Microsoft Flight Simulator Preview - 30th September

[EGLD 439]

2 hours ago, FizziPop said:

None of the teaser videos have had any dates slapped on them. We can only hope that MS somehow finished development earlier than expected cos i can’t wait that long 😩

Me too 😭

I'll take it however they can get it, just SOON!!! no study level aircraft would be fine for now, it would be fun enough to do a round the world in the default TBM because, as X-Plane users know from Ortho - every flight is a genuine adventure to somewhere that looks just like it does in real life

[Superdelphinus 718]

Maybe I understood this wrong, but they said that they’ve been working with the actual manufacturers of the aeroplanes they’ve put in so far to make sure everything works exactly as it should, and that every knob and dial does exactly what it should. What is that if not study level?

[EGLD 439]

well that would be cool, but I'm thinking more of airliners

perhaps that A320 we've seen will be as good as FSL

Edited October 1, 2019 by EGLD

[bonchie 2,305]

Aircraft manufacturers may see this as a good advertising opportunity and in doing so, they'll want everything done right. It's really good news they are involved. 

[ckyliu 1,749]

2 hours ago, bonchie said:

Two other streamers said they confirmed they do not want a subscription model. But is that really any different than paying $60 or $200 every two years for the new P3D?

I wholeheartedly agree, providing the subscription is reasonable. if they go subscription model, perhaps they offer an alternative lifetime licence with reduced/removed streaming elements. Given how much many seem to spend on scenery addons every year (in addition to the base game), is $5 a month (hypothetical figure) really a big deal?

[ckyliu 1,749]

2 hours ago, bonchie said:

They aren't gonna use low resolution stuff like that from what I can tell. There's a shot of Kenya for example where the satellite imagery is absolute garbage, but it looks great in the sim. 

I think for those areas, they'll have some kind of texture set to use or Azure will somehow clean up the images. 

This has been semi-confirmed by one of the preview attendees. He flew across some of Egypt and he said the desert was covered in sandy coloured trees, it seems in areas where they don't have high resolution satellite imagery, OSM or photogrammetry data they process whatever satellite imagery is available and generate a sort of "landclass + autogen + vector" on the fly to get a better resolution (kinda like ORBX regions but done in real time), and in this instance the processing had misidentified the sand dunes as tree canopy.

Edited October 1, 2019 by ckyliu

[Manny 1,293]

Add on Vendors will surely add value ... I am sure. They would find gaps and fill them up.

[EGLD 439]

11 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

I wholeheartedly agree, providing the subscription is reasonable. if they go subscription model, perhaps they offer an alternative lifetime licence with reduced/removed streaming elements. Given how much many seem to spend on scenery addons every year (in addition to the base game), is $5 a month (hypothetical figure) really a big deal?

Subscription certainly fits the model better - it's easier for MS to increase and decrease the resources of the servers providing the data if they can tie it to the revenue and number of subscribers currently active

Once they have an agreed monthly charge that pays for the associated hardware costs, it scales itself as people come and go

Edited October 1, 2019 by EGLD

[DaWu 779]

2 hours ago, bonchie said:

I see no evidence that's what they are using and they said at the event (according to a streamer) that Azure is reading the satellite images and aerial photos and producing buildings on the exact positions. That's what I'm seeing, not the inconsistent splatter of OSM you see in XP11. The buildings are exactly where they should be in MSFS. 

OSM data is also far too sparse in the US to be their data set given what we've seen. 

The usage of Openstreetmaps was confirmed by the Gamestar preview

[mr340 56]

37 minutes ago, Superdelphinus said:

Maybe I understood this wrong, but they said that they’ve been working with the actual manufacturers of the aeroplanes they’ve put in so far to make sure everything works exactly as it should, and that every knob and dial does exactly what it should. What is that if not study level?

I've ask myself if developers like PMDG , FSLAB can create study level aircraft . Why can't Microsoft do the same ? If they can create a flight simulator this big why can't they create study level aircraft ? Maybe this time they are more serious. If they built this platform to be very stable , I can only assume they would also start creating  high quality add ons . 

[ca_metal 2,025]

17 minutes ago, mr340 said:

I've ask myself if developers like PMDG , FSLAB can create study level aircraft . Why can't Microsoft do the same ? If they can create a flight simulator this big why can't they create study level aircraft ? Maybe this time they are more serious. If they built this platform to be very stable , I can only assume they would also start creating  high quality add ons . 

They can, but maybe they don't want to get that deep right now. The have the whole base simulator, with a lot of features, to worry about right now.

Working on another front right now maybe not that interesting for them.

