Get Xp11 or wait for new MSFS

[jcomm 5,890]

Flight dynamics wise also I believe every nice feature already mentioned in the videos for FS 2020 ( excluding the rotary wings they will not have at release time ) has long been fine tuned in XP and is available right now, specially after the latest updates by Austin in 11.40...

Watching it from the outside is a lot easier for me now 🙂

My beach is pretty much reduced to War Thunder these days, so my critical view over civil flightsims is less biased... The more  think about FS 2020 vs XP11 the more I feel XP just needs  better scenery engine, preferably with procedural landcover for seasons and so on, and the Moon ! The rest is all there already, and AH! please Austin, check the wind variability effects on aircraft because it has been tuned satisfactorily on ground or near it, but not at the higher levels...

[pots 10]

Some information from PMDG forum (user threegreen):
"The main developer of this sim isn't Microsoft, it's Asobo from France. They have, in fact, a team of 200 (!) people working on this sim. Further, they are working with actual aircraft manufacturers (Cessna, for example) to accurately represent aircraft in the sim. They have bought a used airframe for reference. Last but not least, over the course of the 5 years they have been working on the sim now, Asobo have reportedly actually payed for flight lessons for team members, some of whom have acquired their PPL by now."
So the team behind MSFS 2020 is much bigger than original Microsoft Aces Studio ( 130-140 people, developing also Train Simulator etc). And being in development for 5 years - so there should be big budget and business plan behind. And probably a lot of meetings with Powepoint slides.

[Paraffin 2,197]

57 minutes ago, pots said:

So the team behind MSFS 2020 is much bigger than original Microsoft Aces Studio ( 130-140 people, developing also Train Simulator etc). And being in development for 5 years - so there should be big budget and business plan behind. And probably a lot of meetings with Powepoint slides.

So with 5 years and 200 people working on it, they don't think they can have a helicopter ready for the initial release? 🙄

In one sense, I can understand it as a laser-like focus on getting a Cessna trainer right. With that, and the spectacular scenery they're showing (although I'm still wondering what it looks like close-up), and a couple other prop planes tossed in like the TBM and C208, that's enough to call it the next Microsoft Flight simulator and make a big splash. 

But many of us are going to be waiting for gliders, vintage radial engine planes, military jets, modern tubeliners, and helicopters. I just hope the flight model they're working with is flexible enough for these other platforms, and not a "stretched Cessna" that needs outside coding for something like a helicopter, tubeliner, or mil jet. 

[Kronovan 14]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

So with 5 years and 200 people working on it, they don't think they can have a helicopter ready for the initial release?

Considering how poorly helos were modeled in their last fight sim, that might not be a bad thing.

[pots 10]

Quote from the same thread (user RichardMcDonaldWoc):

"3. I guess that Microsoft will take over most of the market for land scenery and weather simulation. Companies, such as Orbx, will have to concentrate on airport sceneries. As Asobo said, there will have to be adjustments to markets. There appears to be no future for Active Sky, Prepar3D and XPlane."

Well - from description seems to have super-capacities (weather system consisting of up to 32 individual cloud layers, aerodynamics modelling based more than > 1000 individual surfaces of the aircraft..). But at first the simulator must be released.

[beep747 93]

I wonder what specs are needed to run this new microsoft simulation? 

[Colonel X 1,428]

Yeah lets leave the Blackbird in the hanger. It will look pretty, but other than that, I don't think it will be able to touch what thousands of users have created along with Laminar. Yes we need a new weather engine - and it will come, rest assured. Better ortho integration, official ortho support - that's all no rocket science, it's the general path of flight sim evolution (and it's X-Plane in the LEAD here, don't forget that. Anyone opened P3D recently to remember how bad it looks, runs and plays? MegaSceneryEarth anyone?).

