The latest OrbX reaction to FS20 (hint : quite positive)

[fs4fun 366]

18 minutes ago, irrics said:

If MSFS 2020 will have a DIY way to do third party add-ons, I really hope MS makes add-on installations and the file structure for it far more simplistic.

I should hope so, both MS Flight and FSW had clean ways of installing DLC's with the potential for simple point and click ease on the part of the end user to install/upgrade/remove.

FSW also had Steam Workshop integration for freeware which was easy to publish to for the developer and a simple mouse click for the user to install. It also provided for reviews and feedback.

The new MSFS should be expected to do at least as well as these previous efforts.

Simple file structure might be too much to hope for. It's always been standard MSWindows practice to fling files all over the user's system, not to mention creating a confusing mass of registry entries, environment variables, dll's and whatnot, much of which don't get cleaned up even when using the provided uninstaller, and forget about proper dependency tracking. ☹️

[dtrjones 356]

3 hours ago, sightseer said:

PS: I'd bet its possible to write totally new code that produces a product that looks and acts exactly like FSX does. If they use some old code thats fine. if they use all new code thats fine. what difference does whats under the hood matter so long as its improved. 

At last somebody with a bit of common sense! 😂

[Longranger 148]

Well, it is again the question of evolution against revolution with a very bad example.

In general you never get a true revolution since the software industry learned that planned revolutions generally end in new problems that you never expected and that are difficult to solve. For a commercial product you have to be able to predict the development costs. So it is much more sensible to use an evolution. But P3D is a very bad example because in its core it is no longer predetermined to be a Flight Simulator. It could internally be used for quite different workflows but most 3rd party developers try to stay in old FSX environments so it can be really difficult if someone tries to use a more modern approach. His new addon could crash if i9t has to cooperate with other add-ons.and the customers would only see the crash or something that doesn't work as expected and cause of this problem seems to be your new add-on.

So it is expected that thze new engine in fact (as most new engines are) an evolution of the old engine with several replaced elements and a general more modern approach. But you will find many elements of the old FSX or even FSW behind it. Whi8le the customers are normally fooled by magic tricks, they are simply tricks and behind behind the scenes everyone simply boils with water. And if they simply get new tricks P3D or X-Plane could reply in kind. They will get the same tricks or new tricks that Microsofts new approach doesn't have. X-Plane goes through a recreation anyway and P3D could react with v5 or v6..

This is the reason why most developers simply go into a wait and see approach. If it makes sense for them is another question that will be answered at a later time P3D and X-Plane needs more modern approaches anyway. If their new simulator uses more modern methods it could work with the new approaches anyway. It would simply be another plattform. If the SDK can really be used and if it will be cost effective is a different question.

But Microsoft will do play its own game anyway. They simply have an idea what Microsoft really wants and why it revived their old idea and added new materials. So they have an idea what Microsoft might do and it seems possible that they allow 3rd party developers add their own content. It is no longer expected that their new developer will work with never before seen techniques and ideas and they wont put billions in this new project. The simply added contents that Microsoft itself has but if they want additional sceneries they simply have to pay for it. Will the pay Microsoft or 3rd party developers or will the simply allow 3rd party developers to sell their own stuff? No one seems to know. But at least they have fewer problems than DTG had with its FSW. 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by Longranger

[fta2017 160]

The Porsche 911 is the best selling luxury sports car in the world, and considered an icon. It reached those heights through constant evolution, not revolution.

[rocketlaunch 614]

1 hour ago, fta2017 said:

The Porsche 911 is the best selling luxury sports car in the world, and considered an icon. It reached those heights through constant evolution, not revolution.

True but they did not abandon the market and let their engine technology stagnate. 

[Dominique_K 10,150]

1 minute ago, rocketlaunch said:

True but they did not abandon the market and let their engine technology stagnate. 

I am not sure to understand what you mean by technology but the conversion to 64-bit, the introduction of shadows (including cloud shadows on the ground) and more geenrally of DX10/11 goodies, the extensive debugging that LM did, were not exactly indicative of a stagnation. 

[rocketlaunch 614]

14 minutes ago, domkle said:

I am not sure to understand what you mean by technology but the conversion to 64-bit, the introduction of shadows (including cloud shadows on the ground) and more geenrally of DX10/11 goodies, the extensive debugging that LM did, were not exactly indicative of a stagnation. 

I'm not talking about Lockheed Martin but Microsoft as a software house with their considerable expertise and resources in this field. 

[Dominique_K 10,150]

Just now, rocketlaunch said:

I'm not talking about Lockheed Martin but Microsoft as a software house with their considerable expertise and resources in this field. 

