1 minute ago, eslader said:

Although one does sometimes have to wonder. They include the F22. That's not for training purposes. The Air Force has much better training facilities than sticking a PC into a corner. They include the Connie, which is great, but it's guaranteed no one's "training" how to fly one of those.

... Not to mention the inclusion of a submarine. Pretty good bet anyone fooling with the sub is playing, not learning. 😉

 

What I really find points to home simmers getting some love besides their main interest are things like volumetric fog, precipitation improvements, introduction and improvement of dynamic lighting, better AA options, performance enhancements, setting up a more addon friendly environment (xml method)... there are things that I think the US air force training department couldn't care less about.

10 minutes ago, eslader said:

Although one does sometimes have to wonder. They include the F22. That's not for training purposes. The Air Force has much better training facilities than sticking a PC into a corner. They include the Connie, which is great, but it's guaranteed no one's "training" how to fly one of those.

... Not to mention the inclusion of a submarine. Pretty good bet anyone fooling with the sub is playing, not learning. 😉

 

Maybe that was all included just to make it attractive to a normal end user?  Who knows.  Them doing P3D at all has been odd to me, even from the first time I heard the name  

At the end of the day they can pull the rug out at any moment, and nothing about building out the 13 year old core ESP is even remotely a blip on their corporate budget/interest radar  

The reality is that if there is good third-party support for this new simulator, most everybody will move off of P3D even if right now they say they won’t. 

Edited June 20, 20196 yr by irrics

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

They bailed us out when Microsoft dumped flight sim. I'm still pretty antagonistic towards Microsoft because this is a very different company to the one that Bill Gates formed. Greed springs to mind.

But why are people mad about MS for dropping FS and what they did with Flight? It's a business, they're there to produce and sell goods and make profit. It's not a charity. When they decide to stop developing flight sims it's a disappointment to us all, including me, but decisions like that is what any company does every day. When they decide to turn Flight more into an arcade game instead of a sim that we know, they're free to do so. They don't owe us or anyone anything. It's entirely their decision and right what to do in terms of FS.

5 minutes ago, threegreen said:

But why are people mad about MS for dropping FS and what they did with Flight? It's a business, they're there to produce and sell goods and make profit. It's not a charity. When they decide to stop developing flight sims it's a disappointment to us all, including me, but decisions like that is what any company does every day. When they decide to turn Flight more into an arcade game instead of a sim that we know, they're free to do so. They don't owe us or anyone anything. It's entirely their decision and right what to do in terms of FS.

I never said they should be a charity. They need to produce something for a reasonable price that customers find attractive and will buy and makes Microsoft money. Flight failed because Microsoft got greedy and was charging for things that should be included in the basic package.

I feel they will go the same way with FS2020. Fine but if it's expensive I won't be buying.

@Ray Proudfoot Also, you talked about how 3rd party developers are going to get in trouble if MS actually takes off (pun absolutely intended). I'm grateful for everything they've developed for the likes of P3D et al, but it's not like this wasn't foreseeable. When you start a business based on developing things for another product on the market, you entirely depend on said product. It it goes away, so does your business. If people switch to a substitute and the product becomes obsolete, so will your own products because the demand is gone. Now I don't think it will be anywhere near as brutal as in theory for 3rd party developers, but anyone who started off with this kind of business model should've been wary of the possibility of what may be happening when MFS is released. It's not like it was out of question there will be another sim at some point and might change the way of things as we're accustomed to.

43 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

I think you did not get my point, which was to challenge being somewhat skeptic, afraid even, of the new MSFS because it won’t support FSUIPC.

The native tools that XP11 provides for setting up one’s flight controls are light-years ahead of what P3D offers. Will it fit each and every hardcore sim-pit configuration out there? Of course not...

Nevertheless, I am really happy that I can setup my Joystick/Throttle/Rudder and VR Controls for each aircraft that I fly individually and with a visual representation of my hardware. I hope MSFS will follow suit...

I agree about the great flexibility in XP11 to assign controls on a per-aircraft basis.

There is one possible fly in the ointment with the idea of having all this done within the sim platform. Laminar can't anticipate everything, so they allow 3rd party aircraft developers to load their own custom control assignments as a plugin. 

For example, this lets me open the standard control assignment menu in XP11, and look for the custom plugin assignments for the X-Trident Bell 412. I can then map things like auto-hover, searchlight control, sling load ops etc. on my HOTAS controls or keyboard.

As long as an aircraft developer thinks of what's needed in advance, they can include every conceivable operation you'd want to perform as a custom plugin that automatically loads custom assignments when the aircraft is launched. It's a beautiful system for aircraft developers who take advantage of it, and it's not something you'd expect from the base simulator.

So there's the rub. If the new MSFS supports 3rd party add-ons, they could include this kind of custom controls functionality, whether those add-ons are sold outside the MS ecosystem or as part of a MS storefront.

Of course if every aircraft is built completely in-house by MS, the control assignments can be built into the sim itself. But that's unlikely, I think.

15 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I feel they will go the same way with FS2020. Fine but if it's expensive I won't be buying.

You're saying yourself Flight failed because of that. Why do you think a company like MS would blatantly make the very same mistake again?

Besides, I think that's not the reason Flight failed. You're not going to get a lot of the mainstream gamers overly interested in flight simming. Flight didn't appeal to most simmers and not to many gamers either. Which makes it even more unlikely they will develop a Flight 2.0, imo.

Edited June 20, 20196 yr by threegreen

5 minutes ago, threegreen said:

You're saying yourself Flight failed because of that. Why do you think a company like MS would blatantly make the very same mistake again?

He is again concluding it based on a false premise. MS Flight was free, how would that be considered being greedy?

It was a big failure most probably because it lost the Flight Simulator series essence.