FS2020 will be a big leap - but you don't now how Bing data will look up close compared to XP Autogen (potentially horrendous) and who at "Asobo" ("The studio has developed 17 video games for both consoles and PC, including video game adaptations of the Pixar movies: Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3" - GIVE ME A BREAK !!!!!!) is coming up with the TEN THOUSANDS of detailed airfields X-Plane has. Jean-Luc? Pierre? Flight dynamics? Francois? Oh they have bought a used Cessna - I hear Austin "laughing out loud" here, traffic? ATC? - anyone who thinks "Asobo", a third rate french developer with no flight sim experience whatsoever, will offer a miraculous cure for all of todays flight sim shortcomings, must have had a lot of Kool-Aid.

[tonywob 4,768]

1 hour ago, Colonel X said:

Oh they have bought a used Cessna - I hear Austin "laughing out loud" here, traffic? ATC? - anyone who thinks "Asobo", a third rate french developer with no flight sim experience whatsoever, will offer a miraculous cure for all of todays flight sim shortcomings, must have had a lot of Kool-Aid.

Sounds like you're pretty much in denial here. This "third-rate" french developer is much bigger than Laminar Research and has access to Microsoft's vast resources and you only need to watch the videos/interviews with them to realise they are very serious and have a large and very knowledgable group of guys behind it. In fact it's refreshing to actually hear them talk about the features they are adding that people actually want. I'm in no doubt that this new sim will hit X-Plane and P3D very hard. There is stuff this sim does that other sims could have done, but the developers never cared to do so. To actually think X-Plane won't be affected is simply delusional and wishful thinking.

What is very obvious is that Austin is seemingly not focused or concerned on what users want in terms of the sim and lives in his own world where he believes all X-Plane needs is to allow people to tweak stuff in PlaneMaker. His goal is evidently not to create a first class and beautiful simulator to compete with MSFS, but, as he puts it, to create an engineering tool for nerds. I don't blame LR for this, they've made it very clear about their goals in the past, so anyone hoping for a revolution in XP after this new sim comes out will probably be left disappointed.

Third-parties are what has made X-Plane great, from Ortho4XP, developers like xEnviro (Which Austin didn't even knew existed). Will they carry on, this remains to be seen on what the MS offer in their SDK.

XP will live on of course, but I suspect it will simply drop down to XP9 popularity levels. Those users who want stunning looking eye-candy, realistic weather and to explore detailed scenery will jump ship easily, and those who like to tweak, hack in WED/PlaneMaker and play with Ortho4XP will carry on as they are. 

For the airports, 3rd parties will fill these in, I was never a fan of the lego brick layout anyway.

 

[Colonel X 1,428]

 

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

Sounds like you're pretty much in denial here. This "third-rate" french developer is much bigger than Laminar Research and has access to Microsoft's vast resources and you only need to watch the videos/interviews with them to realise they are very serious and have a large and very knowledgable group of guys behind it. In fact it's refreshing to actually hear them talk about the features they are adding that people actually want. I'm in no doubt that this new sim will hit X-Plane and P3D very hard. There is stuff this sim does that other sims could have done, but the developers never cared to do so. To actually think X-Plane won't be affected is simply delusional and wishful thinking.

I understand that's what my post implies, but really, denial is not my thing. Of course there's a lot more people and money involved, no question about it. It doesn't change the fact however that this developer never even remotely worked on something related to a flight sim. Even the games they released were not exactly well received, not to say quite trashy (they only had a big license - do you see a theme here?). Not that this has to be a bad thing, and I agree a fresh angle on it might even help, still it leaves a taste - only because they can tap into Bing data doesn't mean they are able to build a serious flight sim from the ground up. I am not saying X-Plane will not be affected, but I listed a few areas where money and manpower simply can't replace years of development including crowd sourced content.

 

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

What is very obvious is that Austin is seemingly not focused or concerned on what users want in terms of the sim and lives in his own world where he believes all X-Plane needs is to allow people to tweak stuff in PlaneMaker. His goal is evidently not to create a first class and beautiful simulator to compete with MSFS, but, as he puts it, to create an engineering tool for nerds. I don't blame LR for this, they've made it very clear about their goals in the past, so anyone hoping for a revolution in XP after this new sim comes out will probably be left disappointed.

