What about virtual cabins??

[Chock 17,769]

If I'm paying a hundred quid or more for something which is touted as a realistic simulation of an aeroplane and there is nothing precluding that realism from being included, which there is now no longer since we've moved to 64 bit, then I expect it to be in there for that kind of money, especially if its inclusion is fundamental to simulating the realistic operation of the aeroplane.

There isn't anything especially hard about the task either. Modeling an airliner cabin is not rocket science; and if one uses arrays to create the majority of it, which one can since all the seats are pretty much the same, as are the windows and stowage bins, fittings etc, it's not even especially time consuming as a modeling task, and using that method means it isn't especially demanding on a system either. It's been done before on many FS aeroplanes. It's about time the days of simulating freighters and passenger airliners was pushed on a bit instead of us putting up with flying empty craft around where the simulation of weight is nothing more than a number in the CDU.

[PMDG777 231]

37 minutes ago, Chock said:

If I'm paying a hundred quid or more for something which is touted as a realistic simulation of an aeroplane and there is nothing precluding that realism from being included, which there is now no longer since we've moved to 64 bit, then I expect it to be in there for that kind of money, especially if its inclusion is fundamental to simulating the realistic operation of the aeroplane.

There isn't anything especially hard about the task either. Modeling an airliner cabin is not rocket science; and if one uses arrays to create the majority of it, which one can since all the seats are pretty much the same, as are the windows and stowage bins, fittings etc, it's not even especially time consuming as a modeling task, and using that method means it isn't especially demanding on a system either. It's been done before on many FS aeroplanes. It's about time the days of simulating freighters and passenger airliners was pushed on a bit instead of us putting up with flying empty craft around where the simulation of weight is nothing more than a number in the CDU.

I'm guessing you decided to not read Kyle and Dave's posts on why it's not as simple as 64-bit. 

Since you don't think there will be much performance impact if there was a full cabin, go fly the Captain Sim 777 and come back and tell us how smoothly it flies and how in depth it's systems are (I'll save you the trouble, it's impossible to get good FPS/stutter free flight with it because it's a resource hog, and it's systems aren't a fraction of the PMDG 777). 

As for weight being a number in the CDU, the flight dynamics changes completely for different weights. How else can they model different weights? Do you want a cabin full of non-descript people who don't move because of animation limitations? What you're asking for and what is actually possible with the engine are two different things. 

[downscc 1,327]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

It's about time the days of simulating freighters and passenger airliners was pushed on a bit instead of us putting up with flying empty craft around where the simulation of weight is nothing more than a number in the CDU.

I think you are missing the point here, just numbers on a CDU are very important to real world pilots as well as simulator pilots.  I think it's time to stick a fork in this one and call it done.  I don't think PMDG has any interest in building a cabin model and that's the reason they won't do it.  Simple.  I think in the decade+ that I've been hanging out here I've seen this as a topic maybe three times.  It's not a hot subject.  I sense, maybe unfairly, that you want to make a point and have it accepted.  Well, point made but I'm not sure how many are buying it.

[xender 459]

Maybe my lack of knowledge of the English language made me explain the idea a bit too vague.

Im a software developer myself. I do understand that everything has a price. Everything consumes cpu cycles and lots of things are happening in the background even if you're not looking at them. I know its maybe not realistic to expect the full cabin of the 747 to be modeled at this stage, but im sure the boundaries can be pushed a bit. Like adding what is before the cockpit. I know freighters have a few seats back there and stuff.

If you guys think about it, it is not that resource intensive as the vc, because you dont have gauges there, you dont have screens, you dont have any (or just a few) animations there etc.

My point is that we can push the boundaries  a bit.

[MorsAbAlto 19]

 

3 hours ago, Captain Kevin said:

Some of them, but certainly not everyone. I'm still running FSX off a laptop, as I don't have the money available at the present time to get a desktop in order to run P3D. I certainly don't have the hard drive space available on this laptop to run it, and getting an external isn't a feasible option, given my situation.

Point partially taken.

I admit to going by what I see in peoples signatures on AVSIM. Not exactly scientific, but still a viable indicator. Since we all know how much more of an expense anything (properly licensed) P3D is, making financial stamina a prerequisite to use P3Dv4 seemed like a sensible deduction to me at the time of my post. After all it's priced towards a professional market and not Johnny armchair pilot.

My logic was: If you have the budget to run P3D with 3rd party products, you also have the budget to get a decent machine to run it on. Both is somewhat interdependent, don't you think? If you don't have the money for a desktop PC, you probably don't have the funds to pay for the needed licenses anyway. As always, who wants to run a stock simulator?

That said, I am one of the people with a tight budget myself when it comes to flight simming and apart from the stupid OOMs and ancient visuals, I am content to finally run FSX with 30+ frames in most situations, after some 10 years since it was released. 

For what it is worth, there will be some increment innovation going forward. Just do not expect x64 to be the equivalent to quantum computing when it comes to this hobby. Visual fidelity at reasonable performance cost requires a lot of R&D and thus funding, the latter of which is hard to come by in this niche market. Aviation is a complex subject that will never appeal to the broad masses at an in-depth level, which for me is part of the attraction of doing this at all.

