Although I'm excited about the arrival of MSFS, I'd hate to see things turn into a near monopoly when it comes to consumer, civilian flight sims. I don't think that would benefit the community long term.

I started thinking about what would be necessary to bring other sims up to MSFS level, and how long all that might take.

Posted here for cordial debate 😀 

Streaming

FlyInside Flight Sim implemented streaming from Bing Maps, but I think they're skating on thin legal ice. I can imagine a law suit if Laminar tried it.
Nothing to stop other sims implementing the ability to stream generic satellite image tiles but leaving it up to the user to point it at which ever server they choose.
Using 'free' USGS orthophotos, someone Laminar's or Lockheed's size could even bring their own streaming server online for US maps.
The out of the box experience wont be as good, but it wouldn't be too arduous either.

Photogrammetry

This seems like a big sticking point for other sims. Google and MS aren't going to license their photogrammetry data.
Again, if other sims implemented a generic way to display photogrammetry meshes, maybe some enterprising individual could write 3rd party add-on to load in Google's data. This could effectively leap-frog MSFS as you'd have photogrammetry available for nearly every big, Western city.
Seems a long shot though and, as far as I can see, no one has figured out Google's photogrammetry data format.

Clouds & Weather

Asobo haven't invented anything new for the clouds in MSFS (although they are spectacular). It's existing techniques done very, very well.
Arguably this is most straightforward thing for other sims to achieve as it's only a case of developer time, with no licensing concerns.
Maybe buying an environment add-on company might get them there quicker.

ML Autogen

What we've seen of the machine learning based autogen in MSFS appears to be level above anything else out there.
Autogen based on OSM data is always going to have its limits.
Technically there's nothing stopping Laminar, Lockheed, IPACS or FlyInside from starting their own compute cluster running ML algorithms against Google or Bing satellite data. The end results will be a new creation and under their license.
It's just a case of developer time, like most things.

I think much improved autogen is achievable for other sims in the near term.
 

So I think other sims could catch up to a point over the next 5 years, but photogrammetry seems like a barrier with no easy way around.

I don't think people will stick to one sim.  But wish there was a way to combine them all. Lol. One will inevitably outdo the other in some way with other features.

6 minutes ago, nickhod said:

Using 'free' USGS orthophotos, someone Laminar's or Lockheed's size could even bring their own streaming server online for US maps.
The out of the box experience wont be as good, but it wouldn't be too arduous either.

 

Although this might be possible in theory it won't be feasible in practice because of the amount of servers you'll need to keep everyone flying. MS has servers all over the world already: I don't see Laminar or IPACS doing something similar. I don't know how FlyInside does it but 1. I don't think they have many users and 2. the quality is nowhere near MSFS quality (as far as I can see). 'Won't be as good' is an understatement.

9 minutes ago, nickhod said:

Seems a long shot though

Think so too.

9 minutes ago, nickhod said:

Maybe buying an environment add-on company might get them there quicker.

Maybe. I myself don't understand why IPACS is planning to do all this themselves (somewhere during the coming 10 years or so...). You can buy clouds from other developers and use them in your sim. This one shouldn't be a big problem for the other sims however... I doubt if MSFS is using 'existing techniques'. The amount of clouds and the way they influence everything is something I haven't seen anywhere else. In most games clouds are simply pretty pictures: the MSFS clouds are a simulation on their own, so it seems. 

12 minutes ago, nickhod said:

It's just a case of developer time, like most things.

I think much improved autogen is achievable for other sims in the near term.

But they all seem to be short of time... IPACS certainly is: they've been working on ATC alone for a few years now and nothing has been released yet. 

Imho other sims can only compete if they get could support from 3d party developers. Laminar nor IPACS will be able to make their sims come even close to MSFS on their own: their teams are too small. LM maybe could come close but I think they've got other priorities. I personally doubt if any other sim will ever get close to MSFS. I think AFS2 will be out of business pretty soon after the release of MSFS (or even before that). XP and P3D may live on for quite some time because Laminar is making their sim for their own enjoyment anyway and LM (presumably) has another target market altogether. I think MSFS will really change the civilian flight simming world. 

BTW I also am not sure if a 'a near monopoly' is a bad thing: the MSFS franchise has had long periods of monopoly and it didn't hurt the sim or us simmers at all.

Seasons +IFR  addons I don't see MSFS competing in that area for a few years buy then P3D will have moved on. 

I don’t think xplane should just try to do the same stuff, they’ll just come up short. For a long time. 
 

I think they should try something completely different, do something that Microsoft aren’t doing somehow. This could be to focus on the entertainment part of it, though I don’t think that really fits with their ethos. I would love it if they decided to focus on the detail of these machines. Like a cross between a much more detailed and accurate car mechanic simulator for ‘planes, with a flight sim. I would definitely by something that allowed me to ‘own’ my own Cessna where I could actually do engineering to it, had to maintain it etc. 
 

despite the excitement, msfs is really doing nothing new in a big picture sense. It is giving us an extremely high fidelity version of what we’ve had before. Dare to be different, competitors. 

To me it’s going to be difficult to compete with the resources in play here for the scenery. 

