What We Want (Part 1)

[Noooch 1,084]

- Multiplayer mode with several servers, each with different level of authenticity (or difficulty). For example new simmers or arcade players could go to one server and more serious simmers could go to another server with ATC, real procedures etc... (And a safety net to keep trolls away)

Edited July 30, 2019 by Noooch

[Evan Banalian 5]

3rd party add-ons, especially for airplanes, airports, and weather, that makes a very realistic sim experience.

A realistic night flying with dynamics lighting like X plane. This is one of the main reasons I moved to X plane. ( xplane night flying is just AWESOME)

Good performance to take advantage of the latest Hardware. 

An easy way to update the SIM without breaking anything without the need to do a fresh install every time we update.

realistic car movement, size, speed, etc with good roads build up, including small roads, highways and freeways and bridges. 

A better ATC, especially IFR flying.

Finally, please don't quit on US " If the new sim is what we all wanted " It will be a big investment for all of us and we want to continue to have that support for many years to come."

Edited July 31, 2019 by Evan Banalian
editing

[martin-w 3,235]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested but...

 

 

1. ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT FLIGHT MODELLING! Yes, I've done it in caps. Electric drive trains are the future. We already have the Pipistrel Alpha Electra being used for flight training and the Eviation Alice, promising 1000 KM range and carrying 8 passengers about to take its first test flight. Not to mention numerous hybrid electric aircfat in testing. Therefore, I feel its essential for Microsoft to consider the future and make sure the sim is compatible with the flight dynamics of electric aircraft. Not to mention Prop Regen capabilities etc! And of course we should include the multitude of VTOL electric aircraft, air taxi's, that are in development. The sim should be able to handle the flight dynamics and modelling associated with those guys too.

2. Realistic implementation of snow! By that I mean snow having true depth. Runways, once cleared of snow, having visable snow banks either side of the runway. 

3. More relativistic ATC of course, which I would say most of us want.

4. SID's and Stars of course.

5. Approach plates available within the sim. So no need to scour the internet for free versions.

6 A built in, very capable, flight dynamics editor. Lets face it, how many times have we been dissatisfied with a particular aircraft's flight dynamics?

All developers get it wrong from time time to time and we find ourselves, based on real world pilot experience and definitive data, with a somewhat inaccurate representation. Well to be able to jump into a flight dynamics editor, that's easy to use, with a well designed UI and tweak to our hearts content would be wonderful. No more diving into air flies and having to learn the black arts to tweak. No more less than effective CFG tweaks. 

7. It goes without saying that the new sim will have a brand new, state of the art engine, otherwise there's little point. But lets make sure it doesn't include scenery that unrealistically pops up in the distance. Nothing kills realism more.

8. Don't neglect the smaller airfields, grass strips, dirt runways. Nothing is more entertaining than flying into some of the more challenging, remote grass strips and dirt runways. Flight dynamics associated with this and plenty of such runways available would be appreciated by many. 

9. A decent, high quality, highly capable flight planner.

10. And wouldn't it be lovely, at the end of a flight, to be able to tow your aircraft straight into a hangar for maintenance or storage etc. 

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by martin-w

[benjidunn 1]

Hi I'm new to the forum and very excited about the new sim.

What I'm hoping for:

1) Very good looking graphics, like DCS

2) Like many others already said, a store from Microsoft with approved and high quality (study level, PMDG level) addons, again like DCS. But other than DCS I would like an open SDK, so that everyone can develope addons.

3) For me the best new thing they showed in the Trailer were the animals. I'd really like to see more such details. I find it particularly interesting and entertaining to explore beautiful landscapes, the nature and with that all the living things in it. So I would really love to see many different types of forests with a big variaty of wildlife and other things to explore. 

Also I find animals particularly interesting as they react in many different ways to planes and helicopters. So for example moving cow herds in Australia, would be a new mission idea with realistic animals implemented.

4) Something else I always wanted in a flight sim were and still are much more realistic effects. It's something all flight sims to date didn't get right. When I talk of effects I talk about things as moving grass in the airstream of helicopters or planes, dust and moving trees in the wind. But also the "steam" over the wings, more realistic chemitrails and better rain effects.

 

So that's my list for the microsoft team😉

[threexgreen 3,139]

4 hours ago, martin-w said:

5. Approach plates available within the sim. So no need to scour the internet for free versions.

We already have several offerings like Navigraph, etc. If they were available in the sim and they were to be kept current, I'm not sure about the license stuff for plates from Jeppesen for example. I think in that case you could be looking at a subscription in MSFS at least for charts.

