1 minute ago, sjt said:

I wondered out loud at home a couple of years back why DTG were playing with FSW the way they did, and why they didn't go to Google and ask for a collaborative project to bring it all together with decent scenery. So - maybe it was LM instead, who went to MS saying, "We do sims (with a piece of software you're familiar with), but we need better maps. You do maps. Howe can we do this together" ? 

LM needs better maps? Seriously? Do you know who builds the military satellites that have far more capability than anything Microsoft can use? 

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/satellite.html

 

8 minutes ago, F737NG said:

Neither behemoth ultimately care about the home simmer, but we make good beta testers and add *some* revenue to offset any losses.

Correct. The income from us is not enough to keep the employee's restaurant topped up for more than a couple of weeks. They have bigger fish to fry, and we are just getting a by-product of something that is much more important to their business

3 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Do you know who builds the military satellites that have far more capability than anything Microsoft can use? 

Sure. And how many farmers do you know who bake the bread that comes from the wheat they grow?

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by sjt

24 minutes ago, sjt said:

Do you know what your CPU is mostly being used for in P3D and FSX? It's practically all being used to page the scenery and the autogen, not so much on vehicle physics. The aircraft physics don't consume a lot of CPU - but the scenery paging steals most of it. LM have addressed that partly by loading the GPU with as much scenery rendering as it can - but it's not rendering that is the problem - it's the paging. I've got 2 GTI 1080s in my system, and if I switch one off it doesn't look much worse, because P3D is not a graphics hungry application. All those thousands of files I mentioned have to be read, assembled, and turned into a picture before you actually get to where you are going (that's a bit simplified, but it'll do...). That work consumes the CPU, not the graphics card. So, yes, I'm pretty confident in my own mind that the "new" base sim is not a mile different than what we already have. It will be tweaked, of course because this is MS we're talking about, but I very much doubt it'll be completely rewritten, imho. I'm speculating, I fully admit, but trying to apply some clear logic into what I am suggesting from the business perspective

Let's face it - the 1 minute plus propaganda video is not going to be released with stutters on it for us all to giggle about and tear to shreds, and no doubt we'll still see them at times when it's released until things get ironed out. But most of the intensive work that currently absorbs the CPU will be done for you, in the cloud, with the new scenery engine, which will give your CPU more resources to do other things.

You are right. Scenery  bogs the older and current programs down, XP included. BUT, maybe they decided to no longer be limited by 30+yr old code and start with a newer base model that is designed for the future as they see it.  That does not mean they could not use elements of the past where plausible like file structures, databases, technical info, etc.  Everyone assumes this is a brand new venture. How do we know they haven't been working on it for 3-5 years? We do not.  Everything is speculation at this point. I'm choosing to be optimistic in my old age. What have we seen new since FSX?  Nothing but lipstick on the same old pig, not exactly a recipe for the future. Do you not think a multi billion dollar software corporation has figured that out prior to jumping back into this genre?

15 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

: why have they done it in the past over and over again for 35 years?  They clearly have an interest in flight simulation otherwise they wouldn't spend so much time and effort to develop all these flight simulators.

Relativeoly simple Bill Gates always protected Railway and Flight Simulator. So other projects sometimes got trouble but they were always protected.

Then they sold the commercial license to P3D and Dovetail Games.

A company as huge as Microsoft normally has no real internal opinion. They are m9ore influenced by some of their managers and the CEO.

1 minute ago, Longranger said:

A company as huge as Microsoft normally has no real internal opinion. They are m9ore influenced by some of their managers and the CEO.

Aren’t managers and CEOs “internal opinions”?

1 minute ago, irrics said:

Aren’t managers and CEOs “internal opinions”?

Yes but change one of these people and they can change their opinion by 180°. They don't have the slightest problem to kill someone who was previously considered a Saint. Money and so called performance can replace any ethical consideration.

