What We Want (Part 1)

[snglecoil 1,828]

5 hours ago, NotASenator said:

Porg

😂 oops...I blame autocorrect 

[siggy 154]

Aerosoft's ASK21 (Glider) has an external "Winch" program to launch the glider. It would probably be beneficial if something like this was built into the sim so all gliders could use this.

[Wobbie 938]

Glider launches has been out there for both FS2004 & FSX for many years now, via a 3rd party addon. 

Having it built in would be nice, but maybe it will just add in bloating an install? 

[Paraffin 2,197]

11 hours ago, Wobbie said:

Glider launches has been out there for both FS2004 & FSX for many years now, via a 3rd party addon. 

Having it built in would be nice, but maybe it will just add in bloating an install? 

That's probably just a small amount of code, not bloat. It could be a general-purpose feature for other things too, like payload drops (X-15, military drop tanks) and helicopter sling load release. 

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

I largely gave up on flight sims when Dovetail screwed up FSW. A lot of simmers proudly don’t play PC games, but if you pay attention there is mostly overlap. You see how far behind existing flight sims are. The fact that Laminar is STILL competing with the ESP is sad. To a certain degree you can’t blame these small teams but let’s not pretend they’re on the cutting edge of software development.

I only recently stumbled upon news of this new sim. There is no other company that is as qualified to make a good sim than MS. Maybe they won’t succeed but they have the best chance.

[Paraffin 2,197]

11 minutes ago, carbonbasedlifeform said:

I largely gave up on flight sims when Dovetail screwed up FSW. A lot of simmers proudly don’t play PC games, but if you pay attention there is mostly overlap. You see how far behind existing flight sims are. The fact that Laminar is STILL competing with the ESP is sad. To a certain degree you can’t blame these small teams but let’s not pretend they’re on the cutting edge of software development.

Laminar can be faulted on slow movement to improve everything outside the aircraft: the landclass-based scenery engine, lack of seasons, ATC, and especially weather modeling. All of those need improvement and we XP pilots tend to get impatient when progress is slow.

However, Laminar has made great progress in aerodynamic and engine modeling, especially for turboprops lately, and in advanced helicopter dynamics. Laminar is certainly not "competing" with ESP in this area. 

It shouldn't be written off as "not being on the cutting edge of software development" when these aspects of the sim are in constant development and improvement. Not unless you can point to something that's better right now in these specific areas, and not just what we're hoping for with the new MSFS. I'm very curious to see if the new MSFS can match or exceed what XP has done here.

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

It shouldn't be written off as "not being on the cutting edge of software development" when these aspects of the sim are in constant development and improvement. 

It can’t be completely written off, but it’s not competitive compared to the other 3D software that almost all have modeled physics. Has x-plane’s ground handling improved? The environment including its hideous weather is not immersive at all IMO. There are really well supported graphics engines out there. There are driving sims that model aerodynamics and drag too.

Anyway, my ultimate point is hate on X-plane and it’s great if others are happy with it, I’m just saying I’m another person that will have renewed interest in flight sims if MS flight sim is at all good. I also think there are potential new simmers who MS can attract with good tutorials.

Edited September 7, 2019 by carbonbasedlifeform
word not allowed

[snglecoil 1,828]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

However, Laminar has made great progress in aerodynamic and engine modeling, especially for turboprops lately, and in advanced helicopter dynamics. Laminar is certainly not "competing" with ESP in this area. 

I personally find Austin’s personality grating...reminds me too much of a know-it-all relative of mine, so it’s not really Austin’s fault. Having seen his recent videos talking through the flight model development in XP, however, I’m starting to...dare I say it...drink the XP Cool Aid a bit. I agree, in Austin’s mind, he’s not competing with anyone. The market may beg to differ. 

[Paraffin 2,197]

10 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

I personally find Austin’s personality grating...reminds me too much of a know-it-all relative of mine, so it’s not really Austin’s fault. Having seen his recent videos talking through the flight model development in XP, however, I’m starting to...dare I say it...drink the XP Cool Aid a bit. I agree, in Austin’s mind, he’s not competing with anyone. The market may beg to differ. 

Yeah, I have trouble listening to Austin talk too. His personality is... well, it's actually typical of people who are bright, and somewhat insulated from social norms by wealth, and absolutely fanatical about a single subject. I do wonder if he has any other hobbies. At least we get to go along for the ride on this one. 😄  

[188AHC 2,138]

Enough about Austin and LM. Way off topic. This topic is about MSFS. 

