Yes I believe just the scenery should be cloud based and weather, but the core software and aircraft would be installed locally, that is what would make the most sense to me

8 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

We don't know if 3rd party scenery contribution will be possible at all. We will have to wait and see. It is not like MS can just make that happen if the technology they use doesn't support it. 

Personally, if this was my launch title, I wouldn't allow any 3rd party content for a long time to come. Every addon puts the base platform at risk - and at launch, I want it to be stable. Plus, processing support requests that actually stem from a 3rd party product compromising my platform, costs money too - cost that can be avoided.

Best regards

I would be dead against any block on 3rd party content. Take, for example' Milton Shupe (& team), his free add-ons are far better than payware.

Of course the base platform should be stable upon release, & it's the simmer/gamer's perogative to chose what he puts into the sim. If the sim is 'compromised'/crashes, just take that addon out. If it's freeware, obviously there is no cost.

5 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

Yes I believe just the scenery should be cloud based and weather, but the core software and aircraft would be installed locally, that is what would make the most sense to me

Indeed, with an Aircraft selection similar to FlightGear, where you can add aircraft from a pull down menu.

3 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

I would be dead against any block on 3rd party content. Take, for example' Milton Shupe (& team), his free add-ons are far better than payware.

Of course the base platform should be stable upon release, & it's the simmer/gamer's perogative to chose what he puts into the sim. If the sim is 'compromised'/crashes, just take that addon out. If it's freeware, obviously there is no cost. 

If the technology doesn't support it, there is no point in lamenting it. 

I was talking about the cost for Microsoft having to deal with support requests they are not responsible for. There is a difference between dealing with a couple of hundred enthusiasts consciously using a freeware product and a million people who just clicked on a couple of colorful things and downloaded something from somewhere. Their first port of call will always be Microsoft.

Best regards

IF (and that's a big if, since we know next to nothing about this) the scenery files and weather is generated in-the-cloud and then streamed to you (or the data is streamed, and you're responsible for rendering it), then I highly doubt we'll see any addons for either area. No addon scenery or scenery/texture replacements and possibly no airports or weather engine either... 

Where there could be room for it, is addon airplanes... but that highly depends on whether Microsoft opens the platform up, for any type of customization.

Somehow, I doubt it... but then again, I'm probably the most negative, cynical and pessimistic person in here, by the looks of things...

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by Anders Bermann

Just now, Anders Bermann said:

IF (and that's a big if, since we know next to nothing about this) the scenery files and weather is generated in-the-cloud and then streamed to you (or the data is streamed, and you're responsible for rendering it), then I highly doubt we'll see any addons for either area. No addon scenery or scenery/texture replacements and possibly no airports either... 

Where there could be room for it, is addon airplanes... but that highly depends on whether Microsoft opens the platform up, for any type of customization.

Somehow, I doubt it... but then again, I'm probably the most negative, cynical and pessimistic person in here, by the looks of things...

Nothing negative about it. What we are doing here is what every addon developer and competing flightsim company will be doing right now - risk assessment. Looking at every possible angle of how this will affect what we are currently doing, best and worst case, and how likely each scenario is. When time goes on, some scenarios will become more likely than others, and at some point, decisions need to be made. Project management in general has risk management as a fixed task that is constantly reevaluated. That is just normal business and has nothing to do with pessimism.

I am just contributing my thoughts as a big corporation guy - I have worked for a $50bn/150.000FTE company as software developer for a couple of decades, and that is what I know.

Best regards

13 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

If the technology doesn't support it, there is no point in lamenting it. 

I was talking about the cost for Microsoft having to deal with support requests they are not responsible for. There is a difference between dealing with a couple of hundred enthusiasts consciously using a freeware product and a million people who just clicked on a couple of colorful things and downloaded something from somewhere. Their first port of call will always be Microsoft.

Best regards

Cannot really lament about something that we actually have no clue about, at this stage.

Did we actually contact Microsoft in the good old days when we installed freeware that crashed?

So, if they do go the route where their addons will be curated, then they will obviously be, as you say, the first point of call...inagine the abount of gamers calling them for advice..

Anyhow, pure speculation.  :-)

  

A friend of a friend's cousin's sister's friend told me Bill Gates demanded his A2A C172 aircraft in this sim, so we're all safe now 🙂

In all seriousness, it would be silly for the sim not to allow addons in some shape or form. Microsoft can't possibly build every single airport, every city and every plane in the world out there by theirselves. It may be that the addons are only sold through Microsoft/Steam etc, but I want to be optimistic and think that they'll not only allow payware vendors, but also a healthy freeware community which has helped build up X-Plane's and AF2's popularity over the years. Without addons and the community, FSX wouldn't have sold millions of copies as they indicate, and I'm sure they realise this.