Have a look at something like Star Citzen, by Chris Roberts. How awesome would it be to see similar audio-visual fidelity and technical innovation in a hardcore flight simulator. That is damn near impossible. The reason? Money. Star Citizen has a budget of 155+ million USD at this point and the development team is several hundred strong. They took an OTS game-engine, bought most of the licenses, re-wrote most of the code to suit their needs to get where they are now. 

I am not making a direct comparison for obvious reasons mind you, but still: what some people want/expect/hope to see, by solely going to 64-bit, is a bit much. The financial metrics of this hobby did not change over night. If you want more fidelity, be ready to fork out even more money, rather than expecting more for less. If it did not dawn on you until now. Much of the purchase price is going into licensing and procurement of actual data to feed into a simulator add-on. 

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TL;DR: smh

[Captain Kevin 586]

21 minutes ago, MorsAbAlto said:

I admit to going by what I see in peoples signatures on AVSIM. Not exactly scientific, but still a viable indicator. Since we all know how much more of an expense anything (properly licensed) P3D is, making financial stamina a prerequisite to use P3Dv4 seemed like a sensible deduction to me at the time of my post. After all it's priced towards a professional market and not Johnny armchair pilot.

My logic was: If you have the budget to run P3D with 3rd party products, you also have the budget to get a decent machine to run it on. Both is somewhat interdependent, don't you think? If you don't have the money for a desktop PC, you probably don't have the funds to pay for the needed licenses anyway. As always, who wants to run a stock simulator?

I think ultimately, it's situation dependent. There are people out there that already had a system that was capable of running it that a move towards P3D V4 wouldn't have required getting a new computer altogether. As for the add-ons, that ultimately depends on which add-ons one has. It would appear as though for the most part, the aircraft has to be purchased again for P3D, whilst the sceneries for P3D tend to share the same license as the FSX sceneries, so that'll save you some of the cost. In my case, I would need to purchase the computer, P3D V4, and the PMDG Boeing 747-400 P3D license. The sceneries I already have for FSX, which should run in P3D as far as the scenery developers seem to indicate.

[pracines 823]

2 hours ago, downscc said:

 I don't think PMDG has any interest in building a cabin model and that's the reason they won't do it.  Simple. 

Simple? Do you not remember the PMDG 737 in FS9 with its full cabin? That cabin feature with the advent of FS recorder made for some nice replays of a user flying as a passenger, the plane that they flew from gate to gate....then the VAS OOM cancer crept in....plans had to adapt. 

I'm not saying that the cabin feature is for everybody, but PMDG was very much into the full cabin thing. So lets let PMDG talk or not talk about its interests, lets not speak for them as if we know something when we don't.

[MorsAbAlto 19]

13 minutes ago, pracines said:

Simple? Do you not remember the PMDG 737 in FS9 with its full cabin? That cabin feature with the advent of FS recorder made for some nice replays of a user flying as a passenger, the plane that they flew from gate to gate....then the VAS OOM cancer crept in....plans had to adapt. 

I'm not saying that the cabin feature is for everybody, but PMDG was very much into the full cabin thing. So lets let PMDG talk or not talk about its interests, lets not speak for them as if we know something when we don't.

Can't resist to chip in here as well. :)

The original PMDG 747 also had the upper cabin modelled, iirc, after the Lufthansa 1st Class. All the same it was a rather fugly cabin in both cases. I mean, it was reasonably well done within the confines of the simulator but still way less detailed than the flight deck for performance reasons. The folks rooting for a virtual cabin as being "more realistic" are not really making sense to me, because no cabin we had was ever close to realistic, hence most videos looked out of the cabin and not vice versa (and only with a thick layer of filters applied: blur, smudge, desaturation etc to make it look real). 

Just think about it. A detailed cabin would require a deep level of research and either taking measurements or getting the data from the cabin manufacturer, which probably incurs a host of licensing fees on its own, since you can not just walk into a cabin, make some fotos and be done with it. As soon as you want to make money off someone elses work, you need to compensate them. If you don't you are asking for lawsuits. And that is before the 3D modelling even begins.

So I feel like the "passenger simulator" crowd is fighting a lost battle, because the simulator we have is not even suited to model a somewhat realistic seat cushion, let alone a human face mesh, which you would have 300+ of in a 747 at MGW. In every aircraft I own or saw, the seat is just a block of concrete with a photo texture slapped on top. It's there, but it is not convincing. I have no inside knowledge of the P3D engine, but it seems not even simple techniques like face culling are fully supported. If that is true, imagine what kind of ressource hog a virtual cabin would be. But then I might be wrong.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

While personally I really question how much someone would really use the cabin view, I think it's important that we all avoid telling people who would like this that they're wrong. And I'm not suggesting that anyone has done that, I'm merely getting this out there before someone does. 

The private flight sim group I belong to has some very experienced guys. One of them loves long hauls, and even though I've been flying with him for 12+ years and he's a dear friend who I respect greatly and love flying with (especially in shared cockpit),  I sincerely question why he enjoys long hauls so much - at least those which are not VATSIM events.  After all, once you're at cruise level you just sit there hour after hour after hour!  I mean, you JUST SIT THERE!  It just seems ludicrous to me, and i see no accomplishment by doing this.  I prefer regional flights where in less than 2 hours I interact and fly the aircraft during the takeoff, departure, climb out, arrival and approach - you know, actually doing stuff!

