Just now, simbol said:

20% to 30%, is still high but happy to pay that in a platform that provides lots of exposure.

S.

^^  this is the spirit to have - great to see from a developer who "gets it".  The exposure potential here is orders of magnitude above where the FS world has been for the last decade plus

51 minutes ago, irrics said:

Oh I mean more than that - lighting, weather, scenery - basically anything you could think of looked better.

Looking better than P3D or XP in an early promotional trailer isn't enough, because looks can be deceiving. 🙂

Or if not outright deception, then at least heightened expectations based on very little real information.

For example, that trailer shows a wonderful brief view of a thunderstorm in the distance. Big scary CB with "rolling" clouds at the base.

But what is it? Is it a dynamic 3D system built from injected real weather, complete with vertical convection and really dangerous to fly into? Do those clouds at the base "roll" actively and change shape as the storm advances? Or is it a 2D static image on the skybox? Or something in-between?

I get the impression that a lot of people took one look at that towering CB, and their jaw hit the floor by assuming it's "real weather" in the maximum sense of the word. A complete model of a CB. I've never seen that in any flight sim, and I'll be thrilled if that's actually what it is. But I'm not going to assume that this is what we're looking at, just from that trailer. Need more information.

Similar assumptions might be made by looking at the giraffes... "Wow, they're modeling wildlife all over the world!" Well, maybe not. Let's get more information.

None of this tempers my excitement to see what the new MSFS is like. But I don't want to get out over my skis with enthusiasm either. Let's find out more about what the actual product is.

Just now, ca_metal said:

About performance... They developed the OS (Windows 10), the API (Directx 12) and the software itself (MSFS. They have a huge advantage here, as everything would be more accessible to them.

SWorry to burst your bubble. Since they are under observation the Windows team is extremly careful that Microsoft developers have the same access to the OS as external developers.. For DirectX they have more or less the same problems since the real reserves are NVidia and AMD or to be precise certain developers of them and they implement their functions also under Vulkan.

4 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Looking better than P3D or XP in an early promotional trailer isn't enough, because looks can be deceiving.

For me it is.

The weather systems in P3D and XP are garbage and this trailer already looks better visually, so they literally have nowhere to go but "up".  It basically can't be worse than what we have now and try to cobble together with add-ons (bleh)

 

I'm on personally not worried about the thunderstorm modeling much.  

I do want that as good as they can make it, but that isn't even close to a deal breaker either way for me.  

In the weather realm, there is SO much more important low hanging fruit I care about.

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by irrics

10 minutes ago, Longranger said:

SWorry to burst your bubble. Since they are under observation the Windows team is extremly careful that Microsoft developers have the same access to the OS as external developers.. For DirectX they have more or less the same problems since the real reserves are NVidia and AMD or to be precise certain developers of them and they implement their functions also under Vulkan.

I really believe the teams behind MS games will have way more access to other MS departments than Laminar or Lockheed. That was said by Phil Spencer itself, they talk to each other a lot.

Sure Ubisoft has close access to MS devs, Eletronic Arts also has. Here I'm talking about FSim devs. 

About driver support, Nvidia sharing the trailer tells me a lot:

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by ca_metal

The booty interview in eurogamer literally talks about access to the direct x team being an advantage for them

The "Cheers, Rob." thing is just a default signature, yeah?

It keeps looking funny to me tagged onto some of these posts with very different "tones" to them vs a "cheers!" at the end.  lol. 😀

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by irrics

4 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Nope.  I have no personal hate or disrespect towards you or anyone here ..

Oh I didn't meant to imply any - Your consistency on ending every post the same way is impressive!  haha

20 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

My prediction (just a guess) is perhaps we go from 200,000 active FS users to 400,000 active FS users (globally) which will then fall back down to about 250,000 active FS users as 150,000 users are once again bored with just flying around and move onto something else.

I find it hard to predict honestly because I think P3D and XP "as is" and requiring so many add-ons to even be really enjoyable and remotely good looking and feature complete is a real real turn off to many people.  I don't mean just "gamers" either - even simulation interested people and real pilots - many of us just don't want to f*#( around with all the work to get the sim up to spec and then keep it updated.  I fly all the time and I don't do any simming anymore.  

It's a pain.  It kills the fun with all the cobbling together of various things.  I don't want spend time trying to keep things up to date and dealing with ridiculous updater apps and finding serial numbers and on and on....and on..

My hope - especially for 3rd parties - is that this whole MSFS reinvigoration could get people interested, like a whole generation of people, that don't even really know about this hobby much and are turned off by the existing legacy player offerings.

Name and brand of MS could do a lot here to engage an entire lost generation of people.

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by irrics

21 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Both, to distribute via Windows Store (if that is required) which includes distribution to XBOX platform, that is 20-30% taken from sales (that's a fact from MS policy as it stands today for Windows Store).

You'd be ok with 20-30% though?

Would be interesting to know what's the cut that current flight simulator addon stores take.

1 hour ago, irrics said:

The weather systems in P3D and XP are garbage and this trailer already looks better visually, so they literally have nowhere to go but "up".  It basically can't be worse than what we have now and try to cobble together with add-ons (bleh)

Of course it could be worse! If what we see in the trailer is just eye candy with nothing underneath, no realistic weather modeling, then it could be much worse than what current sims provide for weather.

I can't speak for P3D but I think it's a bit of an overreaction to say the weather in XP is "garbage." It could be a lot better, and I rant about that all the time over in the Avsim XP forum.

But it still meets some basic criteria that we have no idea MSFS will meet, just based on the sexy visuals in that trailer. Things like in-flight icing. The effects of tire traction on dry, wet, or icy runways. Thermals near ridges for gliders. Wind shear. Realistic-feeling turbulence (okay, that one does require the ActiveSkyX addon but the others are in the default sim).

I just learned that the update for the Carenado PC-12 actually shows visual icing slowly accumulating on the wings, driven by the XP icing dataref. That's pretty neat. I care about that a lot more than how pretty the sunsets are.

If the new MSFS can do all this, and deliver great-looking clouds and pretty sunsets as well, then that will be great! But some of us are going to be looking "under the hood" of the weather system to see what else it can do. I'm not going to assume it's all there until we see it.

23 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I can't speak for P3D but I think it's a bit of an overreaction to say the weather in XP is "garbage." It could be a lot better, and I rant about that all the time over in the Avsim XP forum.

It's ok - reasonable minds can disagree of course

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by irrics

2 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

If what we see in the trailer is just eye candy with nothing underneath, no realistic weather modeling, then it could be much worse than what current sims provide for weather.

Yes - but.. C'mon - You know they aren't going to do that.

2 hours ago, ca_metal said:

The simple fact they are Using their Azure AI and their maps tech on the scenery makes it amazing to me.

Unless they limited this tech usage to 5 cities around the World, I'm really impressed and looking forward for more info on that matter.

I looked at the Dubai shot in the trailer and compared it to Google's Streetview.  The building heights on the main land and the palm tree island are very accurate.  Even the game textures on the buildings look close to real life, but its hard to tell if its a default building height texture and is just coincidence it matches, or if somehow Azure Ai is able to render texture accuracy.  Google has no 3D map capture for Dubai, only streetview.  I have to assume Microsoft doesnt have a 3D capture of Dubai either and that this is all Azure Ai in effect.

Azure Ai will definitely be rendering the entire planet and not just several large cities.

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by Heli