Brief Update:
I've been sifting through the debris field that was my storage, and doing the cost benefit analysis regarding retrieving the data using a forensics specialist. Bottom line is that the expected revenue from the six retail packages that were basically ready for market would not justify the many thousands of dollars it would cost to retrieve the data. It would basically be a wash.
I've been going through my email records of all my purchases. Many are obsolete, no longer supported or dead links. Many more will require that I re-purchase newer versions of the software. That will be quite a few hundred dollars.
The viable links will take many weeks or months to chase down and re-download.
Regarding FS Pilotshop.
I am appalled that this company has undertaken a policy to de-activate my entire purchase history (including recent), requiring a $4.95 fee to re-instate links to each of nearly eighty purchases. That is nearly $400.00 to access products that I own a legitimate license for, the records of which still exist on the FS Pilotshop website. I will pay those fees under protest, and shall never do business with these crooks again. Sorry if I ruffle feathers here, I call it as I see it...deal with it.
As for the rest of the data, I will need to replace the external storage device and one spinning drive. The damaged storage and existing 5TB spinner holding the "retrieved" data will be retired, awaiting analysis at a later time. In the meantime, I need to have usable storage space.
Regarding Future Projects
A good friend asked me the other day on Skype, what was I planning for my next project.
Friends, please understand that there will be no future projects. This product line was timed to release around the time P3D went to full PBR, but that plan has been eviscerated with the destruction of the assets.
Building a scenery project is not a matter of coloring between the lines. Every project requires an asset library of plants, trees, grasses, volumetrics, buildings, bridges, roads, boats, trains, ships, jetways, vehicles, people, trash cans, dumpsters, transparent windows, furniture, GSE, fences, ground textures, building textures, seasonal textures, LM textures, Point of Interest objects and thousands of other bits that create the composite project. Many of those assets require special animations or other parameters to control time of day, seasonal and weather related display parameters. These assets need to be built and hand painted one by one, then stored in a comprehensive archive. This is what I have been doing for the last decade. All of those assets have been wiped out along with the composited builds. The aircraft in progress represent another massive investment in time, which has now been reduced to a pile of meshes and useless code.
In addition to the assets, all of the clever bits that make a sim more efficient and unique to its user have been destroyed.
All of the accumulated skins and freeware from a decade of collecting have been lumped in with the 1.2 million other files in what amounts to a digital landfill.
This is a catastrophic loss and un-recoverable. Even with the honorable and generous offers of help, I simply cannot allow my friends to fix what amounts to a deep personal loss. I have a love and passion for this work and am doing my best to come to grips with this invasion of my Intellectual Property. In my opinion this is a criminal offense, for which there should be remedy...but there is none. My feelings about this? Unless one has worked twenty hour days, seven days a week for a decade to have it erased without any recourse, it would be difficult to experience what I am feeling. There are no words to express my anger around this event. Every hour that I am spending gathering up the pieces add to the frustration, and this will go on for many months to come. To put it mildly, I'm in leg breaking mode.
I have taken on one project that was only barely started when I lost the data. Re-launching that project will require a minimum of backtracking, so this is the one that will occupy significantly less of my time than I previously allocated to the development work. I will not be doing updates or progress reports, I'll simply complete the project and release it. After that project is finished, I shall retire completely from flight simulation and move back into my real world projects, which will make my wife, who tolerated and supported this errant venture, extremely happy.
The work I have published on this site shall remain available as my small contribution to this community who have treated me with respect and kindness over these years.
Best to all, and many thanks for the years of support.
Gordon
