All about AZURE

[gpbarth 12]

On 6/13/2019 at 4:08 PM, Matthew Kane said:

I am all for this. I don't need to install the entire world on my PC in a low compromised detail so they can cram it in a smaller installation package. I would much rather pay a subscription to have access to 2 petabytes of satellite data that I can stream what I want, where I want and when I need it. This makes far more sense to me.

I would like the core software installed locally and continue third party aircraft and utilities, perhaps airports can be purchased and installed locally as well. As for the rest of the world that can stay up on a cloud, that concept is awesome if you ask me.

Only problem is that monthly fee. Right now, you can't "own" a lot of software. MS Office is a good example. You can't own and install Office once. You have to pay a yearly fee or it stops working. I don't want to subscribe to Flight Sim. And that IS the way all this is going.

[irrics 1,517]

7 minutes ago, gpbarth said:

You have to pay a yearly fee or it stops working. I don't want to subscribe to Flight Sim. And that IS the way all this is going.

I guess..."keep using P3D or XP"?

Not sure what else to tell ya'.  To your point, this is the way it's all going.

It's sort of get onboard (or don't).

Edited June 15, 2019 by irrics

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

On 6/14/2019 at 12:38 PM, WarpD said:

The internet is not even remotely reliable enough for the majority of customers to support this concept.  I live in a major city and still see bandwidth issues on broadband cable.  Fiber optic is not being brought to older, lower income areas of anywhere and cable is only as far as the company has convinced some poor soul to pay for them to hang the wires.  In short... in the U.S. this is not going to be a successful approach for a product.

You come from the nation where those astro dudes first walked to the moon so I am sure you guys can figure this one out too.

I live in New Zealand and they have already wired fibre to both my home and business last year without asking for it but I didn't sign up yet. I am happy enough with my unlimited DSL connection for now and when 5G rolls out here will probably just skip fibre all together. 

And yes I can totally see the day when you are just on an unlimited 5G network and grabbing the scenery off a cloud will work fine, the days of an internet connection wired in will come to an end. We already have a 5G network under testing so not too far off now

Edited June 15, 2019 by Matthew Kane

[kaosfere 3,115]

24 minutes ago, gpbarth said:

I don't want to subscribe to Flight Sim. And that IS the way all this is going.

That's cool.   You do you.

At some point, atomic storage may become affordable enough for us to have practical petabyte-scale desktop drives, and then you'll be able to have five-season, 10cm resolution photo imagery and high detail terrain mesh for the entire world on your desktop, and you can fly offline in high definition all you want.

And while you wait for 2040 to come, the rest of us will have had 20 years of amazing flight simming at the extreme penalty of having to pay someone to host and serve to us content that we can't manage all on our own.

See you then!

Edited June 15, 2019 by kaosfere

[kaosfere 3,115]

Snark aside, I do have a wacky idea about using bittorrent or a similar protocol to provide peer-to-peer on demand delivery of high-res terrain imagery.  The rights management would be nightmarish, and it would probably be impossible to have a sufficiently large swarm for it to be practical and performant, but it would do away with peoples' resistance to having to pay some Big Evil Company to stream content to us.

[gpbarth 12]

39 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

That's cool.   You do you.

At some point, atomic storage may become affordable enough for us to have practical petabyte-scale desktop drives, and then you'll be able to have five-season, 10cm resolution photo imagery and high detail terrain mesh for the entire world on your desktop, and you can fly offline in high definition all you want.

And while you wait for 2040 to come, the rest of us will have had 20 years of amazing flight simming at the extreme penalty of having to pay someone to host and serve to us content that we can't manage all on our own.

See you then!

I have been flying with Flight Sim since the Sublogic days. And since FSX came out, I have been flying the latest "realistic" aircraft from PMDG, A2A, Flight 1, RealAir, etc. I've been flying with FSDT airports, Active Sky real weather, FS2Crew, Navigraph charts and FMS data, ORBX scenery. On Saitek HOTAS, rudder pedals and TrackIR.

So I've had over 30 years of amazing flight simming, and now have a machine with a lot of speed, graphic power, and RAM. And in 20 years, I'll be 92 years old. Sorry, but I've had it all for a long time. I don't need to pay a monthly fee to do what I love to do.

[irrics 1,517]

9 minutes ago, gpbarth said:

I don't need to pay a monthly fee to do what I love to do.

You might have to on MSFS 2020

But you certainly don’t have to participate. 

[james_2k 36]

10 hours ago, gpbarth said:

I have been flying with Flight Sim since the Sublogic days. And since FSX came out, I have been flying the latest "realistic" aircraft from PMDG, A2A, Flight 1, RealAir, etc. I've been flying with FSDT airports, Active Sky real weather, FS2Crew, Navigraph charts and FMS data, ORBX scenery. On Saitek HOTAS, rudder pedals and TrackIR.

So I've had over 30 years of amazing flight simming, and now have a machine with a lot of speed, graphic power, and RAM. And in 20 years, I'll be 92 years old. Sorry, but I've had it all for a long time. I don't need to pay a monthly fee to do what I love to do.

