New Microsoft Flight Simulator announced!

[fsx 0]

Two things gathered as fact from today.There will be a new MS FlightsimThe feature immediately targeting the mass audience will be the 'Live' (play with your buddies) concept.I HOPE the following becomes fact over time:Although under the Live umbrella, I HOPE the sim is in fact a leap forward for us hardcore folks.I HOPE the sim is open ended for 3PD's to develop detail rich, hi-fi content.I HOPE the the sim allows for ultra realistic flight dynamics (as well us the dumbed down mass version)I HOPE 'Live' does not mean having to be online to flyGreat news nonetheless.

[Cativo 0]

My 2 cents: this will be more like HawX than FSX, meaning more missions in detailed but confined scenery. But we'll have to wait for more info.

[fullmetal02 23]

I wonder how Aerosoft is reacting? If Aerosoft continues their development we should be in a win-win solution. When has MS thrown away old code? If someone can prove me wrong I would appreciate it.Looks like 2011 will be a great sim year!

[Peter Clemenko 0]

I thought it was a Microsoft publicity photo created by a Microsoft marketing team who had no knowledge of what was actually possible and planned... as opposed to photoshop contest. It was an edited photo no doubt, but not a contest entry from what I recall. Anyway, I get your point as well - the graphics seen are technically possible on a desktop platform, but my inclination would be to discount that and err on the side of caution. We've seen many high-end graphics rendering demos from nVidia, ATI, and even other 3rd party developers with great terrain engines... but what we don't know is how that all works when you layer on all the other processing needs a flight game will have. Aerosoft is quoted as saying that they've seen all these sorts of engines and capabilities as part of their R & D on their new title, however there was no way to utilize them in a simulator environment due to the other processing requirements needed. The rendering engines are and were stunning, but the horsepower needed to run them in tandem with a simulation engine isn't there yet. Has Microsoft found a way around this? Who knows! But, until we get to see some footage or screenshots actually from MS Flight (*months from now, I am sure), I feel it prudent to consider that video not-representative of what the game will be like. I HOPE I'M WRONG, but for sanity's sake it's probably best to treat it as some sort of game cutscene, rather than an honest-to-goodness representation of what we'll see on our own computers. I thought I was going to sit out this announcement, eat popcorn to watch the comments fly, and not get involved! So much for that, eah?-Greg

I have to agree, it's plausible, but not confirmed. If anything, it may just be something that they had pre rendered, however there is another possiblity I am thinking of as well, and that's this: What if they are outsourcing a lot more of the rendering to the GPU than was on FSX. FSX had a lot of stuff like Autogen on the CPU, where the GPU was barely used, what if they are running autogen (the biggest killer of FPS in FSX) and various other GPU based computations off something like quad crossfire top end ATI or quad SLI top end Nvidia cards. I would not put it past MS to do that, especially considering I heard reports that the last versions of ESP that they were testing before ACES got axed had full SLI support and were a lot more optimized than FSX SP2 in general.

The motion blur is too good for realtime. Theres too many samples & its too precise for a 2D effect. Its possible for an enclosed tech-demo of course. I worked on FMV for videogame intros for 10 years. This isn't ingame; & even if parts of it are, its highly enhanced in post.

I respect what you have to say as you have experience, however something tells me it is possible. I suspect they are using top of the line multi-GPU rigs to do it at full DX11, probably running at what they think systems will be at in the top of the line when it's targeted to be released, or sometime after that. I don't have much experience with shaders and 3D, as I'm still a relative newbie to game programming, however IIRC I don't remember many 3D suites (which you probably use for the FMV stuff in video game intros, most likely something like 3ds Max or Maya, or possibly even Softimage or something else) that have full rendering based on the GPU instead of the CPU. If my knowledge serves me correctly (and please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm always wanting to learn more), most rendering software runs off of the CPU, and the GPU is still only barely being actually exploited at this point. There is only one render engine I can think of that has even experimental GPU support for rendering, which is Luxrender, and I've seen the tech demos of what that is capable of, and the GPU really enhances the render times by a matter of factors of numbers, so it may be plausible that they may be running a high end rig with heavy shader effects, however I really do not know, and this is all pure speculation. Also I should point out that I really don't know much about the 3d development aspect at all, so I may be completely wrong in that assumption. I would however love to hear more of what you have to say involving this, as even though I am only breaking in to game programming at this point, the further my understanding of other aspects of development, the better I can become in general understanding of the overall process of development. My overall goal once I'm out of college is to get a job in the games industry, and any knowledge I can gain about the industry and the tools used would be greatly appreciated.

