3 minutes ago, pmb said:

Exclude me here. I just bought ORBX LEAS Asturias and TE Washington for XP before, and I am going to buy sceneries (I rarely buy planes), perhaps a bit more selective from obscure makers, but I am not going to stop. Why should I? TE Washington will certainly give me a lot to enjoy and investigate for over a year from now, and perhaps even longer.

As a sidenote: I am not "rich", but this is my main hobby.

That's me. I am sure others will disagree.

Kind regards, Michael

I think I was projecting my own thought process.  So I apologise.  But I'm still on P3D and I'm not entirely happy with the Orbx TrueEarth product (in P3D) anyway.  So no more for me.

Edited June 26, 20196 yr by ErichB

I'd rather not, at this stage, as we do not know how much of that data will be utilized at all. 

Obviously, a minute portion of that raw data COULD be within the sim, or streamed, if that is the plan. LOL, even 500meg of scenery data is going to be too much for anyone to download, never mind having space on our PC's.

2 petabytes is 2048 terrabytes so, thats over 1 000 2 terrabyte drives!

That 2 petabyte comment is actually the raw data available, NOT ingame use at all! 

Edited June 26, 20196 yr by Wobbie

1 minute ago, Wobbie said:

I'd rather not, at this stage, as we do not know how much of that data will be utilized at all. 

Obviously, a minute portion of that raw data COULD be within the sim, or streamed, if that is the plan. LOL, even 500meg of scenery data is going to be too much for anyone to download, never mind having space on our PC's.

2 petabytes is 2048 terrabytes so, thats over 1 000 2 terrabyte drives!

That 2 terrabyte comment is actually the raw data available, NOT ingame use at all! 

"That 2 terrabyte [sic] petabyte comment is actually the raw data available, NOT ingame use at all!"

It probably is just the amount of source data that they will use, but who's now claiming certainties when nothing about the amount of data to be used in the sim has yet been confirmed?

Works both ways, pessimists and optimists should only make statements like that if there's a valid source to support their argument. Everything else is just opinion.
 

3 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

I'd rather not, at this stage, as we do not know how much of that data will be utilized at all. 

Obviously, a minute portion of that raw data COULD be within the sim, or streamed, if that is the plan. LOL, even 500meg of scenery data is going to be too much for anyone to download, never mind having space on our PC's.

2 petabytes is 2048 terrabytes so, thats over 1 000 2 terrabyte drives!

That 2 terrabyte comment is actually the raw data available, NOT ingame use at all! 

The point is Robin, some people are just holding fire on any purchases until they know more.  It is not that hard to understand why 

5 minutes ago, ErichB said:

The point is Robin, some people are just holding fire on any purchases until they know more.  It is not that hard to understand why 

Sorry for my poor spelling. :-)

Peta, not tera (silly me)

Dunno, It could well be 18 months for the game release, Personally, I'd rather enjoy my sim now, if there's an add-on that I'll enjoy.

Just saying!

I certainly do not want ORBx to stop development of the P3D versions of TrueEarth GB Central and North (although I do expect them to source at least 10m mesh data for the latter; sorry, but a 30m mesh is not good enough for a country like Scotland).

Edited June 26, 20196 yr by Christopher Low

12 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I certainly do not want ORBx to stop development of the P3D versions of TrueEarth GB Central and North (although I do expect them to source at least 10m mesh data for the latter; sorry, but a 30m mesh is not good enough for a country like Scotland).

To STOP? As far as I recall, they will install a new group of developers to START with both in September. This seriously begs the question if they'll complete it before  the advent of FS2020. And I only hope this group will do a better job than the one having done South for P3D.

Kind regards, Michael

9 minutes ago, pmb said:

To STOP? As far as I recall, they will install a new group of developers to START with both in September. This seriously begs the question if they'll complete it before  the advent of FS2020. And I only hope this group will do a better job than the one having done South for P3D.

Kind regards, Michael

I would surmise, Michael, that any smart business people would have, at least,  a second look at their pre-MS announcement plans to recruit people and/or take debt. 

6 hours ago, rjfry said:

they are not going to have customers ranting at them for a addon that does not measure up to the customers expectations. 

They don't have to. Just require that addons ping a central service that then alerts you if there is an update, and provides a consistent method for applying those updates.

So instead of spending half a Saturday going through every purchase I've ever made for p3d, checking their individual websites, and downloading updates when I find them, I just hit an update query button and I get a list of available updates, and can then check the ones I want to update and it gets done.

If you set it up right it wouldn't even require Microsoft to have a central addon server. Just an auto-updater as part of the sim that can check the appropriate websites.

One advantage to this is that FSPilotshop.com and other stores can't pull their little stunt of making me pay $5 to update a plane to the latest version if I missed, or they mis-delivered, the update notification and I didn't notice in time.

 

 

4 hours ago, F737NG said:

That all works based on current levels of customers.

It's estimated that there are currently anywhere between 150,000 and 300,000 flight simmers. FSX in its heyday sold over 2 million units. That's 6 - 13 times the number we have now. With 67 million gamers on Xbox, the exposure will be even greater. Instead of a 100% increase, you may actually get 600% or more.

"May" is the operative word there. I know I'm the Negative Nelly on this subject, but that kind of thinking assumes there is a huge untapped market of potential flight simmers out there in the wilderness, who don't know this thing called a flight simulator exists, unless it appears on a game console. I'm not so sure about that.

