First, people are mentioning Stadia specifically. That is a Google product that Microsoft will never use. Microsoft's equivalent is xCloud. 

The next issue is that there are different types of cloud/streaming of games and sims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming#Types

If you look at the Wikipedia article, there are several types of "cloud gaming." The most well-known type seems to be gaming on demand, based on a thin client where the server does everything and input is fed quickly to the server and the results are sent back. Another is progressive downloading, where you can play the game immediately but other parts are downloaded in the background. 

In my opinion, it's unlikely that the actual flying and environment is going to involve pure "gaming on demand." There's too much going on and its too hardware intensive. I'm no expert but it seems like latency is too big of an issue; it will be remarkable if these companies can make it work for your average console game in the near future, but that seems to be their plan.

Also my opinion: I think we all have an inkling that a fair amount of progressive downloading will be used, particularly for scenery. The issue is how much. MS could still be figuring this out, but I think they are going to figure out a balance. Maybe users will have to make a choice between waiting a while before a planned flight (loading time) if they have a slow connection and having more versatility and speed if they have a faster connection.

It seems like a lot of people here have lower than average connections or live in remote locations. The US doesn't even have that fast of connections compared to Japan/Korea or Europe, which are more densely packed. Granted, they are not 3D models, but I can have multiple internet connected devices and movie/tv streaming connections without any risk of reaching my cap. If one only has dial-up or 1 Mpbs, it just seems like one has been passed by the world in general. 

I also don't think you can compare the likely MS2020 download sizes with OrthoXP. OrthoXP is really just downloading giant jpegs that are loaded at the same time. I'm not sure it can get any less efficient. This new sim only needs to download and load what is actually in your environment or at least coming up soon. This goes back to the idea of progressive downloading.

What do you guys think?

Yes. as I posted in another thread, people keep conflating two things:

Resource streaming - Loading orthophotos, terrain meshes, autogen models, photogrammetry models on demand

Cloud gaming - The game running on remote hardware in the cloud and your local PC acting as a simple terminal

Resource streaming is all but confirmed.
Cloud gaming might happen via xCloud. It wouldn't be built into the game itself, because all you need is one terminal app for any xCloud / Stadia game. The game has to run locally somewhere though.

The data transfer requirements for MSFS will probably be lower than using something like Ortho4XP + enhanced autogen because you're only downloading the bits you need at the detail you need them.

Edited September 24, 20196 yr by nickhod