Farewell FSW

[bonchie 2,305]

2 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

No we're not.  Code is not outdated it's constantly being updated by LM and LR, it's just setup to operate at a global level and current limitations of hardware which are still very much a limiting factor in what can be simulated in real time.  As a matter of fact, I'm working with some code right now ... originally created by myself and another developer written in 2005 ... I did NOT toss all the code, I just made some adjustments and updates to it and it's work perfectly, job done in a couple of weeks rather than re-writing it from scratch that would take a couple of months and produce the same end result.  Just because code is old does NOT mean it's crap.  ACE's Development team were exceptionally talented developers and the state of pixels and binary permutations hasn't really changed other than the improvement in hardware shifts ordering of rendering and adds techniques that the GPU can handle ... maybe when quantum computing (and computers) becomes mainstream software engineers will have an entirely different construct, but until that happens, the transistor still rules the day, just lots of them opening and closing very fast.

Sorry man. We normally agree, but the P3D engine is dated.

I don't care about what's under the hood or how the code has technically advanced. Graphically, it looks way, way out of date. While I'm happy for the many improvements LM has made to many grahpical elements, the general FSX-esque presentation of the landclass system, resolutions, and general scenery is still there.

Edited April 27, 2018 by bonchie

[bonchie 2,305]

2 hours ago, pmb said:

So this predicts a bright future for AeroflyFS2. It got rid of the ugly landclass system, sports a "modern, beautiful engine" (at least compared to FSX/ESP or XP) and has a "limited geographic area (but not Hawaii ... but a well done US state)". It now has even more regions, including really well done ones like the NY region.

So we clearly have a winner. I hope you are right - seriously in fact.

Kind regards, Michael

Notice I said it can't be feature stripped though. Whatever someone offers, it can't be lacking so many basic features that people look past the graphical improvements because they just can't do without ATC or weather.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Sorry man. We normally agree, but the P3D engine is dated.

No need to apologize at all, polite disagreements are more than welcome ... nobody needs to think alike all the time and we are all just expressing our POVs.

Besides, I agree with you somewhat, the "out of box" experience for P3D does look dated, the terrain the buildings the roads.  However toss a bunch of add-ons some weather and it can look very good.  I think XP11 has a much better "out of box" experience.  FSW "out of box" experience was a little better than P3D but not much.  AF2 "out of box" experience was nice but very limited (essentially no weather, no water, and large chunks of void).  DCS "out of box" experience is very nice but again very limited to area size, no weather, etc. etc. ... you see the pattern developing for each small development ... they have some really nice stuff but missing so much else.

Combined, we might have just been able to have our cake and eat it today rather than what we currently have with fragmented sims with missing elements.

Cheers, Rob.

[bonchie 2,305]

42 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

The old engine/old code nonsense that occasionally shows up here in threads is not the theory of the Rob Aincoughs and the Jay Bloomfields of the world, but rather people with little or no professional background in either computer programming or simulation modeling. Somehow, people feel that everything in high tech must be developed from scratch. if that was the case, we'd still be in the Stone Age. The vast majority (if not all) major video game titles rely primarily on both middleware and the OS to handle most of the tasks at hand. That frees the developers to spend their creative energies on gameplay logic and modeling. I already pointed out how long its take both LM and LR to get to where they are today. But DCS is going to be ten years old this year. And IPACS has been doing flight simulators for twice as long (1998).  So when is "code" new?

Read my post. I said developers can't keep rehashing the same thing. I realize that old code can be updated. Heck, that's what DCS did and I was using them as an example.

What I don't think can succeed is yet another FSX clone where none of the underlying scenery engine is really changed, i.e. FSW putting lipstick on FSX while it still looks 99% the same.

 

Edited April 27, 2018 by bonchie

[bonchie 2,305]

1 minute ago, Rob Ainscough said:

No need to apologize at all, polite disagreements are more than welcome ... nobody needs to think alike all the time and we are all just expressing our POVs.

Besides, I agree with you somewhat, the "out of box" experience for P3D does look dated, the terrain the buildings the roads.  However toss a bunch of add-ons some weather and it can look very good.  I think XP11 has a much better "out of box" experience.  FSW "out of box" experience was a little better than P3D but not much.  AF2 "out of box" experience was nice but very limited (essentially no weather, no water, and large chunks of void).  DCS "out of box" experience is very nice but again very limited to area size, no weather, etc. etc. ... you see the pattern developing for each small development ... they have some really nice stuff but missing so much else.

Combined, we might have just been able to have our cake and eat it today rather than what we currently have with fragmented sims with missing elements.

Cheers, Rob.

My #1 biggest issue with P3D at this point is something addons can't change, and that's the scenery presentation in how it handles landclass, cities, etc. My #2 is the night experience. I can't even play P3D at night anymore after using XP11 and DCS. It just looks bad to me.

