by toprob » Sat Mar 24, 2007 11:11 am
The support I've received has been very gratifying. At the moment I'm still happy to continue with what I'm doing (being committed to Auckland Intl after Marlborough) and there are plenty of airports on my can't-wait list after that.
A number of issues have combined to make me reconsider my future direction. The main issue was the release of FSX -- the changes have caught all designers by surprise, much more so than any previous update. Some of the new features work well, others don't. For instance, self-shadowing and bump mapping are two new features which most designers have been waiting for, but in reality they are not well-implemented. Others, such as AI shipping, have no SDK info or tools at present.
I can understand subscribers getting fidgety, and maybe by committing to a dual release for Marlborough I may have overextended myself. All this, though, is ultimately just an exercise in growth and development. However when it is combined with a recent huge increase in apparent piracy of my work, and the new and unexpected personal attacks, I may have succumbed to negativity -- not like me at all, but understandable.
I've had a large number of emails regarding Australia, even before making any public suggestion that I was looking in that direction. Basically they fall into two categories -- those that see the need for something separate from the existing projects, with an emphasis on quality rather than quantity, and those who think that the market is pretty much taken care of over there. Both have good points, and I admit that my thinking has been mainly powered by the idea that if I can *almost* make a living here in New Zealand with our 4 million folk, I should be able to jump the gap between 'almost' and 'comfortably' by jumping the ditch, with their larger population.
Not to mention the climate -- the older I get the more I enjoy Ausrtalia:)