How do you know?

How do you know?

The key is those worlds are not as big as the earth. It may take you a few hours to walk from point A to B in ultima ... it will take you several months to walk across North America.

But it's all just mesh, landclass, AFCADs and autogen isn't it? In Skyrim there are caves, ruins, forts, NPC questgivers and places of interest everywhere on the map. Have a look at how cluttered it is:http://www.realsg.co...ations-map.htmlAnother thing to note regarding Flight Sims is that it doesn't require large amounts of high resolution textures, maybe apart from the virtual cockpit and runway textures. MS isn't trying to imitate ORBX quality here.Also Have a look at Take on Helicopters. It's a big download on Steam because It uses photoreal terrain and it is inefficient in terms of data compression because the game uses an infantry FPS engine. (Arma 2) If that game covers the whole world then we would be talking about hundreds of Terabytes of game data. MS Flight IIRC was developed from the FS2004 engine and that game only requires 1.8GB minimum HDD space.However I must add that it does seem odd that MS is only posting pics of Hawaii, and the lack of jets which account for about half the flyable aircraft in FSX. (also most previous versions of FS have a jet as box art, and IMO most people here fly jets)

But it's all just mesh, landclass, AFCADs and autogen isn't it? In Skyrim there are caves, ruins, forts, NPC questgivers and places of interest everywhere on the map. Have a look at how cluttered it is:http://www.realsg.co...ations-map.htmlAnother thing to note regarding Flight Sims is that it doesn't require large amounts of high resolution textures, maybe apart from the virtual cockpit and runway textures. MS isn't trying to imitate ORBX quality here.Also Have a look at Take on Helicopters. It's a big download on Steam because It uses photoreal terrain and it is inefficient in terms of data compression because the game uses an infantry FPS engine. (Arma 2) If that game covers the whole world then we would be talking about hundreds of Terabytes of game data. MS Flight IIRC was developed from the FS2004 engine and that game only requires 1.8GB minimum HDD space.However I must add that it does seem odd that MS is only posting pics of Hawaii, and the lack of jets which account for about half the flyable aircraft in FSX. (also most previous versions of FS have a jet as box art, and IMO most people here fly jets)

You think they might not be ready quite yet? I hope for an ERJ or 717 for jets

It is nothing more-nor-less than an &@($*umption based entirely on the screenshots/videos being only from around the Hawaiian islands. It has been hysterically cited so often that it's taken on the patina of a "truth" these days.Like the illogic of trying to "prove a negative," it makes no sense whatever...

LOL!

However I must add that it does seem odd that MS is only posting pics of Hawaii....

It's not that odd really, it's a pretty common way to work :)Many games do get built by taking one level all the way to completion.This becomes an area where new ideas are tested and all the methods are settled on.This is what investors want and expect…they want to know what they’re going to get.Once it’s signed off the rest of the levels are built to the general spec of the first.This work can be done with the help of more junior employees, because the hard problems have been addressed.That’s for an average game...and every game I've worked on - that went well ;)But for FS much of the content is build by processing data with scripts. It’s not all hand built.So perfecting a vertical slice becomes pretty important...because it's about building a finished set of scripts.Also a way to speed up and stabilize the FS engine is to optimize the content.So for now I’m encouraged to see the 10GB figure. Do more with less.If you’ve followed the development of FS over 20 years, there are no surprises here.It’s an evolution like others and there are features in the pictures to be excited about :)

I love this thread. So far nothing has been announed but some of us seem to know for certain that its a closed sim with no SDK, Hawaii only, it will come to a crawl with addons (à la PMDG) and MS are going to milk the cow again. You may be right, maybe not but I'm sure we'll have a good laugh when looking back at this thread after the product is released.The only fact we have for the moment is that the screenshots in Hawaii look good (OK, the scenery in the distance is still a little blurry).Good job they didn't decide a global tax on speculation at the last G20 :-)

it will come to a crawl with addons (à la PMDG)

You forgot that there will be no third-party addons

You forgot that there will be no third-party addons

thank you for reminding me!

You forgot that there will be no third-party addons

Oh yes, sorry I forgot :-)

Oh please... A business doesn't owe you anything before you've purchased their product.

Wow... so wrong on so many levels.

Please explain. I don't see how MS owes me more info on the upcoming sim...