[Noooch 1,084]

33 minutes ago, threegreen said:

We already have several offerings like Navigraph, etc. If they were available in the sim and they were to be kept current, I'm not sure about the license stuff for plates from Jeppesen for example. I think in that case you could be looking at a subscription in MSFS at least for charts.

He was talking about free ones, not necessarily up-to-date but does it really matter that much? I only use free charts by using the amazing chart finder plugin from XPlane and I never was disapointed.

[simmerhead 885]

Rewards! I want rewards and easter eggs like those in FSX. And please make it so that your rewards are stored so not lost when switching computers or reinstalling the sim. 

[G-RFRY 1,710]

One for Microsoft could please bring back fight simulator to the Channel 9 msdn like we had way back, and we can see the Devs that can give some insight on the work they undertook to bring Flight Simulator back to the community, I enjoy there videos.

There is still some old videos on there.  

[bashope 112]

Hello community!!

I spent a few minutes reading this thread and I have to say a big thanks to the moderator who eventually had to step in and politely ask to keep it on topic or it would be blocked. It was getting quite painful to read. I mean, I'm happy that moderators are not overly aggressive on their tasks as in other forums, but there should be a reasonable limit.

So, having said this... I was a P3D user until X-Plane 11 came around, which is when I jumped ship and never looked back (or did I?).

As such, I'd like to start this post with the features that made me switch to X-Plane, which are obviously features I'd like to see in my next sim:

• Performance - For me this is a big one. What good is it to have a perfect flight model, perfect visuals, perfect everything, if you're looking at a 5 fps slide show? Also, if we agree that VR is the future, performance plays an even more important role as for good VR we should be looking at no less than 60 fps with a 5k, maybe even 8k display (Pimax, anyone?).
• Night lighting - and visual fidelity in general. Everyone knows it... flying at night in X-Plane is simply a very enjoyable experience. So much so that most older videos of X-Plane, particularly X-Plane 10 and early X-Plane 11 are mostly at night. Huge draw distance and very good looking lights, couples with great performance, made night flying very enjoyable. Also, in the beginning most people complained about "haze" in X-Plane 11. What most people didn't realize was that real weather was limiting visibility at 10 kms (Europe) because METARs don't report better visibility. If one would increase visibility to a higher value (say, 30 or 40 kms), the haze was gone. And this haze was much more realistic and looked much better than P3D. I also like this.
• Sloped runways - A lot of people made fun of me because of this. However, to me, nothing screams "fake" louder than a perfectly flat 2 km strip of asphalt. Especially at night when you can the line of lights perfectly lined up. Seemed like a 2 km swimming pool on a very calm day. Sorry, sloped runways are a must. With the respective performance penalties to boot, as others already mentioned.
• Flight model - A lot of people talk about the importance of flight model but I'm not sure if they really understand the differences and the importance of X-Plane's flight model engine. Never before I felt like flying through an actual "fluid". I'm a student pilot with a few dozen hours logged, so I know more or less what flying a C172 feels like, and boy-oh-boy it's so much more realistic in X-Plane. Wind gusts actually affect the plane in all 3-axis, and requires continuous corrections actions in all control surfaces. It's really great. A lot of people say "but if you get a good add-on in P3D the flight model comes from the add-on and is perfect". Sorry, I don't agree. I think people are just talking about performance tables or something like that. In P3D I've tried a few payware add-ons and they simply don't compare.
• Hassle-free installation, including add-ons - I'm kind of a maniac with my PC's "cleanliness", so I love the fact that X-Plane is not polluting my PC's registry with entries which will eventually have conflicts and mess my system up. Same for installation of most add-ons. Just drop them on a folder, and that's it. It's not a deal-breaker for me, but I like it.
• Community support - How genius was it from Laminar Research to have the community work for them? By creating the necessary tools to allow common folk like you and me to contribute, they basically have a massive workforce of hundreds of people creating airports for them. I'm proud to say I have also contributed with a few.