4 minutes ago, Longranger said:

Yes but change one of these people and they can change their opinion by 180°. They don't have the slightest problem to kill someone who was previously considered a Saint. Money and so called performance can replace any ethical consideration.

I guess I don’t really understand what any of that has to do with this topic. Sorry I am confused

46 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I'm not talking about civilian/academic P3D. Assuming that LM has military-side uses for the license (and otherwise why bother with it?), you can bet they'll use satellite data for internal simulation that is way better and more recent than what Microsoft can get. Which is why they may not be interested in using Microsoft's tech.

Just speculation. I have no inside info here.

No doubt you are correct but LM may benefit using the MS process to depict those better quality Sat Pic's??

Members :   One more time.  Please do not quote very large posts. Please prune them to just the major point or reference them such as "See Bill's post on page XX". 

We have members that have slow connections and large quotes present a very real problem for them.

Thanks.

 

This whole thing brings up old memories and I have to speak up a bit about third party developers.  Yes, some of it is overpriced.  But think about the small audience relative to the big picture.  I remember back in 2008/2009 when I was at the apex of my FSX days.  I was losing my mind learning FSDS and GMAX for 6 months so that I could re-do KGSP.  A smaller regional airport that had no prayer of ever getting an accurate representation unless one of us locals managed to pull it off.  I took 100's of photos from the outside, often explaining the reason to airport police.  100's more from the terminal side on various flights. Many more from the FedEx Tarmac and USPS property.

I remember spending an entire 9 months building KGSP from the ground up for FSX.  Custom terminals, buildings, photo-textured runway and taxiways, 3D lighting including custom approach lighting, blended ortho tiles, AFCAD, true to life water fountains, parking lots, parking garages, ground vehicles, on and on. Much of this on my company's work computer after hours because my home computer didn't have the balls to render quickly enough for my tastes. Then a lightning strike killed the dream. All was lost, at least 500 hrs, maybe more. At the time, I was thinking of charging $10-$15 for it because it looked darn good, frame rates optimized.  I thought long and hard about redoing it and realized that even 1000 copies sold could not justify the time lost in my life during that year.  Most do not realize the man hours involved just to complete a medium size regional airport.  I remember spending an entire week just placing taxiway and centerline lights hour after hour.

Fast forward 2 yrs and another guy made a pretty good rendition that I paid $30 for.  Still use it in P3d when the urge strikes. There will always be a demand for these things and it will never be dirt cheap.  Once you experience the monumental task of building it all from scratch, testing, testing and retesting, you will quickly realize that the dollars are charged for a reason.

Edited June 13, 20196 yr by CarlHill
word not allowed

1 hour ago, sjt said:

Sure. And how many farmers do you know who bake the bread that comes from the wheat they grow?

Actually I know a few, but that's irrelevant. LM is in the business of building highly classified aircraft and space vehicles. If they need higher res and more recent data than Microsoft, I'm absolutely sure they can get it. The issue is that it *is* classified, so you're not going to see it in a civilian sim. And that's a big reason why I doubt they're going to license MS's new streaming software. They don't need it, and it would create obvious security issues.

What they use for scenery in P3D is "good enough" for that platform, which prioritizes flight training over eye candy in the scenery. They leave that up to 3rd party devs, which is the only indication we need that they don't care about it.

47 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

No doubt you are correct but LM may benefit using the MS process to depict those better quality Sat Pic's??

I doubt it, because they use P3D both for what you see in public and what they do internally with the license. There are major security issues in using that technology with an outside provider like Microsoft. 

You can bet they're not running their mission critical computers on Windows 10 either. 🙂

Edited June 13, 20196 yr by Paraffin

Wow this thread...hold on, I need to grab some more popcorn.

A question in the same vein as @dave2013, is it out of the realm of possibility that someone associated with this project is actually passionate about flight? ...Nevermind, that's just crazy talk. There's no place for that nonsense in a soulless corporation.

6 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

There's no place for that nonsense in a soulless corporation.

In this whacky thread nothing is nonsense.!! LOL