New MS Flight Sim shown at E3

[787WannabePilot 12]

2 hours ago, irrics said:

 

No joke - Also, how do we know the next gen Xbox won't be more full fledged right out of the box?

It might more seriously go after the PC gamer market and offer keyboard/mouse/other peripherals right out of the gate in an effort to be the one stop gaming solution for many users.

 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7122455/Microsoft-unveils-gen-Project-Scarlett-Xbox-console-release-2020.html

 

Funny you should mention the next gen Xbox.

[Pastaiolo 1,688]

Was there a statement from Aerosoft so far regarding that Airbus?

[be77solo 125]

12 hours ago, Sethos1988 said:

Game Pass is a service that allows access to a full library of games at a monthly fee. Something a lot of platforms, including Microsoft has pushed heavily for years now. It's not a service to provide exclusive games that you need to subscribe for. Everything can still be bought outright. The idea is to let people play and try hundreds of games at a small price, instead of buying one game at 60 dollars.

Man, I've read you defend Game Pass so many times in this thread, and few here seem to get it.... I know you are frustrated ha.

GAME PASS doesn't mean streaming subscription gaming, it just allows you to download and install on your own machine the game (SAME AS IF YOU BOUGHT IT) and then play it (and tons more) while you have a subscription. This isn't Netflix, think more Blockbuster where you have the actual disk...….

I have a PC.  I have an Xbox One X.  With GAME PASS, I can download and play games, same as I bought them.....  on either platform, depending where the said game is available.

I can still BUY THE GAME IN FULL WITH A DISCOUNT and NO LONGER NEED THE GAME PASS.  I'm not streaming anything......

[Sethos 4,343]

6 minutes ago, be77solo said:

Man, I've read you defend Game Pass so many times in this thread, and few here seem to get it.... I know you are frustrated ha.

GAME PASS doesn't mean streaming subscription gaming, it just allows you to download and install on your own machine the game (SAME AS IF YOU BOUGHT IT) and then play it (and tons more) while you have a subscription. This isn't Netflix, think more Blockbuster where you have the actual disk...….

I have a PC.  I have an Xbox One X.  With GAME PASS, I can download and play games, same as I bought them.....  on either platform, depending where the said game is available.

I can still BUY THE GAME IN FULL WITH A DISCOUNT and NO LONGER NEED THE GAME PASS.  I'm not streaming anything......

Ouch, misread that for a second. You're right, it does become a bit comical at one point. Think a lot of simmers are very out of touch with the other side of gaming, so this is all very new and daunting, causing a lot of confusion.

Edited June 10, 2019 by Sethos1988

[micstatic 4,319]

I'm always curious why everybody is so curious about ATC.  Why would you want in-game ATC when you can have VATSIM?  Literally curious.  

[overspeed3 410]

I have FSX-Steam:  When I saw the video about a possible 2019 MS PC version, fireworks were going off in my head.  Then I look down at my 2015 "state of the art" PC.  Now I think, "I'm probably gonna need a bigger boat"...

[irrics 1,517]

5 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I'm always curious why everybody is so curious about ATC.  Why would you want in-game ATC when you can have VATSIM?  Literally curious.  

I’m sure that many of us just would like to be able to enjoy ATC services without having to use any 3rd party services or even necessarily interact with any other people in real time, etc. 

 

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I'm always curious why everybody is so curious about ATC.  Why would you want in-game ATC when you can have VATSIM?  Literally curious.  

Could be many reasons. Not everyone flies in a part of the world covered by VATSIM. That's probably the main one. Even in parts of the world covered by VATSIM, there may not be coverage of smaller airports. 

Finally, not everyone wants interaction with a live human. With today's voice synth and voice recognition technology, and available data, it just shouldn't be that hard to create a minimal programmed ATC system built into the sim.

[blueshark747 1,843]

10 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I'm always curious why everybody is so curious about ATC.  Why would you want in-game ATC when you can have VATSIM?  Literally curious.  

What does VATSIM have to do with this new title?

[snglecoil 1,828]

11 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I'm always curious why everybody is so curious about ATC.  Why would you want in-game ATC when you can have VATSIM?  Literally curious.  

Coverage 

[DaWu 779]

17 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I'm always curious why everybody is so curious about ATC.  Why would you want in-game ATC when you can have VATSIM?  Literally curious.  