[HiFlyer 9,345]

1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Your comparing apples to oranges, the market for potential buyers of automobiles is drastically different from market of potential buyers of flight simulators.  Smaller markets have less options to the point where "crowd funding" is sometimes needed which has been used in the FS arena especially around high quality FF controllers and even some scenery development.

The key operative word being "sometimes"

I don't know what the market is for flight sims. I do know it was once much larger, but then something happened and we fell into our current state of nichedom. Perhaps we're doing it wrong. Perhaps something needs to change. Perhaps there are other ways, but if we decide beforehand that any new attempt is futile, we self-select for eventual stagnation/failure. It's said with good reason that the only absolutely foolproof way to fail is to convince yourself to never even try.

I myself refuse to believe that the only logical future for flight simulation is infinite coats of paint for FSX.

1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I also don't understand the reference to "targeting" ... a new user that doesn't know how to fly can be just as "at home" in P3D or XP11 as any other simulator ... there is no barrier to age groups, interest levels, experience levels.

I see and saw pretty huge barriers. I saw them when I first arrived back on the scene, and in some ways the learning curve has only gotten steeper. Once upon a time, FSX was the gateway, with bright colors, a friendly voice, and an open acknowledgement that it was for everyone. It became the most popular civilian sim, ever.

Years later, in comparison, I feel P3D is not at all consumer/noob friendly, and that's not surprising since it was never intended to be. Its an adjunct for military training!

It's a very....(deep voice) serious sim, and as utilitarian in approach as a swiss army knife: no friendly guiding voices, missions.......... or fun. (no smiling!)

Moving to X-Plane, I couldn't even get near it till version 11 really, and that was only after a couple of years intermittently learning its foibles through the lifetime of version 10.

My first experience was actually version 9, and the memory of my hair practically standing straight up in horror as I was plopped at the controls of a 747 and essentially told to have a nice day, then presented with the most opaque user interface ever when I tried to figure out what the heck was happening. 😱

If that was my first introduction to simming, it would have ended right there!

Fortunately, X-plane is MUCH friendlier than that now, (hence its increased popularity, I think) but I still don't know if its a good starter sim yet. Better than P3D, I think, but FSW was supremely welcoming. Unfortunately it seems to have disturbed the status quo enough that many seem quite happy to have it go away so things can return to.... normal?

Now it's gone, I raise my eyebrows a bit. Are we turning to the next target(s) in line?

Do we really believe there can be only one, and that that would be a good thing? (I discount the talk of X-plane: it feels rightly or wrongly like obligatory political correctness when I suspect many really just want P3D)

[Guest]

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

Do we really believe there can be only one, and that that would be a good thing?

Two seems about right for this market size.  3rd party content providers might like just one platform as that means they don't have to learn two different methods of getting the same job done.

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

but if we decide beforehand that any new attempt is futile, we self-select for eventual stagnation/failure. It's said with good reason that the only absolutely foolproof way to fail is to convince yourself to never even try.

I didn't suggest giving up, I suggested be smart about development resource and investments.  If an investor(s) is sitting on some cash, not enough to do a full blown FS platform, but "some", then put the "some" to best use possible and don't re-invent the wheel, us the "some" to make the existing better ... approach those establish entities (LM/LR) and try to make deals/agreements that would benefit everyone.  That's certainly not giving up, it's getting from A to B faster with more features.

Cheers, Rob.

[pmb 5,137]

5 hours ago, bonchie said:

Notice I said it can't be feature stripped though. Whatever someone offers, it can't be lacking so many basic features that people look past the graphical improvements because they just can't do without ATC or weather.

Not sure about weather, but IPACS is working on ATC really hard and they realized it's a paramount feature. Which should include some sort of AI planes, otherwise wouldn't make sense. On the other hand, I am sure they'll have done it right, when it arrives.

Kind regards, Michael

[tonywob 4,768]

44 minutes ago, pmb said:

On the other hand, I am sure they'll have done it right, when it arrives.

I hope so since nobody else has managed to do a good job of this so far. There's hope they'll come up with something incredible 🙂

 

[G-RFRY 1,708]

The only way someone is going to throw money into a modern flight sim on todays or tomorrows tech it will have to run on a game console, the specs of which are set in stone and a top title will sell more in a month than any flight sim to date, top titles on game consoles can sell over 1million copies in a very short time at £50 a pop that's a lot bread.  

[Guest]

15 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

AF2 may not officially announce "retirement" but I'll be surprised if we see major growth in that platform any time soon.  Sure they've release a few airports/scenery and added a few aircraft, but relative to what's been released for XP11 and P3D those are MANY orders of magnitude higher (for every 1 location/airport in AF2, 150 locations/airports and 100+ aircraft are released for P3D).

Agreed. Unfortunately.

14 hours ago, Paraffin said:

What are you offering that I can't already get in the sim I'm currently flying? 