[Superdelphinus 718]

24 minutes ago, mr340 said:

I've ask myself if developers like PMDG , FSLAB can create study level aircraft . Why can't Microsoft do the same ? If they can create a flight simulator this big why can't they create study level aircraft ? Maybe this time they are more serious. If they built this platform to be very stable , I can only assume they would also start creating  high quality add ons . 

I agree, and potentially at an even higher level. Or at least quicker and with better performance. If this was a game, something like Microsoft simulator, I’d just buy a few of the main add on companies and combine their expertise with cutting edge tools and techniques, more manpower and money and more access to manufacturers. 

[EGLD 439]

1 minute ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

And you know this how?

No infrastructure??  You do know that Lockheed Martin help build the satellites that are used to obtain this data?  This doesn't seem like a company with lack of data infrastructure:

https://geoawesomeness.com/lockheed-martin-artificial-intelligence-model-satellite-imagery-analysis/

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/gps.html

https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2015-02-17-Intelligence-In-The-Cloud-Lockheed-Martin-And-Esri-Cloud-Deployment-Enables-Geospatial-Information-Sharing-Across-Intel-Community

https://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-offering-new-satellite-image-analysis-service/

 

Rob, there's literally only a handful of companies with the global infrastructure required to support streaming of 2 petabytes of satellite imagery to hundreds of thousands of people in all corners of the earth - Google, Amazon and Microsoft are miles ahead of anyone else when it comes to size, scalability and global reach

If LM or Laminar want to match MS here, they are going to need to sign a deal with one of those companies IMO

[bonchie 2,305]

17 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

And you know this how?

No infrastructure??  You do know that Lockheed Martin help build the satellites that are used to obtain this data?  This doesn't seem like a company with lack of data infrastructure:

https://geoawesomeness.com/lockheed-martin-artificial-intelligence-model-satellite-imagery-analysis/

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/gps.html

https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2015-02-17-Intelligence-In-The-Cloud-Lockheed-Martin-And-Esri-Cloud-Deployment-Enables-Geospatial-Information-Sharing-Across-Intel-Community

https://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-offering-new-satellite-image-analysis-service/

Serisously, what's your beef with Lockheed Martin?  The filled a void in the flight simulation from 2009 to 2019 and beyond and you seem to have a problem with that?

$10/mo (current XBOX Live subscription) is going to break the bank?  So provide all the Azure Cloud services for free and you think this is a good business model?  Does it follow the "money falls of trees" business model?  Or maybe it follows the amorphous BORG collective business model where everything is just magically absorb without any impact. 😉 Microsoft is in business to make money as are most business entities, sorta the primary goal.  I know Bill Gates has donate many Billions to charity, but Microsoft isn't 'his' company anymore (well 4% still is).  Do you want Microsoft to stick around or would you rather they just give the shop away for free and once again close the doors and walk away?  If a subscription keeps this level of visual quality going, I would happily pay the $10/mo and I suspect so would the majority of users and hopefully get back to the days of over 1 Million users.

That doesn't justify a bad design decision ... hopefully that mantra doesn't continue with the new MFS moving forward.

Can you expand on that because I never heard the word "tiling" used nor "LOD" ... but I could have missed it or not understood.

Cheers, Rob.

My beef? I was using P3D from V1.

My beef is with the obtuseness of some of these posts. LM may maintain satellites, but they do not have what MS and Google do unless they choose to license it. That’s the infrastructure I’m talking about. 

What we have is zero information about P3Dv5 vs. MS being unbelievably open. There’s no reason for anyone to believe P3Dv5 is anything more than another incremental update. Why would they trash their old work when what they have works for the commercial market?

As to XP12, I’ve paid attention to Austin for long enough to know it’s not going to compare. They don’t have the manpower to do it.

Edited October 1, 2019 by bonchie

[Dominique_K 10,150]

15 minutes ago, EGLD said:

Rob, there's literally only a handful of companies with the global infrastructure required to support streaming of 2 petabytes of satellite imagery to hundreds of thousands of people in all corners of the earth - Google, Amazon and Microsoft are miles ahead of anyone else when it comes to size, scalability and global reach

If LM or Laminar want to match MS here, they are going to need to sign a deal with one of those companies IMO

Lets keep things in perspective, putting LM and Laminar on the same footing is kinda weird ! They are not exactly playing in the same league, are they ?  Also FYI LM has already some venture with Amazon on data infrastructure. 

I am very happy to see what FS20 is bringing to us. I would even happier to see some competition between LM v5 and MS FS20. 

 

 

 

Edited October 1, 2019 by domkle