MegaScenery V4 for New Mexico

[Jim Young]

We'll see what happens on October 10th.  I think they are causing a lot of confusion with the video showing "coming October 10th" at the end with no further explanation.  I did some research (finally) and see the Discovery Series will, in fact, be released on October 10th.  Still they should have indicated something like this at the end of their last video.  Reading and watching the videos recently released, it looks like an almost finished product to me and difficult for me to see it requires another year of testing. 

25 minutes ago, goates said:

Preview builds are work-in-progress builds we’ve created for the purpose of working directly with our community to deliver the best experience collaboratively through feedback/suggestions.

Our forums have already given them hundreds of suggestions and some of them have already been implemented.  It simply does not make sense to me for another year of testing just because they want to do Alpha/Beta test first to make it look like they fixed all the bugs and implemented all the suggestions from the Alpha/Beta testers before releasing.  They have already done a lot of Alpha testing and they didn't bring in those invited to spend 5 plus hours on the simulator for nothing.  If they think their product will be free of bugs and further suggestions after all the testing before release to the public, they are wrong.  I could understand Alpha/Beta testing back several years ago but technology has made developing software a lot easier than in the past.  Oh well.  I will now get off my soapbox and wait until November 2020.  I hope they realize that time spent on Earth is short, and for some, shorter than others.  They need to get those over 200 techs who have been working hard on this project busy and start polishing this simulator for release in 2019.

[Paraffin]

29 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

Reading and watching the videos recently released, it looks like an almost finished product to me and difficult for me to see it requires another year of testing. 

Optimization could take that long. On release day, the sim has to fly smoothly without stutters in the frame rate and without noticeable pop-in on at least a medium-spec gaming PC. Or else it will get torn apart in reviews and on the various forums (not just this one). That could take a while to optimize, with input from outside testers in the Tech Alpha and any outside Beta testing they have planned.

Another issue with optimization is that it looks like they're going to be streaming and buffering the scenery, at least for the highest-quality version of scenery. The videos they're showing made with internal MS/ASOBO hardware are presumably made with very high-speed connections to the scenery servers. Or they might even be using locally cached scenery to make those clips. 

It might take a year for MS/ASOBO to figure out the right balance of eye candy to bandwidth requirements, so they can feed us that spectacular scenery on the kind of Internet connections we're using out in the real world.

[pracines]

3 hours ago, Jim Young said:

They need to get those over 200 techs who have been working hard on this project busy and start polishing this simulator for release in 2019.

I totally agree.👍😁

[Baber20]

Megascenery can only dream of competing with what we have in FS2020. I mean its not even in the same league. The resources Microsoft has with all the bing data and azure AI, and then the technology to use all that in the sim, you just cant compete with that. Its as real as it gets.

[Dominique_K]

The Discovery series will not be released on October 10th, only the first episode will. Also, I don’t think we can infer from the video that the new sim is almost ready. We can only say that the Seattle area looks pretty good. I read about trees all over the Sahara for instance. Also, no ATC and three aircraft only. They have still a lot of work in front them. And of course the testing, including for the delivery to users.

[Pastaiolo]

To be honest, texture definition is the least of the interesting things to look forward to MSFS. So no, i woudn't say they are going to compete in any way with MSFS.

[nickhod]

6 hours ago, Jim Young said:

Reading and watching the videos recently released, it looks like an almost finished product to me and difficult for me to see it requires another year of testing. 

Those videos didn't show heavy jets or ATC. It's possible there's months of development ahead on those alone. There might be entire other features that are planned for release but not done yet, like the in-game addon store.

The SDK, plus all the documentation and examples required for that might be at an early stage for all we know.

The game was running on pretty high end PCs. It's also possible that they have weeks or months of optimisation work to do to get performance acceptable and stable on down level hardware.

Software can look almost done but really have a way to go. (Explaining that to the marketing team is the bane of a software engineers life, believe me 😀).

[G-RFRY]

Watched a video of the testers arriving at the airport from the hotel to go to the booths, NDA signed no filming in the booths, forbidden some have lost any future involvement judging buy the pics on here, no pictures of the interface can be show only the prerecord video supplied by Microsoft 👀  oh dear.

[fppilot]

1 hour ago, nickhod said:

The game was running on pretty high end PCs. It's also possible that they have weeks or months of optimisation work to do to get performance acceptable and stable on down level hardware.

Cannot recall the last FS version that offered acceptable and stable performance on down level hardware at the time of the version release...  Not since 2000 anyway!

[ca_metal]

14 hours ago, Jim Young said:

I did not see anything on their site which states this. 

Well, the video is about the Discovery Series, and was posted on the Insider Area and all insiders knew it was a preview clip for the series, insiders have access to a roadmap that states on october 10th they will kick-off their series of videos about the sim features. There's of sim scheduled for that date. But sure, it could be more explicit on the video itself.

Just take a look at their last roadmap version:


About the Public Alpha version is on their roadmap, also everybody is able to sign-up and test the build when available. They will select people on waves, for each new version, their intention is to select the more people they can. 

My point, when talking about the Alpha, was that we are not a week from the release. Alpha versions are in a really raw state, they are still adding features, those new features will be also tested after implementation. When we have an stable Beta version, I would say the final release will be a lot closer.

