17 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

But only because we needed them to overcome the basic nature of the default sim. It may be that we won't need scenery and weather add-ons in the new sim.

 

11 minutes ago, SmokeDiddy said:

I wouldn't hold my breath.  I would venture to say that if MS finds a way to create decent scenery, there will be those that will not be satisfied no matter what and that goes for weather too.

It has always been the case that the new sim pushes us forwards with new tech. Then the 3rd parties recognise a gap in what has been provided in the base sim and fill it for those simmers who want greater fidelity.

With the lack of a new widely popular sim from Microsoft for 13 years, that gap has become the size of a canyon and we've tried to fill it with hundreds of possible add-ons to bring our current sims upto something approaching a modern experience.

What I'm looking forward to is having a base sim that provides much more than than is possible with a fully-loaded P3D. With just a few add-ons, I'm hoping to experience a sim that is  vastly superior to anything we have now. Fingers crossed, but it looks promising!

16 minutes ago, busdriver said:

 

Passion? I admire passion, but when that passion leads to some of the invective we have seen on AVSIM, you have now moved toward obsession, and not a healthy one either.

Some have clearly taken a page from Simon Evans (snave) book. A reincarnation ?

 

1 minute ago, F737NG said:

What I'm looking forward to is having a base sim that provides much more than than is possible with a fully-loaded P3D. With just a few add-ons, I'm hoping to experience a sim that is  vastly superior to anything we have now.

I'm hoping for a base sim which is better than what's currently available (but not necessarilly amazing) and which I can add what I want where I want. For example, I'm not interested in how good the USA looks as I fly exclusively in Europe.

38 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

But hasn't that always been the case? No matter how good things get, some people always want them to be better. From the very limited amount that we've seen in the trailer, the scenery already looks at least as good, if not better, than the best 3rd party scenery currently available. The weather looks much better! Remember that there's still a lot more development and refinement to be done before it hits the streets. 

No.

Sceneries look much better in the landmark areas shown. What about Japan, North of France, the Philippines or Costa Rica ? 

Weather does not look much better. Clouds and cloud shading look much better. Weather is an entirely different matter.

Edited June 28, 20196 yr by domkle

4 minutes ago, domkle said:

Sceneries looks much better in the landmark areas shown. What about Japan, North of France, the Philippines or Costa Rica ?

Basically the rest of the World outside of North America! In the earlier days of flight sims, the biggest market was probably in the USA so it was generally accepted that the scenery there would have the most detail. Gaming is now a much more global activity and, especially as this is going to be available on XBox, customers will want most countries to be well-depicted.

9 minutes ago, domkle said:

Weather does not look much better. Clouds and cloud shading look much better. Weather is an entirely different matter.

Semantics, but I think you know what I meant! For most parts of the world it's now quite easy to access the met data required to show detailed weather so how it appears in the sim is much more significant for most people.

1 minute ago, vortex681 said:

Basically the rest of the World outside of North America! In the earlier days of flight sims, the biggest market was probably in the USA so it was generally accepted that the scenery there would have the most detail. Gaming is now a much more global activity and, especially as this is going to be available on XBox, customers will want most countries to be well-depicted.

Semantics, but I think you know what I meant! For most parts of the world it's now quite easy to access the met data required to show detailed weather so how it appears in the sim is much more significant for most people.

Sceneries : again I was responding to a fellow simmer saying that there was a  fear of change. There is not. I am just not certain that FS2020 will start from the baseline of what we have today outside the large market regions (the US mainly, you are right). I fly everywhere in the world (including the US) but glossy  stuff over SFO (where I lived), Chicago or a crater in Az fail to convince me at that stage that everything will "much better".

Weather : No, I don't play with words. The only thing we see in the trailer is clouds. Weather integration has considerably imrpoved over the years (thanks to Opus and Active Sky and Rex) from the single call to METAR by FSX to organize cotton puffs but we have still a long way to go in terms of depiction. To say that weather is much better is an exageration 😉. 

2 minutes ago, domkle said:

To say that weather is much better is an exageration

But the weather relies on the quality of the available data (which is easily accessed nowadays) and is outside of the control of MS or any of the add-on suppliers. It's how the weather is depicted on screen (which MS do have control over) which is the important thing.

2 minutes ago, domkle said:

but glossy  stuff over SFO (where I lived), Chicago or a crater in Az fail to convince me at that stage that everything will "much better".

Meteor Crater, Arizona is out in the middle of nowhere, west of Winslow.  In stock FSX/P3D the ground texture is pretty bland, not much more than a single color with some random autogen bushes thrown in.  I've flown the area many times and the best thing I can say about the stock crater is that I saw a picture of the real thing and knew immediately what it was.

I've also seen screen shots from people flying over the area with photo scenery and it looks incredible.  The desert isn't one bland color, it's quite varied and interesting.  I doubt the crater itself is the only thing in the area with the improved textures, and any improvement of the desert in the area will be most welcome.

Perfect?  I don't care.  I just want an improvement over what is not much more than filled polygons.

Hook

12 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

But the weather relies on the quality of the available data (which is easily accessed nowadays) and is outside of the control of MS or any of the add-on suppliers. It's how the weather is depicted on screen (which MS do have control over) which is the important thing.

Didnt' you see improvement from FS9 (FSX weather was the same) untill now with Active SKy ? Same kind  of METAR all  this time

Metar are raw and coarse data which need some wizardry to organize into the sim. AS and Opus and Rex did already an amazing job

Edited June 28, 20196 yr by domkle

2 minutes ago, LHookins said:

 

Hook

Craters, I love craters 😂. A favorite flight of mine is fly over the Java string of volcanoes (Indonesia). Japan and Central/South America have some nice ones too. Do you think that the new sim will bring them to me the same way we see Meteor Crater ? Maybe.

Don't make me wrong. I am pleasantly intrigued by the new sim but not to the point to say that the baseline will be "much better" everywhere. Thats all. 

1 hour ago, vortex681 said:

Not all drivers work well with the various iterations of the hardware they're designed for.

True. But the information as to which driver you should be using in X application is out there. Right now we have to bounce around reading forums to figure out which driver we should get. If you could centralize that information, and then have Windows choose the appropriate driver (not necessarily the latest driver) then our lives would all get a lot easier. Especially if you had Windows automatically choose it, but not automatically install it until you say it's OK.

 

Edited June 28, 20196 yr by eslader

3 minutes ago, domkle said:

Craters, I love craters 😂. A favorite flight of mine is fly over the Java string of volcanoes (Indonesia). Japan and Central/South America have some nice ones too. Do you think that the new sim will bring them to me the same way we see Meteor Crater ? Maybe.

No way to know how much of the entire world will be like that.  But they might have done the Painted Desert in the area.  For Java, I probably wouldn't hold my breath. 🙂

One thing I noticed right away with Flight was that they got the textures on vertical surfaces right.  Hilly/mountainous areas looked a lot more natural.  I think we can at least expect this in the new sim, even if it's still generic landclass textures.

I like discovering volcanoes and look for caldera everywhere I go.  I'll even divert a flight to check one out if I discover one that looks interesting on the chart.  

Hook

13 minutes ago, LHookins said:

  they got the textures on vertical surfaces right.  Hilly/mountainous areas looked a lot more natural.  I think we can at least expect this in the new sim, even if it's still generic landclass textures.

 

An important point for me too. I hate these stretched textures. 

Are we nearly there yet  🙂

13 hours ago, pracines said:

This is called "passion", and its this level of passion that sets flight simmers apart.

Passion with a vengeance, that is!