14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Project Phoenix crashed faster than Windows XP with a bad driver, but instead of a blue screen there was just the embrace of the water at Long Beach, California’s Rainbow Harbor. Windows Phoenix managed to fly only for a brief moment at Flugtag, a competition sponsored by Red Bull, designed to let flight enthusiast to build and attempt to fly their own machines off a 30-foot high flight deck.
According to Ben Rudolph, senior public relations manager for Windows, the phoenix managed to fly a total of 62 feet.
That’s including the 45 feet synonymous with the plunge that the Windows-themed human-powered aircraft took.
At the bottom of this article, users will be able to see the unique, and absolutely hilarious performance of the eight members of the Windows team that were involved in Windows Project Phoenix in front of 105,000 people on August 24th.
“The actual flight wasn’t a huge success, but the event was. People were cheering their hearts out for us and for Microsoft, and I know I speak for everyone on the team when I say that it was really cool to be part of something so totally off-the-wall crazy,” Rudolph stated.
“I think my favorite part of the flight was the reaction from the crowd when we played our launch music, which we laced with system sounds from Windows 7 and Windows XP.
“When the Windows XP startup music played, the crowd immediately got into the groove. Everyone knows that iconic noise and it instantly made the Flugtag/Microsoft connection for the 105,000 people who were watching,” he added.
The Windows team was dreaming to break the Flugtag distance record currently 207 feet, but ended up with an epic crash instead.
But hey, at least they were dreaming big, and users can only hope, that just like the Phoenix bird, this project will rise up from its well, crash, and finally manage to break the Flutag record.
“This is about as Microsoft a project as you could get - you have a bunch of super-smart guys and girls playing with polycarbonate, power tools, and CAD [computer-aided design] programs,” Rudolph said.
It took the team no less than two months of hard work to put together Windows Phoenix and to get ready for the Flugtag flight.
Just six days before the start of the completion Rudolph had assessed the team’s chances: “It certainly looks like a plane, which is good enough for me.”
And the rest is history, as they say…
