I watch  all the lovely pics and vids with a nagging thought at the back of my head. Is it really for me who live at the end of line of a lousy ADSL2 connection ?

Are we going to see a FSX redux when a nice sim in 2006 required hardware to be released in 2009... This time around, the issue wouldn’t be CPU or GPU but bandwidth.

I am no expert at all in the matter.  This issue has come up in several threads already and I thought it might be useful to focus it in one thread.

Declaring a flight and waiting for the download of imagery along the route to be completed before flying ?  Allow users huge regional (the West Coast for instance) downloads to lighten the streaming load?  Also could MS  pioneer new protocols  ? 

What do you think ? 

In any case, the team would be welcome to say that they are working on the issue. 

 

I think theres a great deal of technology that we know little or nothing about and we'll all be amazed when it works much better for more people than many currently believe it can.

and yes I agree that MS will be pushing boundaries once again.  hopefully Im farther ahead of 'normal' than I have been in the past but I'm currently thinking that not even my CPU will meet minimum requirements.

Ill have XP11 and the updated FSX to mess with.

Edited September 3, 20196 yr by sightseer

I can buy a new CPU, unfortunately I can’t rent a better connection 😉.  

I have no idea what MS will do.  what I keep seeing in my head is what amounts to a high def movie which I think many of us can already watch online.  the information we need downloaded is the possible views from our current location.  When sitting still this wont change and when moving it would be easy to predict and keep ahead of the needed graphics.  Our actions change the prediction model and the needed graphics but if they can keep the immediate few seconds of your flight on your machine and only worry about downloading based on changes at some point in the future then I could see where it would work.

A plane in flight simply cant change course or speed or anything fast enough to throw a violent curve to a predictive AI and even it if could, would we be able to perceive the error?  I don't think so.

I can imagine a lot could be downloaded while we file a flight plan and then it just goes from there.  The only thing that ever needs continuous uploading is a 3D vector.

thats how I see it.  could be completely wrong.

 

Edited September 3, 20196 yr by sightseer

16 minutes ago, sightseer said:

A plane in flight simply cant change course or speed or anything fast enough to throw a violent curve to a predictive AI and even it if could, would we be able to perceive the error?  I don't think so.

That could work, but then what happens when you're flying in the Pacific Northwest, and you get a sudden urge to fly through the Swiss Alps? How long does it take to switch to that new area? People already complain about loading times. I can't see this working if it takes longer than it does in current sims.

Maybe you'd get a very low-res version of the scenery first, to get you started, and then it would fill in to full detail later. I'm not sure how many people would accept that on a slow connection, where you'd spend some time flying before seeing the full scenery. You'd want maximum detail at least at the starting airport area.

You don't need to download 'scenery'.  You only need the images that can be seen from your perspective.  If you change course (which you are actually doing all the time anyway),  the new vector is uploaded and the prediction model changes what you will see in a few seconds.

You're basically flying flight simulator as you always have -- interacting with your controls and seeing your environment -- its just that instead of all the data needed to build the scenery, you're just shown what you would see.

13 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

That could work, but then what happens when you're flying in the Pacific Northwest, and you get a sudden urge to fly through the Swiss Alps? How long does it take to switch to that new area ?

There will trade-offs to accept for the bandwidth challenged. Low res vs time to wait a pre-download, I’d go for the latter. Difficulty to switch  in a blink from Honolulu to Geneva ? So be it.

1 hour ago, domkle said:

There will trade-offs to accept for the bandwidth challenged. Low res vs time to wait a pre-download, I’d go for the latter. Difficulty to switch  in a blink from Honolulu to Geneva ? So be it.

I don't mind waiting with the current sims, where the delay is usually less than a minute on my setup to switch areas, even with the more complex Orbx TE scenery.

Would I wait twice as long, if the scenery is significantly better? Sure! I've played games that took a couple of minutes to load. Would I wait a half hour or longer to switch areas, or just boot up the sim? Now we're in the "Not sure this is worth it" zone.

We just don't know enough yet about how this will work, but MS should at least be aware of the issues.