Aerofly offers a totally different engine (in all possible ways) with extremely good performance (so far). FSW was more or less FSX repackaged.

10 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

How about this scenario, the developers from FSW help get LM to PBR, the iPACS developers help get LM better quality photoreal scenery, allowing the LM core team to focus on fixing their ever shape shifting elevation mesh issues and bring DX12 with SFR DMA support so we can achieve solid 60-120 FPS regardless of what we toss at it.  Same type of scenario could be done for XP.  The growth possibilities of adding additional resource into existing two major platforms far exceeds the "start from scratch" or "I can do it better" philosophy ... far less financial risk also. 

I think this is a unrealistic scenario that will never happen. Why? Imagine LM working on their sim one sunny day and then they get a call from someone. "Hey, I've got a great idea to make your sim better. Let's meet and then I will help your sim to become better." What do you think LM will say...? "Yeah, right. Bye bye" after which they will say to each other "Who was that lunatic?"
Your scenario may only possibly works if the guy who calls can show he has done something good already, like creating a sim of their own. But if he has done so, why give over their company to another one? They spend years on something and then they just give up to improve the product of the competition? It just doesn't work this way.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, pmb said:

Not sure about weather, but IPACS is working on ATC really hard and they realized it's a paramount feature

They've been working very hard undoubtedly but they are moving too slow. ATC has been announced 'ages' ago already. In September 2017 they announced to give a preview soon but we still haven't seen anything of it. I asked about this on the IPACS forum last week: not a WORD. I seriously doubt if we will see ATC this year and I also really wonder how good it will be (looking at thow hard it seems to be to create a good ATC addon for P3D).

About they weather: they haven't even acknowledged yet that they will work in it in the future. I've asked about this a hundred times because imho a flightsim without weather can't be called a flightsim. So don't expect weather in Aerofly before, let's say, 2020. But taking into account how slow the development is going for ATC I think we won't see any weather before 2022 or 2023, Thats is if IPACS ever decides to work on it. Yes, I am very sceptic and pessimistic about the future of Aerofly. Progress is very slow and there is no communication at all with the developers themselves (the guys who do post on the forum aren't the main developers of IPACS). The ONLY hope I've got is that 3rd parties will get involved but that also doesn't seem to work out well (apart from Orbx).

Edited April 27, 2018 by Guest

[Christopher Low 5,341]

In my opinion, we do not need another "global" flight simulator. P3D and X-Plane do that just fine. As far as I am concerned, any developer that wants to enter the flight simulation market needs to bring something new to the table. I would argue that a self contained feature complete simulation would be of interest. A simulator that has everything required "straight out of the box". By this, I mean.....high resolution photorealistic graphics and terrain mesh, detailed airports, a handful of feature complete aircraft, a fully working ATC environment, realistic AI planes, accurate flight dynamics (including realistic floatplane/water physics), variable weather with realistic cloud formations/fronts/precipitation effects etc, good quality night lighting, and a landscape filled with realistic 3D buildings/trees/landmarks. In other words, a simulator that does not need addons to make it look/sound/feel great from the start. Something along the lines of "Flight Unlimited : The Next Generation".

Of course, the question here would be.......could a developer create something like this at a cost that would make it commercially profitable for them? That is a big question, and it is entirely possible that the answer to this question is a resounding "NO".

When I first saw Aerofly FS2, it reminded me of the "Flight Unlimited : The Next Generation" of my dreams. The South Western USA region is much, much bigger than the San Francisco and Seattle high resolution regions of Flight Unlimited 2 and 3, and the landscape is based on high resolution photoscenery. What I would like to see would be this region "fleshed out" with detailed 3D landmarks and autogen, a working ATC environment, realistic AI planes and flightplans, and the accurate water physics that I mentioned above. In other words, a self contained and believable environment that has something for everyone.....bush flyers, GA flyers, and a region large enough for even tubeliner pilots to be able to enjoy. However, I worry that Aerofly FS2 is going to be pushed towards being yet another global simulator, with pockets of detail scattered across the globe......and I am not sure that this is what it really should be. The VR potential of Aerofly FS2 is apparently highly rated, and I guess that areas like ORBx Innsbruck and Chicago look absolutely amazing, but......I can't help thinking that it would be even more amazing to concentrate on that one large region of South Western USA, and make it a truly immersive simulated environment that would take months to explore in detail.

I think I am probably living in a world that vanished 15 years ago

Edited April 27, 2018 by Christopher Low

[Buffy Foster 133]

Consoles, LOL.

[Wobbie 938]

Well, Christopher, believe it or not, there are actually many simmers that are not interested in only flying in certain regions of the USA, & there are also those of us what want to dip our toes in other regions as well, so, we actually do want a 'global' sim, with scenery that we can add, if required.

That's the whole fun of simming, & entertainment. There are also some of us that do not want all the bells & whistles of PMDG type aircraft as well.

Just sayin'