34 minutes ago, domkle said:

- the quality of orthos may vary the world over : resolution, colorimetry, artifacts (clouds, ...). Some heavy processing will be necessary . The mixed reactions to the new TE Oregon show that even in the US the quality is not always at level. MS will do it for its  main markets (US, EU, ...) but what about  Sri Lanka, Laos, Costa Rica, Patagonia, the Samoas etc.

I am very optimistic about that, see the difference between this screenshot taken on Bing, this shows I think the worst satellite resolution you can think of in the middle of Africa

 

 

And look what they made about it

I cannot wait to switch from airliners to helicopters and bush planes!

Again Microsoft, thank you!!!

Edited August 21, 20196 yr by Noooch

1 hour ago, Superdelphinus said:

I’ve seen this written a lot on here. What is the evidence that the success of the new sim will hinge on dlc? Or at least masses of dlc, which seems to be the point here. I would have thought that success is much more likely to hinge on how broad an appeal they can create?

i get that dlc is an important part of any piece of software, particularly games - but “entirely hinge” on it? 

Flight sims are a different kettle of fish compared to other games. Most games have some sort of story line, or other things that attract users. Flight simulators on the other hand, are as boring as can be to the casual gamer, unless additional options are opened up by 3rd parties.

9 minutes ago, Noooch said:

I am very optimistic about that, see the difference between this screenshot taken on Bing, this shows I think the worst satellite resolution you can think of in the middle of Africa

That's really interesting. Seems to show that the default Bing satellite images and the Bing terrain mesh can be overridden with custom data.

That's what you'd expect of course, but I didn't see anything to hint at that, apart from this comparison.

As @domkle says, scenery packs for more remote / niche destinations may still be a thing.

4 minutes ago, nickhod said:

That's really interesting. Seems to show that the default Bing satellite images and the Bing terrain mesh can be overridden with custom data.

That's what you'd expect of course, but I didn't see anything to hint at that, apart from this comparison.

As @domkle says, scenery packs for more remote / niche destinations may still be a thing.

This is the closest point of view from the in-game scene I could find. I might be wrong with the exact location where the screenshot is taken but I searched for quite long.

FYI it is south of Mount Kilimanjaro if you want to take a closer look 🙂

Edited August 21, 20196 yr by Noooch

17 minutes ago, Noooch said:

And look what they made about it

That does look good! And nice work finding the location in Bing!

1 hour ago, Noooch said:

I am very optimistic about that, see the difference between this screenshot taken on Bing, this shows I think the worst satellite resolution you can think of in the middle of Africa

 

And look what they made about it

 

I cannot wait to switch from airliners to helicopters and bush planes!

Again Microsoft, thank you!!!

Good job, a nice find !

Not willing to rain on the parade but I am afraid that we have the same problem here than with Courchevel. We are in a highly touristic area, the Kilimandjaro NP, I have no doubt that the MS team will bring sensational sceneries for a few spots in the world like this one with savannah grass and giraffes and whatnots. What about « normal » Africa ?

 

Speaking of Africa, I look forward to fly in the Mali mountainous areas where France has COIN operations with some NATO allies. A good mesh and orthos should do justice to the splendid landscape there better than any LC.

4 hours ago, JB3DG said:

Flight sims are a different kettle of fish compared to other games. Most games have some sort of story line, or other things that attract users. Flight simulators on the other hand, are as boring as can be to the casual gamer, unless additional options are opened up by 3rd parties.

Yes which suggests to me that success will hinge on that aspect of the sim/game, irrespective of whether it’s part of the base game or dlc. 

The only comparison I can think of is iracing, where I’d say dlc is essential beyond a certain point. The trouble is that I think the basic proposition of car racing is more exciting than flight simulation to most people. 

Look at something like truck simulator. It should needs loads of dlc to be successful on this logic, but it doesn’t because they didn’t forget that it should be fun. 

14 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

 

Microsoft's success is hinged entirely on DLC, some don't like that, but many users do for the reason above.   

 

Totally agree with that. FS has to be like its predecessor, a sandbox where we can bring our own toys (aircraft, airports etc), the toys we chose to have not the toys MS imposes on us.  

5 hours ago, domkle said:

Good job, a nice find !

Not willing to rain on the parade but I am afraid that we have the same problem here than with Courchevel. We are in a highly touristic area, the Kilimandjaro NP, I have no doubt that the MS team will bring sensational sceneries for a few spots in the world like this one with savannah grass and giraffes and whatnots. What about « normal » Africa ?

 

This is around 30 miles south!

2 options here: - they made touristic places better than the rest of the word with hand placed objects in a radius of AT LEAST 30 miles wich is a huge work.

                         - this is pure autogen with AI processing.

Looking at the Pyrénées screenshot from last week, this looks autogen to me.

1 hour ago, Noooch said:

 

I don't think we can infer much from  this pic in Tanzania, either way.  It could be a special construct, even 20-odd nm from the Kilimandjaro foothills. I've been pleading at OrbX, a couple of times, for a bush scenery within OpenLC Africa, like the two they made for the PNG, small dirt airfields around the Kilimandjaro. So I would welcome very much that. You could have  small patches of enhanced sceneries on a 100 miles radius.

Like for the sloped runways we need to see "normal" places, without anything special. An airport in Arkansas or in the Massif Central (France), a view from the real boondocks of Africa and so on and so forth.

BTW Google Earth offers striking images of this area. 

 

Edited August 21, 20196 yr by domkle

13 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Wow you do hate DLC and can be rather insulting to boot, you're on a mission it seems ... best of luck with your corral. 

Cheers, Rob. 

Rob, he said in his first post that he was interested in developing add-ons....I think there is a potentially a misreading of his motive for the question.  If I'm reading him correctly, I agree with his sentiment. The current environment where it is expected to have to significantly augment the base product came out of the void created when FSX ceased development.

With the new platform, I really don't want to have to pay for a real-time weather injector. I would prefer not use replacement cloud textures, sky colors, global ground textures, HD building texture, tree textures, pavement, asphalt, grass, taxiway signs...you get the point. That to me is "low hanging fruit" that will hopefully provided in the base install. It is not a knock against the great work that HiFi, ORBX, REX, Old Prop, and all the other great 3rd parties have contributed to the hobby. 

There will continue to be demand for airplanes, highly detailed airports and other points of interest, utilities to extend the base simulator experience if they are not satisfactorily available by default.

1 minute ago, snglecoil said:

 

I agree with you, Chris, that it is a total and unfortunate misreading of what Nickhod wrote. 

3 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Wow you do hate DLC and can be rather insulting to boot, you're on a mission it seems ... best of luck with your corral. 

Cheers, Rob. 

Wow indeed.

On 8/20/2019 at 3:14 PM, nickhod said:

I've been considering what types add-ons might be popular after MSFS is released. (Partly as I'd like to develop some).

 

Just now, Rob_Ainscough said:

"low hanging fruit" sure seems insulting

Agreed, those developers, Rex, HiFi, PMDG, Orbx and many many others are absolutely top shelf!