Cos I never have and never will fly online

[dave2013 1,130]

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

While I'm excited for this new entry to flight sims (mainly as a competitive push for other platforms), I feel compelled to offer a contrasting viewpoint on the scenery approach. 🙂

I know orthoscenery is probably the most popular type here at Avsim, but not everyone prefers it over landclass + data-driven autogen. My personal beefs with orthoscenery are these below, and it's because I do a lot of my flying at lower altitudes in bush planes and helicopters:

• Immersion-breaking artifacts like "squashed" cars and buildings, and shadows that don't track the current sun angle.
• Clashes with autogen roads and moving cars that don't match the underlying photo.
• Poor to nonexistent night lighting.
• Difficulty in landing helicopters away from airports, when the ground turns into a pixellated blur and I can't see texture to judge my height.
• Unrealistic response to sunlight at low angles and changing color of sunlight at dawn or dusk.
• Poor to nonexistent coverage at decent resolutions for large parts of the world, many of which are incredibly interesting for "bush" flying. 
• "Stretched" bitmaps on near-vertical surfaces when 2D orthos are layered onto 3D terrain mesh. You can see this even on a high quality orthoscenery product like Orbx GB South on the southern chalk cliffs.
• No seasonal changes without complete texture replacement.

That last one is huge, although it doesn't seem to have hurt the Orbx business model too much. Does everyone really enjoy always flying at noon on a Summer day?

There have been hints from Laminar about procedural seasonal changes, things like trees dropping leaves dynamically in Autumn, particle-based snow on autogen building rooftops, which could (in theory) come and go based on injected real weather data. Of course that's all talk and no action so far, but potential for procedural generation using a mix of landclass and data instead of satellite orthophotos is huge. We're just not there yet.

Now, orthoscenery does look great at higher altitudes, no contest (if you ignore night flying). Much of what I'm griping about disappears if you're the kind of sim pilot who zooms in a tubeliner from a 3D airport up to the flight levels, and then lands at a 3D airport without seeing much of the ground in between, except at high altitude.

I do hope this new project is successful, if only to spur progress in the other sim platforms. And who knows, maybe it will even convert skeptical 'ol me to the streamed orthophoto approach. 
 

I share your concerns in regards to the orthoscenery.  Actually, I've personally never been a huge fan of it.  ORBX Trueearth has changed my view on this as they've been able to combine, or so it seems to me, orthoscenery with landclass, vector scenery, night lighting, airports, etc.  I'm hoping that the new MSFS will use this approach.  Hopefully they can improve the 3D trees which just don't look good.

I think the seasonal changes can be implemented using shading techniques such as texture color changes.  Add to that accumulating snow, wet surfaces, and changing autogen vegetation and you have seasonal changes without having to have 5 separate texture sets.  Of course, I've always said that any seasonal changes must be based on location and the time of year which requires something akin to the seasons.bgl file we have now, which unfortunately is not very accurate and makes very coarse date-based seasonal changes. 

Dave

[dave2013 1,130]

2 hours ago, irrics said:

Are we sure this won't be a locally installed game and only the scenery would be streamed (and likely cached locally)?

That would avert most all latency concerns during actual usage.

This what I believe they'll do.  The local storage requirements for photoscenery for the entire world is huge and just not practical unless you're willing to spend a lot of money.

I don't see latency as an issue because the sim would simply download and cache/buffer the photoscenery within a certain radius of your present position just as it loads it from your local hard drive now.

Again, this is all just speculation until MS reveals more.  It's sure fun to talk about it though!

Dave

[vortex681 806]

42 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I'm always curious why everybody is so curious about ATC.  Why would you want in-game ATC when you can have VATSIM?  Literally curious.  

Because VATSIM isn't always available for every region and airport that you may want to use. Unlike the real world, there's no guarantee that the controller you want to talk to will be there.

[Paraffin 2,197]

16 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

I share your concerns in regards to the orthoscenery.  Actually, I've personally never been a huge fan of it.  ORBX Trueearth has changed my view on this as they've been able to combine, or so it seems to me, orthoscenery with landclass, vector scenery, night lighting, airports, etc.  I'm hoping that the new MSFS will use this approach.  Hopefully they can improve the 3D trees which just don't look good.

I admit to being impressed by Orbx GB South (only one I've tried) in many areas. They seem to have solved the "can't see the ground" texture problem when landing a helicopter off-airport by patching in landclass textures. The UK-unique buildings and landmarks look great, and I like seeing cars driving on the left side of the road.

It still has many artifacts though, if you look for them (and I guess I'm naturally inclined to do that), like squashed car parks and the stretched bitmaps on cliff sides.

Quote

 

I think the seasonal changes can be implemented using shading techniques such as texture color changes.  Add to that accumulating snow, wet surfaces, and changing autogen vegetation and you have seasonal changes without having to have 5 separate texture sets. 

 

You may be right. We haven't seen an attempt yet at AI-driven, automated doctoring of orthos used as terrain. In theory that could work.

Of course, if software goes far enough in that direction and it has enough data to work with, it could just process the data and build accurate landclass textures and 3D buildings on the fly as well. Maybe just using orthophotos as a guide, and not what we actually end up seeing on the ground.

Along with tracking seasons, this "stream and build scenery on the fly" approach would have the advantage of being constantly updated to represent the real world based on the latest satellite imagery, compared to the "snapshot" we have now with orthophoto-based scenery.

Interesting times ahead.