New MS Flight Sim shown at E3

[Bt103504 30]

I wanted to chime in and share a few of my thoughts as well.

• I get the sense that the product will be released for the current gen Xbox and obviously will be compatible with the new Xbox when it is released as well in 2020. However, my understanding is that even current mid-range PC's can easily run the products currently released on this generation of consoles, at least that has been my experience. After watching the Microsoft E3 presentation and their emphasis on cross-platform support moving forward I have serious reservations that they would require a monster PC to run the new sim. I think there will likely be advanced features that users COULD utilize if they wanted, but so much of the technology that people are talking about (RTX for example) is still fairly expensive to the average consumer.
   
• I do think that there will be a "game" side to this that is somewhat similar to the Acceleration pack we saw in FSX. Perhaps a more modern take on some of these missions, after all that would be the path of least resistance for them. For simmers to completely write this whole sim off just because it is being released on a console is pretty sad. I really feel like the Acceleration pack, in particular, brought in a new generation of simmers into the hobby and that really helped grow the community exponentially. 
   
• Lastly, I'm also not as skeptical that the footage we saw in the trailer was completely doctored (the hangar scene appears to be the most CGI of anything) but, if we look at the movements of the AI they still appear to be plagued by some of the same issues we remember from FSX (baggage carts driving through planes, road traffic driving through itself or into buildings). There's also very minor instances of texture popping. I'm more optimistic I suppose, but I imagine after seeing the explosive growth and popularity of P3D and X-Plane it wouldn't surprise me that Microsoft would spend a substantial amount of time developing a new sim. If they completely developed their own engine internally they would be perfectly capable of producing these types of results as they are not as limited as engines like P3D.  I still remember when the trailer of the most recent incarnation of XP dropped everyone started making very similar comments to what I've been hearing now about MS Flight Simulator, claiming the footage is all CGI or not the actual sim etc. 

 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

1 hour ago, Woozie said:

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?

I don't think that's Microsoft's motivation for this release. I think it's just an attempt to get someone - anyone! - to use Bing maps.

[Wobbie 938]

1 minute ago, DaWu said:

No way. We all pray that this will be NOT a Flight v2 so we should not name it that way.

FS2020 ist absoltely fine.

Why? for goodness sake, does mot Microsoft themselves call it Microsoft Flight Simulator?

So why should we differ?

For brevity, call it MFS, as everyone shortened the previous incantation to FSX.

[simmerhead 885]

I was an early digital adopter, and was scanning and editing negatives and positives in Photoshop long before digital cameras were useful. I still can't think of a time when I've needed to use the term AA in relation to photography, but you're free to educate me. I'm always happy to learn something new. 

But I get your point. Claim expertice and you'd better be well armed with knowledge. 

[Chock 17,769]

With regard to the notion of whether what we are seeing is all 'in game footage' so to speak, one thing I suspect might possibly be occurring with that teaser vid - particularly in the case of the shot of the hangar opening with the Diamond Twin - is that could very well be a loading intro clip for the sim as it fires up (you know, the type of thing you click the option for 'do not show intro upon start up' after you've seen it once).

It certainly has that mood to it with the 'opening up the hangar and here we go' subject material. Thus it could indeed genuinely have been captured real-time if it was a 'load screen' type of affair, and therefore not be a 'blag', but also not quite what it seems. It would not be the first time such a thing has been done with video games and sims and I daresay it won't be the last time either. If this is the case, it is perhaps a little cheeky and one could even say a little misleading, but it is not actually dishonest if that genuinely is what you see when you fire the sim up.

Edited June 12, 2019 by Chock

[SpiritFlyer 987]

One thing for sure,

It's obvious that we grumpy old flight simmers need to mellow out, get our blood sugars under control, and then act as if we still remember being younger and optimistic just a wee bit more.

After all, this isn't about difficult bowel movements, but our dream hobby!  

Kind regards,

Spirit Flyer

Stephen 

[Wobbie 938]

With regard to the teaser, we must regard it as a trailer of whats to come... just like the movies, a little taste, a teaser, 100% of what we will most probably not be in the release!

Stephen, correctly said, about your difficult bowel movements. 

For me, it's making my piles throb!

[shivers9 1,174]

4 hours ago, Anders Bermann said:

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

Not really....LOL Many of us have been to this Happy Mountain more than once!!

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

1 hour ago, DaWu said:

So much talk about streaming without any proof not even a small hint that any streaming is involved.

How else do you propose that those 2 Petabyte of scenery data get to your client? That is 500 hard drives with 4 TByte each.