Then remain with your older sims and keep enjoying it? The rest of us will embrace the future.

[KBUR 178]

2 hours ago, james_2k said:

Then remain with your older sims and keep enjoying it? The rest of us will embrace the future.

 

To me this is not future, it's like a step backwards into the past.

It's like a guy who is fully equipped with all fancy video editing stuff at home,where he not only can manage video editing but als watching them at the same time - where and when he wants and completely independent from outer sources (exempted power).  And with no subscription he has to be pay for, capable of watching his stuff on his fancy machine as he likes and independently - with a great feeling of freedom in his heart.

Now the same guy has to go to the cinema again (in this case some "new" kind of cinema - just with a different name called "streaming"), like years before and before he became independent for watching and editing all his video stuff at home. --> and the worst thing, he even has to pay a monthly subscription like in the old days of cinema.

But all the other guys in the same cinema, watching the same movie "on screen" are cheering "this is the future old guy - this is good for all of us and you are just an old fashioned moron".

If that is how things will change into this "bright future" then I would say to this poor old guy: Give me your hand venerable father, let us hug and let us be "old fashioned morons" together.

 

The new future of the Pig Trough: But the pigs don't care, they just wanna feel saturated and they want it tasty 😂

 

To me, the right way into a bright future of flightsimming would be, if the hardware trusts would go on in delivering more capable machines, better and bigger handling of storage at the cost of lower prices.  And better optimization of the software itself, like IPACS is already doing with their Aerofly. 

But such an approach needs effort, it needs a lot of brain power and maybe more time in the beginning.  "Streaming on demand" - Cinema at home, is just the easier way and pobably a lot cheaper - AND COMPANIES HAVE A LOT MORE OF CONTROL OVER ALL OF US via Cloud Computing - AND THAT'S IT WHAT THE TRUSTS REALLY WANT - CONTROL AND MAXIMUM PROFIT.   Beside, I'm not old with an age of 48, just using my common sense.

Edited June 15, 2019 by KBUR

[Guest]

Yeah, go easy people on us old timers. IMHO gpbarth raises a salient point. I hated it when MS Office became a sub as did I when Adobe did too. I believe I should pay for the product and "take it home" as were. I know that's impractical for what seems to be shaping up as MSFS and the way it's delivered to our machines.

I know, it's the future and has to be embraced but I don't blame anyone feeling irritated by it and expressing that here. It's indicative of another way big corporations are turning is into living breathing income-streams - and I get very cynical about all that kind of thing.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Guest

[irrics 1,517]

I think we should delineate a bit between things like Office and FS though.

Ostensibly a subscription makes a ton of sense here simply due to the sheer size, volume & complexity of the scenery data and how that processing would be done on Azure on MS's end and then kept up to date and the entire planet provided on demand.

Normally I hate Subs, but this case is different.  It makes a lot of sense here and should be seen as a very fair exchange for a customer here - at least if they're being fair I think.

[WarpD 824]

You are assuming that a game subscription would include scenery updates, navdata updates, etc.  I don't recall reading that anywhere in any official Microsoft statements, etc.  I do not believe that a subscription based sim would be a long term financial success.

[irrics 1,517]

11 minutes ago, WarpD said:

You are assuming that a game subscription would include scenery updates, navdata updates, etc.  I don't recall reading that anywhere in any official Microsoft statements, etc.

Yes, I am assuming that cloud delivered scenery would be a product they'd want to keep up to date on their servers and expand over time.  Remember this is a new type of scenery mostly.  It's not just ortho and 3d buildings, but their own compute power fixing things and filling in gaps and color matching, on and on.  It's way more than what we've really ever had.

I doubt they'll launch with the entire world in the fidelity we'd all like, but would more likely aspire to build it out over time.

In the context of the mess we have now of all the third party expensive, quickly out of date, pieced together, patchwork, this would be a welcome new direction.

Again, this is for base scenery.  

I would be surprised if there isn't extensibility for even higher fidelity airports add-ons.  But, for a large percentage of people, perhaps none are here on Avsim, that would be way more than adequate.

Edited June 15, 2019 by irrics

[irrics 1,517]

I guess everyone is different, but I've seen some people comment about the literal 3,4,5 thousand dollars they've put into FS over the past 10-15 years, which I can totally understand on FSX/P3D with the huge amount of add-ons that are really needed for it to feel like a modern, feature complete and visually rich platform.

Even at "only" $3k across 15 years, that user has already been spending $16.60 per month.

I don't really even buy many add-ons and have been out of P3D for a while now, and I still have over $1000 of add-ons from the last 15 year period - which doesn't include all my X-Plane purchases.

 

Edited June 15, 2019 by irrics
typo

[gpbarth 12]

12 hours ago, irrics said:

You might have to on MSFS 2020

But you certainly don’t have to participate. 

Well, I won't be participating in the new FS. My own personal decision. I've already branched out, as it were, to other simulations which are multiplayer online situations, like DCS World. As I mentioned, I'm an old fart with set ways. I have 4 TB of storage with tons of FSX stuff, and a bunch of other sims. I think I'll stop right here!