@Anders Bermann

Look I understand skepticism..

But here is where you lose me..

1.  Flight - that was an unbelievably different MS back then. Totally different mindset and leadership now. It’s virtually useless as an informative datapoint about MSFS20

2.  “Xbox” - guys. ALL of MS gaming, PC and otherwise, is now under Xbox branding. That’s literally the end of what that means. It doesn’t infer something “more game like” or anything whatsoever. It’s simply a cohesive brand name for their gaming efforts on all platforms now. 

 

I really am sorry you are taking any of this as “hostile”. It’s absolutely not meant that way, so apologize if it feels that way for you  

 

I just don’t understand why people can’t err on the side of positive and hopeful here. 

 

If MS releases something you hate, literally nothing has changed for you. Just keep using P3D or XP (or FSX). I am sure that if MSFS2020 isn’t “simulation” enough for some, the other platforms will still be there picking up that part of the market. Hell, they will likely proceed on just fine either way!

 

It just seems all positive in my view.

Either MSFS 2020 is amazing and it’s great for all..or it is just great for some and others can continue on with what they use now  

 

Is there some bad angle to all this I’m missing?

Edited June 16, 20196 yr by irrics

21 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Everyone will have their own definition, but here's a few things I'd look for, in no particular order:

<snip>

And probably some more that I'm forgetting. I actually don't care that much about programmed ATC or AI aircraft because I mostly fly bush planes and helicopters in more remote areas...

Microsoft Flight had most of those. 🙂

I've heard helicopters are better in XPlane.  Do they handle the ground cushion to your satisfaction?  FSX doesn't seem to even have it (at least in hover) and I haven't tried helos in P3Dv4 yet.

I enjoyed the Dodosim 206 in FSX.

Hook

The word “serious” here is cracking me up. 

One can “seriously” cook eggs or “seriously” hand build a house or “seriously” play Golden Tee at a bar. 

 

I could “seriously” enjoy and spend time in DCS - or Aerofly - or Flight Unlimited - shout out!  Who remembers FU!?

 

THAT was awesome at the time. 

Edited June 16, 20196 yr by irrics

21 minutes ago, irrics said:

What about visuals besides what you mentioned?

If you fly bush, I’m assuming you’d like that to always be a very high priority too yeah?

Absolutely, but bush flying scenery is already handled fairly well by the terrain mesh + landclass + autogen approach. I don't need ortho scenery when flying in the coastal mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Orthos can have weird artifacts in mountain areas too, like "stretched" bitmaps on near vertical surfaces. I admit that what's shown in mountain areas in the MSFS trailer looks fine, but it just isn't as badly needed as ortho-based terrain might be in more suburban and urban areas.

The other requirement for bush flying is detailed texture at or near ground level. That's critical when landing a helicopter off-airport, so you can see where the ground is in the last 20 feet before touchdown, and not the pixellated blur you get with only ortho-based scenery at ground level. Seeing that ground texture is also important when landing something like a Cub on a gravel bar along a river, or a beach. If I only see a huge ortho blur down there, I don't know when to flare.

On the other hand, one thing I love seeing in the MSFS trailer is the water coloration in that one high-angle shot. That's something ortho-based scenery does better than any other approach, until we can get hydrographic data in the sims, I guess. I don't do much sim flying in tropical island areas in XP11 because the water looks so abysmal, unless it's a hand-crafted airport with an imported ortho for shallow water colors.

6 minutes ago, irrics said:

The word “serious” here is cracking me up. 

One can “seriously” cook eggs or “seriously” hand build a house or “seriously” play Golden Tee at a bar. 

 

I could “seriously” enjoy and spend time in DCS - or Aerofly - or Flight Unlimited - shout out!  Who remembers FU!?

 

THAT was awesome at the time. 

What's Golden Tee at the bar?

3 minutes ago, Anders Bermann said:

The gamer aspect is (at least to me) concerning - but also foreseeable, since I guess that's where the big revenue is.

I agree with you on every thing else you said, but this statement, I disagree, I think you do too, here is why:

We are talking about a flight sim, and gamers will not flock to it more than flight simmers will. If its a realistic sim all flight simmers will flock to and support it. If its more a game it will not have revenue enough to sustain it because gamers are busy gaming with the likes of shooters (the most common and most popular game type, like it or not!). Yes gamers have more population but that means nothing if they are not interested.