Best regards

[Bandselect 11]

4 hours ago, tronied said:

I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days and really think they could make something great. I'm not just talking with the graphics but with how the community and add-ons are managed. They've been making all the right noises, but they could really push that further. Here's a couple of things I'd like:

1) A common market place available in the game to get free / purchasable add-ons. I know this fills a lot of people with dread, but if MS charged a small percentage to creators to host their wares then it would really simplify the process and open it up to a lot more people without having to mess around with the file system.

2) As part of this, they could have different categories like custom created missions or even... certifications! Just think how amazing it would be if you could do the majority of a pilots license by using videos and actual practise with tie into the game. That way if you do actually go for your real license, you've already covered the material / tests you'd need. They could even get these two involved: 

3) Have the option for a streaming or local option. Most people are assuming they'd stream the assets (scenery) from Bing onto your local machine which will mean it's an online only. This is great but not everyone has a good internet connection yet. As such it would be great if they'd offer a simplified offline option to broaden the appeal.

Obviously it's still a long way to go yet until release but I don't think I've been this excited for anything in a while  It was so out of the blue but roll on a year and I guess we'll have some of these answers.

I also think a universal utility for updates via the cloud would be welcome, especially if they work with the development community to implement. While I certainly don't tweak P3D V4 that often these days, an all in one app for updates to aircraft, liveries, scenery, FMC data, charts, clouds, textures, etc would be a blessing. I really like what PMDG and Flightbeam have done to consolidate the process, but the bulk of my add-ons lack those tools...but a universal utility that would have gateways for the aircraft developers, scenery developers, etc. to utilize for updates would be nice. The specifics of an individual aircraft or scenery or weather would still be controlled locally on the host to tailor to your specific preferences. But the updates would be done through a single app.

[vortex681 806]

45 minutes ago, Bt103504 said:

I'm also not as skeptical that the footage we saw in the trailer was completely doctored (the hangar scene appears to be the most CGI of anything) but, if we look at the movements of the AI they still appear to be plagued by some of the same issues we remember from FSX (baggage carts driving through planes, road traffic driving through itself or into buildings). There's also very minor instances of texture popping.

But it's still a long way from being released. If it genuinely is this good now, think how much better it will be when it finally hits the market.

[charlie130 196]

On 6/10/2019 at 12:34 AM, Chock said:

Well, just to play Devil's Advocate on these questions and more for the purposes of information and understanding than an accusation or anything else, the phrase 'capture in real-time 4K' does not necessarily mean 'captured at full 100 speed', i.e  it could theoretically have been captured in 4K realtime (i.e. recorded), but recorded whilst running the sim at less than 100 percent speed in 4K. Recording footage of products with all the whistles and bells on at less than full speed and then playing back speeded up to look like regular full speed, is a technique which quite a few product videos and reviews use. Now, I'm not saying I know this is what was done, just that it is something which could be done.

I was thinking the same. Most "demo" videos are re recorded to eliminate stutters. There are examples of this art form on You Tube. When you look at the product you have just purchased, it never looks as good!

I would personally love to see Photo Real landscapes and flight decks, running in stutter free, "real time". That's all graphic parsing and needs a new approach since anything which currently uses autogen is prone to bottlenecks and stutters. I don't think any ESP based engine can render autogen very well. There always seems to be hold ups when the PC hardware tries to "draw" autogen on top of a landscape.

Secondly, I would like accurate, rapid parsing of aircraft systems and flight models. Models which have Mjc Dash 8 and PMDG level of detail.

If the scenery is pre rendered by MS and can be downloaded via super fast broadband then stutters may be removed, perhaps? A bit like flying over Google Earth? All that graphical candy being displayed via our GPU.

If the CPU is then free to parse the aircraft systems and flight models, I can see a realistic simulation being on the cards? Since the old ESP bottleneck between GPU and CPU could be removed?

Surely if they are intending to use Xbox, as a platform, then some new wizardry in presenting a flight simulation will be required?

All just my two penneth speculation.

Many of us older FSX types, still have memories of the plug being pulled on ACES and wonder if MS are in it for the long term?

Anyway, good luck to MS. 

Cheers.

 

 

[DaWu 779]

5 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

How else do you propose that those 2 Petabyte of scenery data get to your client? That is 500 hard drives with 4 TByte each.

Best regards

Compression maybe? Preload depending on your glihtpath? Who knows

[ca_metal 2,016]

8 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

How else do you propose that those 2 Petabyte of scenery data get to your client? That is 500 hard drives with 4 TByte each.

Best regards

They used 2 petabytes of raw data to build the world together, it doesn't mean the sim files will be this big.

[GCBraun 2,392]

2 Petabyte of satellite data does not mean that we would need 2 Petabytes for the final scenery. I have about 30% of the world in Ortho4XP and need about 7Tb.

Edited June 12, 2019 by GCBraun