Thanks, 

[Paraffin 2,197]

1 hour ago, 188AHC said:

Enough about Austin and LM. Way off topic. This topic is about MSFS. 

Thanks, 

If you're going to be that rigid about comparisons with other current flight sims, I hope that restriction applies to any comparisons with FSX and P3D also. Right?

Or is XP the only sim we're not allowed to talk about here?

[snglecoil 1,828]

Apologies for the derail. Guess we’ll all be back to talk about MSFS when there’s something more to talk about. 

[188AHC 2,138]

8 hours ago, Paraffin said:

If you're going to be that rigid about comparisons with other current flight sims, I hope that restriction applies to any comparisons with FSX and P3D also. Right?

Or is XP the only sim we're not allowed to talk about here?

It's ok to compare Sims. Actually it's helpful when comparative facts are used. This discussion devolved into a discussion of Austin's personality and attitudes. That is disrespectful and not acceptable. 

 

[ErichB 3,643]

21 hours ago, 188AHC said:

It's ok to compare Sims. Actually it's helpful when comparative facts are used. This discussion devolved into a discussion of Austin's personality and attitudes. That is disrespectful and not acceptable. 

 

I not an XP user or fan, but I admire and respect Austin and I love listening to him talk - about anything.  It doesn't matter that I don't always agree, but he has an amazing mind.

Back on topic, I hope the new sim allows for smooth animations - particularly of wings during flight (as per XP) and other ground based animation.  Nothing to do with flying itself, but it is an important part of an immersive experience.

 

Also, a proper camera and replay system.  I'm sure it's been said before.  I'm sure I've said it before.

Edited September 9, 2019 by ErichB

[bashope 112]

On 9/6/2019 at 9:24 PM, Anders Bermann said:

I don't want to be rude - but I think you (and many others in here) either have a complete lack of knowledge of how many calculations are being performed to be able to simulate what such a complex simulator is doing, OR you are deliberately trolling the topic, by demanding unreasonable and setting - in my opinion - unjustified bars for this new simulator. 

You can think that, and it's not rude, but allow me to counter that.

It just so happens that I am (or was) a programmer by profession and I follow closely the "technical" rants of Ben Supnik and the likes, and I do understand what is going on, I think.

As a professional programmer (for SAP) I do know the additional effort that multi-threading programming requires and how much easier it is for (lazy) programmers to just hack everything into a single thread and then blame it on the machine for not being fast enough. And it looks like that is *exactly* what sim developers have been doing so far. And to top it off, it looks like they tie the graphical part up with the physics calculation portion of it, making the fps dependent directly on how fast the machine can calculate the flight model.

It also looks like the goal of porting XP to Vulkan is to improve exactly that... the usage of all the cores on the CPU and also detach the graphical "calculations" from the flight model.

 

So, to sum it up, I disagree with you. I think nowadays simulators' relatively poor performance comes from poorly optimized coding for multicore usage, inefficient coding practices and frameworks which tie up flight model calculations with the graphical part. I think that with experienced developers on "gaming" (or performance sensitive graphical applications, if you prefer) would be able to:

• Create a proper graphics engine with optimized "LOD" which can have great detail up close (like grass, moving trees, etc), but be able to quickly "switch it off" in the distance for performance, like pretty much any decent game nowadays.
• Detach the flight modeling calculation with the graphical representation, and use the remaining resources as necessary to maintain good performance on the graphical side, and a flight model as accurate as possible, according to the resources available. I can even imagine a slider where the user could choose between allocating more power to graphics or to flight modeling accuracy. You've probably seen Austin's latest video where he talks about all the little details they plan to add to XP11.40. At some point, these calculations will make very small difference and will only be noticeable to pilots who are pushing the limits of the flight envelope. So I can definitely see a benefit and a use-case for gradually adding further flight modeling calculations as resources are available, or switching off some of them if the machine is lacking computational power. Oh, by the way, I am also a RL pilot. I am afraid now you will also say I have no knowledge about real life flying.

 

As a professional programmer I have grown to believe there are no "impossibles", only "very difficults", or very time-consuming stuff to do. But whatever has been asked in this thread, I think would all be very "justifiable bars" for the new simulator in terms of *hardware*, and only limited by the ability and/or quantity of developers assigned to work on this project.

Edited September 9, 2019 by bashope