Jordan King: First impressions

[barrel_owl 304]

47 minutes ago, CaribbeanCLANK said:

I am NOT expecting an airliner as complex as PMDG, Majestic or Aerosoft to be included in Early Access. And I did not ask that DTG include one. Where did I say that??

FSX is an old sim so I would expect any default airliner (if offered in FSW) to be a lot better than what we can find in FSX's default hanger. It is not unreasonable to have hoped for an airliner with a certain degree of complexity. 

Define "certain degree of complexity". Airliners are no medium-complex or half complex, they are simply complex. Period. And so are business jets and most turboprops. Take into account that after 11 years I have found no default GNS for FSX/P3D which acts even close to the real counterpart. If you want this, you buy Flight1 or Reality XP gauges and this means $ 50 for each gauge. Creating a ProLine 21, a Prodigy G1000 or any FMS would cost itself at least 3 or 4 times the sales price of FSW. Not to mention the rest.

In my opinion, it would make no sense to add default airliners with very basic systems today. It made sense 11 years ago, now things changed after so many high-level third party addons have been brought to the market. The flight simulator is a platform, just that. You fill it with 3rd party addons when, where and as much as you like. If any, of course.

[Murmur 3,941]

I don't think the lack of a default airliner is a bad thing per se. After all it could be a consistent choice if FSW has been thought as a product with an initial focus on GA and teaching new pilots to fly (a bit of a sequel to Flight School), with the adding of airliners reserved to add-ons.

The problem IMO is the default aircraft selection covering only a single slice of GA. They could have instead expanded the scope, by having gliders, bush planes, seaplanes, ultralights, etc. This would have also allowed more varied missions and flight lessons.

 

[MadDog 353]

3 hours ago, Murmur said:

The problem IMO is the default aircraft selection covering only a single slice of GA. They could have instead expanded the scope, by having gliders, bush planes, seaplanes, ultralights, etc. This would have also allowed more varied missions and flight lessons.

Personally, I'd prefer to see the developer (of any sim) concentrate on the areas that third-parties can't improve (rendering, lighting, system depth, AI behavior, ground handling, ATC interaction with AI, VAS, etc.).

[Rimshot 1,142]

On ‎5‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 11:42 AM, J van E said:

...The problem a lot of people are having here is that no matter if it is early acces or 'late access' or a finished product: it still is based on an old sim! That will never change. The MS FS foundation is here to stay. You WOULD have a very valid point if during the early access period the core engine would change because of user feedback but we all know for certain this will not change.

 

Well Jeroen, thanks for clarifying again, but I already got the picture. I simply do not agree with you and others there is no future in the Microsoft code. Looking at how the Microsoft FS code evolved over the years makes me think there is still room for improvement, also in the areas a lot of folks are complaining about. Let's look back at this discussion a few years from now

On ‎5‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 1:59 PM, Silicus said:

I guess I just don't understand why DTG decided to build on that, spend a lot of money on it, to have a very mediocre product at the end.

Cool rain drops and a few new aircraft just don't make up a 'NEXT GEN' flightsim.

I agree, it is a ongoing development of old base code. Still, by changing enough to break compatibility with FSX in my view the term next gen is allowed.

I would also love a completely new engine, but I fear if any company would take on that huge task we might not see a sim that covers the whole world and functions as a base platform third party content for many, many years.

On ‎5‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 1:17 AM, Anders Gron said:

Frankly I'm kinda tired of the constant argument which keeps being thrown around:
'Your critism of what you've seen so far isn't valid, since this is 'Early-Access' hence you don't know what the end-result might look like!".

That might partial be true, but most of the points of critism which are brought up, are things they won't change. Lighting engine, terrain and autogen depiction, and in general the way mesh, landclass and vector scenery is drawn. All these are 'relics' or characteristics of the old ESP engine. It's within the core of FSX/P3D and the new FSW and won't/can't be changed ....

How do you know this will never change? I hope you are very wrong about that.

On ‎5‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 3:51 AM, J van E said:

One thing I do like to repeat: despite my view on FSW I am sincerely happy the flight sim market is alive and kicking and that Dovetail is adding their part to it!

Amen to that!

Edited May 14, 2017 by n4gix
brake -> break

[anden145 2,285]

1 hour ago, Rimshot said:

How do you know this will never change? I hope you are very wrong about that.

Well...

Because these things are core elements of the ESP engine. We can see them both in FSX and P3D and we already know, that DTG will be basing FSW on ESP engine. It's apparent from the first previews. Besides - to be frank - if DTG were to change these things, I really think we would have seen them in the 'Early-Access' videos and/or screenshots we've seen so far. 

I seriously doubt they're going to change something which so that fundamental at this point. You can only hope but I really don't think it will happen. I think we'll be seeing an improved (I will admit, the screenshots look quite nice!) version of FSX in 64-bits (which people have been crying out for, for a while now) - but with the same 'caveats and issues' that plauges FSX and P3D (some of them, I mentioned in my previous post).

I'm sorry - but if you're hoping/expecting more (and by that I mean truthfully groundbreaking fixes and overhauled lighting and terrain depiction engine) I think you're setting youself up for disapointment... 

Again this is purely my subjective opinion! Sorry for the dystopic view.

[Longranger 148]

4 hours ago, Rimshot said:

 

How do you know this will never change? I hope you are very wrong about that.

Never change would go too far, but it would destabilize the complete simulator. The old and simple system fixed several problems at the same time. Improve one of these compionents and you will suddenly see what is in fact missing.

The loss of detail is interpreted by our brain as a kind of haze, so it expects not so see mountains in the distance, higher buildings and so on.

