Is it even simming or is it just gaming? Are we simmers?

[User72 28]

I threw this topic here as I couldn't figure out where else it might belong. It arises from another but I think it begs its own space as it would seem to be a topic which should stand alone.

 

I was reading the transcript of an interview with the renowned John Venema today having been pointed in its direction. It's a good read if you have the time but the part of it which caught my attention and piqued my curiosity was the following:

 

John: "We can now execute and continue to execute well to create the environments that we want to experience ourselves eight years ago. If there’s any innovation that we want to go from here, it would be around creating an experience inside an airport. If I want to allude to something that’s been going around in my mind and I’ll tease you with it, if you can imagine Tate getting out of the aircraft, having a full on conversation with an animated person, and having a branched conversation that allows you to take the experience from the cockpit into the FPA or the café or talk to a mechanic while he’s cleaning his cylinder head or something like that.
That is something that I want to achieve. There’s technologies out there that we’re going to explore about how to move to that level because my demographic that I believe follow Orbx passionately are people who are explorers who love the atmosphere of the airport, of landing and walking around and soaking it in. What if we can take that to the next level? So you land in the sim. You get out of the aircraft and then you experience a whole different thing. A little [inaudible] [58:04]. Yes, there could even be an opportunity for a storyline-based experience to kick in once you add all that, or a mission that you do which is help the fisherman find his lost boat or have conversations with villagers to say, have you heard about the boat that went missing, you know? They’re out there with a float [inaudible] [58:25] trying to see if the tide’s taken out. These sorts of experiences and I can tell you now there’s going to be customers saying, we want that."

 

Now I should declare my allegiance from the get go; I am one who is minded to see the simulation of flight in the most realistic manner possible as the primary reason for simming. It's that pursuit of my idea of the most realistic simulation possible that has led me to try them all with an open mind and to not care which company fulfilled that mandate. I have no brand loyalty. I have had on my system FSX/P3d 2.2 with Orbx up until very recently when I eventually decided that X-Plane 10 most closely represented the simulation I've been chasing all these years. For those of you whose curiosity has driven them to download the XP demo, that's not it! Just like FSX/P3d, XP needs the addition of some addons to realise its potential. It requires G2XPL to create photoscenery at far greater resoultions than I have seen in FSX/P3d and World2XPlane to add autogen to its realworld positions atop the scenery. That combination with the base platform that is XP renders for me my ideal flight simulation of the real world where I can fly over what actually exists in the real world which is important to me. I didn't like the idea of flying over the faux world of Orbxland. It's just not real.

 

I digress and I'm not looking for a your sim/my sim kind of confrontation so I'm hoping for contributions to the conversation that will at least try to avoid the tendency towards confrontation.

 

To the point; the above quote from John indicates to me that the simming aspect of P3d is to become less important, with the gaming aspect John describes set to become the future of P3d for the hobbyist market. Now as an ex-aircraft mechanic I have a greater than normal desire to wander into the hangars and chat to the crews on duty in real life but I have to say I have zero interest in doing so in a simulator. This strikes me as a move away from simulation towards gaming by the biggest player in the market and he reckons it's the future!

 

What do you think? Am I mistaken in my interpretation? I guess the question that comes to my mind is when does the simulation cross over to becoming the game John outlines and is that for better or worse? Is that even a problem for Johns demographic? Are they different from those who see the simulation of flight in as realistic a manner as possible as being the most important aspect of flight simulation as a hobby? Is there a difference between a simulation and a game even? I welcome your thoughts.

[SierraHotel 987]

In a similar vein, Star Citizen, will be taking this idea to whole new level.

[User72 28]

Agreed SierraHotel, I've been on board with Star Citizen from early on but I see it squarely in the game category rather than as a sim as lets face it, it's complete fantasy. I love gaming but I see that and simming as occupying different spaces.

[tonywob 4,770]

I'm not sure how I missed this podcast as I have it my iTunes subscription, but have just listened to it

 

For me, a flight simulator is a "flight simulator", and "a little more". I will certainly admit to being one of those people who walks or drives around the FTX airports or sceneries, just because they are so incredibly detailed or well done. Also, when I recently got hold of CZST for X-Plane (so not just Orbx), I actually used a car to discover the scenery. One of the things that is very important I think, is the feeling that you are actually flying somewhere, and when you land, you are in a different place than when you started, Orbx have this with the payware airports, and have done it so well.

 

However, I draw the line at the idea of getting out of the plane, walking into a hangar and doing missions, etc. The second that happens, it turns into a game for me, and is how I felt when I tried MS Flight, it simply wasn't for me. Don't get me wrong, I love gaming, but I like to keep my flight simulator separate from being a master criminal in GTA V :smile:

 

Orbx regions falls over for me though when I know the area I'm flying in, I simply can't get myself to use the UK region, because my home town doesn't look like my home town, the buildings are in wrong place, local landmarks are missing, etc. I want to fly over my own town or places I know well, and with generic scenery, I simply can't, which is one of the reasons I went over to X-Plane and started World2XPlane. Now, and with combination with G2XPL, I can get into a helicopter, and fly slowly over my town and recognize everything, from the house I grew up in, to the fields I played in as a child, places I've worked in, something I could never have done in real life, but now can virtually. For me, this is what flight simulation should be, and not chatting to a virtual engineer in a hangar.

