August 29th, 2019 [Update]

[cmpbellsjc 2,947]

2 hours ago, MatthewS said:

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.

I wouldn’t care to do it that way but was thinking that it’s possible due to the memory space required for all the ortho and custom cities that maybe once the base MSFS is installed, you can  download the high detailed/ortho areas that you want to have installed permanently. Maybe they could have them divided by continents, countries or cities. Perhaps also would be for purchase individually if not included in the base price.

This way you can load up the stuff you want and not need to download, stream or store areas of scenery that you never use.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with. 

[ErichB 3,553]

On 9/1/2019 at 8:53 PM, 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

Exactly right

Throw into the mix different monitor types, resolutions, poorly adjusted colour settings .....everyone will see things differently.  My system is visually tuned to the way I like it.  But I am sometimes shocked to see other peoples set-ups,  and the way THEY like it.  (Mine is of course, better, because I can't see beyond what I want.when it comes to simming)

Edited September 3, 2019 by ErichB

[Ian McPhail 55]

What a great discussion, and a few angles I hadn't considered I admit.  But Australian download speeds are going to be a real problem.  Practically all Australian simmers except some lucky National Broadband Network customers close to critical broadcast centres will be excluded.  I know we are a minor portion of the market, but we spend, and spend well on our simming. I am close to the boundary of 5G but I can't find Telstra's future installation plans, and the kids at the local retail shop can only tell me what I can find on the web. I noticed a contributor rejoicing in the fact that 81% of the US is covered, but the pb left out are the ones that start the revolution.

30mbs sounds like one of those dreams that I don't even have these days.

MS please consider a DVD option with streamed updates.

I have looked at Aerofly 2, and that is restricted to California. That sort of sim is mentally stultifying to me at least.

LM stay in the game, or I will have to go to XP11, and find someone to set it up for little old me (sigh)

[Dominique_K 9,914]

8 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I wouldn’t care to do it that way but was thinking that it’s possible due to the memory space required for all the ortho and custom cities that maybe once the base MSFS is installed, you can  download the high detailed/ortho areas that you want to have installed permanently. Maybe they could have them divided by continents, countries or cities. Perhaps also would be for purchase individually if not included in the base price.

This way you can load up the stuff you want and not need to download, stream or store areas of scenery that you never use.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with. 

I do not know whether what Matthew proposes is possible or not but one thing is sure, MS’d be welcome to find a solution for those with a poor connection without having them to run a dumbed down version of the sim.

This is IMO a major issue.

[G-RFRY 1,658]

How many hard drives are you going to need to download and install that much and we are talking SSDs, and with a slow internet connection how long a week or more.

In fact it will be interesting next year to compare the new XBOX MSFS streamed in 4K from AZURE and the PC version for some in 1080P.

Edited September 3, 2019 by rjfry

[Ian McPhail 55]

rj:  your observation, wry though it be, is accurate.

But that well may mean that those of us under benighted regimes ( I mean broadband) are probably not going to be participants.  But recall MS will have the scenery on server, they surely will know the size of it.  We can then decide to spend our retirement income on a home server, or stick to what we know and love!!!

[G-RFRY 1,658]

It`s already been calculated about the same as 20,000 blue ray disc so no I don't think there will be a disc version.😎 

[SteveW 1,785]

The scene may be derived from 2-3 Petabytes of data, but that data is managed by AI Cloud applets that create a concentrated subset of only what's necessary to create the view. Analogy is a bit like only sending screen updates instead of whole frames.

[Christopher Low 4,910]

Broadband download speeds are obviously going to be very important, but speed consistency and connection reliability are also major factors. My connection reliability has been very good for a long time, but download speeds can vary quite considerably. How are Microsoft going to deal with situations like this? Are we going to have a more advanced version of "look ahead frames" to deal with data throughput variations?

Edited September 3, 2019 by Christopher Low

[FlyBaby 659]

On 9/2/2019 at 1:07 AM, Rob_Ainscough said:

I'll disagree with you there, REX, TOGA Projects, PTA are all about offering different flavors and not filling in gaps ... sky textures, clouds textures, etc. all exist in the base product so there is no "gap" but their is variance to be provided for those that desire a "choice" ... from this thread it looks like many still want a choice even for "base" environments.

Filling in the gaps would actually be detailed airports and more aircraft not in the base product.

 

You are contradicting yourself here...

First you say that there is no "gap" if the feature exists in the base product, then you say that "filling the gap" would be detailed airports. Well, airports (no matter how bland) exist in the base product.

I don't think that there is a right or wrong conclusion as to what one would consider "filling the gap" vs. "adding flavors"; and your contradiction shows just how subjective that definition is for the "individual" user.

X-plane has clouds in the base product, but they were so ugly to look at (initial 11 version), with a limited draw distance (a circle around your plane), and had such a performance hit, that I would simply fly without them. So to me...this was a "gap" that X-Enviro "attempted" to address, not a flavor.

