New MS Flight Sim shown at E3

[Fedmediate 4]

OK, OK, OK. I can consume crow with the best of them. My apologies to ganter and TechguyMaxC  who turned out to be rightfully critical of my  skepticism on p64 here whether this new sim was a true sim with flight controls. I just view this Flightchannel.com video of a Microsoft Simulator 2019 flight from Denver to San Francisco in 4k. I saw switches being flicked on and off. The yoke moving. Instruments working. So my doubts were unjustified. I wish I had seen the video first. Sorry guys. Pass some more of that delicious crow.

 

[sharksfan166269 3]

24 minutes ago, Fedmediate said:

OK, OK, OK. I can consume crow with the best of them. My apologies to ganter and TechguyMaxC  who turned out to be rightfully critical of my  skepticism on p64 here whether this new sim was a true sim with flight controls. I just view this Flightchannel.com video of a Microsoft Simulator 2019 flight from Denver to San Francisco in 4k. I saw switches being flicked on and off. The yoke moving. Instruments working. So my doubts were unjustified. I wish I had seen the video first. Sorry guys. Pass some more of that delicious crow.

 

That’s just a clickbait YouTube video. That’s actually just the PMDG 777 and Flightbeam KSFO in P3D.

[Christopher Low 5,359]

Quote

By the looks of it, I’d wager that the majority of the planet will be using a traditional ground texture/landclass approach with a lot more high definition areas filled in with satellite imagery.

I sincerely hope this does not mean that the majority of the planet will be covered with similar rubbish looking landclass textures and autogen that we see in default FSX and P3D. That would be a massive disappointment.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Christopher Low

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

I sincerely hope this does not mean that the majority of the planet will be covered with similar rubbish looking landclass textures and autogen that we see in default FSX and P3D. That would be a massive disappointment.

Somehow you quoted me without quoting me.

I got that idea from watching the last trailer video broken down by a reasonable sounding person (link to video below) where it was showing that showed hard edges between snow covered mountains and a “default” style texture. Also toward the end of the video where it showed the giraffes walking around in high grass that was 3D (54:51 in video) that looked like a default style texture.

Having said that, I’d assume that due to the massive amount of data to stream or download the whole world would be prohibitive. We don’t need photo real oceans so that eliminates about 70% of photoreal data. Then minus remote desert areas in places like the Saudi Peninsula, unpopulated forest areas, remote parts of Russia and Asia, cover those with a more realistic default texture/landclass system and use the photoreal stuff for mid-large city centers and points of interest. Now you’ll have a smaller amount of data to either download permanently or stream if that’s the case.

I’m not suggesting that the default texture/landclass system would be as bad as it is now as they’ve had a lot of time to improve it, but it would make sense from a data storage standpoint to go that route for both them and the consumer, especially for the consumer with low speed connections and/or data caps.

You can see the non-photoreal looking textures as is the 54:51 mark in that video and it still looks good. Perhaps even something a 3rd party could improve if an SDK is released.

Personally that would be fine by me as I don’t need photoreal covering every square inch of the planet as I don’t fly every square inch of it and I’d assume that the majority of users are more interested in mid to large city areas with detailed cityscapes as shown in the video. I’d assume some compromise would have to be made like that, of course if you’re a user who lives in the middle of nowhere or an area that isn’t covered by the high detailed area, you might be disappointed if that’s where you do all your flying.

Of course it’s just a guess based on the video and what I’ve seen so far. Maybe the whole world, minus oceans and water bodies will be covered in some sort of photoreal, but it wasn’t shown like that in the video.

https://youtu.be/psZgtalap7Y

[Longranger 148]

On 6/15/2019 at 11:10 AM, pmb said:

Reading through several of the contributions, most people do think this will be a completely new engine (weather developed in-house or licensed) and a new sim from the ground up.

Well I would go a step further. I would guess the new server is based on their world simulator. You always have to be quite carefull with big companies. They have a lot of money but they also have a lot of projects that compete with each other. Most people have no understanding that this internal competition is sometimes harder, than the outside competition. I have seen multiple times thet in many cases they have no real hard feelings for their outside competitors. But the inside competition was quite a different question, because they are always compared with each other.

I think in this case Microsoft simply started some basic systems like the world project and a lot of games that play on these essentials. I think world and weather are parts of the essentials and the different teams have to take care how they can use them.

In the flight simulation we have some rather difficult problems. They are a lot of casual gamers but they only want to fly around and look at some places but then they would be done  if you don't bind them. So I would guess missions and a kind of mission system will play a rather big role. Furthermore online flights will be included but this is in fact a danger.You will always have a huge number of Kids and they don't want to follow the rules and instead try to crash in other planes.They will have to control these tendencies or they will frustrade their gamers.For some of the players the rules are an essential part of the world but on the other hand they don't want to fly waiting cycles while someone is waiting for them with dinner.

If it  is based on subscription money the flight simulator is one of the games that compete with each other for the number of players and the amount of time that they spend in the game.And each game will get a shop.And I think at its base they share one rendering engine that they can fine tune for themselves.

