This is the bit I think may take time to resolve - it’s not like music or movie/ tv content where there are one or two streaming options, if every publisher does one there could be like 20+ to choose from. I don’t like games from only one or two publishers and I’m not going to end up paying £200 for every one of them. I thought google stadia might have been the gaming Spotify, but it seems not. 

Amazon Prime video used to offer a bunch of videos included free with Prime.  Then most of the indie movies went to various subscription services and you might have to subscribe to a lot of them.  I quit even looking for movies to watch as I mostly watched indie movies.  The last time I checked Prime Video it looked like they didn't do this any more.

The worst case, like with Prime Video, is that each add-on vendor offered their products through a subscription service and you'd have to pay each vendor a monthly fee.  The upside is that you *might* get several or all their products for one monthly fee.  The downside is that you *might* have to pay a monthly fee for each product.  Still, paying for a single month would allow you to try an aircraft, for example, then cancel the subscription if the aircraft isn't as advertised, not to your liking, or one that you only fly a couple of times a year.

Hook

I don't mind a subscription fee as long as the fee is reasonable, as it almost forces the provider to keep reinvesting adding/building/maintaining.

 

One thing I'm a bit unsure about at the moment is steaming of the scenery. For example, if I do the same slight from lets say EHAM to EGCC everyday will it make the user redownload/stream the exact same data every single time, or will it save what you've downloaded from previous flights and only download if there's been a change to the scenery.

If it makes you redownload the same thing every time that seems quite inefficient to me.

With game pass already being like 10 bucks, how much do you honestly think they'll charge us for this sim?

 

 

16 hours ago, Superdelphinus said:

It could be that the entire game can be streamed too, at the other end of the scale. I think their version of google stadia is launching in the autumn? 

Yeah I'm pretty sure it'll end up on xCloud like their other games.

In the UK on the news today it was announced that ITV and the BBC would launch a joint subscription based TV streaming platform this will likely mean the end of free catch up TV, it`s the way the industry is going in the future.

2 hours ago, Litmoose said:

One thing I'm a bit unsure about at the moment is steaming of the scenery. For example, if I do the same slight from lets say EHAM to EGCC everyday will it make the user redownload/stream the exact same data every single time, or will it save what you've downloaded from previous flights and only download if there's been a change to the scenery.

If it makes you redownload the same thing every time that seems quite inefficient to me.

It would be inefficient for that one flight, but the sim has to accommodate every possible user's preference in flying. Some people only fly the same routes, others skip around all over the world. Enthusiasts of Cessna trainers aren't going to cover the same distance as someone who flies long range tubeliners.

Assuming there is a streaming method for scenery -- which we're just guessing at, it hasn't been confirmed -- the data would pile up quickly on the user's hard drives or SSD's.

Example: I have only two of the Orbx True Earth scenery packages: Great Britain South and Washington USA. Just those two areas take up 340 GB of space on my hard drive. While I haven't flown over every square foot of that scenery, I've covered a lot of it. If it was streamed and kept on the drive, I imagine it would still be in the neighborhood of 200 GB for areas I've explored so far. And I fly in many more areas than just those two.

We don't know what the scenery data size is for the new MFS and how it would compare to Orbx TE scenery, but if it's anything like the trailer it could be at least that huge. It would be much more efficient to stream it onto a fast SSD as a buffer, with a "look ahead" for where you're about to fly, and a continual erasing of data for areas you've left behind.

You wouldn't "own" the scenery in the usual sense, and this would be awful for people with slow or intermittent Internet connections. Or no connections at all when traveling. But it would be an efficient way to cover the world with very high definition scenery without requiring massive hard drive storage on the user end, which is where we are now. I know simmers using free user-made ortho scenery in XP11 who need drives in the multi terabyte sizes to store all those files.

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

Assuming there is a streaming method for scenery -- which we're just guessing at, it hasn't been confirmed -- the data would pile up quickly on the user's hard drives or SSD's.

It's not only the data of the sim piling up on your disk - what about the huge amount of bandwidth you use to stream the scenery? I read an article recently that outlined all the problems customers of a service like Google Stadia would be facing: most people have monthly caps on the bandwidth they can use before being charged additionally or even being downgraded to a significantly lower available bandwidth. The article calculated with the published data about bandwidth use of Google Stadia that when streaming a game you're quickly arriving at your average bandwidth cap and you'd therefore be seriously time limited when it comes to how long/often you can stream a game. Add to that other internet use like Netflix for example and you're close to having to forget about streaming your games.

I'm certain it won't be as problematic as that for MFS streaming the scenery, but depending on how often and how long you fly and in what areas and what kind of flying you do I'd guess bandwidth usage would quickly pile up, too. Would that mean you either have to pay extra to your internet provider or you actually have to reduce the time spent flying?

Plus, what happens when MS servers, or any server of any game for that matter, is down for maintenance or something? You wouldn't be able to fly I guess. Same if a game provider decides to pull the plug on a certain game - it's gone. You're very dependent on them.

I really see more problems than upsides with streaming games.

36 minutes ago, threegreen said:

I really see more problems than upsides with streaming games.

I do too, at least for now.

Ten years from now, with more people on 5G wireless and faster trunk lines, there will be more potential consumers for streamed games. We're just at the beginning of this tech, and I don't think anyone knows how it will play out. The major companies are scrambling not to let anyone else get ahead of them. For the next several years, this may be like VR with a very small (and wealthy) enthusiast base for a while.