If those numbers showing a decline from 2 million to 300,000 are accurate, there could be many reasons for that decline. I think the main one is that air combat and civilian flight sims used to be one of the showcase "games" on a PC, without much competition except from strategy games like the original X-COM and isometric RPGs like Baldur's Gate. Flight sims were one of the first types of games that actually modeled 3D objects in motion.

This was before the arrival of AAA Action/RPGs , First Person Shooters, and Car Racing games with million dollar+ budgets, and beefier PCs showing a fully realized 3D world for the player to move through. There are now far more games to choose from, besides combat and civilian flight sims. The new MSFS will have to compete with all of that on both the Xbox and PC. 
 

Quote

I get the reluctance. Some developers products just won't appeal to the masses. Those that do have that appeal will be selling unit numbers that they've never seen before.

I hope for the sake of developers that it goes that way. But "appeal to the masses" isn't guaranteed. That was the target market for both MS Flight and DTG Flight Sim World. Both failed, and FSW had the supposed advantage of being marketed on Steam, where the potential to reach that untapped market was just as big as an Xbox market. And yet, those masses never showed up.

Sure, FSW wasn't as sexy as what MS is showing in the recent trailer. Maybe just more eye candy and sex appeal will be enough to attract people who aren't already interested in aviation. But I wouldn't blame developers for being wary until that "vast" market actually shows up and starts buying 3rd party content.

On another note, I wonder if MS will incorporate a robust Airline career mode to attract the casual crowd. Personally if MS can add an FSPassengers like module not necessarily tied to a career mode that I can use on any flight that would be awesome. 

Also, to those still doubting how much interest there is in the sim, consider that the Halo Infinite- MS' flagship game- E3 trailer has ~4.4 Million views. The MSFS trailer has ~3.3M. There's definite interest, whether that translates to actual sales is yet to be determined. Not bad for a 'niche' game.

Edited June 26, 20196 yr by A330-300

2 hours ago, ErichB said:

Why would you buy an Orbx HD patchwork scenery now, when a new sim a year away will, based on current information, offer the same thing on a global scale?

That will be great if it's true, but we don't know yet that MSFS san do this on a "global scale." The data may or may not be there. 

For example, I live in a small town in WA state, population 9,000, about 50 miles from Seattle. Even in this tech-heavy state, the home of Microsoft and  Amazon, Google Earth Pro will only show a flat 2D photo of my town. It can't do that thing where you tilt the view and see 3D buildings like you can in some places, because (I assume) the data  just isn't there.

I just bought the Orbx TE Washington scenery last weekend, and of course the first thing I did was check out my hometown. It not only shows "plausible" autogen that looks a lot better than the default XP11 landclass+OSM (with a few visible flaws here and there, like a "squashed" marina), but it includes three custom, handmade 3D landmarks that are unique to the town: a factory, a courthouse building, and a lighthouse. They're not generic objects, they were designed to give some unique flavor to this small town. We probably got a little more attention than some places because it's a historic tourist town, but it shows what the Orbx approach can do in selected areas. 

If MSFS with its Azure tech can magically extract 3D data for my town and show something better than I see in Google Earth, I'll be thrilled. Even without the Orbx landmarks. And it might do a better job than that squashed marina. But I'll have to see it to believe it. I'm not going to assume ahead of time that it will match or exceed what Orbx is doing here. 

BTW, I'm actually not a huge fan of ortho-based scenery, and obviously the storage space would be ridiculous for any extensive coverage of all popular flying areas. I'm just lucky that I happen to live in an area that's popular for flight sims. The Orbx model is a flawed concept, compared to what could theoretically be done with enough data and streamed scenery. But let's see how the new MSFS  actually works, before jumping to conclusions that the entire world will look like it does in that trailer.

2 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I’m not, many others I know aren’t, the enthusiasm of “to be the buyer to report back” on new products is still going strong.  That’s human nature and I haven’t seen any real signs of that slowing down because of an announcement from Microsoft with no playable demo yet, just a short snippet video.

Sounds more like you have a beef with ORBX and their performance issues in P3D.  There are other products like France VFR, MSE, etc.

I ran a flight out of FlyTampa KLAS with MSE Nevada v3 and my visual quality was as good as MSFS 2020 trailer, if not better as my LOD out in the distant looked much better than the MSFS trailer, and my performance was rock solid.  I made video some time ago.

Cheers, Rob.

 

 

Good to hear.  Might give it another go.  

2 hours ago, Wobbie said:

I'd rather not, at this stage, as we do not know how much of that data will be utilized at all. 

Obviously, a minute portion of that raw data COULD be within the sim, or streamed, if that is the plan. LOL, even 500meg of scenery data is going to be too much for anyone to download, never mind having space on our PC's.

2 petabytes is 2048 terrabytes so, thats over 1 000 2 terrabyte drives!

That 2 petabyte comment is actually the raw data available, NOT ingame use at all! 

About the 2 petabytes...

...is it unreasonable to think about this type of process:

You choose a flight plan from A to B, then you have the option to choose the width of the corridor according to your configuration/system and so....

For the free flight, as well an option allows you to choose the radius of your flight in advance.

You download what is necessary and go...

Comments?

Richard

Edited June 26, 20196 yr by DrumsArt

One of the things that I found interesting from that aces guy’s video (kevin Phillips?) was that he thought that there were low resolution satellite images with a detail mask applied over the top, at least in some areas. Maybe outside of major cities, this will be how it’s done, which would presumably reduce the size of the game significantly? It looks fab even then though.