 

So these are the main points that made me switch. Now I'd like to talk about some of the things I miss:

• Realistic looking water and clouds - Unfortunately, even with such realistic visuals on one side, X-Plane can have really bad looking visuals on another side... water, particularly ocean water, just looks absolutely terrible and unrealistic. The same with the clouds. With default, one will never see a towering cumulonimbus or such other formations. And how important is that for flying?? One should know to avoid them, but it seems as though X-Plane's creators are only flying inland and on good weather... which brings me to the next point.
• Seasons - I didn't miss them for a long time, but I have to admit that flying in Summer conditions all year long, even if the METAR has heavy snow, even if everything around me (in real life) is covered in white... in the simulator it's Summer. And for those of us who are old school VFR pilots, trying to practice some dead-reckoning with snow covered terrain, this is not optimal.
• Realistic weather engine - Thankfully, HiFi Simulations came to the rescue with ASXP, but X-Plane's default weather engine is atrocious. Unacceptable for a new sim. Weather is a huge part of flying, is it not?

 

Ok, now some "random" points which I would like to see on the new sim:

• Rod Machado's lessons - I still recommend to anyone who is a complete beginner to flying to get FSX Steam Edition and follow Rod Machado's excellent lessons. It can totally bring you up to speed with the practical side of flying. What are flaps. What's the trim and how to use it. Some notions of principles of flight and aerodynamics. What's a traffic pattern. How to take-off, how to land, etc. These lessons are just invaluable and we should preserve them.
• VATSIM/IVAO - I basically almost always fly on IVAO, wouldn't have it any other way. If the new sim will not offer the possibility to connect to these networks, I'm out. To have this already integrated in the sim as someone already suggested would be fantastic.
• FSUIPC (or equivalent) - I fly pretty much always on a VA, and as far as I understand the ACARS needs to able to connect to FSUIPC to read the flight's data.

 

I might remember a few more points in the meantime, but this is my list for now 🙂

Cheers, thanks for this thread!

[roarkr 104]

No need for endless tweaking to improve FPS. Just flying.

Edited July 31, 2019 by roarkr

[SteveW 1,792]

21 minutes ago, roarkr said:

No need for endless tweaking to improve FPS. Just flying.

Would be good.

We would probably need a page whereby we can move sliders around, as we do, that also ignores over reaching settings.

We would need to set up our preferences, such as do we prefer more shadow detail rather than shrubs and trees.

In the end, I think tweaking will always play a part of some kind as on the PC with the march of improving them.

[martin-w 3,235]

9 minutes ago, SteveW said:

Would be good.

We would probably need a page whereby we can move sliders around, as we do, that also ignores over reaching settings.

We would need to set up our preferences, such as do we prefer more shadow detail rather than shrubs and trees.

In the end, I think tweaking will always play a part of some kind as on the PC with the march of improving them.

 

Just a thought, but I wonder if an automated performance system might be feasible. Whereby you select the frame rate you desire, and the sim adjusts the relevant parameters to maintain that frame rate. We would be trusting MS in terms of which parameters were adjusted of course. 

[felixfer 20]

1 hour ago, bashope said:

Rod Machado's lessons - I still recommend to anyone who is a complete beginner to flying to get FSX Steam Edition and follow Rod Machado's excellent lessons. It can totally bring you up to speed with the practical side of flying. What are flaps. What's the trim and how to use it. Some notions of principles of flight and aerodynamics. What's a traffic pattern. How to take-off, how to land, etc. These lessons are just invaluable and we should preserve them.

I totally agree, glad to read that.

[Macpah 46]

11 hours ago, martin-w said:

A built in, very capable, flight dynamics editor. Lets face it, how many times have we been dissatisfied with a particular aircraft's flight dynamics?

All developers get it wrong from time time to time and we find ourselves, based on real world pilot experience and definitive data, with a somewhat inaccurate representation. Well to be able to jump into a flight dynamics editor, that's easy to use, with a well designed UI and tweak to our hearts content would be wonderful. No more diving into air flies and having to learn the black arts to tweak. No more less than effective CFG tweaks.

Yes, that's exactly what I would like to have.

Thank you for mentioning it.

[SteveW 1,792]

4 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

Just a thought, but I wonder if an automated performance system might be feasible. Whereby you select the frame rate you desire, and the sim adjusts the relevant parameters to maintain that frame rate. We would be trusting MS in terms of which parameters were adjusted of course. 

That's what I was saying. To keep within the fps there will be decisions such as less shadows or something else has to give depending on a scene. And so that becomes a new set of sliders I mentioned, where we choose the preference of what detail we want to lose when a scene becomes too complex to maintain the fps we chose or require for the monitor.