[coa1117 53]

Not sure I want to spend time thinking about the line between simulation and game, but what this guy is proposing seems to convert the experience from flight simulation to human interaction simulation. I seriously doubt there would be much of a market, if any, for this kind of thing. Given the general trend in human interaction simulation toward more and more violence, having a virtual chat with a virtual aircraft mechanic would be a non-starter. If it were more like: land, grab your shotgun, exit your aircraft and let the carnage begin -- now that might sell.

[jcomm 5,991]

It all depends, IMO, on what you want to do with your flight simulator.

 

Most pilot's training for their RL IFR tickets will choose something as simple as Luiz Monteiro's IFR simulators, or ELITE if they want some visuals and flight perception without being distracted by unnecessary items, and using an interface that was designed to help training IFR procedures.

 

Most are pilot wannabes and pretend they're captains at the controls of the PMDG 777. They master each and every system of the aircraft, spend hours in long range flights, flight planning, precise takeoff calculations, etc...

 

Others just look for the emotion of having a simulated world and aircraft whose graphics, flight dynamics etc... are immersive, even if they don't even guess if realistic...

 

For me, unless being use for RW training, flight simulation is an hobby, a game playing hobby, without me seeing any sort of negative connotation on that.

 

As a glider pilot I tried to use FSX and X-Plane to plan some RW flights, using photoreal scenery, but unfortunately, scenery quality / detail is far from being the only important aspect of a flight simulator... I place a lot more of expectations on flight dynamics, weather, systems... so I ended up using the old ( 2006 ) Condorsoaring, even over scenery areas that are far from where I usually fly IRL... What good is to have excellent scenery if the aircraft behaves all but realistically?

 

I have been using flight simulators for since the last Century, and, due to the lack of time to sit in front of a PC "flying" a long haul, or optimizing my sim to be able to run it in my rig, or installing scenery, etc... have progressively started to become more lazy... I want plug & play flight sims with plausible flight dynamics, good graphics, AI and multiplayer modes, where I can get a great time

during sometimes not more than 10'.... Found that on combat flight simulators....

[Robert McDonald 167]

I'd much prefer just keeping it to flight simming.  There are many games ("The Sims") where you can emulate human interaction.  My .02

[tonywob 4,770]

A game for me is something that has a goal, i.e. you have missions, you can win/lose or die. FSX and X-Plane don't really have any goals, of course you can fly for virtual airlines, use ATC, but in the end it's a completely open-ended simulation, you can do what you want, go where you like, you can learn and be serious about aviation, or you can fly a 737 upside down under the golden gate bridge, it's your choice :smile:

 

But, I'll admit, the scenery is what's the most important for me, the actual aircraft is secondary. FS2000 encouraged me to do real life lessons, and since that point (although it was a long time ago), I realised that we simply can't "yet" simulate the real feel of being in an aircraft, however we can certainly simulate what it looks like, and we can do it very very well. I'm almost 100% sure most people on this forum have done a flight in FSX/P3D or whatever, and had "wow" moments, e.g. Breaking out of the clouds and seeing the city lights, or seeing an amazing sunset, and completely forgetting that what you are looking at is a computer screen and feeling immersed (That's simulation at it's finest for me)

[pfflyers 7]

I've been simming almost thirty years now, but I'm really not a "serious" simmer. I just do it for the experience of flying and to exercise my inner Walter Mitty. I fly mostly GA and helicopters so detailed scenery is something I enjoy. I have often explored by car and boat. The idea of being able to fly to an airport, then get in a helicopter, car, or boat and travel to a location away from the airport over plausible high resolution scenery seems like it would be fun to me. This is one of the things that makes Outerra seem interesting to me, it looks like you could build a "world sim" based on that. Not sure I need missions though. 

[User72 28]

I'd much prefer just keeping it to flight simming.  There are many games ("The Sims") where you can emulate human interaction.  My .02

 

Yeah, it seems from my admittedly limited perspective that JV is reaching a bit here, attempting to create a market that may not actually exist, now or later. Missions have been tried before with questionable success. I had been thinking for a while that Johns market was becoming saturated. All the major hubs seem to have been done and are being redone and there are so many tiny little airfields now, once you've flown into a few why would you pay for more of essentially the same thing?  There is only a certain amount that can be done to innovate even if P3d does prolong the process somewhat over what's possible in FSX. There comes a point where your money might be better spent on other distractions.

