A flight simulator is not a regular piece of software, it's a piece of software that has to be future proof, we had to drag FSX into the 2010's even though it had no multicore support, and it was painful.

I think the Devs of MFS2020 already made it clear that MFS2020 was going to be fully using our current hardware, but what about in 5-10 years, when 64 cores CPUs might be mainstream, will it take full advantage of this?

Now I know what you must be thinking "the sim hasn't even been released, and this guy is already talking about how it will fare in 10 years"

True, but it is right now that the SIM is being developed, in 3 years it may not be actively developed anymore.

In my opinion it would be really great if the SIM could be optimized for current hardware, but also support up to 128 CPU cores, 256gb or ram, for instance, this way, every year, newer hardware will give us more FPS, and allow us to use more power-hungry add-ons, up until now it was somewhat theorical.

Maybe they already thought about this. And already made it so, but I have a second point:

Please Microsoft, do not dumb down the game, even if max settings only run smoothly on a 2080ti, that's what max settings are for, give us low and medium settings for weaker hardware, do not make it so most computers can run max settings at the cost of visual fidelity, optimize the game as much as you can, but at the end of the day, please, do not remove visual features just because current average hardware cannot run it, because just 5 years from now it will be a completely different story.

I say that because I see many AAA titles being graphically dumbed down so that Timmy can put all the sliders to the right and still get 60fps with his 1050ti, in my opinion it would be a very detrimental strategy for a SIM that is  probably going to stick around for a long time.

Now low and medium should look great too, but do not hesitate to put OPTIONAL next gen visual features that will put current hardware to their knees, because in 5 years we'll be glad to have them, in my opinion.

I imagine it's been designed with scalability in mind and the ability to use as many cores as you want to throw at it.

Also, I imagine a lot of the computation that previously had to be done on your PC (in FSX/P3D) is now done on Azure.  So a lot of computations related to simulation of weather, traffic (road, rail? and water) and ATC would be handed by Azure and just the results of that computation sent to your PC for visual rendering.  So offloading this computation to Azure lets your PC render the world with greater fidelity/fps.

Can't agree more. I have always believed that flight simulator is not a regular piece of software. It touches some parts of our heart, and it reaches somewhere high and above. It's entertaining, educational, and uplifting. Somehow I believe Microsoft is the only enterprise that's capable of doing it. It's business, and it needs a huge budget, but it's more than that. It needs bigger perspective, and forward-looking.

We are happy to see it has already done some right things for the future: Azure, cloud gaming, modern game engine...those must all be done as the core and base of the game. But it's not enough. Without VR deeply embedded into its core and base, it's still flight sim of the last generation. Really wish more and more people could see the true meaning of the new MSFS. It's a most cutting edge flight simulator, and it's much more than a flight simulator.

I hope not. Competition is healthy. 

15 years ? Now lets not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe 5 to 10 years at max. Look at how much the tech has evolved in the last 15 years. How that has allowed the graphics to improve and achieve photo realistic visuals. I am pretty sure after 15 years, this is going to look outdated and people would want a new sim that will then support the graphical goodies of that time. 

12 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

15 years ? Now lets not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe 5 to 10 years at max. Look at how much the tech has evolved in the last 15 years. How that has allowed the graphics to improve and achieve photo realistic visuals. I am pretty sure after 15 years, this is going to look outdated and people would want a new sim that will then support the graphical goodies of that time. 

I'm unsure about this.

First, if we take FSX as an example, FSX wasn't cutting edge when it was released, there were way more advanced game graphically, and it wasn't very well optimized, yet, we kept it (albeit a modified version of it) up until today, 13 years later

Technology is going to improve, but MFS2020  is cutting edge today, and it can only exist in its state thank to Microsoft, no other company has such an unlimited access and rights to bing maps, the complicated logic of an AI engine (azure AI) .

There was nothing in FSX that another company couldn't have done at the time, today, Laminar cannot possibly create a simulator with the technology in MFS2020, they don't have access to the huge base of technology Microsoft has that allowed them to produce MFS2020.

I strongly believe that MFS2020 will still be the top dog in 5 to 10 years, unless of course Microsoft releases an upgraded version of the sim.

1 hour ago, Baber20 said:

15 years ? Now lets not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe 5 to 10 years at max. Look at how much the tech has evolved in the last 15 years. How that has allowed the graphics to improve and achieve photo realistic visuals. I am pretty sure after 15 years, this is going to look outdated and people would want a new sim that will then support the graphical goodies of that time. 

Though it has been said they will further develop the sim for at least 10 years. I hope they design it in a way that they can not only add features like seasons in the future but actually improve things under the hood as well.

There are times where Microsoft Flight Simulator barely looks indistinguishable from a real-life photo, so I think it will age really well. DirectX 12, ray-tracing, improvements to the rendering engine, new satellite data, new features and add-ons will prolong its life nicely. I won't be surprised if the competition will not have caught up in 10 years.

The phrase 'The hardware to run FSX well hasn't been invented yet' comes to mind!

7 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

 I won't be surprised if the competition will not have caught up in 10 years.

I would be more prudent. Lockheed Martin has been working on their P3D for years, has all the resources to do the same and we don't know anything at all about v5. 

Yeah I’d rather there be room to grow, but I wonder if there will be people who complain that this doesn’t run on their 100 mhz win95 system.

2 minutes ago, domkle said:

I would be more prudent. Lockheed Martin has been working on their P3D for years, has all the resources to do the same and we don't know anything at all about v5. 

If they decide to ditch backwards compatibility then I'm sure they can do wonders with what they have, but until then, Prepar3D will keep working and looking like a refresh of the old ESP engine, no matter what version.

5 minutes ago, domkle said:

I would be more prudent. Lockheed Martin has been working on their P3D for years, has all the resources to do the same and we don't know anything at all about v5. 

LM is not interested in entertainment and haven’t done much anyway. They’re essentially an arms dealer.

1 minute ago, carbonbasedlifeform said:

LM is not interested in entertainment and haven’t done much anyway. They’re essentially an arms dealer.

This is why I think that Prepar3D will not be relevant among us eventually. The current add-on ecosystem will move to Microsoft Flight Simulator and be rendered incompatible with Prepar3D, so they will part ways and Lockheed Martin will focus on bigger improvements for their commercial userbase. Unless Microsoft update ESP and Prepar3D aims to become part of the updated ecosystem at some point.

21 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

If they decide to ditch backwards compatibility then I'm sure they can do wonders with what they have, but until then, Prepar3D will keep working and looking like a refresh of the old ESP engine, no matter what version.

We, the general public, just don't have any hint about what they cook with v5. Not me at least !  Read this press release . They have huge intellectual resources in the imagery and AI domains and they build planes, don't they ? 

I am not sure at all they want to put 100 millions dollars to compete with FS20 but discarding that they could be a real competitor for MS is premature. 

And who would gain then ? Us.

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 20196 yr by domkle