...similarly in high speed simulations, tables are used to evaluate sin(), and cos() being the same values out of phase, and so on with look-up tables where full accuracy is unnecessary..

Just to slip away from the above, and might I say useful discussion back to what we might get.  I know these speculations are a little crazy when regular updates have been scheduled.  Thank you Microsoft.

But I have a feeling that there are a number of cards yet to be revealed.

If the game can be played off-line what will be the quality of the scenery and the aircraft provided.  Also would it then be regionally based or mission based like railroad simulators?  We would never go back to a restricted area of operation, nor would we want other than the best add-on aircraft of the style we like.

If, as I suspect there will be, an upmarket on-line version subscription based with the scenery streamed, another set of considerations are needed.  Frankly the sub is not for me a real issue, but it will be for others.  BUT download speed is.  At the moment in Australia I am on ADSL2 with a rarely met max DL speed of 1.5mb/s, and when I get access to our vaunted but disappointing NBN cable speeds can still only be around 5mb/s.  Will this be sufficient to avoid laggy and stuttering flight?  5G is coming but at the present has a very incomplete network, and IT techs are genuinely concerned about lag when streaming.

Also we must not forget that storage is getting cheaper and cheaper. so will there be another option that allows us to download every part including huge scenery volumes.  Maybe with an update sub if that is offered.

If both versions allow expensive add-ons to improve flying or scenery, what would be the real advantage over LM. I am not sure I want to rebuild a library of add-ons on which I have spent a fortune, unless MSFS2020 is greatly and clearly superior.

Maybe LM should hold their horses and not leave the field.  There are many of us with a huge investment in them, and for me not one to be lightly thrown away.  But if I was LM I would consider licensing some of the Orbx base products, Active Sky, Navigraph etc which really have upgraded your product.

Edited September 2, 20196 yr by Ian McPhail

I expect what will make the final cut is still under review. Having said that I would expect ongoing development whatever makes it into the first available versions.

There's some months to go yet, so I'll be getting back in that cockpit to enjoy what I have for the time being.

I have always wanted to test XP-11, but I find its interface daunting, and tuning the sim and controls really hard.  I know the purists prefer XP, but even if I got someone to set it up for me, I would still be back buying add-on versions of scenery and aircraft add-ons which I already have.  But I realise this is a typical whinge of the elderly, but there are still guys flyiing FS2004, not because they want to (I hope) but because the cost of the upgrade is just too much.

27 minutes ago, Ian McPhail said:

At the moment in Australia I am on ADSL2 with a rarely met max DL speed of 1.5mb/s, and when I get access to our vaunted but disappointing NBN cable speeds can still only be around 5mb/s. 

I’m addition to the sad state of affairs of Australian broadband, Google stadia (similar to Microsoft xCloud) will require at least 35Mbps for a 4K stream at 30fps. Latency is also a huge concern, if you’re not close to a data centre the experience will have stutters, 5G has ultra low latency, but we won’t see the same coverage as 4G in Australia. 5G is essentially a wifi network on steroids, and requires many more towers vs 4G as it has a very small coverage footprint, which is bad news for regional areas. 

Quote

According to Google, Stadia will require a 35Mbps connection to maintain a steady 4K service. That’s 1.4x more bandwidth than Netflix, which requires a 25Mbps connection for 4K. In per-MB terms, a 35Mbps connection will eat 15.75GB per hour

1 hour ago, Ian McPhail said:

I know the purists prefer XP..

That's definitely not the case.

1 hour ago, Ian McPhail said:

I would still be back buying add-on versions of scenery and aircraft add-ons

Consider great sceneries (ortho tiles) and aircrafts are for free

3 hours ago, Ian McPhail said:

Maybe LM should hold their horses and not leave the field.  There are many of us with a huge investment in them, and for me not one to be lightly thrown away.  But if I was LM I would consider licensing some of the Orbx base products, Active Sky, Navigraph etc which really have upgraded your product.

LM is concerned with educational, commercial, and military training. They don't give a hoot about gamer's or their 'investment'. They are not going anywhere. P3D will be around for a long time, but it won't cater to our needs and wants. They have a different market.

1 hour ago, rhumbaflappy said:

P3D will be around for a long time, but it won't cater to our needs and wants. They have a different market.

But... but... they're catering to *my* needs and wants quite well!

Am I the different market?  Wow.  Who knew?

Hook

2 hours ago, rhumbaflappy said:

LM is concerned with educational, commercial, and military training. They don't give a hoot about gamer's or their 'investment'. They are not going anywhere. P3D will be around for a long time, but it won't cater to our needs and wants. They have a different market.

I basically agree with what you say. 

With two nuances. I have not seen  LM accounting books.  And is catering to a negligible  market the way corporate America works ? 

2 hours ago, rhumbaflappy said:

LM is concerned with educational, commercial, and military training. They don't give a hoot about gamer's or their 'investment'. They are not going anywhere. P3D will be around for a long time, but it won't cater to our needs and wants. They have a different market.

I had the opportunity to meet Rob McCarty and his team in Vegas during the flight sim show, the experience was incredible pleasant and it gave me an insight how they work and think.

I suggest you should attend one of these events and approach one of the LM developers which are always engaging with users around the floor.

It will change your perspective, they do care, and a lot, in fact I haven't meet such a dedicated team before in my 27+ years of experience.. As an example, it is very rare to see flying simulators developers engaging directly with customers via forums as P3D developers do, much less having them interacting with them on flying sim events..

Regards,

Simbol 

Three main flight sim have coexisted for some years without a problem and most likely will do again. 

On 9/1/2019 at 6:36 PM, sightseer said:

 nevermind... you know this laready.

What we're both called 'Dave'! 😂😂😂

23 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I love these discussions, see, no one can agree on a sunset, not even real ones ... and this is where, how, and why 3rd party Add-Ons are born 🙂 ... Microsoft's interpretation/simulation may not be the same as what other's want to see ... viola, enter REX, TOGA Projects, AS, PTA, etc. are all back in business with MFS.

And that's just sunsets ... then we have trees, grass, weeds, cloud types, etc. etc. ...  

Speaking of clouds, what I'd like to see is a moisture density value (say 1 to 20) that can be queried or set via the SDK which would in turn adjust the cloud darkness/base ... obviously it would be performance prohibited to do this for every single cloud for 150mi radius, so perhaps applied to a cloud cluster so that way we have some variability in their base and color and can avoid some of the repetition.

Cheers, Rob. 

Love this, thanks Rob!

9 hours ago, Ian McPhail said:

Also we must not forget that storage is getting cheaper and cheaper. so will there be another option that allows us to download every part including huge scenery volumes.  Maybe with an update sub if that is offered.

Would be nice if you could submit a flight plan and have FS2020 download all the scenery in advance.  

Lets say I'm planning a flight YSSY to RPLL on Friday night, well it's Tuesday morning now, so I'll generate my flight plan (in PFPX or whatever), export it to the standard .PLN format, submit it to FS2020 and it can spend the next day or so downloading all the scenery I'll need on Friday.

I fly the same routes over and over so I'm happy to have that scenery cached (and periodically updated) so it's always ready and available offline if needed.