From what I understand, Miles will allow them to do more customization of sounds, with better sound detail and quality while using LESS resources. If... scratch that.. WHEN they get it working, this will be a very smart move for HTC, allowing them to have their cake and eat it too.
As users, we constantly complain about not wanting to upgrade our systems, and complaining that the newer graphics of Aces High could not run on systems that previously could run it. Since HTC worked out the bugs in that, the opposite was true. Turning off all the eye-candy actually allowed for better playability on dated systems. This is just another example of that. Also, for those of us who DO choose to upgrade, we are 'rewarded' with extra eye-candy (and soon to come ear-candy) to further enhance our gaming experiences here.
Now, HTC has been kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. It is increasingly difficult to recruit new paying subscribers with graphics and sounds that could be considered 'inferior' to competing software. It is ALSO increasingly difficult to support legacy systems that many of our veteran players use, and if they are confronted with the options of either upgrading or quitting, many would probably choose to quit. I for one can't blame them because if they have a computer that is capable of everything else they want to use it for then it doesn't seem fair to me to ask them to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to upgrade just so they can play one single game.
This is what impresses me most about HTC. I believe you'll find that (aside from the bugs that are being ironed out) AHII is probably the single most EFFICIENT software out there right now... ESPECIALLY when it comes to games! HT and the crew (kudos to all of you by the way) know how to crank every bit of horsepower out of every cubic centimeter of every piston of their game engine and because of this you have a lean, mean, dogfighting game machine!
While the inital 'test' of Miles may have been a bit of a flop, I have nothing but the utmost confidence that HTC will get it going and we'll all be 'ooohs and aaahs' when it's finally completed. Aside from the Vox issues, I found the sounds being produced by their Miles setup to be absolutely stunning. Even though the game sounds hadn't changed, they seemed more robust, more clear, and more detailed with patch 0. I nearly wept! (until I hit Vox and my game crashed LOL). When patch 1 came out which reverted back to the old sound system, the VERY FIRST thing I noticed was how poor the sounds were again. Not poor so much that it sounded bad, but compared to the Patch 0 sounds... well.. it sucks!