A lower priority right now, but after the sim has matured with helicopters and VR and amazing world scenery, they should focus big time on multiplayer and being able to actually see yourself and meet others in sim. It brings a reason for the flying. When you get to the destination you can drive to the beach hotel to enjoy the views or ride on one of the ships etc etc.

Sure thing! Why not do a 'fly in' to Verbier, Switzerland for some terrific skiing?

What? No skiing in MSFS? No buy!

Basically a feature to have large scale or private fly in events, to wherever you want, on a set UTC time. No other sims do this and you need good scenery detail anyhow. And this I am talking a few years down the track. 

I actually agree with you. I think it is a quite natural follow up to multi-player. It would be neat if we could make our own avatars as well.

We did things like this back in the day with the flightsim.com multiplayers adventure group.  Like for example, flying to an area with a known golf course, then loading up a golf game where we all played multiplayer together. 

4 minutes ago, andyjohnston.net said:

We did things like this back in the day with the flightsim.com multiplayers adventure group.  Like for example, flying to an area with a known golf course, then loading up a golf game where we all played multiplayer together. 

Those crazy, crazy days. 

4 hours ago, Superdelphinus said:

Those crazy, crazy days. 

Yep. Back before there was a World Wide Web -- yes kids, there was online life before the Web -- we ran fly-ins on dial-up BBS Compuserve when I was one of the two SysOps there. And oh man, it was not fun running that software back end as a SysOp on those vintage DEC mainframes. 

We'd have people in the Compuserve Civilian Flight Simulator forum sign up for a fly-in destination. Flights from their home airfield to the destination was on the honor system. But on final approach, they would have to log in with a person acting as "observer/ATC" running one FS connected to each member who flew in, on the two-plane connection you could do back then with the early version of PC Flight Simulator.

The observer would have another computer logged in to the Compuserve forum, where he'd describe everyone's landings, good or bad, to all the forum members logged in. It added a lot of stress, knowing that your landing was being described to the whole group. Crazy days indeed, but we worked with what we had.

Edit to add: In the other Compuserve forum for combat flight sims, we'd run contests based on how long you could survive in Red Baron. 

Edited October 19, 20196 yr by Paraffin

People used to do stuff like this in Microsoft Flight.  Unfortunately we couldn't seen each other's avatars or it would have made for some interesting get-togethers.  Lots of stuff to explore in Flight's Hawaii.

Hook

4 hours ago, Paraffin said:

We'd have people in the Compuserve Civilian Flight Simulator forum sign up for a fly-in destination.

Unfortunately I never knew about that forum but c.1989 I did a fly-in with a guy I met on AvSIG. I was on MSFS for the Mac. I took off from LaGuardia and he came down from someplace in New England, I think. We flew to Martha’s Vineyard, went into chat (that was the fly-in part), then we logged in and flew home. Later we went to AvSIG to compare notes on the return flight. I remember it was an overcast fall day (not that a clear day would have looked any different) with a nasty crosswind. Made for an interesting landing. We were convinced we were online flying pioneers. I’m not sure that any later flights I’ve done felt nearly as exciting. 

6 hours ago, LHookins said:

People used to do stuff like this in Microsoft Flight.  Unfortunately we couldn't seen each other's avatars or it would have made for some interesting get-togethers.  Lots of stuff to explore in Flight's Hawaii.

Hook

This exactly is what I found so entertaining about MS Flight, the ability to get together, try to land in difficult spots, look at each others landings... And the ability to walk around, just land that A5 icon near a shore, get out and enjoy the sunset while walking along the beautiful beach with palm trees swaying in the wind. The detail was amazing for the time, I can remember landing in a field and taking a hike across a village at dusk. 

With today's technology (cloud computing, mesh networking) it would be possible to eventually create a massive world where all players are visible to each other. Think about the meetups and fly-ins that would become possible when we eventually get that. We can go on a tour of the grand canyon together, take a trip among the Swiss Alps, or have a fly in at the beaches of the Gold Coast.  

If they eventually create such a world we will need two instances (or a filter) though, so that professional pilots (anybody who flies by the rules) can filter away all the people that are jerking around in the world. But nonetheless I can see the appeal of both online worlds. 

I'm not at home right now, but on my regular PC I have a screenshot from flight of the Icon parked next to a little stream.

58 minutes ago, andyjohnston.net said:

I'm not at home right now, but on my regular PC I have a screenshot from flight of the Icon parked next to a little stream.

You should post it when you get the opportunity, would be nice to see!

7 hours ago, Raymond.Groenendijk said:

You should post it when you get the opportunity, would be nice to see!

Okay...How do I attach a picture, does it have to be uploaded somewhere first?

8 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

Okay...How do I attach a picture, does it have to be uploaded somewhere first?

Ah not a clue actually, it seems that way yes 😞 

9 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

Okay...How do I attach a picture, does it have to be uploaded somewhere first?

Yes, you have to upload it on a platform such as igmur first. Then you can use the button „insert image from url“.