1 hour ago, Murmur said:

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.

Two points about that. First, we have no idea how advanced the weather model in MSFS will be. They're showing some pretty graphics. That thunderhead in the initial reveal trailer looks amazing!

But we have no idea how much of what they're showing is actually an advanced model with dynamic weather. That thunderhead could be a 2D painting on the skybox for all we know. Or, it could be a real 3D model with internal vertical convection and windshear at the base. What they're showing so far, isn't enough to know how good the MSFS weather system is. Let's wait to see how good it is, before making too many assumptions.

As for Laminar, I remember Austin saying at one point that what's needed is a fully 3D weather model to accurately depict something like a towering CB with internal convection from ground level to the stratosphere. Not the 2D horizontal layer cake model XP currently uses. I saw recently a post about the MSFS weather that said they'll have something like 16 layers of clouds. That's not a very encouraging hint that they're going full 3D with weather modeling.

So I think there is an opportunity for Laminar to do better, if Austin cares enough. From that one clip with him commenting on xEnviro, he knows the weather system in XP needs major work.
 

54 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

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.

From what I've read, Austin really doesn't like the ortho scenery approach. I'm not holding my breath for a complete change from landclass + OSM autogen in XP12.

But that system could be a lot better! Try the free Japan Pro scenery for a taste of what more country-specific autogen adds to the experience. And if Laminar can figure out a procedural way to do seasons, they might beat whatever ASOBO and MA have planned for coloring their photo imaging to represent seasonal changes. 

Interesting times ahead, I think.

People are forgetting that Austin, X-Plane and Laminar as a team, have been competing with Microsoft for 30 years.  And they've always turned a profit.  It's a safe bet that X-Plane isn't going anywhere.  

26 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

From what I've read, Austin really doesn't like the ortho scenery approach.

To be honest, I probably agree with him. The ground is often covered up with either trees and/or buildings and even when it isn't, open spaces such as farmland change so much that orthoimagery is constantly out of date. The best approach is probably what many XP11 users do: orthoimagery in areas familiar to the pilot and landclass everywhere else.

This is what LR needs to do first :

Vulkan - Without this and staying on opengl will not open anymore doors for performance, go vulkan in 11.50 and then work on multithreading , i would                    be more happy if  they put most of the load on the GPU like DCS does.

Wx - open it up and let Xenviro use it properly or Activesky or Skymaxxx pro.

Where Ortho integration is concerned i really doubt it would be possible unless there is a tie up with Google or some other satellite data for licensing it to use it within the simulator by default.

As google is not allowing ortho download using Ortho4xp and bing is allowing , MFS is using Bing and the day MS pulls the plug on Ortho4xp we are stuck with the default textures. 

Give me an atmosphere based on day / location / season 

6 hours ago, HumptyDumpty said:

Where Ortho integration is concerned i really doubt it would be possible unless there is a tie up with Google or some other satellite data for licensing it to use it within the simulator by default.

Well, they could. Flyinside managed to get Bing aerials in to the sim so I'm sure they could if they really wanted to pursue it. The issue is not so much having orthos in the sim, but having the nice autogen etc on top. Flat orthos simply don't cut it these days, and would look pretty poor.

1 minute ago, tonywob said:

Well, they could. Flyinside managed to get Bing aerials in to the sim so I'm sure they could if they really wanted to pursue it. The issue is not so much having orthos in the sim, but having the nice autogen etc on top. Flat orthos simply don't cut it these days, and would look pretty poor. 

It's not that they can't, what i am saying is the licensing they might need to acquire. I am not sure how it goes.

7 hours ago, GoranM said:

People are forgetting that Austin, X-Plane and Laminar as a team, have been competing with Microsoft for 30 years.  And they've always turned a profit.  It's a safe bet that X-Plane isn't going anywhere.  

Of course, and I suspect they'll carry on business as usual. It was certainly nice seeing the rise in popularity of the sim recently but I think this will now stall and popularity will just drop again. However, I have no doubt the sim will carry on and move forward in its own direction, as it always has.

 

 

Just now, HumptyDumpty said:

It's not that they can't, what i am saying is the licensing they might need to acquire. I am not sure how it goes.