Improve the problems and you will learn pretty fast why X-Plane needs so much power. You suddenly have to add a lot more buildings, You will have to look at terrain details of distant tiles, you need a haze shader...

In other words these functions suddenly need a lot more computing power and memory, which means that you have to rewrite the rendering to cope with preloading and reaction times. And you can burn many of the old tools. You can no longer simply convert sceneries, you have to rewrite them instead.

What many people don´t expect: The terrain is the big consumer of computing time, not the flight model.

[CaribbeanCLANK 134]

10 hours ago, barrel_owl said:

In my opinion, it would make no sense to add default airliners with very basic systems today. It made sense 11 years ago, now things changed after so many high-level third party addons have been brought to the market. The flight simulator is a platform, just that. You fill it with 3rd party addons when, where and as much as you like. If any, of course.

Fair enough, I can agree with that. 

[Rimshot 1,142]

18 hours ago, Anders Gron said:

I'm sorry - but if you're hoping/expecting more (and by that I mean truthfully groundbreaking fixes and overhauled lighting and terrain depiction engine) I think you're setting youself up for disapointment... 

Again this is purely my subjective opinion! Sorry for the dystopic view.

No need to apologize. I'm not afreaid to hope because there is the possbility of disapointment

14 hours ago, Longranger said:

Never change would go too far, but it would destabilize the complete simulator. The old and simple system fixed several problems at the same time. Improve one of these compionents and you will suddenly see what is in fact missing.

Improve the problems and you will learn pretty fast why X-Plane needs so much power. You suddenly have to add a lot more buildings, You will have to look at terrain details of distant tiles, you need a haze shader...

In other words these functions suddenly need a lot more computing power and memory, which means that you have to rewrite the rendering to cope with preloading and reaction times. And you can burn many of the old tools. You can no longer simply convert sceneries, you have to rewrite them instead.

Obviously I do not know enough about the technology under the hood of the Microsoft code. But I'm still keeping my hopes up! Roll on DTG and LM

[Donstim 109]

On 5/12/2017 at 2:11 PM, pmb said:

Here's another very clear question on this topic: Will the SDK be available for freeware developers to develop scenery and aircraft addons or not?

Thanks and kind regards, Michael

On 5/12/2017 at 4:08 PM, DrumsArt said:

Good question ! Waiting for the answer...

Regards,

Richard Portier

Still waiting....though the silence may speak for itself.

 

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

Community - "We are tired of OOM's and the same old visuals. We want it to look like those screen shots from Microsoft. Why did they leave us?!"

DTG - "Hey Guys, we heard you want a new 64 bit simulator with great visuals, so we paid Microsoft millions to bring it back to you!"

Community - "GET OUT!"

[BEARlyThereCDN 46]

^ lol ^

Very concise analysis of what's been going on since DTG made their announcement TheFlightSimGuy! Personally, I'm a die hard FSX guy but I welcome DTG's new (sorta) flight sim. I am going to continue with my coveted FSX for the foreseeable future but I may suffer a few crash landings as my eye gets drawn to see what they do next. I may not be over-the-moon-dying-to-try FSW but how can it's launch and continued development be a bad thing for anybody in the community no matter what sim flavour you prefer?

As DTG succeed, and grow, and improve FSW that forces all other devs to do the same. Bottom line - as simmers, we all win, don't we?

[Gibbage 199]

3 minutes ago, BEARlyThereCDN said:

As DTG succeed, and grow, and improve FSW that forces all other devs to do the same. Bottom line - as simmers, we all win, don't we?

Yep.  Competition is a good thing, always.  

[SmokeDiddy 262]

If great visuals mean 80-90GB downloads/updates for scenery/terrain like Aerofly2 uses, I want no part of that.  If I want that level of scenery, I'll go get my PPL and hop in a Cessna.  I don't think a flight sim is intended for this kind of visual detail around the earth.  IMO, flight sims are about flight dynamics, aircraft systems, weather, etc.  Having detailed VCs is awesome tho.  I think it's a little over the top to whine about scenery and terrain. I just don't care to fly around where I live and dive down to see my cat standing in the yard takin a dump.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, pressler said:

I don't think a flight sim is intended for this kind of visual detail around the earth.  IMO, flight sims are about flight dynamics, aircraft systems, weather, etc.  Having detailed VCs is awesome tho.  I think it's a little over the top to whine about scenery and terrain. I just don't care to fly around where I live and dive down to see my cat standing in the yard takin a dump.

Thanks for your personal and very subjective point of view. To me the scenery is a very important part of flight simming. In fact, without good scenery I wouldn't be flying. Simple as that. This is of course also very personal and subjective. But that is the great thing about sims: you can use them however you want and nowadays we even got various options to choose from! The fact that you don't care about scenery is no excuse imho to call talking about that 'whining'. I am sure I am not alone in this.

[SmokeDiddy 262]

1 minute ago, J van E said:

 To me the scenery is a very important part of flight simming.

I will not argue that point with you as I do agree; however, IMO there becomes a point where very detailed scenery just becomes too much - either in storage requirements or systems requirements, additionally one can even make an argument for bandwidth requirements.  I try to think of the value add for high level detail where simming is concerned.  VFR is one that I can think of but VFR doesn't necessarily need HD scenery because you can fly VFR in current sims.   Smoother graphics - I believe needs improvement, amongst other things, in the upcoming FSW (at least if you look at the videos that have been posted)  Anyway, I appreciate the eye candy, I really do, but the one thing I have noticed about the sims with great eye candy, they lack in other respects that FSX and P3D do not.  Now this could be because they are no where as mature as FSX and P3D or the developers focused on this area exclusively, but the differences are noticeable.  This is just an observation.  I'm just glad this community has something to talk about at this point.  Thanks for your reply!