So, my point was that the current base sims are "so far behind the times" in many "visual" aspects that many of addons (to me) were filling in what "I" considered to be a "gap" in my flight sim experience (much like you and airports).

With that said, MSFS has really pushed boundaries with what they are offering in the base sim, so I don't think there there will be "as much of a demand" for 3rd party addon like clouds etc. given that the base sim offers a "good enough" visual representation of clouds, water, environment etc. In other words, I would not pay "additional $$$" for another "flavor" of MSFS great looking clouds.

 

[G-RFRY 1,658]

Your banking a lot on this when FSX was released WOW! fantastic fast forward a couple of years and vids on YouTube showed up and it was what addons are you using my sim looks nothing like that. and don't be surprised if the same happens with MSFS in a couple of years. What ever the users has he want`s more. 

And this forum post`s proves the point it`s not going to have everything.

Edited September 3, 2019 by rjfry

[ErichB 3,553]

1 hour ago, FlyBaby said:

my point was that the current base sims are "so far behind the times" in many "visual" aspects that many of addons (to me) were filling in what "I" considered to be a "gap" in my flight sim experience (much like you and airports).

Mind the Gap

Edited September 3, 2019 by ErichB

[Paraffin 2,197]

16 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I wouldn’t care to do it that way but was thinking that it’s possible due to the memory space required for all the ortho and custom cities that maybe once the base MSFS is installed, you can  download the high detailed/ortho areas that you want to have installed permanently. Maybe they could have them divided by continents, countries or cities. Perhaps also would be for purchase individually if not included in the base price.

This way you can load up the stuff you want and not need to download, stream or store areas of scenery that you never use.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with. 

If that method was used, you're still going to need humongous hard drive space and possibly days to pre-load the scenery if you're on a slow connection.

I have just two of the Orbx TE scenery addons on my system. TE Great Britain South takes up around 124 GB of space, and TE Washington State takes up around 206 GB of space. On my relatively slow connection, both were overnight downloads. And the Orbx TE scenery may not be as data-intensive as the scenery shown in the MSFS trailer. I doubt a pre-load and local storage would work for anyone who flies in many different parts of the world, and not just one fixed route.

It might work as a dynamic system (like people are speculating), where only the immediate area you're flying in is pre-loaded and buffered, then erased from your drive as you leave the area.

There are still some questions about how that could work. If you always start a flight from the last place you landed, then you could boot up the sim and fly right away with just that local scenery kept on the drive. But what if you want to switch to a different area? Do you have to go for a cup of coffee while you wait for a 10-20 GB scenery download? People already complain about slow loading times with our current sims, where everything is already on the local drive.

[dave2013 1,041]

22 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

If that method was used, you're still going to need humongous hard drive space and possibly days to pre-load the scenery if you're on a slow connection.

I have just two of the Orbx TE scenery addons on my system. TE Great Britain South takes up around 124 GB of space, and TE Washington State takes up around 206 GB of space. On my relatively slow connection, both were overnight downloads. And the Orbx TE scenery may not be as data-intensive as the scenery shown in the MSFS trailer. I doubt a pre-load and local storage would work for anyone who flies in many different parts of the world, and not just one fixed route.

It might work as a dynamic system (like people are speculating), where only the immediate area you're flying in is pre-loaded and buffered, then erased from your drive as you leave the area.

There are still some questions about how that could work. If you always start a flight from the last place you landed, then you could boot up the sim and fly right away with just that local scenery kept on the drive. But what if you want to switch to a different area? Do you have to go for a cup of coffee while you wait for a 10-20 GB scenery download? People already complain about slow loading times with our current sims, where everything is already on the local drive.

FSX already works this way, i.e. it pre-loads only the scenery within a certain range of your location and then dynamically loads scenery as necessary as you fly.

This is, in fact, the only way it could work unless MS expects everyone to build a large file server with 100s of GBs of storage and then spend days downloading scenery data.  However, this, too, has its challenges.

Here's a calculation I did to estimate how much data would need to be loaded:

Photoscenery for Washington State = 206GB (based on the disk space that ORBX TE Washington uses)

Scenery for a 30 mile radius around your location: app. 8-10GB

Time to download scenery based on 50MB/sec speed: almost 30 minutes.

This is obviously not practical, so either the amount of scenery pre-loaded will be smaller, the scenery will be of lower resolution than ORBX TE, or Microsoft has a super duper compression scheme that greatly reduces the amount of data.

Perhaps I'm missing something.  Please chime in everyone, especially Microsoft Devs.

Dave

[DadJokeCinema 145]

On 9/1/2019 at 3:53 PM, 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. 

I'm sorry, I will only play this sim if it is free of weeds (or has the option to remove them via third party tools).

Weeds have taken over my garden, they will not take over my sim!