49 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Without addons and the community, FSX wouldn't have sold millions of copies as they indicate, and I'm sure they realise this

Really? So you are saying that people picked up a box of FSX at WalMart because there were addons for it and a "community"? I remember many many complaints from people who bought the sim and were deeply disappointed that it didn't look like the YouTube videos. And were shocked and daunted by the task of having to find/buy/download/install/manage a ton of addons to get there. Imagine just getting into the sim and flying, without all the rest. No more wasting time "hunting" addons, bugs, stutters… IMHO the latter only has appeal for us hobbyists (and I admit, it has lost its fascination for me - I hate having to do this).

IIRC AF2 didn't have addons either at launch. Imagine my example from above - MS just puts a "Flight Sim" tile next to CandyCrushSaga in the start menu of every new Win10 installation. Just a demo area with in-app purchase. I would think that sales would be pretty good, regardless of addons or community. That may come later but doesn't have to be the initial sales pitch. 

Best regards

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

Quote from YouTube Einstein in that video on Page 32 of this thread....

Quote

It looks exactly like FlightSim World

LOL to the nth power.

12 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

Really? So you are saying that people picked up a box of FSX at WalMart because there were addons for it and a "community"?

I did, based on FS9 and the addons I had at the time. Of course I'm not speaking for everyone. If there was no community making addons for my home area I'd have never bothered with FSX, nor would it have kept my interest very long. The same applies for X-Plane. How many people do you think buy P3D and FSX because of the likes of PMDG etc? 

This sim may seem like a different beast entirely, but if you'd like an idea of the 3D cities that may be in this new sim in all detail shown, then just use their 3D earth app, they're identical. e.g. London is missing, as are most cities in the UK. Sure, they may update it eventually, but in terms of the 3D city coverage, it's somewhat behind both Apple and Google's offerings. In addition, the 3D cities at present seem to lack night lighting, PBR textures etc, so whilst automation will get you so far, someone still needs to sit down and bring them up to standard.

 

 

 

1 minute ago, tonywob said:

How many people do you think buy P3D and FSX because of the likes of PMDG etc? 

Between 100-200 thousand in total.  

I chose the Walmart example because all MS flightsims were only available as boxes until FSX:SE - and that last one only sold about 700.000 copies (I think). So what was sold in millions were those boxes - easily accessible in the most casual places to anyone, not only those "in the know". Just like the Windows Start menu would be, or any of the other online avenues that Microsoft have at their disposal. 

About "keeping the interest very long" - from the manufacturers perspective, buying it is all that is required of you. 

Best regards

4 minutes ago, tonywob said:

London is missing, as are most cities in the UK. Sure, they may update it eventually, but in terms of the 3D city coverage, it's somewhat behind both Apple and Google's offerings.

That got me worried (missing London or Paris photogrammetry is disconcerting) but someone pointed that Azure maps have some "pro" version with data that we can´t see on windows maps. That should be the reason why Dubai and the pyramids have not photogrammetry in Windows maps but they have in the video.

Cheers

Carlos

1 minute ago, chass32 said:

That should be the reason why Dubai and the pyramids have not photogrammetry in Windows maps but they have in the video.

Check them carefully, they are both custom modelled, especially Dubai.. It's pretty obvious if you look at the skyscraper textures in Dubai.

I really don't get why there's so much doubt, scepticism and distrust when it comes to Microsoft. According to some posters in here they are the epitome of evil, like a fat kraken trying to squeeze every single hard earned cent out of us. Who knows, maybe they will even charge us for virtual Jet Fuel.... 

Did they ever screw us over? Did they ever try to rip us off?

Yes they abandoned FSX due to restructuring and commercial reasons, many seem to have taken this personally. Yes, they tried something new with MS Flight as a F2P model, a trial that failed spectacularly and some despise them for even daring to offer us something like that. 

Keep in mind that the gaming division takes up only about 10% of their entire revenue (they reported 110.4 billion total annual revenue in 2018, with gaming division reporting about 10 billion annual). Within that gaming division they own multi million dollar franchises like Halo or Forza Motorsport/Horizon series. Flightsimulator, even if they sell millions of copies, would count for about 0.1% of their total company revenue. They are not like a small dev studio like Dovetail, who rely on a steady income from their 2 or 3 franchises in order to survive. 

Who knows, maybe there still is a bunch of flightsim enthusiasts working at MS, dreaming of a new, true next gen flight sim that will provide a platform for our hobby for the next decade or two. Is this so hard to believe? It may be a perfect opportunity for joint department development to push their map and AI tech even further, without even thinking about ripping us off. 

Its absolutely possible that certain areas of the sim wont be accessible for 3rd party devs due to new tech not allowing it but we shouldn't automatically suspect they only do this out of pure greediness.

I'm not just a flight simmer, i play games across all genres for more than 35 years now, and from the Big 5 publishers out there, MS was by far the least greedy of them. Others like EA or UbiSoft rig their full price titles with micro-transactions and implement artificial grind to in order to seduce gamers to spend real money on shortcuts, i never seen MS doing this. Yes they offer DLC's for their games, but i never felt like the intentionally took out content of a finished title just to sell this as a post launch DLC. 

 

TL;DR: Show some love for MS you bunch of grumpy old sim-farts! 😉

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by Woozie