Speaking about 10GB of installation.....well, take into account MS will load into Flight a massive amount of freaky missions ( collecting teddy bears at luna park, shooting the barrels, acrobatic retired men rescues, strawberry harvesting, flying into cones of soap bubbles, Santa's flights delivering Xmas presents, Jingle Bells's sound effects ... and so on.. ) so, many of the graphic textures will be dedicated to them.

Yeah, I just love the preview shots that show all this!

I just don't get it. If Flight is gonna include the whole world at 10GB, then what did the following development teams do so inefficiently to require so much hard drive space for their simulators?FSX: 14GB for the whole world 6 years ago.AeroflyFS:24GB for SwitzerlandTake On Helicopters: 20GB for SeattleKind of sounds like microsoft used a magic wand to create graphics at such a high level of detail around the world in only 10GB of space. Oh yeah, and also improved weather, clouds, ATC, AI, added new missions, added new and awesome planes, etc., etc., etc. With such great advancements, sure is a shame that they have not shared any information from other parts of the virtual world. Probably because it is still so "early in development". (but wait, isn't there a beta just around the corner? hmmmmSorry to sound so sarcastic, but it seems pretty clear that 10GB is just too small, but who am I to say. Maybe it is big enough.

I never said it would be the whole world. Just more then Hawaii.The games you listed are so big because of photoscenery. Flight, from what we've seen so far, is using the same landclass system as FSX.

Aerosoft didn't come up with an own simulator yet so I can't support ( or go against ) them until I will see something, therefore I can't say nothing about them for the next upcoming 5 years at least, regarding the flight simulation aspect. Their airports are good instead IMO.

Aerosoft essentially gave up on developing their own in-house simulator some time ago, and they have put their efforts into the X-Plane 10 world instead. Although I can't provide the citations, I recall Mathjis reporting that the complexities of creating something entirely new were cost and time prohibitive, so they were going to shift gears and support the XP10 world, in addition to FS2004/FSX and possibly Flight depending on how that shakes out.-Greg

I think that the 10 GB is for a Typical installation. A full installation will require more HD space.

Aerosoft essentially gave up on developing their own in-house simulator some time ago, and they have put their efforts into the X-Plane 10 world instead. Although I can't provide the citations, I recall Mathjis reporting that the complexities of creating something entirely new were cost and time prohibitive, so they were going to shift gears and support the XP10 world, in addition to FS2004/FSX and possibly Flight depending on how that shakes out.-Greg

I was not aware they gave up producing their own simulator, this is a bad news because even if here we have different opinions on Flight we all love flight simulators ( I assume ) therefore this is a bad news for all IMO.I think everybody agrees here.

None of us know how Flight's scenery is going to be created. If Flight includes the entire planet, and you really only need 10 GBs of disc space to run Flight (and this is not just the minimum amount needed), the scenery is not being done the same as in FSX. Perhaps MS is using real time procedurally generated terrain that just renders the terrain in the area that you're flying in.Have you guys seen what the vieWTerra Earth simulator is capable of?Video Link:

.........Have you guys seen what the vieWTerra Earth simulator is capable of?Video Link:

Thanks for the video. It looks great! I haven't been checking on vieWTerra's progress for a long while. Pretty interesting stuff going on:http://www.viewterra.net/http://www.vworld.fr/http://www.viewterra.com/http://www.monde3d.com/If 'Flight' manages to be anything like that - I think most people will be happy.

Thanks for the video. It looks great! I haven't been checking on vieWTerra's progress for a long while. Pretty interesting stuff going on:http://www.viewterra.net/http://www.vworld.fr/http://www.viewterra.com/http://www.monde3d.com/If 'Flight' manages to be anything like that - I think most people will be happy.

It is really impressive.I just don't understand why someone like Microsoft or Laminar can't buy them a license or something to use that to render the world. Just for that.

I just don't understand why someone like Microsoft or Laminar can't buy them a license or something to use that to render the world. Just for that.

If these rendering technologies were indeed useful and efficient, I am positive that one of the big players would have already brought it on-board. That they haven't is a pretty clear indicator that they are not suitable for desktop flight simulation.In addition, Mathjis Kok of Aerosoft intimated that he and his team both discussed and experimented with several of these newer rendering technologies for use in the now shelved simulator they were working on. They came to the very quick conclusion that even though these terrain and scenery rendering engines look absolutely gorgeous, the methods by which the generate their visuals is simply too intensive to put in front of all the rest of the processing items needed in a proper flight simulator.

The quality and quantity of textures and sound files are a big variable in the install size.

Exactly. Like I said, the only way to reduce the install size is to reduce the quality and/or quantity of content. To put it another way, it is impossible to increase quality and quantity without increasing the size of the install. That Flight is 5GB smaller than its predecessor is damning evidence that it will feature limited content and/or reduced quality out of the box.

Perhaps MS is using real time procedurally generated terrain that just renders the terrain in the area that you're flying in.

I doubt it. That's slow and computationally intensive and would be hard to pull off in real-time even on today's most powerful desktop CPU's.And besides, the screen shots we've seen show good old fashioned photo textures and not anything that's been procedurally generated.

How do you know that MS hasn't bought into something like this? Real-Time rendering is getting better (and more efficient) every day. That ViewTerra video is over a year old.Just because Aerosoft's team didn't think this was doable, doesn't mean that MS agreed. The same was said about 3D games a few years ago.You guys are also leaving out the fact the MS is making Flight an online sim, so what if all the procedural rendering was done on Flight's main server? Then the area that you needed for your flight would be downloaded. Perhaps only Hawaii comes on the DVD, and everything else requires a download.All I'm say is that NO ONE here knows what MS is doing with Flight's scenery. Personally I think my speculation is better than a LOT of what I've read on this forum.

Read the thread linked in greggerm's post. In short, procedural rendering is inherently unsuitable for flight simulators.As for generating data and then shoving it through the internet pipes to individual customers, that's probably an even less efficient way of doing things.

Read the thread linked in greggerm's post. In short, procedural rendering is inherently unsuitable for flight simulators.As for generating data and then shoving it through the internet pipes to individual customers, that's probably an even less efficient way of doing things.

A post by Aerosoft nearly two years ago can hardly be considered gospel on the subject.

Read the thread linked in greggerm's post. In short, procedural rendering is inherently unsuitable for flight simulators.As for generating data and then shoving it through the internet pipes to individual customers, that's probably an even less efficient way of doing things.

I read that link. You obviously don't know much about procedural rendering.Once you have rendered something (which can take a very long time), you can save it and view it again (without having to recreate it). So, if MS renders everything on their Flight server, you are just downloading the current rendered graphics, for your flight area. This would be pretty easy for users, since it could be pretty much automated. Many of the online game worlds work in this manner, so why can't a flight sim?

I read that link. You obviously don't know much about procedural rendering.Once you have rendered something (which can take a very long time), you can save it and view it again (without having to recreate it).

Actually I do know a thing or two about procedural rendering, but what you said above is not the same as your original comment:"Perhaps MS is using real time procedurally generated terrain that just renders the terrain in the area that you're flying in."It is extremely unlikely that Flight will make use of textures and terrain generated procedurally in real-time. Unless there has been some revolutionary break through in procedural algorithms (and there hasn't been) then what was said in that thread from two-years ago remains true today.

So, if MS renders everything on their Flight server, you are just downloading the current rendered graphics, for your flight area.

We're talking gigabytes of data (if you want high quality geometry and textures) that would have to be constantly streamed to the customer's computers during play. Since few of us have the luxury of a T3 line in our home then this is obviously impractical and unrealistic.