What happened to TakeFlight Interactive?

The guys that did missions for original Microsoft FSX who got together for new ones with Air Alaska?

I love missions for FSX so went back to their site for a look yesterday, it was ridden with spam posts, and is currently down for maintenance to remove the spam? however on previous visits there was no indication they were working on anything new at all and that’s a bit disappointing after all the semi promises and enthusiasm they gave us at start and the time between last mission set … must be 6 months + easily?

Site is closed now while spam posts are being dealt with or at least closed only to registered members and I cant remember my ID I made at time :slight_smile: I hope its not the end? They did promise a version for FSX SE Steam, but that never transpired, will it work for Prepar3D V 3? … I hope its not the end for them but I fear so.

If there is anyone reading that can make a difference, one of the worst aspects of Air Alaska was its need to use an outside of the sim engine to start it, sure that was a brave move but a reason for a lot of the problems too IMHO, they should have stuck with the traditional in sim mission engine IMHO, it was still pretty powerful and well proven, too many bugs in Air Alaska (the Penny wise mission is nigh on impossible unless you cheat at realistic levels) might have killed this venture I think.

Also, while I’m typing about FSX missions, does anyone know what happened to Vertical Studios’s ones?

http://www.vertical-studios.net/ Been waiting on the third instalment of Big Budget Blockbuster for over a year now, used to be in touch with Chris from there and towards end of last mission set before Big Blockbuster he was saying he might not complete that one but obviously changed his mind, now I guess he does not want to complete his Big Blockbuster one for part three?

Bit of a shame but I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes … I know he got a lot of flak on Avsim for no good reason and I hope that’s not the reason why?

He made some pretty good missions really.

Well, it looks like their main site is still up:

http://takeflightinteractive.com/products/

But their forums seems to have been taken down for: “Due to ludicrous amounts of spam bot posts, we’ve temporarily shut down the forums for maintenance and cleanup. Please check back soon.”

I don’t know what the bigger picture is. It is a hard industry to make it in - particularly when you have so many free options and a general (and I think misplaced) reluctance to pay for quality content. I thought their package was pretty good from a gameplay perspective (as in hours in game per dollar). I tend to weigh everything against the price of a movie ticket these days, and most games come out ahead. I do remember receiving a nice e-mail from them after they read our review on the site and they indicated more was to come. I sincerely hope so.

As for Vertical Studios - your mention is the first I’ve ever heard of it, and it is the type of content I would love. So much of the problem with some of these companies is the marketing and not reaching out to the right places or hiring the right person to get your message out there. Thanks for putting me on to it, I’ll check them out.

BeachAV8R