Gamers have proven to the whole world that they are NOT interested in flight simulators or NVidia would have released at least a few "Ready For XP/P3D" drivers by now. And we would have had a MSFS 2008 -through today (no gap) because MS would never walk away from the revenue generated by the mass numbers. MS Flight need not have been free of charge! Gamers did not even take that bait. Look how many free copies DTG's gave away, gamers did not take that bait either - they do not like flight sims; they like DOTA, GTA, COD, Halo, Mario, anything that involves action with violence is widely acceptable.

We'll see if NVidia will release a "ready for MSFS 2020" driver...they may have to from the looks of that hanger shot, unless that is part of an intro clip to a mission (my theory for now). 

_________________________________________

To everybody - I don't hate games or gamers, I just see the distinction that is very obvious. While they enjoy shooting people/zombies, we flight simmers enjoy shooting approaches.🙂

 

17 minutes ago, ganter said:

What's Golden Tee at the bar?

Golf arcade game - quite titled toward the “arcade” part, but tons and tons of competitive fun with pitchers of beer and a crowd. 

Edited June 16, 20196 yr by irrics

27 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Absolutely, but bush flying scenery is already handled fairly well by the terrain mesh + landclass + autogen approach. I don't need ortho scenery when flying in the coastal mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Orthos can have weird artifacts in mountain areas too, like "stretched" bitmaps on near vertical surfaces. I admit that what's shown in mountain areas in the MSFS trailer looks fine, but it just isn't as badly needed as ortho-based terrain might be in more suburban and urban areas.

The other requirement for bush flying is detailed texture at or near ground level. That's critical when landing a helicopter off-airport, so you can see where the ground is in the last 20 feet before touchdown, and not the pixellated blur you get with only ortho-based scenery at ground level. Seeing that ground texture is also important when landing something like a Cub on a gravel bar along a river, or a beach. If I only see a huge ortho blur down there, I don't know when to flare.

On the other hand, one thing I love seeing in the MSFS trailer is the water coloration in that one high-angle shot. That's something ortho-based scenery does better than any other approach, until we can get hydrographic data in the sims, I guess. I don't do much sim flying in tropical island areas in XP11 because the water looks so abysmal, unless it's a hand-crafted airport with an imported ortho for shallow water colors.

I'm cautiously optimistic they've got some stuff figured out. It has been 13 years after all.

The leap from FS2002 to what we saw in FSX, for example, was mind-blowing and that was over a 4 year period. Hopefully they do that again.

I won't hear a bad word said against FSX - after all - hesitant and recalcitrant though some might be - we owe everything that has come since to it.

And I for one still fly it (now and again) and I fly in RW too. It's an excellent procedural trainer - with suitable modifications, etc. It's great to be able to do a virtual flight before embarking on the real thing the next day - and has certainly helped in repect of SA on CC's !

Tonight, for instance. Here I am, resting and smoking a cigarette after a successful flight across the channel in tricky weather (AS16- check the current METAR for EGHI if you want to know what the flight was like) in the beautiful Ceranado Golden Eagle C421.

I'm looking forward to the next step that MS has - in their considerable wisdom - decided to take.

I'll see you onboard. And remember, if I put the Seat Belts sign on, it's not a suggestion.

 

 

Edited June 16, 20196 yr by Guest

1 hour ago, pracines said:

Flying is a real life thing. Aviation is much more important in this world than gaming is. Take away aviation and the world will essentially stop including the gaming/computing industry. But take away gaming and its more an inconvenience by comparison. Besides that, a flight simulator saves money, time, and lives. Much more superior, much more important, than playing games on Xbox.

You got a lot going on here, but I think you should also take note that...if at home flight simulators go away it's more an inconvenience.  You can't compare FSX flight training with true FAA authorized commercial flight simulators.  I am sure the procedural things learned in a FSX/P3D for a PPL could easily be learned by other methods, again, it's convenient to have an at home flight sim but you are learning it whether you have a flight sim or not.  I lived with two SkyWest pilots for almost 3 years and every time they had to be tested they sat at the kitchen table reading books and had giant fold-out posters of the cockpit and they studied, never once did they boot up a home simulator, nor did they even know what FSX or it's "serious" add-ons were.  Flight simulators are great and there is a convenience in them but let's not pretend that the aviation industry will collapse and pilots will start flying into terminal buildings without FSX/P3D/Xplane11.