[Jim Young]

3 hours ago, france89 said:

To be honest, texture definition is the least of the interesting things to look forward to MSFS. So no, i woudn't say they are going to compete in any way with MSFS.

Not sure what you said but, yes, you will need a powerful computer like mine to run MSE or MSFS if you want to enjoy it.  You will be one of the lucky ones who won't have to go online to play MSFS2020.  You can use the default textures.  It will probably be cheaper too.

2 hours ago, Flamingpie said:

Is all of this serious or has Jim's account been hacked...? 😧😎

Sounds like I'm another one who you disagree with.  You are building a large database! 😞

 

12 minutes ago, fppilot said:

Cannot recall the last FS version that offered acceptable and stable performance on down level hardware at the time of the version release...  Not since 2000 anyway!

MegaScenery has always run well in P3DV4 but I always had to be careful using it with FSX/Acceleration because, if you load too many MSE scenery, it will have a very long loading time at startup and while loading a scenario as photoscenery loads all photoscenery worldwide whether you want it or not.  If you do not disable the unneeded photoscenery, you will run out of VAS pretty fast too.  I have to disable Orbx Pacific Northwest region too.  My flights from KORD to KIAD, a two hour plus flight requires me to load Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.  In FSX I'll will usually run out of VAS on Approach to Dulles International especially if it is raining.  With P3Dv4, the flight is smooth, loads fast, and no problems arriving at Dulles no matter what payware aircraft I use.  That's why I know I won't have any problems with MSFS2020 (to be released in November 2020).  Still, I do not plan on getting a lot of MSE V4.  For sure Virginia and Florida and Maryland and, most likely Northern/Southern California. I have V3 for every US State.  My latest system will run anything right down and long into the future.  I think most modern systems will run any MSE scenery as long as the app is P3DV4.

2 hours ago, nickhod said:

Those videos didn't show heavy jets or ATC. It's possible there's months of development ahead on those alone. There might be entire other features that are planned for release but not done yet, like the in-game addon store.

The SDK, plus all the documentation and examples required for that might be at an early stage for all we know.

As I and others have stated elsewhere, those are easy fixes as Microsoft could easily subcontract those tasks to developers who are experts developing heavies, AI, and ATC.  If I were on the team, I would try to get all of the AI in UTLive, install a recent Navigraph AIRAC database (that can be updated via a separate subscription).  That way you could have only one location for Navigraph updates and payware or scenery makers would simply link to the one database in MSFS2020.  I am sure there are developers who can make nice looking, fully functional default aircraft that will be loaded with the simulation.  I'm not sure if they can install Boeing or Airbus aircraft with real world names of aircraft like American, United, etc., as I recall they could not use real world names due to restrictions from the individual Airlines.  Perhaps that has changed since we now have AI from every airline in the world.  For the basic MSFS2020, they would need at least 5 heavies as defaults.  So these issues are quick and easy to fix if they subcontract them to the proper experts.  For sure, I do not want MSFS2020 to contain everything that is currently payware for P3DV4.  That should be added later or soon after the release of MSFS2020 in November 2020. 

MSFS2020 developers are already working with some payware aircraft makers with appropriate SDK instructions to incorporate their payware into MSFS2020.  They do not need the whole document.  I'm sure FSDT and other scenery makers are also getting individual instructions on how to incorporate their scenery into MSFS2020.  A full or partially completed SDK will be released when the MSFS2020 is released and updated as appropriate.

[Jim Young]

2 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

Well, the video is about the Discovery Series, and was posted on the Insider Area and all insiders knew it was a preview clip for the series, insiders have access to a roadmap that states on october 10th they will kick-off their series of videos about the sim features. There's of sim scheduled for that date. But sure, it could be more explicit on the video itself.

As I stated later in this topic, I found this roadmap and admitted my mistake and the fact they should have added this fact at the end of the video instead of "coming October 10, 2020" which made it very confusing.  When you have a video showing near perfection and end it with a statement like coming October 10, 2020, what else would one think unless they are completely familiar with the roadmap.

[klamal]

6 hours ago, Baber20 said:

Megascenery can only dream of competing with what we have in FS2020. I mean its not even in the same league. The resources Microsoft has with all the bing data and azure AI, and then the technology to use all that in the sim, you just cant compete with that. Its as real as it gets.

Could not agree more!  Based on videos that I've seen so far for FS2020, there isn't anything, Megascenery, X-Plane, anything, that will be close to FS2020 in this category.  Or, maybe(hopefully) any category.  As far as I have seen and heard so far, FS2020 will put an end to all other flight sims.

[nickhod]

40 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

As I and others have stated elsewhere, those are easy fixes as Microsoft could easily subcontract those tasks to developers who are experts developing heavies, AI, and ATC. 

That's not how big game studios work. They typically want to do everything in-house to know the code and own the IP end-to-end.

ATC and AI will be tightly integrated into the code base, so you need developers who have worked on it for years.
Building planes for MSFS will likely be different to every other sim (given the use of PBR textures, vector liveries etc). Asobo are the only experts right now.

The idea that you could "easily" subcontract anything for a game as complex as MSFS seems a bold assertion. Subcontracting anything, when it comes to software, is almost always a complete nightmare for all involved.

[Krakin]

They're welcome to compete but this doesn't look anywhere near as good as fs2020