos in the same light that is visible to our eyes, Herschel will go after much longer wavelength radiation - in the far-infrared and sub-millimetre range.

It will permit Herschel to see past the dust that scatters Hubble's visible wavelengths, and to gaze at really cold places and objects in the Universe - from the birthing clouds of new stars to the icy comets that live far out in the Solar System.

Some of these targets, though, are frigid in the extreme (between five and 50K; or -268 to -223C); and for Herschel to register them requires an even colder state be achieved on the observatory itself.

This involves the use of a cryostat. It is akin to a giant "thermos" bottle. Filled with more than 2,000 litres of liquid helium, its systems will plunge Herschel's science instruments into the deepest of chills.

Critical detectors will be taken to just fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0K; -273C), from where they can make the most of their remarkable design performance.

"Imagine one million, million, millionth of the brightness of a 60W lightbulb - that's what we can detect with one of our detectors," explained Professor Matt Griffin, who leads the international consortium behind SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver), one of Herschel's three instruments.

"Turning that around - imagine observing one of our very faint sources; let's say a very distant galaxy. If we were to observe it with SPIRE for a billion years, we would collect enough energy to light that 60W lightbulb for just one-twentieth of a second," the Cardiff University, UK, researcher said.

Herschel's other instruments are HIFI (the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared) and PACS (Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer).

With the entire package, the observatory can investigate a broad range of wavelengths (55-672 microns), including a swathe that has hitherto been missed by orbiting telescopes.

Eagle Nebula at different wavelengths (Nasa/Esa)
The classic "Pillars of Creation", great columns of gas and dust. Viewing the star-forming region at progressively longer wavelengths opens up new features
(A) Visible light: Reflected light from the nebula is seen (0.5µm)
(B) Near-infrared: Nebula suddenly becomes transparent (1-2µm)
(C) Even longer: Possible to see emission from the nebula itself (7µm)
(D) Longer still: Different structures start to become apparent (50µm)

Herschel's interest will be piqued near and far.

Close to home, it will study the mountainous balls of ice, dust and rock (some of them comets) that orbit our Sun beyond Neptune. The nature of these "primitive" objects has an important bearing on the story of how our Solar System came into being.

And beyond our little corner of space, Herschel's vision will allow it to see inside the clouds of gas and dust that give rise to stars in the Milky Way galaxy today, to see the conditions "in the womb". Studying these embryonic events will give astronomers further insights into the Solar System's beginnings 4.5 billion years ago.
Herschel instruments (Esa)
Once the liquid helium boils off, Herschel's instruments will go blind

Another key target for Herschel's investigations will be those galaxies that thrived when the Universe was roughly a half to a fifth of its present age. It is a period in cosmic history when it is thought star formation was at its most prolific.

Herschel will need to look deep into space to make these observations. The data will be used by scientists to test their models of how and when the galaxies formed their stars and how successive generations of those stars produced the abundance of heavy elements (everything heavier than hydrogen and helium) that now exist in the Universe.

Professor Griffin summed up the Esa mission in this way: "Herschel is not about studying mature stars or galaxies; it is really about studying the processes by which they are created.

"We know very little about that and we need to understand it in order to put together a picture of how the Universe we live in today grew from the earliest stages after the Big Bang."

A double deal

Herschel's launch will be doubly significant because it sees Esa loft two major science missions on a single rocket. The other passenger on the Ariane will be the Planck telescope, which will look at even longer wavelength (microwave) radiation.

Planck (Esa)
Herschel will share its ride with the Planck telescope

Read about Esa's Planck mission

One reason for the dual launch, says Esa's head of science projects, Jacques Louet, is logistics. Both telescopes have been designed to operate at the so-called Lagrange Point 2, a gravitational "sweet spot" in space where the observatories can stay fixed in the same location relative to the Earth and the Sun.

"The other reason is that we have coupled them industrially," he told BBC News.

"Both spacecraft share the same service module, so there is an economy in building them together. And because you build them together, you have basically the same timing on each mission. So, overall, I think it is a good strategy, but a risky strategy."