We don’t yet know pricing, but it’s hard to see how the old ways of lots of manual work and licensing procurement that OrbX does will be viable. 

Just the value proposition of “acceptably to really good worldwide scenery” alone is going to be really hard for other sims to compete with. 

1 hour ago, Flamingpie said:

Imho other sims can only compete if they get could support from 3d party developers.

Yes, in the example of Aerofly / IPACS I'd love to see them tightly integrate with 3rd party weather an ATC solutions and resell those as 1st party DLCs.
The strategy of doing everything in house isn't working out well. There's definitely "not invented here" syndrome with a few of these companies.

My bold predictions for other sims in the wake of MSFS:

P3D: I can see Lockheed axing it and licensing MSFS. They're not an entertainment company, they're a defence company. It's developed as tool to train pilots and MSFS will eventually be a better tool to train pilots.
X-Plane: Will no doubt carry in their own unique way, giving users physics updates when they want performance improvements
Aerofly: I can see them focusing on mobile apps and Apple a lot more. Depends how long VR takes in MSFS and the performance of it.
Fly Inside: Could imagine this one closing unless they find a niche.
Deadstick: I think it'll still do well due to its narrow focus as more of a fun game rather than a full blown simulator.

 

I think it's a question of the time horizon. Four-five years from release (they've already said this product is going to be around for a while) when there are tons of addons and big features like VR have been implemented (I doubt VR will take that long), the other sims will be very niche. X-Plane and P3D won't be anywhere as popular as now. Until then, people with specific needs and products that they like will stick with the old ones. 

re: complex plane add-ons being utilized in legacy mode

I'm not concerned by this at all.  Afterall, is anyone here doing spins in a 747?  

Simply put, the benefits of a more realistic physical simulation are less impactful for commercial aviation.

Edited October 7, 20196 yr by TechguyMaxC

1 hour ago, nickhod said:

X-Plane: Will no doubt carry in their own unique way, giving users physics updates when they want performance improvements

Commenting on just that one, because it's the sim I know best -- I don't see Austin responding directly to MSFS. As you say, XP will probably carry on with the roadmap for XP12, whatever that is. 

The way XP could compete, if Austin wanted to, would be with a really outstanding procedural season and weather model that does things you can't easily do with a static, orthophoto-based scenery system like MSFS is based on. Not just changing seasonal colors with shaders, but dynamic effects like snow blowing across roads and runways, building up on the ground and then disappearing with rain when the METAR shows the ground warming up. Dust storms in dry areas, deciduous trees dynamically changing color and dropping leaves in Autumn to show bare limbs in Winter. So many possibilities if the "seasons" are an an active, procedural system and not just swapping shader colors or texture overlays.

And all of those seasonal effects tied in with a groundbreaking weather system that can actually model something like a CB as a discrete, three dimensional system with internal vertical convection. Full 3D weather, not a stack of horizontal layers, which sounds like what MSFS might be doing. I've seen a lot of assumptions here about how good the weather will be in MSFS, but we really have no idea how good the dynamic modeling is yet. We only know the weather looks good.

I suspect that this won't happen, knowing Austin and his priorities. But it's where I'd push the upcoming XP12 to be more competitive. Which, coincidentally, should arrive close to the time that MSFS is released, or not much later.

11 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I suspect that this won't happen, knowing Austin and his priorities. But it's where I'd push the upcoming XP12 to be more competitive. Which, coincidentally, should arrive close to the time that MSFS is released, or not much later.

Does anyone know what kind of features might be coming up in the next version of X-Plane?

52 minutes ago, carbonbasedlifeform said:

Does anyone know what kind of features might be coming up in the next version of X-Plane?

As with most all XP versions, prepare to be disappointed and LR to demonstrate curious focus on seemingly odd efforts to address things that are outside the scope of what people continue to *actually* ask for.

2 hours ago, nickhod said:

P3D: I can see Lockheed axing it and licensing MSFS. They're not an entertainment company, they're a defence company. It's developed as tool to train pilots and MSFS will eventually be a better tool to train pilots.

 

 

LM bought the original ESP license from Microsoft.. they could do that again if Microsoft offers an "enterprise version of the new MSFS"..

56 minutes ago, carbonbasedlifeform said:

Does anyone know what kind of features might be coming up in the next version of X-Plane?

Not a peep so far. 

2 minutes ago, irrics said:

As with most all XP versions, prepare to be disappointed and LR to demonstrate curious focus on seemingly odd efforts to address things that are outside the scope of what people continue to *actually* ask for.

Well, the jump from XP10 to XP11 was a major overall improvement with a new world lighting model, PBR (finally got metal reflections), extended night lighting, and more advanced turboprop modeling. Also a major focus on improving frame rates, and now a pending shift from OpenGL to Vulkan/Metal graphics API.

It's not everything people have been asking for, like seasons, ATC, and better weather. But it was "under the hood" stuff that in retrospect we should have been asking for, and got anyway. 🙂  That's just how LR operates.

if  pessimistic testers at seattle are blown away at this early stage already, imagine a year from now the final product....I really cannot see

a reason to stick with any other flightsim. This is so much different than anything we have right now. If only for the weather😍