I understand that. But Prepar3d is the product of a licence of MS IP and, as far as we know , there are reasons to think that MS may have a right over the improvements made by LM. The baseline is not FSX but it smuch younger evolution, P3Dv4. 

[G-RFRY 1,712]

22 minutes ago, domkle said:

I understand that. But Prepar3d is the product of a licence of MS IP and, as far as we know , there are reasons to think that MS may have a right over the improvements made by LM. The baseline is not FSX but it smuch younger evolution, P3Dv4. 

MS may have ditched the FSX ISP code for all we know and MSFS my now be based on a new code, MS did not decide to come back to MSFS a year ago this I suspect has be a plan under the W10 Universal Windows Platform they have been working on for some years, as for the licence to use a product is like saying Vulcan studio could pull the plug on a lot of the gaming industry by halting the use of it by game studios.    

[andyjohnston.net 617]

P3D, even at its most recent, is not much of a development from FSX.  They look virtually identical, other than a few lighting things, scenery is cross compatible and many aircraft are as well.  The last version of P3D came out some 12 years after FSX, that's like comparing FSX to FSWin95.  The amount of change there was indescribable.  Now, perhaps LM didn't have the authority to make such changes, or maybe they didn't feel the need to improve the realism of the program.

I would be a little surprised if they restarted from scratch.  They would have to rewrite the whole world, every field, the weather system, the AI system, the ATC, and so much more.  I don't have any inside knowledge, but I would tend to think they would start with the already extensive components they have and then build on them.

[Reader 2,030]

17 minutes ago, andyjohnston.net said:

They would have to rewrite the whole world, every field, the weather system, the AI system, the ATC, and so much more.

I don't have a clue what can or can't be used from the old code but I seriously can not imagine MFSF having flat runways like FSX/P3D have so they will have to redo all airports anyway. From what I do know going from flat to sloped runways isn't an easy thing: if it would be easy I am sure P3D would have had sloped runways a few versions ago already. I mean... P3D is supposed to be a professional simulator but it doesn't even have sloped runways... Funny thing: if you think about it not having sloped runways is absolutely ridiculous and unrealistic and not proper for a real flight sim... but still every P3D user thinks P3D is the best sim around. Which shows how distorted our view has become over time: we are so used to how things have been for ages that we don't even see anymore how odd or bad some things are. 😉 "P3D is the most realistic sim around!", "Okay, but does it have sloped runways?", "Er...".

Anyway, if MS does NOT rewrite almost everything I doubt if MSFS will be successful. We already know large parts of the world will be totally new, as I said they really can't get away with flat runways this time, parts of the weather system are already new (at least graphically), AI and ATC we don't know but... nah, it's going to be a NEW sim. I can't imagine anything else.

[andyjohnston.net 617]

Re sloped runways

 

They existed in Flight, one of my fav strips to come and go from was a little place just north-west of Hilo where you could only really land in one direction, and only really take off in the other because of the slope.  So they certainly have been able to do it.  I remember reading somewhere that the problem getting them in FSX was not user's planes but that AI couldn't handle it when the runway wasn't all level.

[n4gix 4,947]

1 hour ago, andyjohnston.net said:

 I remember reading somewhere that the problem getting them in FSX was not user's planes but that AI couldn't handle it when the runway wasn't all level.

That is absolutely correct. The "problem" with non-linear runways is simply that the AI cannot follow them properly.

User flown aircraft and ground based vehicles have no such problem following the terrain.

[Pilotboy9 0]

On 7/27/2019 at 3:32 PM, domkle said:

This is obviously pure AND biased speculation from my part 😃. Give me an evolution over a revolution anytime.To suffer years of aches coming with an entirely new flight simulation code ? Not for me. So yes!,  I see what I want to see. Like you do maybe, the hopeful of a New Age   😉 ? 

The important piece of news is obviously not my "first" conclusion (pure and biased remember !) though, it is that OrbX believes now that the new sim is an opportunity for all 3rd party developers. We are not talking of a small dev here, but of a major scenery company. The crispation/worries observed after the initial announcement seems a thing of the past. That is good.

We need all the good developers that made our sim world what it is, still in the game with FS20, the OrbX, Hifi, A2A, PMDG and others.

I really agree some people, like me, have spent lots of money on flight simulator x and in prepared3d but as im sure many would agree 3rd party add ons are very necessary to be transferable from their sim to this new simulator because it would be a huge waste of money from our behalf if the sim wasn’t capable of doing so and I would most probably stay in fsx steam addition. 

[Pilotboy9 0]

The only thing I hope they keep is the compatibility of keeping third party add ons because it has cost the community a lot of money and without the capability I would stay with my current version of fsx