[tonywob 4,770]

I think, as John said in the interview, they always have to appear to be innovating and pushing the barriers of what's possible in FSX and P3D, and to this point, they have done an incredible job. I really love their small GA airports, especially with the people walking round, birds singing, etc, you can almost smell the aviation fuel as you sit on the apron running through your checklist. I'm curious though how much further they can push this, and also wonder how many people actually spend the time discovering all the tiny little touches they add to each and every airport, like swaying grass or a guy working in a hangar only visible if you walk around.

 

 

 

The idea of being able to fly to an airport, then get in a helicopter, car, or boat and travel to a location away from the airport over plausible high resolution scenery seems like it would be fun to me

 

+1, I'd certainly buy that :smile:

[Robert McDonald 167]

Well, Outerra is certainly an amazing simulation - but as been written, is too small an area to 'work well' as a flight sim environment.  The ortho-photo city sceneries from Sim-Heaven for X-Plane are HUGE, 2 and 3 GB per city, and of course, they only have 'major' cities thus far (S.F., New York, Miami, Chicago, many in Europe and other places like Dubai.  I have previously suggested a hybrid remote 'power server' platform where all the 'horsepower' of the sim could reside on a huge 'server farm' and the user would have monitors and hardware going to that farm via the web... sort of like MS Flight "on steroids".  Don't think that's going to happen either.

 

To me, it's about the flight model coupled with eye-candy scenery.  Right now, taking scenery, flight model, and FRAMES spread across 3 monitors / 3 pcs, the 'answer' (for me) is XP 10.  It's still got some real warts, and the promised 10.3 release has yet to materialize.  Tom Curtis has built a Winter Weather World for XP 10 but is awaiting the stabilization of the scenery platform, I think he's waiting for 10.3 as well.

 

I have very high hopes for P3D - and I've put 2 items on my 'wish list' for it.  64-bits, and better networking support for the multi-monitor/multi-pc cockpit builders.  Of course both of those 'wishes' are as yet just that...

[Lowflyer 97]

To me a "game" does not need to have a clearly defined goal because that would exclude stuff like The Sims, SimCity, Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program from being games. Worse still it would mean that Farming Simulator, City Bus simulator, Goat Simulator and other are actually simulators.

 

What a "game", by which I mean a computer game, absolutely needs to have though is a fail-state. An undesired possible outcome that you need to a certain degree of skill to avoid. By that definition FSX and other flight simulators are games because you can crash and subsequently fail to reach your destination, your "goal". However that definition also means I have to agree that commercial full-motion simulators are also games, which is rather awkward.

 

No matter what definition you like to use there's always a way to shoot it full of holes. Also, does being a simulator automatically exclude something from at the same time being a game? A "simulator" is something that to an as high degree as possibly tries to mimic the behaviour of it's real life counterpart. A piece of software can do that while at the same time have goals and fail states meaning it is in fact both.

 

It's a fun subject to discuss but like most subjects being discussed on the interweb we're never going to reach a conclusion that everyone will agree on. At the end of the day it is what you make of it.

[-Stark- 3]

I've flown in both military and commercial simulators. They are far more robust and do a decent job of actually simulating a flying experience and controls, they do less of a better job with graphics.  I jumped in a T-38 trainer at Vance AFB a few months ago and while the graphics looked like crap the true cockpit, force feedback/resistance on the control surfaces were outstanding.  That said I landed the T-38 crabbed in a manner that would of ripped my gear off and probably popped my tires... but the sim said I did it fine.

 

I play P3D, I like flying, I like my Saitek Yoke and Pedals and it is what it is... it's a flight simulator game with a few of the controls being emulated.

[Robert McDonald 167]

I've flown in both military and commercial simulators. They are far more robust and do a decent job of actually simulating a flying experience and controls, they do less of a better job with graphics.  I jumped in a T-38 trainer at Vance AFB a few months ago and while the graphics looked like crap the true cockpit, force feedback/resistance on the control surfaces were outstanding.  That said I landed the T-38 crabbed in a manner that would of ripped my gear off and probably popped my tires... but the sim said I did it fine.

 

I play P3D, I like flying, I like my Saitek Yoke and Pedals and it is what it is... it's a flight simulator game with a few of the controls being emulated.

 

+1 on this.  My bud has a real 737 Boeing Cockpit in his garage at his home, and same deal, the real deal on all the electronics and hardware.  He is struggling with the graphics, waiting to buy large LED screens to replace his overhead projector and movie screens and Matrox triple-head-to-go splitter.  But sitting on the real Boeing sheepskin, and pulling back on the twin Boeing Yokes and moving the actual TQ levers and fuel cutoff switches, yada yada yada?  PRICELESS!  For everything else, there's XP 10 (or P3D).

 

He's put in a buttkicker, and every switch and dial on the overhead works, has twin FMC's, brand new comms console... slurp, drool, slurp...  oh, and it was a quick project, only took 18 years and 160K.

 

Now THAT's GAMING!