The problem though, is that so many here are assuming that what's shown in the initial trailer for MFS will be what we'll see everywhere in the world. Or at least for hundreds of major cities. And at 4k resolution, no less, where you can't get away with low-res textures and low polygon counts.

I don't know how they could pull that off without streaming. Or as an alternative, the Orbx approach where you leave your computer running overnight to download just one scenery package, and it takes up hundreds of gigabytes on your local hard drive.

Either people are wrong about how widespread the scenery detail in MFS will be, or else Microsoft is making some very optimistic projections about what end-users have for bandwidth and/or local storage space. 

Edited July 19, 20196 yr by Paraffin

All this for what amounts to a better weather rending and terrain engine. Give us flightsim experienced "old timers" a break. I will not pay a dime for a subscription to anything related to flightsim.

I'd be very surprised if they went for a full streaming service (similar to Google Stadia). Ignoring the problem of download caps for a moment, just the bandwidth required would be an issue for a significant number of potential customers worldwide. For example, Stadia will need at least 10Mbps just to stream games at 720p. For 1080p you'll need at least 20Mbps and for 4k that rises to at least 35Mbps. The average global bandwidth is currently about 20Mbps. When you consider that many people, even in 1st-world countries, get much less than this you can see scale of the problem. You'd also need to consider the additional bandwidth being used for other things in your home - video streaming services, music streaming and smart home products, for example. On a good day I'd struggle to reach 35Mbs and I live in an urban area of the UK (and that's the maximum available for the foreseeable future for my area). I wouldn't want to game at 1080p any more so that would effectively rule me out.

I wouldn't be surprised if scenery is streamed (and possibly cached) to our systems. Even if the whole of the world wasn't covered by photorealistic scenery, just the major cities, surrounding areas and all of the other popular regions would take up many terabytes of storage space. Perhaps they'll let you download regions (like Orbx) as you need them. It'll be interesting to see how they actually do it.

Edited July 20, 20196 yr by vortex681

2 hours ago, vortex681 said:

On a good day I'd struggle to reach 35Mbs and I live in an urban area of the UK

@vortex681 Blimey, you’re lucky! 10Mb/s here a few miles south of Edinburgh City Centre and that’s with ‘Fibre To The Cabinet’. For most purposes that’s fine in our household. At least it’s stable and reasonably reliable (BT). Downloading large >1TB files can be done in a couple of hours or overnight depending on size and available bandwidth.

Have to say that unless there’s an option to purchase, download and install a core standalone product, that includes a few areas that have received special treatment, then you can probably count me out. Nowadays, those of us with sufficient motivation are unlikely to baulk at achieving an error-free compressed download of, say, 20-40GB. I’m sure there’s a lot can be done with that before feeling compelled to consider the selective addition of any 3rd Party enhancements.

Regards,

Mike

My own connection has recently been upgraded, and I am now hitting 50+ Mbps. Hopefully, that will reduce the download time required for ORBx TrueEarth GB Central......whenever it gets released

@Cruachan

I'm sorry to be nitpicking - but are you saying, that you have 10 MB/s or 10 Mb/s? If the latter (which is what you wrote in your post) I suppose you can expect around 1 MB/s (overhead taken into consideration)...

The reason I'm asking (and is confused) is that you're claiming, that you can download "large files >1TB" (terabyte?) files in a coupe of hours or overnight. Again, I'm sorry to be nitpicking, but if you're sitting on a 10 Mb/s connection, downloading a 1TB file, means a download time of approx. 291 hours = about 12 days! If you're on a 10 MB/s (about 100 Mb/s) connection, it would most likely be (assuming, that you can keep up full connection speed constantly) about 29 hours - or approx. 1 day and 5 hours.

Edited July 20, 20196 yr by Anders Bermann

3 hours ago, Anders Bermann said:

I’m sorry to be nitpicking - but are you saying, that you have 10 MB/s or 10 Mb/s? If the latter (which is what you wrote in your post) I suppose you can expect around 1 MB/s (overhead taken into consideration)...

The reason I'm asking (and is confused) is that you're claiming, that you can download "large files >1TB" (terabyte?) files in a coupe of hours or overnight. Again, I'm sorry to be nitpicking, but if you're sitting on a 10 Mb/s connection, downloading a 1TB file, means a download time of approx. 291 hours = about 12 days! If you're on a 10 MB/s (about 100 Mb/s) connection, it would most likely be (assuming, that you can keep up full connection speed constantly) about 29 hours - or approx. 1 day and 5 hours.

Hi Anders,

Thought I was going mad until I performed the necessary calculations which quickly revealed my mistake/brain failure! 

My sustained download speeds are usually around 1.2MB/sec which occasionally rise to the dizzying heights of 1.3MB/sec.

1TB = 1048576MB

1048576 @ 1.2MB/sec = 873813 secs = 14564 mins = 243 hours = 10 days....ouch!!

1GB = 1024MB

1024MB @ 1.2MB/sec = 853 secs = 14 mins....now, that’s more like it!

Example:

13GB (Prepar3D) = 13312MB

13312MB @ 1.2MB/sec = 11093 secs = 185 mins = 3 hours which, as I recall, is about right.

Clearly, the limbic system (responsible for memory) of my brain required a reboot...lol!

Thanks very much for the heads up. 

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that such download speeds are borderline acceptable for my meagre requirements. I cannot recall the last failed download so my link to the local exchange must be pretty stable. In time no doubt this will improve but, until then, my requirements remain valid where MSFS is concerned.

Regards,

Mike

 

 

 

No worries, @Cruachan

I was just confused... 🙂