I think the Op has a very valid point about internet speeds or maybe the lack of speed would be more to the point. I continue to be amazed at the number of folks who have gotten so excited about this process. I wish MS all the luck in the world but a few processed short clips and a weekly release of what is going to be scheduled next month just simply does not signal a change to the world as we know it. MS may work magic and pull something off and even improve on peanut butter but lets face it.....we know nothing for sure at this point. We have had the ability to send man to the moon for many years now but only a few have been able to take that trip. Like anything that is hard to do, there are far more questions than answers.

The world will have bland pre-baked textures. But if you want the fancy photo real scenery you will have to pay extra. If you want fancy airports you will need to pay extra at the Flight sim store. It's all going to cost extra. A big cash cow to milk us dry for extras.

2 minutes ago, Greazer said:

The world will have bland pre-baked textures. But if you want the fancy photo real scenery you will have to pay extra. If you want fancy airports you will need to pay extra at the Flight sim store. It's all going to cost extra. A big cash cow to milk us dry for extras.

Wow Greazer! You are such a bright ray of sunshine...

26 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I don't mind waiting with the current sims, where the delay is usually less than a minute on my setup to switch areas, even with the more complex Orbx TE scenery.

Would I wait twice as long, if the scenery is significantly better? Sure! I've played games that took a couple of minutes to load. Would I wait a half hour or longer to switch areas, or just boot up the sim? Now we're in the "Not sure this is worth it" zone.

We just don't know enough yet about how this will work, but MS should at least be aware of the issues.

Project xCloud is expected to launch next month, Microsoft must by now have a very good idea of what is happening, (should have discovered where all the kinks, setbacks and wins are to be found), and know what is possible, what is feasible and what is currently impossible. 

I agree, up to 5 minutes wait time is acceptable to me for a ready-to-go environment. After that, I'm changing what I'm doing.

 

Just now, Greazer said:

The world will have bland pre-baked textures. But if you want the fancy photo real scenery you will have to pay extra. If you want fancy airports you will need to pay extra at the Flight sim store. It's all going to cost extra. A big cash cow to milk us dry for extras.

So nothing new to the current situation us simmers face then?
 

45 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

I think the Op has a very valid point about internet speeds or maybe the lack of speed would be more to the point. I continue to be amazed at the number of folks who have gotten so excited about this process. I wish MS all the luck in the world but a few processed short clips and a weekly release of what is going to be scheduled next month just simply does not signal a change to the world as we know it. MS may work magic and pull something off and even improve on peanut butter but lets face it.....we know nothing for sure at this point. We have had the ability to send man to the moon for many years now but only a few have been able to take that trip. Like anything that is hard to do, there are far more questions than answers.

I agree. I think the level of reliance on a user’s internet connection speed is the one genuine potential issue I can see at this stage. I’m luckily enough to have a pretty fast connection (well enough to run at least 3 4K tv shows through Netflix/ amazon at the same time, anyway) but many, if not most, people live in areas where it’s very slow. The divergence of internet speed is much more stark than the divergence of of hardware components in my opinion.

I would imagine that various delivery methods will be part of the testing programme at some point.  

29 minutes ago, Greazer said:

The world will have bland pre-baked textures. But if you want the fancy photo real scenery you will have to pay extra. If you want fancy airports you will need to pay extra at the Flight sim store. It's all going to cost extra. A big cash cow to milk us dry for extras.

Nah, I think we’ll have to pay for individual shades of colour. 

3 hours ago, sightseer said:

You don't need to download 'scenery'.  You only need the images that can be seen from your perspective.  If you change course (which you are actually doing all the time anyway),  the new vector is uploaded and the prediction model changes what you will see in a few seconds.

You're basically flying flight simulator as you always have -- interacting with your controls and seeing your environment -- its just that instead of all the data needed to build the scenery, you're just shown what you would see.

I agree with that, that is exactly what I imagined when I first heard about streaming games.

I mean, that's the whole point, why download if you just need to have an image at any moment, that's called a film. Only a few data will need to be downloaded at any given moment just like @sightseer explained.

How could you play a game on a cellphone, like Stadia is advertising, knowing the memory a cellphone can handle?

Edited September 3, 20196 yr by Noooch