6 hours ago, Wobbie said:

Just a thought... If Microsoft will be streaming & rendering 4k scenery for their new sim... would there still be a place for 3rd party scenery developers?

I am thinking the only things that 3rd party developers can bring to the sim for scenery includes high quality airports (but hopefully that is included with the sim) and a more robust scenery for offline mode.

4 hours ago, ckyliu said:

... A2A, FSL, PMDG and CaptainSim's FSX aircraft generally ported to P3D with none or minimal changes (certainly until v4 x64 required some more significant code adjustments and recompiling). These developers deliberately stopped people doing porting themselves through the EULA and software updates/DRM to force existing customers to repurchase these products at a greater price than the FSX version. ... [my emphasis]

Your inclusion of FSLabs in this group of devs is wrong.

A320X for FSX:       99.95$
A320X for P3Dv3: 139.95$ - 100.00$ discount for FSX customers = 39.95$
A320X for P3Dv4: 139.95$ - 139.95$ discount for P3Dv3 customers = 0.00$

so, the total upgrade price from FSX to P3Dv4 was 39.95$.

@SierraDelta My understanding is the FSL upgrade discount was a very limited time offer, is it available now? I recall PMDG did the same but the window was about 3 days from release!

Edited July 31, 20196 yr by ckyliu

It is unlikely, to say the least, that MS2020 will ever become the Number One sim.

Firstly it will be expensive. Subscription based for hi rez PC versions, and a hefty PC will be required.

Secondly, it will probably be one season only, like XPlane. There may be filters of some kind but much of the beauty would be lost. And filters are not popular in XP11 right now.

And thirdly, as with all sims, many will be reticent about moving due to their investment in sim a or b etc.

And of course, for all the big addons to be developed for FS2020, it is going to take time... a lot of time !

Ergo, there will be plenty of the pie left for devs like Orbx, even IF..... they don't even make any stuff for FS2020... which is very unlikely, as there will always be a need for airports and modified/improved areas around those airports.

So, the fun will continue.

They make a living and we, the consumers, get the most important thing... choice and variety.

Edited September 22, 20196 yr by Gabe777

Thank you for this onfo

@Gabe777

- it’s almost certainly not going to be subscription based

- there are plenty of modern games that change seasons, and look beautiful with it. Look at forza horizon 4 for one of the most modern versions, and that is from the same studio

- how many users of flight sims have spent over 50-100 units of currency of your choice as a percentage? You’d have to know how critical add-ons are going to be to the target market to make this sort of assertion. We’d be crazy not to think that MS are going to be looking to massively increase the user base for the sim, and most of the new people are not going to be that bothered about whether add ons are carried over quickly or not. Also, the leading add on developers must be itching to get stuff done so they don’t miss the early, exciting honeymoon period with all of those shiny new people. 

Edited September 22, 20196 yr by Superdelphinus

Too early to tell yet if MSFS will take the lead quickly, but it will eventually unless there's competition, which seems unlikely. 

No idea what the system or bandwidth requirements will be, but hardware keeps getting cheaper.  It may take a while for a majority of the people to get the full experience (no idea yet about how it'll work) but even a basic experience is likely to be better than FSX.

I expect seasons.  The MS development team is a bit bigger than XPlane's and has more resources.

Some users won't be willing to give up some of their current content, but others will without a backward glance.  When I upgraded from P3Dv2.5 to P3Dv4 I had to give up a couple of things but I'm not flying 2.5 any more just for them, because v4 is just too far advanced.  Besides, the new users that MSFS will attract have no current content, and they'll likely make up the bulk of the users.

Some of us suspect that the third party developers are already working on content for the new MSFS and may have that content available for sale at or shortly after release.  Of course it will take some years to get everything, but I can only fly one aircraft at a time over one area, and we'll have plenty of each to explore while waiting.

I don't know how Orbx will fit into the MSFS ecosystem, but they'll probably find a way to carve out their niche.  And FSX/P3D/Xplane aren't going to go away.

Hook

 

4 hours ago, Gabe777 said:

It is unlikely, to say the least, that MS2020 will ever become the Number One sim.

Firstly it will be expensive. Subscription based for hi rez PC versions, and a hefty PC will be required.

Secondly, it will probably be one season only, like XPlane.

And of course, for all the big addons to be developed for FS2020, it is going to take time... a lot of time !

By what we have seen so far it's actually very likely it will become the number one sim. At this point we can only really talk about visuals of course, but this is where MSFS is on a whole other planet than any sim we currently have. Further, MS have made it pretty clear that they are going for an actual simulation rather than a game and that they are building from FSX which would suggest it's at least as good as FSX in terms of simulation depth. Anything else would be a step backward and, quite frankly, pointless.

No, it will not be subscription based. The confirmation was put out in a rather playful way, but it's very clear nonetheless. I don't know why people are still speculating about MSFS being subscription based.

There is no way of knowing if you will require a top end system. If the scenery is indeed going to be streamed, there will be lots of eye candy processing taken away from your own system which would greatly favor performance even on lower end systems.