And then the different games have to cope more or less for themselves.For them the number of players, their time and the the amount of sold items is money, that they can spend for additional projects, special share in the world project to get elements that they can use especially well.

For Microsoft this makes a lot of sense but for the flight simulator itself it means trouble. They will always compete with other games. So it doesn't matter what features they promise and how motivated they are they always have to get the money first.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Longranger

[vodka69 13]

https://fselite.net/news/phil-spencer-on-microsoft-flight-simulators-return/

[vortex681 806]

8 minutes ago, vodka69 said:

https://fselite.net/news/phil-spencer-on-microsoft-flight-simulators-return/

It's nothing new - just a précis of the PC Gamer interview.

[Fedmediate 4]

7 hours ago, sharksfan166269 said:

That’s just a clickbait YouTube video. That’s actually just the PMDG 777 and Flightbeam KSFO in P3D.

It was touted as a 4k demo of the new Flight Simulator. Was I hustled by a fraud?

[Chock 17,769]

10 minutes ago, Fedmediate said:

It was touted as a 4k demo of the new Flight Simulator. Was I hustled by a fraud?

That'll be the good old 'quick, make a video on the latest hot topic so our youtube channel gets some view traffic' malarkey.

Don't sweat it, it's an annoyingly common phenomenon on youtube for channels which are desperate for clicks, views, and by association, some accompanying ad revenue, so it's not likely to cause you any real personal harm other than to have wasted your time somewhat. Although what these clowns forget is that I and most other people will not only not subscribe to channels which do stuff like that, but if I was previously subscribed, I will be prompted to unsubscribe if they do that kind of thing, and whilst I'm at it, I'll report them too.

So bear in mind that reporting stuff is always and option if you think you've been maliciously misled by something on youtube, but frankly if you reported every channel on youtube which does that, you'd be at it all day long.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Chock

[corinoco 22]

Quote

spectacular failure of FLIGHT which was an arcade point and fly game with no simulation whatsoever

Wow. Really? Did you actually ever try it?

One of the really sad things (and you can go back to late 2011 / early 2012 forums here and look) is that Flight was utterly panned by a very vocal subgroup of flight simmers. None of them ever downloaded or even tried Flight, but they utterly poisoned public perception of it.

Why? because of the business model MS chose for Flight - a single area for free, along with a modest selection of planes - and paid DLC to expand it. Yes - please remember that - MS FLIGHT WAS FREE. Many people forget that little fact! Funny thing - DCS lives using exactly the same business model.

MS latest foray? There's clearly knives out already; hopefully MS is better prepared (no pun intended) to weather the storm this time.

 

[Chock 17,769]

For those who are of the opinion that MS Flight was of no worth to a flight simmer into 'serious stuff', I recommend you check out this video on my channel where I compare one of the default MS Flight aeroplanes, to a very good XPlane add-on of the same type, as well as an FSX one of the same type, plus a P3D V4.5 one too. You'll see that the MS Flight aeroplane scores quite highly, and in more than one criteria, it is actually the better choice. If you don't want to watch the entire vid, just the bit which covers the MS Flight aeroplane, skip to around about the  22:30 time mark on the video:

 

Edited June 16, 2019 by Chock

[reignman40 450]

5 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I sincerely hope this does not mean that the majority of the planet will be covered with similar rubbish looking landclass textures and autogen that we see in default FSX and P3D. That would be a massive disappointment.

Maybe through AI they have built landclass through satellite imagery. Making it much more accurate than in the past by having even small towns that are at least the same size and shape as in real life.  

[pmb 5,138]

5 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I sincerely hope this does not mean that the majority of the planet will be covered with similar rubbish looking landclass textures and autogen that we see in default FSX and P3D. That would be a massive disappointment.

As far as I understand, Outerra

http://www.outerra.com/

which has been mentioned before, uses procedural scenery only, no aerial images at all. And I think most will agree it looks excellent, in no way resembling our landclasses inherited from the 1990s.

Now I don't think MS licensed Outerra technology (well, who knows), but it shows it can be done. As a sidenote, the full world-wide Outerra dataset is 40 GB.

Kind regards, Michael

[irrics 1,517]

18 hours ago, TechguyMaxC said:

Half the issues with 3rd party add-ons in ESP-based sims are things we will never have to waste our time or money on again.  Like weather.  And scenery. 

You wanna deal with that stuff go right ahead.  I'll be happy to put it behind me, and I know I'm not alone.

Thank you. You encapsulated the main point I was getting at  

If the Sim is more full featured to begin with (as it should be) we don’t need 3/4 of the nonsense addons that you have to use now just to make something look and work good 

Edited June 16, 2019 by irrics

[pmb 5,138]

Here's an interesting bit I just came across. Flyinside Flight SImulator - which I suppose only a few of you know and even less ever tried - will release an updated version streaming scenery directly from Bing Maps.

Here's the announcement by developer Dan Church:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/862390/discussions/0/1638662230370399158/

Don't forget to check the linked images. I wouldn't comment this at this stage, just make it known. As a sidenote, Flyinside Flight Simulator is (not unexpected) optimized for VR but runs also in 2D.

Kind regards, Michael