I'd say GTA is equally as complex, but in a different way. It's not just *another* shooter. The details and environmental events blow FSX out of the water. That said, it's still not a round earth simulation. Still a very capable and powerful engine.

 

Indeed.

 

Rockstar made an entire city with hithtero unseen levels of detail, utterly immersive and got it all running on the relatively modest hardware of a console. It's an amazing achievement in software coding, even if the game itself is of no interest to you as a "hardcore non-entertainment totally professional and not having any fun on my $5k PC flight simmer."

 

It's kind of disappointing but perhaps not surprising that there are still quite a few people in this thread who look down their noses at consoles and console titles. It's obvious these people think consoles haven't moved on from the days of Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario Bros. Landmark titles like The Witcher 3 or the upcoming Fallout 4 seem to totally go over these peoples' heads yet they fawn over an old code base that struggles to maintain 30fps on a $5,000 PC and OOMs with anything more than a few additional addons or modules installed.

 

Even on page one of this thread somebody asked if flight sticks were coming to consoles...

 

http://www.amazon.com/Saitek-Aviator-Flightstick-Xbox-360/dp/B001EYU1W8

 

This was available over five years ago. A flight stick. For a console.

 

Gents, if you're going to engage in elitist snobbery directed at consoles and console users, at least try to have a clue about stuff.

Interesting comments from various postings from the Steam forum..

 

'I dont think you should get too caught up in the words of gamer vs simmer. Even the original FSX was classified as a "Flight Simulation Game". The simmer is the person who takes an approach of realism and replication of the real world in the game environment. So you make it as much of a sim as you want it to be. But if it is for entertainment purposes, it will always be a game.'

 

'I know the market; my sons are world-class competitive gamers and I also know that MSFS is not a "true" simulation of flight. The flight physics are "boxed," and inaccurate. There are more gamers than simmers. The money goes to the most profitable demographic. That's the core of marketing and business.'

 

http://steamcommunity.com/app/314160#scrollTop=6498

It's kind of disappointing but perhaps not surprising that there are still quite a few people in this thread who look down their noses at consoles and console titles. It's obvious these people think consoles haven't moved on from the days of Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario Bros. Landmark titles like The Witcher 3 or the upcoming Fallout 4 seem to totally go over these peoples' heads yet they fawn over an old code base that struggles to maintain 30fps on a $5,000 PC and OOMs with anything more than a few additional addons or modules installed.

 

Best post of the thread.

Most of today's highest quality addons for flight simulation are unquestionably bigger than the simulator they run on. If there is any real difference between simmers and gamers is that the former waste the most to get the least.

If there is any real difference between simmers and gamers is that the former waste the most to get the least.

 

Truer words never spoken. Whats the difference between a $1500 PC and a $5000 PC with P3D or FSX?

 

4 frames per second and $3500

Best post of the thread.

 

 

Remember a few years ago now when the Lotus Sim L-39 was released for FSX and many of the users' comments received were how such a high quality model could have so little impact on framerates?

 

If I recall correctly the developer had a lot of experience in developing console games. He was used to having to achieve maximum optimisation in order to work within the console's hardware limitations. Therefore he knew how to properly optimise his models and textures and achieve an excellent model with no framerate impact.

 

Now compare this to the recently released Just Flight Tornado GR1 which is bloated beyond belief with its 100MB+ VC model and ridiculous number of draw calls.

 

If anything, the flight sim development community could learn a lot from the console developers.

Remember a few years ago now when the Lotus Sim L-39 was released for FSX and many of the users' comments received were how such a high quality model could have so little impact on framerates?

 

If I recall correctly the developer had a lot of experience in developing console games. He was used to having to achieve maximum optimisation in order to work within the console's hardware limitations. Therefore he knew how to properly optimise his models and textures and achieve an excellent model with no framerate impact.

 

Now compare this to the recently released Just Flight Tornado GR1 which is bloated beyond belief with its 100MB+ VC model and ridiculous number of draw calls.

 

If anything, the flight sim development community could learn a lot from the console developers.

If I recall correctly, Mir from Flightbeam is or was a developer of console games as well as that is where he learned a lot of modeling and texture tricks.

Thanks, I never knew about Mir being a console dev.

 

 

Even on page one of this thread somebody asked if flight sticks were coming to consoles...



http://www.amazon.co...0/dp/B001EYU1W8



This was available over five years ago. A flight stick. For a console.



Gents, if you're going to engage in elitist snobbery directed at consoles and console users, at least try to have a clue about stuff.

 

What about yokes, rudders, Throttles? More importantly for hardware cockpit buliders, can the displays be undocked,  to be used on their panels.

What about yokes, rudders, Throttles? More importantly for hardware cockpit buliders, can the displays be undocked,  to be used on their panels.