The sales process does not begin only when you buy something. Companies establish customer relationships and repore BEFORE the customer actually spends a cent. This means, understanding the customer. Building your product according to what you think your customer wants as well as what they say they want. Being open with your customer and bringing them into the development process. If YOU as a business expect to be eventually paid for that product then YOU as a business have to EARN that BEFORE you expect them to PAY you for something. Companies find that they spend millions of dollars to engage non-customers to make them customers.Look at all of the MMORPG games. Star Wars The Old Republic is one of the most anticipated games of the year. The MMORPG space is extremely competitive and everyone is fighting for customers against the default king of the MMORPG, WOW. Lucas Arts / Bioware is currently conducting OPEN beta testing prior to release in December. How many Beta Testers you ask? EVERYONE. EVERYONE who asked to be a Beta Tester prior to Nov 11th was accepted. Bioware is listening to live feedback and tweaking the game to opimize it for the very dedicated Star Wars community. They are also faciliting Guilds, forums, bandwidth, and generating great excitement all at their expense. You know why? Bioware is investing in the hardcore MMORPG players and building loyalty. Whether everything we ask for will be in the game is irrelevant and whether the game is perfect at launch is irrelevant. Bioware and Lucas Arts is listening, acting. Sometimes that feedback is great, sometimes it's pretty frank and ugly. Are they whining about getting their feelings hurt? No. They understand the passion of the community and are acting like it. Myself and hundreds of thousands of others will reward that loyalty to US with our wallets as a sign of our loyalty to THEM.So when I hear someone say that companies don't owe you anything until you pay for it...that cannot be furthest from the truth for companies that strive for excellence and customer loyalty.

Perhaps you should tell that to our CEO at Cisco, John Chambers, as well as the rest of the 65,000 of us at Cisco Systems who would beg to differ with your assessment. It would make my job a heck of a lot easier - oh...wait I wouldn't have a job as a PRESALES, Systems Engineer. Amazing that our company sees the PRESALES Engineers and Account Managers as the heart of the company. Apparently to grow our business year over year, we seem to think that paying customers aren't the only people we invest in.

There have been a few comments regarding a company's owing the courtesy of important information, or anything for that matter, to potential customers. In my experience, both as a customer and a business/IT consultant, creating and managing a good relationship with a company's customer base, even if the company has little to no competition, is critical, and I think most reasonable people will agree with that.The point I am attempting to make is the majority of the people that contribute to or visit Microsoft Flight Simulator-related forums have been loyal customers, and even advocates of Microsoft's FS series over multiple release purchases. Many of us have been eagerly anticipating the purchase of Flight soon after the title is released. As a customer constituancy, we are a fairly sophisticated group of users, and we depend on information pertaining to a future release so we can make decisions on future significant purchases related to current version add-on software and hardware upgrades.With these customer segment characteristics in mind, it is expected that MS would owe this group of users the courtesy of being more forthcoming with information than they have been. (By the way, we all know that they have provided us several pictures and a few videos of Hawaii, but how Hawaii looks is not the point anymore.) With software development being somewhat unpredictable, I think most people can understand Microsoft's not releasing information too prematurely by stating features that may or may not be included in the final product, but whether or not Flight is to be a global simulator is absolutely a feature that they should know by now.

Thanks for the extensive explanations Mike. I can understand why you look at it this way. However, I still don't understand how it could be an obligation for Micrososft to show us more than they have now. It is their project and they decide what is ready to go out in the open. Why is that so hard to understand? Customer relations are important, as is marketing research. But in the end the it is creator of a product who determines what the product is going to contain and when and how previews are shown to the public. What are we going to do if they don't give us more info on Flight? Punish them by not buying it? Lol, like they do care. We're a very, very small percentage of the targetmarket.

Punish them by not buying it? Lol, like they do care.

Oh, they care alright. They are scared $hitle$$ by X-plane since atleast version 8 and particularly the upcoming version 10. A "two-bit" lean and mean outfit comprising of perhaps a dozen staff and/or contractors giving M$ a run for it's money.Don't get me wrong. So is Laminar Research, the creator of X-plane, to an extent. Comparatively, X-plane is the new kid on the block and M$ is threatened. The new kid is somewhat hungry, somewhat flush with ca$h, since the introduction of it's app on the iPhone and later iPad and Android.The recent noises about stay tuned for an "important announcement" are suspect and one can't help but wonder whether they have anything to do with the imminent release of X-plane version 10 - in a month or so.

Oh, they care alright. They are scared $hitle$$ by X-plane since atleast version 8 and particularly the upcoming version 10. A "two-bit" lean and mean outfit comprising of perhaps a dozen staff and/or contractors giving M$ a run for it's money.Don't get me wrong. So is Laminar Research, the creator of X-plane, to an extent. Comparatively, X-plane is the new kid on the block and M$ is threatened. The new kid is somewhat hungry, somewhat flush with ca$h, since the introduction of it's app on the iPhone and later iPad and Android.The recent noises about stay tuned for an "important announcement" are suspect and one can't help but wonder whether they have anything to do with the imminent release of X-plane version 10 - in a month or so.

NAH!A

NAH!A

Oh, they care alright. They are scared $hitle$$ by X-plane since atleast version 8 and particularly the upcoming version 10. A "two-bit" lean and mean outfit comprising of perhaps a dozen staff and/or contractors giving M$ a run for it's money.Don't get me wrong. So is Laminar Research, the creator of X-plane, to an extent. Comparatively, X-plane is the new kid on the block and M$ is threatened. The new kid is somewhat hungry, somewhat flush with ca$h, since the introduction of it's app on the iPhone and later iPad and Android.The recent noises about stay tuned for an "important announcement" are suspect and one can't help but wonder whether they have anything to do with the imminent release of X-plane version 10 - in a month or so.

You are kidding, right?