They could stream the imagery in to the sim, showing the Bing or Google copyright notices on thee screen. This is exactly what Flyinside do. There are even APIs to do this, and if they wanted to, I'm sure they could, but I doubt it would have as much impact as would improving the core sim (weather, ATC) etc.

2 minutes ago, tonywob said:

They could stream the imagery in to the sim, showing the Bing or Google copyright notices on thee screen. This is exactly what Flyinside do. There are even APIs to do this, and if they wanted to, I'm sure they could, but I doubt it would have as much impact as would improving the core sim (weather, ATC) etc.

are you sure Flyinside does it ?  there is GeoFS which does ofc and i think that Infinity Flight , then yes its possible , but we all know that XP is Austin's toy , he makes the way he likes it to be.

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Well, they could. Flyinside managed to get Bing aerials in to the sim so I'm sure they could if they really wanted to pursue it. The issue is not so much having orthos in the sim, but having the nice autogen etc on top. Flat orthos simply don't cut it these days, and would look pretty poor.

Forkboy can pull it off (Autogen overlays), why wouldn't Laminar be able to do it. They could also refine it... for example fading out orthos at low altitudes (so you only see X-Plane Autogen & textures and no blurry orthos) or restricting orthos to areas outside of metropolitan areas.

And the debate rages on. I do not see any mind changing yet. Microsoft will make a killing on FS2020. Question is how much will Microsoft make in the first month it is on the market?

And after FS2020 going on the market, people will be ripping it apart as ya all are doing x-plane 11. Can't wait for that debate!

A good day to fly, See ya all in the air.

Cheers

57 minutes ago, Colonel X said:

Forkboy can pull it off (Autogen overlays), why wouldn't Laminar be able to do it. They could also refine it... for example fading out orthos at low altitudes (so you only see X-Plane Autogen & textures and no blurry orthos) or restricting orthos to areas outside of metropolitan areas.

I disagree, good quality zl19 ortho needs nothing on top of it, in fact, in my opinion autogen on top just spoils things and makes the sim look toy like

1 hour ago, philmurfin said:

I disagree, good quality zl19 ortho needs nothing on top of it, in fact, in my opinion autogen on top just spoils things and makes the sim look toy like

I was thinking of my ramblings with the flat earther when I wrote these lines, and here you are!

Hello again, there's really no need to be rude, we have very differing opinions that's all, not a bother!

4 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Forkboy can pull it off (Autogen overlays), why wouldn't Laminar be able to do it. They could also refine it... for example fading out orthos at low altitudes (so you only see X-Plane Autogen & textures and no blurry orthos) or restricting orthos to areas outside of metropolitan areas.

That's a neat idea, but the change in colors going from ortho to landclass might be immersion-breaking, without a prohibitive amount of hand-tweaking to match colors. 

The main problem with XP moving to an ortho-based scenery approach (aside from Austin's dislike) is how they would get the data onto the user's PC. They don't have the infrastructure to stream it like MS, and ortho coverage worldwide sure as heck won't fit on most user's hard drives. Even just regional coverage is resource intensive on the client PC (as I'm looking at that 206 GB of data just for Orbx TE Washington state on my drive).
 

3 hours ago, philmurfin said:

I disagree, good quality zl19 ortho needs nothing on top of it, in fact, in my opinion autogen on top just spoils things and makes the sim look toy like

Until you fly low enough and notice the artifacts like squashed cars, squashed buildings, baked-in shadows, no cars moving on the roads, no seasons, and no night lighting. 😉

I know this is just personal preference, but orthos alone have never done it for me. Especially since I spend a lot of my civilian sim time flying in helicopters. 

The Orbx TE approach with an ortho base + autogen buildings and roads + custom landmarks here and there + a fine-grain overlay so I can see the "ground" when landing on what otherwise would be a pixellated blur, is the closest I've seen to believable scenery. Except that the ground color isn't seasonally correct most of the year in WA, but I can get over that.

What I'm really curious about with the new MSFS, is what does it look like under 1000 feet of altitude away from the cities? And what does it look like at ground level? It looks spectacular from higher altitude, but any good ortho-based terrain system with sexy lighting and clouds can do that.