But see, he enjoys what I find to be boring as hell.  Even if he's suffering from some Forrest Gump type mental defect (I'm kidding) that results in him being excited by doing absolutely nothing for countless hours, that's what he likes!  Even though I lightheartedly tease him about it, I also respect that's just his thing, and who am I to tell him he's wrong?

Speaking of Shared Cockpit... I've been promoting Shared Cockpit in commercial airliners with developers and the community for well over 12 years, and have worked with every developer who has provided this capability during this time.  Done right (and sadly hardly anyone does do it right), Shared Cockpit in an airliner with a friend is absolutely the best flight sim experience I've had in 30+ years in flight sim, and I can still say that after over 12 years and 6000+ hours of Shared Cockpit flying!  On top of the fun and moments of excitement, there is absolutely no more realistic way of flying an airliner unless your talking a full up simulator with someone else. Think about this... you're both in the same aircraft, on VATSIM with full (human) ATC coverage for your flight, the airport and airspace is full of human controlled aircraft, you have seamless communications between you and your co-pilot and ATC, and you work together to do everything. When you see or hear something the other person sees/hears it exactly the same.  You talk and laugh together during the entire flight about anything and everything, laugh about other pilots and ATC when they screw up (which happens in real life too), plan on how you're going to do things... man, I could talk about all the things you do for a long time!  Now, the group also makes group flights in single cockpit, and we do the same thing on our voice server during these flights, but it lacks the perspective and immersion level that a Shared Cockpit flight has.

Given the many tremendous benefits of Shared Cockpit, you'd think that everyone would be doing it!  Though the numbers of people enjoying this incredible type of flying is growing it's not for everyone, and no matter how much I think everyone ought to be enjoying Shared Cockpit I'm not about to tell someone they're wrong for not doing it.

Thankfully, our hobby is incredibly diverse, and there are many cups of tea from which we can drink. I'm never going to criticize a fellow flight simmers because they don't like what I do.  I guess I'm just wishing that less of this happened in our forums and community.

Thanks for allowing me to rant a bit.

My very best wishes to everyone for happy flights!

 

 

 

 

 

[Captain Kevin 586]

28 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Given the many tremendous benefits of Shared Cockpit, you'd think that everyone would be doing it!  Though the numbers of people enjoying this incredible type of flying is growing it's not for everyone, and no matter how much I think everyone ought to be enjoying Shared Cockpit I'm not about to tell someone they're wrong for not doing it.

Not always easy to find somebody who will fly with you. Not including anybody from any online flight simulator forum, I can count on one hand people I know who would actually fly with me. Unfortunately, these days, time is a limiting factor, so as cool as it would be, it would be a little difficult to make it happen under the circumstances.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

1 minute ago, Captain Kevin said:

Not always easy to find somebody who will fly with you. Not including anybody from any online flight simulator forum, I can count on one hand people I know who would actually fly with me. Unfortunately, these days, time is a limiting factor, so as cool as it would be, it would be a little difficult to make it happen under the circumstances.

 

I agreed. We're doing something about this at Aerosoft (search the A330 Preview forum for "Connected Flight Deck" for more info), but in the end it's easiest if one belongs to a group or Virtual Airline who does this.

 

[doylie22 5]

5 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

 

I agreed. We're doing something about this at Aerosoft (search the A330 Preview forum for "Connected Flight Deck" for more info), but in the end it's easiest if one belongs to a group or Virtual Airline who does this.

 

Just need to find some like minded individuals. I've successfully completed many CFD flights with members of my Vatsim ARTCC.

That and my college roommate got into flight sim once he saw me doing it. Eventually we were CFD sitting next to each other. Incredible stuff.

This is probably the ONLY think PMDG is not going in their products that they could be investing worthy time in. Imagine a shared cockpit 777 flight? Incredible.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

Friends,

To prevent my derailing this thread further (sorry), I created a "Status of FSX/P3D Shared Cockpit - 2017" thread in the Shared Cockpit forum, and addressed a few things that people might find to be of interest.  The link is below.

 

Best wishes.

 

 

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Gents,

A not-so-gentle reminder to everyone in this thread that your opinion is yours alone.  Others may have different opinions, and theirs are equally valuable to them.  Because someone has different priorities than you does not make him wrong- and you will treat his opinion with the same respect you would give to someone who agrees with your point of view.

Also- I would like to stomp publicly on the toes of anyone in this thread who tosses out phrases like, "now that we have no limits" or "I expect this" or "it is easy to do" or "PMDG won't because."  These over-generalizations are always wrong- usually misinformed- and almost always simply a strident way of stating what is otherwise your opinion based loosely on what you would like for us to do.

If you have questions, please ask them- but do not tell us what we SHOULD do unless you buy the company and thus assume that right in the transaction.

 

[anden145 2,285]

The more you disagree with a person, the more politely you should address them.