There's absolutely no way of knowing whether there will be seasons or not. It's 50/50. We have already seen how incredibly realistic the sim's visuals are so, personally, I think it's unlikely MS won't have a way of implementing seasons.

We also still don't know if it's an entirely new engine or if there will be some sort of backward compatibility or at least a relatively easy way to port addons over. Further, like others said, it doesn't even seem unlikely that some developers are already working on addons. Actually, we know that Aerosoft are working on it so there's that. There is an actual chance it won't even be that long for developers to catch up.

Edited September 22, 20196 yr by threegreen

I expect there will be no backward compatibility, any more than there was with Microsoft Flight.  But anyone unwilling to give up their FS9/FSX/P3D/XPlane content can still fly in those sims.  

When I was considering P3Dv4 I was flying almost exclusively in the Aerosoft BeaverX.  It wasn't until I had it converted to run in v4 that I was willing to upgrade from v2.5.  Mostly it was extracting artwork from a .gau file and writing xml code to drive the engine instruments.  Three other gauges only required a single line to be removed from their xml files which I had already done for v2.5.  Everything works exactly the way it should, including the suction gauge which is properly calibrated and marked.  I'm also using the FSX engine and prop sounds rather than the stock Aerosoft version. 🙂

Hook

In Microsoft Flight after some work it was possible to import the FSX default scenery.

Anyhow, Orbx will have the usual opportunities for airports, city scapes and sceneries imho. No where it is said that the level of the detail will be the same, and honestly you can't expect even Microsoft to have detailed cities everywhere in the world.
Same for plane and helicopter developers, their work will still be needed.

3 hours ago, france89 said:

In Microsoft Flight after some work it was possible to import the FSX default scenery.

I remember Stonelance was doing some work on it, but I didn't keep up with it.  This wasn't something that was possible with the original Flight.

Hook

2 hours ago, france89 said:

No where it is said that the level of the detail will be the same, and honestly you can't expect even Microsoft to have detailed cities everywhere in the world.

The jury is still out on that. The technology is mostly if not fully satellite based. Most if not all of the world is mapped by satellite. One example that suggests many cities will be covered is the Houston clip from the trailer. Houston is not a city that gets a lot of attention from flight sims. I really doubt MS spent extra time modeling it.

Going based off Apple and Google maps (remember MS has its own map software) some big cities seem to get extra 3D image depth that might come from aircraft but MS likely has its own data that OrbX can’t match.

 

 

 

8 minutes ago, carbonbasedlifeform said:

The jury is still out on that. The technology is mostly if not fully satellite based. Most if not all of the world is mapped by satellite. One example that suggests many cities will be covered is the Houston clip from the trailer. Houston is not a city that gets a lot of attention from flight sims. I really doubt MS spent extra time modeling it.

Going based off Apple and Google maps (remember MS has its own map software) some big cities seem to get extra 3D image depth that might come from aircraft but MS likely has its own data that OrbX can’t match.

 

 

 

There is this interview made on June where is said that MS is using 2 Petabytes of geographical data, so probably most of the world will be covered 😄

https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-wants-to-bring-back-flight-simulator-to-show-it-supports-pc/

https://www.pcgamer.com/xboxs-phil-spencer-on-game-pass-steam-and-the-epic-games-store/2/

14 minutes ago, carbonbasedlifeform said:

The jury is still out on that. The technology is mostly if not fully satellite based. Most if not all of the world is mapped by satellite. One example that suggests many cities will be covered is the Houston clip from the trailer. Houston is not a city that gets a lot of attention from flight sims. I really doubt MS spent extra time modeling it.

Going based off Apple and Google maps (remember MS has its own map software) some big cities seem to get extra 3D image depth that might come from aircraft but MS likely has its own data that OrbX can’t match.

I think you are getting ahead of yourself. The Bing 3D cities numbers to an impressive 400 or so that I believe is covered in photogrammetry - the vast number of these in the good US of A.

The rest of the cities could have a satelite source as a base with some Azure AI process used to map placement of trees and buildings which is similar to what has allowed Orbx to create the TrueEarth series however that also requires a hell of a lot of hero building asset generation, water masking, satalite colour correction and tidying up of assets to get locations feeling correct.

I can't see Microsoft doing this everywhere so you'll get a generic feel to a lot of locations, I'm pretty sure therefore Orbx and others will have plenty of scope to create amazing scenery.

3 hours ago, dtrjones said:

I think you are getting ahead of yourself. The Bing 3D cities numbers to an impressive 400 or so that I believe is covered in photogrammetry - the vast number of these in the good US of A.

The rest of the cities could have a satelite source as a base with some Azure AI process used to map placement of trees and buildings which is similar to what has allowed Orbx to create the TrueEarth series however that also requires a hell of a lot of hero building asset generation, water masking, satalite colour correction and tidying up of assets to get locations feeling correct.

I can't see Microsoft doing this everywhere so you'll get a generic feel to a lot of locations, I'm pretty sure therefore Orbx and others will have plenty of scope to create amazing scenery.

That's exactly my point.

At least Google covers a LOT more cities with photogrammetry, hell, even most cities/towns in Italy (at least the famous ones) are covered. With Bing Maps i can count them with one hand.