2 minutes ago, TravelRunner404 said:

I lived with two SkyWest pilots for almost 3 years and every time they had to be tested they sat at the kitchen table reading books and had giant fold-out posters of the cockpit and they studied, never once did they boot up a home simulator, nor did they even know what FSX or it's "serious" add-ons were.

Good post.

I recently read on another forum a post by a real world 737 pilot who had just purchased the PMDG version and "found that it had some real world applications."  This guy already did a lot of flight simming in a lot of aircraft, so it wasn't like he bought the sim just for the 737.

If it's useful, use it! 🙂  But it's not like "if you can program the FMC in the sim, you can fly the real plane" which many seem to believe.

Hook

It's the subject of an interesting discussion. I fly RW as GA pilot just on a PPL but in the course of my work I work with CPL and ATPL pilots. I build sims for flying schools - who breed the next generation of ATPLs.

What do we say here about the usefulness of a simulator to equip wannabes for their futures as FOs and one day Captains; well, it certainly has a place in their training, without a doubt. I know commercial pilots who regularly use simulators to plan their activities and practise procedures. I certainly know (albeit) small scale flight academies who use sims based on FSX (because I've built the things for them and they're using them!)

There are complicating factors that come in to play - in my part of the World we need EASA Certification of the level of the sim - which in turn dictates how many hours can be accrued on the sim in logs/ training points by the student, etc. It's a little fluid in truth - and on a practical level it's a PITA because EASA and the CAA keep moving the standards.

However, there is a relevance to the early ATPL learning the ropes of IR for instance in Sim and then going to extrapolated learning within a wider context of whatever course he/ she is on. 

Later on, naturally, they're going to find themselves in a Level D sim for the 50 hours before then doing the Base 4 on, 4 off at somewhere like LFLX to prove their ability to take an A320 on the flap and not kill the pax. 

I like to think that that initial training in the sim (perhaps P3D based, perhaps X-Plane, maybe even FSX in an ab initio environment with a P28 Warrior or C172) contributes to their future competence in that simulated environment when suddenly everything has to count big time.

18 minutes ago, TravelRunner404 said:

You got a lot going on here, but I think you should also take note that...if at home flight simulators go away it's more an inconvenience.  You can't compare FSX flight training with true FAA authorized commercial flight simulators.  I am sure the procedural things learned in a FSX/P3D for a PPL could easily be learned by other methods, again, it's convenient to have an at home flight sim but you are learning it whether you have a flight sim or not.  I lived with two SkyWest pilots for almost 3 years and every time they had to be tested they sat at the kitchen table reading books and had giant fold-out posters of the cockpit and they studied, never once did they boot up a home simulator, nor did they even know what FSX or it's "serious" add-ons were.  Flight simulators are great and there is a convenience in them but let's not pretend that the aviation industry will collapse and pilots will start flying into terminal buildings without FSX/P3D/Xplane11.

The discussion has been about making flight sim a game or not. You are correct that at home flight sims are not as important, but that is my point. They are not important because they are made more like a game. If they were more realistic, they would be wanted/required more and more by flight schools, and wanted by more and more by pilots for homework or for refreshers and prior to check rides. Already they are being used quite a bit, just imagine if complexity were added instead of simplicity. 

I would much rather MS seek contracts with Aircraft/Avionics manufacturers and flight schools rather than the gaming industry...much more logical, lucrative, and much more useful/beneficial to the world. Gamers will not support a flight sim in the short term or the long term no matter how beautiful the scene or how easy it is for them.

I've heard of a lot of private pilots who became interested in real world aviation by starting with flight sims.  

I became a real life tank crewman because I got interested in it playing Panzerblitz.  I joined the Army to play with toy tanks on a 1 to 1 scale.  I do not regret this.

Hook

6 minutes ago, LHookins said:

I've heard of a lot of private pilots who became interested in real world aviation by starting with flight sims.  

I became a real life tank crewman because I got interested in it playing Panzerblitz.  I joined the Army to play with toy tanks on a 1 to 1 scale.  I do not regret this.

Hook

Absolutely me Hook.

Up until I was 20 I'd never flown on anything smaller than a 737 and then in the 90's I got FS and became intrigued about what it would be like to fly a small aeroplane. I took an experience flight and that was it.

These days I'm poor but happy and have a good GA Logbook to prove it!