This is probably true, however I don't think X-Plane completely relies on Austin. Ben does a great job and all we really need is Austin trusting Ben and supplying him with the required resources. Recent developments, such as the landmarks, allow to at least hope that this is the case. I am not expecting a revolution from Laminar, but if they proceed and accelerate that path - I hope the funds allow it - we're good. Official ortho support would be one big step here and key to competing with the bingmulator.

 

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

For the airports, 3rd parties will fill these in, I was never a fan of the lego brick layout anyway.

I have to disagree here, I believe the Gateway approach is genius. I all depends on how good the bricks are - and they have become a lot better recently. MS simply can't compete here (get ready for recycled FSX assets). Same goes for Autogen - there's so much work in this and it works pretty well (the variety needs to be upped, but Mister X is already at it) - as I stated before, nobody knows how Bing 3D data will look up close, but we might be in for a sh*t show here. Check Bing maps on your desktop. It's great from a distance... and the idea of buying, like, 20 US Class C airports (it will also take years for 3rd parties to catch up) for FS2020 - well. I don't like it. 

 

[GCNorth 7]

7 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Yes we need a new weather engine - and it will come, rest assured.

And what evidence can you provide that there will be improvements in the weather engine and ATC?  And when can we expect these improvements?  XP12?  

[tonywob 4,768]

They'd be crazy not to try and improve the weather now. Decent atmospherics and lighting could also go a long way to improving the sim and make it more appealing

[Bjoern 1,153]

All Laminar needs to do at the moment is getting their Vulkan transition done. It just wouldn't make sense to improve any other core features before that.

[Paraffin 2,197]

6 hours ago, tonywob said:

XP will live on of course, but I suspect it will simply drop down to XP9 popularity levels. Those users who want stunning looking eye-candy, realistic weather and to explore detailed scenery will jump ship easily, and those who like to tweak, hack in WED/PlaneMaker and play with Ortho4XP will carry on as they are. 

Well, it won't be that easy to jump ship if the new eye candy sim doesn't have the plane you want to fly.

That's going to delay the transition for many of us, I suspect. MSFS will probably launch with only a small handful of default aircraft, maybe not even a jet airliner or helicopter based on what they've shown so far, and hints from the recent dev Q&A. It's going to take time to get the fleet built up to anything like what we enjoy now in XP (or P3D for that matter).

I could be wrong, of course. Maybe it will launch with a PMDG tubeliner and something equivalent to an X-Trident or DreamFoil helicopter. I just think that's going to take a year or two from release. During that time, MSFS may only be a cool sightseeing sim in a few GA planes, used alongside XP and P3D for the aircraft of choice.
 

42 minutes ago, GCNorth said:

And what evidence can you provide that there will be improvements in the weather engine and ATC?  And when can we expect these improvements?  XP12?  

I'm not expecting any change in the weather system before XP12. For one thing, XP12 probably isn't that far away, maybe a beta next year?

Also, a better weather engine should ideally be tied in together with seasons as an integrated system. Laminar will need something splashy to get people to buy XP12, and seasons along with a more advanced weather engine would be a major selling point. Especially if the new MSFS hasn't managed to incorporate seasons by then (it won't be easy, with that combined ortho/photogrammetry based scenery system).

[Murmur 3,941]

7 hours ago, tonywob said:

They'd be crazy not to try and improve the weather now. Decent atmospherics and lighting could also go a long way to improving the sim and make it more appealing

Weather and procedural seasons, together with a _significant_ post-Vulkan performance improvement, could give XP (12?) some legs in competing. Especially if MFS initially ships without seasons, ATC, and VR.

For me the real question is, do they (Laminar) have the skills to design an advanced weather model comparable to MFS, both visually or at least functionally? The current XP weather model is still a lot more primitive than FS9's one. Together with water, precipitation effects, etc.

 

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Unless either Laminar or LM issues a press release that they've partnered up with Google to stream photoreal scenery in their sim, I'm afraid that MS would have to completely fumble everything in order for their two competitors to create a competitive product to MFS.