In the simmarket you will spend 100x the price of the base sim in add-ons and the simmers are willing to pay. Why offering the base game for free and charging for the airplanes and sceneries would be considered greedy? I would say the reason it failed was it wasn't accepted by the consumers because it wasn't appeling enought.

Edited June 20, 20196 yr by ca_metal

@threegreen, I really don't want to debate this any longer. I've read the points you've made. Each of us has an opinion. That's fine.

I guess it's naive and I'm getting lazier.  But, at 67 years old and many years of flight simming, I'd really like to see a sim that I can install and then not spend the next few months adding a bunch of stuff to get decent scenery, traffic, ATC, aircraft or weather. 

Or, if extra stuff was needed (and I know that will continue to be likely), let's add it and keep it updated within the sim.  If I have to go through the challenge of updating a Flight 1 product again, my beer fridge will quickly be empty!

Yes, the current versions of XP and P3D "work" out of the box.  But, I would never consider flying with either of them without a number of scenery addons, aircraft and other utilities. 

If a subscription system can offer that convenience, I'm willing to give it a shot.

6 minutes ago, ricka47 said:

I guess it's naive and I'm getting lazier.  But, at 67 years old and many years of flight simming, I'd really like to see a sim that I can install and then not spend the next few months adding a bunch of stuff to get decent scenery, traffic, ATC, aircraft or weather.

Most, probably everyone would agree here I think. There are basically two types of addons: addons that make up for and fix things the base sim is lacking and addons that add something new. The latter will always be there, provided MS allow for it, like aircraft and airport scenery, and that's a good thing. The former, however, should really be coming with the base sim.

13 minutes ago, ricka47 said:

I guess it's naive and I'm getting lazier.  But, at 67 years old and many years of flight simming, I'd really like to see a sim that I can install and then not spend the next few months adding a bunch of stuff to get decent scenery, traffic, ATC, aircraft or weather. 

Or, if extra stuff was needed (and I know that will continue to be likely), let's add it and keep it updated within the sim.  If I have to go through the challenge of updating a Flight 1 product again, my beer fridge will quickly be empty!

Yes, the current versions of XP and P3D "work" out of the box.  But, I would never consider flying with either of them without a number of scenery addons, aircraft and other utilities. 

If a subscription system can offer that convenience, I'm willing to give it a shot.

I have the exact same feeling at about half your age!! I can't take one more re-installation of P3D!

It is so much more convenient to install addons via a marketplace. Hopefully Microsoft will build this into MSFS and charge a fair percentage, so that developers can adopt the MS Store as a standard and a full re-installation may be done in a mostly automated way.

The way it works today is a total disgrace...

Edited June 20, 20196 yr by GCBraun

2 minutes ago, ricka47 said:

I guess it's naive and I'm getting lazier.  But, at 67 years old and many years of flight simming, I'd really like to see a sim that I can install and then not spend the next few months adding a bunch of stuff to get decent scenery, traffic, ATC, aircraft or weather. 

Or, if extra stuff was needed (and I know that will continue to be likely), let's add it and keep it updated within the sim.  If I have to go through the challenge of updating a Flight 1 product again, my beer fridge will quickly be empty!

Yes, the current versions of XP and P3D "work" out of the box.  But, I would never consider flying with either of them without a number of scenery addons, aircraft and other utilities. 

If a subscription system can offer that convenience, I'm willing to give it a shot.

I'm with you! I'm "just" in my 40s, but I'm tired of the current offerings and haven't had a sim running for about a year. With the new sim I don't see myself buying any addon unless it is integrated into the Xbox ecosystem and authorized by Microsoft, and everything is linked to a single user account. I'm not ungrateful for all the great things that 3PDs have brought to the hobby, but for me personally, it has become too complex, too expensive and too cumbersome to get it all working (together). 

36 minutes ago, ricka47 said:

I guess it's naive and I'm getting lazier.  But, at 67 years old and many years of flight simming, I'd really like to see a sim that I can install and then not spend the next few months adding a bunch of stuff to get decent scenery, traffic, ATC, aircraft or weather. 

Or, if extra stuff was needed (and I know that will continue to be likely), let's add it and keep it updated within the sim.  If I have to go through the challenge of updating a Flight 1 product again, my beer fridge will quickly be empty!

Yes, the current versions of XP and P3D "work" out of the box.  But, I would never consider flying with either of them without a number of scenery addons, aircraft and other utilities. 

If a subscription system can offer that convenience, I'm willing to give it a shot.

Hey, I'm 24 and I am as lazy as you! 😂
I just want something that is at least at the level of other games: auto update, no external addon-manager each with their settings, ecc.

Something like steam workshop where when the developer/modder updates his product/free mod, that is automatically updated in your PC. Easy as that.

Edited June 20, 20196 yr by francy25
grammar errors

I'm 69 3/4.  I have a few aircraft.  I have Active Sky plus Cloud Art.  I have Accu-Feel.  I don't need anything else.

I once tried a scenery demo, decided it wasn't enough of an improvement to warrant having it, and uninstalled it.  Then it took a total wipe and reinstall of P3D to get rid of what it messed up elsewhere.  I'm glad it's available for those who want it.  I've seen some great screen shots.  Maybe it's just a style thing, like liking Anime style, but I like the default.  Yeah, some things could be improved.

Having a new world will be pretty cool.  Having everything under one roof, so a reinstall is a "one button click process" would be great.  Photo detail of ground textures is good.  Giving up your favorite aircraft might not be so good, but you'll develop new favorites, which you'll miss if you go back to FSX/P3D/XP11.  Any outside purchases probably won't be covered under the "one button" reinstall though.

Still looking forward to what we might get.  I'm excited by the potential of what we might see.  It'll be fun in any case.

Hook