At a combined value for Hershel and Planck of approximately 1.7 billion euros, you get an idea of just how risky this strategy is. If the rocket fails, both missions are lost.

One is tempted to say "good luck"; but as Göran Pilbratt points out, when you have put as much effort into these missions as Esa has over the past 20 years, "luck doesn't come into it".

Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Fed, said that the economy needs 'urgent' action to avoid even deeper recession.

KOHALA COAST, Hawaii (Reuters) -- The United States is not facing a downturn as deep as the Great Depression, but many of the current dynamics are similar, driving the need for "urgent, aggressive action" to stop a deepening recession, a top Federal Reserve policy-maker said Friday.



The dynamics of the financial markets as well as the global nature of the current downturn both have similarities to the depression of the 1930s, Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, told reporters after a speech to the 128th Assembly for Bank Directors meeting on the Kohala Coast of Hawaii.

"The economy is in the midst of a downward spiral, and that calls for strong policy responses," Yellen said. "Government policies to restore confidence, create jobs by boosting the demand for goods and services, and improve the functioning of our financial system represent our main hope of avoiding a very severe economic contraction."

Yellen is a voting member of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee in 2009.

Yellen, speaking on the same day the government announced the biggest job losses in 34 years, said now is not the time to dither or debate endlessly on the shape of fiscal stimulus.

"It is critical that decisions on these matters be made on a timely basis," she said.

The U.S. jobless rate hit 7.6 percent in January, the Labor Department said on Friday. Yellen said most economists see the rate peaking in the 8 percent or 9 percent range, still short of the peak of the 1981-82 recession and far below the 20 percent plus rate of the Great Depression.

The U.S. Senate on Friday evening reached a deal on a $780 million stimulus package to stem the recession. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure soon, and if it passes then lawmakers would have to resolve differences between the Senate bill and an $819 billion version passed by the House of Representatives last week.
'No end in sight'

Yellen said consumer spending had been stopped in its tracks as American households have hunkered down and acted to boost their savings in response to spiraling unemployment and a "staggering" $10 trillion loss of household wealth.

Yellen said that "unfortunately, there is no end in sight" to the housing woes that triggered the current recession, with inventories of unsold homes remaining high and private mortgage credit still scarce.

Meanwhile, a yawning output gap in the U.S. economy suggests "inflation will remain, for some time, below levels that are consistent with price stability."

Still, Yellen said outright deflation, while possible, was less of a worry to her than rising "real" interest rates now that nominal rates are already as low as they can go, inflation is falling, and the economy is still contracting.

The U.S. inflation rate, both headline and the core rate excluding volatile food and energy costs, is likely to fall below 1 percent in 2009, she said.

"The committee does not regard it as desirable to allow inflation to fall to very low levels," she said, referring to the policy-setting FOMC.

Yellen said the FOMC's recent comments that it intends to keep short-term interest rates low for a considerable period are one way it can bolster the economy now that it has reached the "zero bound" on the fed funds rate.
Banks have to unclog their balance sheets.

Yellen said past banking crises have shown the importance of removing bad assets from banks' balance sheets, and looked for a proposal on that score from the Obama administration soon, as a prerequisite to restoring stability to the financial system and, ultimately, the economy.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is due on Monday to outline a "comprehensive plan" to stabilize the financial system in a speech set for noon Eastern time.

"As long as hard-to-value, troubled assets clog their balance sheets, banks find it difficult to attract private capital and to focus on new lending," Yellen said.

She urged bank directors to act in ways that would help restore economic growth.

"My hope is that, while avoiding imprudent practices that would put your institution at risk, you will also resist extreme risk averse, since it would undermine efforts to get the economy going," she said.

As the Fed continues to cross "traditional boundaries" in providing liquidity to various corners of the credit markets, Yellen said she was "absolutely open" to the idea of the central bank buying long-term Treasuries if it would help the overall functioning of the credit market.

Meanwhile, Yellen told reporters the Fed needed to fight back against the notion that its liquidity efforts would inevitably lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates, terming the notion "ludicrous."