 

Is your question about whether yokes, throttles etc. exist for consoles? Or whether it is possible for them to exist? For the first question, I don't know of any offhand, but I also haven't looked very hard. As for the second, it is very possible for them to exist. There are steering wheel, gear shift and gas/brake pedals for consoles. The only missing requirement would be demand for them.

 

As for cockpit builders, well, they may have to stick to PCs. Consoles don't try to be everything to everyone, as the many, many current PC gamers show. On the other hand, there are many people that show up in these and other flight sim forums that just want to install a flight sim and go. They don't want to bother with the minutiae of building and configuring a PC, and then doing more tweaking to get the sim running well on it. And then having to figure out what the uiautomationcore.dll is and why they need it. A decent sim on a Xbox or PS4 with a joystick or yoke, and throttle, big screen TV and Kinect (on the Xbox) for some TrackIR functionality would be perfect for them.

 

Although it's really a moot point right now as Dovetail is only working on bringing their sim to the PC, for now at least.

 

 

1. Simmers vs Gamers. Pointless distinctions. The correct word is "users"

 

OK, users then. But the distinction is still there, like from the point of view of some manufacturers and their marketing gangs. There is a group in the user base that I can sell $1000 yokes to. The rest obviously just smile and look down their noses at this rather small group - as is evident in this thread too. And this is nothing special, there are always a few people taking some thing a lot more seriously than the rest (one can be serious about collecting beer bottle caps). And there is no practical way for the "enthusiast" to make a "non-enthusiast" understand - and that is just life too.

 

Call them enthusiasts, call them power users, call them simmers, call them crazy, whatever name you fancy. I'm pretty sure there are quite a lot of expressions around. But you can't just deny that they exist, when the products catering to this group so obviously exist too.

How about we don't label/title/group them at all?

Call them enthusiasts, call them power users, call them simmers, call them crazy, whatever name you fancy. I'm pretty sure there are quite a lot of expressions around. But you can't just deny that they exist, when the products catering to this group so obviously exist too.

 

Who said anything about denying these guys exist. That's not what I said. The point I wanted to make was, simmer or gamer, fsx provides something for both groups, and it's likely that Dovetails sim will offer the same choice. Who cares if someone will spend a £1000 on a yoke, hell, I'm one of those people. But just because it take it 'seriously' doesn't mean I can't let my hair down and enjoy a mission, or try to land a 747 at London City.

 

Perhaps the best marketing phrase dovetail can use isn't 'as real as it gets' more 'as real as I want it'

 

Jim is right. Why label anyone at all?

Truer words never spoken. Whats the difference between a $1500 PC and a $5000 PC with P3D or FSX?

 

4 frames per second and $3500

Made me laugh...and it's true

 

Next question is at what point do people take this hobby too seriously that it consumes them to the point where it is no longer a hobby anymore?

I  fully agree to Jessica. In my opinion, one of most important factors for the success of the MSFS series was its scalability. You could take off at Meigs with the keyboad and just make a few circuits for fun over Chicago with virtually no background (I know I did in FS4) ... and a few years later a few of those more serious end up with a multi-k$ equipment in a PMDG 777 still within the MSFS product range as the core simulator.

 

As we know, another factor was the open environment in the later versions.

 

If Dovetail manages to reproduce or even further develop these two aspects - which I wouldn exclude right now - they will certainly have a winner. No premature praise, but their present vacations in the Flightsim area

 

http://www.dovetailgames.com/vacancies

 

read serious.

 

Kind regards, Michael

No, there is a fundamental difference between gamers and simmers.  Jessica is wrong, both groups cannot be happy with the same sim / game.  Take DCS for example, how many people think that DCS would do well on console?  More accurately what does DCS offer that HAWX or Air Combat doesn't offer? 

 

The casual group want great graphics and lots of things to do, this will dictate the area of flight size.  People keep mentioning GTA V, that is exactly what a casual flight game looks like, it's fun, tons of missions, races, great environment.  You cannot carry this across into something the size of FSX or P3D, the technology just doesn't exist yet to replicate this across the entire planet.

FSX / P3D don't offer any those things, Jessica mentions landing a 747 at EGLC, yeah the casual gamers will attempt to do that, either make it, or fail and never try it again.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter if it's a complete simulation of the 747 or a stock FSX 747 that simply looks like a 747, the casuals don't care, they take off and attempt to land and get bored, in that order.

 

Now i will say that a portion of those casual gamers will perhaps be turned into simmers, but how many, i doubt it's the majority.

 

Flight failed because it was aimed squarely at the casual market, but and critically; it carried across the modeling and environment from the Flight Simulator line.  It looked good (compared to FSX) but bad compared to HAWX or Air Combat, you couldn't blow anything up, no real progression, just a series of tasks with no overriding mission. 

 

If Dovetail attempt to appease both groups, much as MS did with Flight, we'll end up again with the above situation.