[n4gix 4,955]

Bill,With all due respect, you are "in the know".

Far less than you might believe, actually. I am a "collector" of FS related trivia. I have read many, many posts from several hundred sources over the past years, and remember most of what other's would not consider at all significant. :( Every word I wrote previously is the result of following the many, many "breadcrumbs" that've been left all around the net by folks I do know are "in the know..."For example, why would I posit that the new "Flight" title will (likely) be a reversion to the earlier FS9 codebase? When I read a post a few months ago from a well-known former ACES employee -one who'd been kept on staff to "archive" all work to date months after everyone else had left- states that he's rejoined MS to work on the "new project" doing "...pretty much what he was doing before FSX," that's really a pretty significant clue, IMHO.Years ago I did much the same for FSX's likely look and feel long before I'd been invited onto the beta team. In retrospect my projections were for the most part pretty accurate... :(

[Peter Clemenko 0]

Far less than you might believe, actually. I am a "collector" of FS related trivia. I have read many, many posts from several hundred sources over the past years, and remember most of what other's would not consider at all significant. :( Every word I wrote previously is the result of following the many, many "breadcrumbs" that've been left all around the net by folks I do know are "in the know..."For example, why would I posit that the new "Flight" title will (likely) be a reversion to the earlier FS9 codebase? When I read a post a few months ago from a well-known former ACES employee -one who'd been kept on staff to "archive" all work to date months after everyone else had left- states that he's rejoined MS to work on the "new project" doing "...pretty much what he was doing before FSX," that's really a pretty significant clue, IMHO.Years ago I did much the same for FSX's likely look and feel long before I'd been invited onto the beta team. In retrospect my projections were for the most part pretty accurate... :(

I hope your right up to a point, I just hope it has all the (good) features (gameplay and development wise) of FSX with the optimization and the better parts of FS9, while running better and taking full advantage of newer hardware. You can't have it all, but you can dream...

[irishsooner 9]

just wonder down the road if we will get a point man, or woman, to fill us in on development and related hardware issues like Phil Taylor before? miss reading his entries from few years ago.FSX on an ancient HP m1270n media center with an Nvidea 8600gt thrown in

[FSXHD 5]

just wonder down the road if we will get a point man, or woman, to fill us in on development and related hardware issues like Phil Taylor before? miss reading his entries from few years ago.FSX on an ancient HP m1270n media center with an Nvidea 8600gt thrown in

This looks promising http://paul-flightsimguy.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

[january 19]

Wow- I'm guessing there hasn't been so much excitement over so little information since the three wisemen saddled up their camels and headed off in pursuit of a strange new star in the sky!Alex Reid

[dmaher 0]

This is great news :)The movie - It’s certainly not an in-game movie.Just meant to convey the spirit and direction.Game developers do this - they have to.The studio initially promotes the game with conceptual art.A teaser.Not to say the game won’t look like that - but it may not too.It’s not a promise, but an indication of what they are striving for.That's why they made it, and why we should look at it.The DX10 preview probably should have never been released outside of the studio ;)But in-house that is the kind of material that’s produced by the art director, in consultation with the engineers, to set out the direction for the team. It's part of the game design documentation.DannyThe animation of the airplane is a dead giveaway the movie was key-framed.

[Avantime 81]

I really hope this won't end up like Simcity Societies. What people here want (and we will pay good money) is a fully fledged flight simulator, not another Pilotwings.

[Tanocapo 4]

Great new i've heard in a while!! I think and i trust Microsoft would do a great job!! Maybe it's my high expaction who is talkingCheers,Ignacio :(

[Guest veeray]

Peter: I'd have to disagree with you... actually the FFT Water samples I've seen were 10x better than what Microsoft is showing here. Second is that FFT water is only for Nvidia cards as ATI doesn't have the supporting libraries at this point. But then again who knows maybe it's a feature only available on Nvidia DX11 cards :)

[TPerson 15]

Just a heads up.Shouldn't this thread now be moved to its proper forum here:http://forum.avsim.net/forum/365-the-microsft-flight-forum/Todd

[Geofa 108]

Just a heads up.Shouldn't this thread now be moved to its proper forum here:http://forum.avsim.n...t-flight-forum/Todd

Maybe-Maybe not...how is that for decisiveness!:(