1 hour ago, SierraHotel said:

Can someone point me to the article from the developers where it said that it would be released without seasons? No, I couldn't either! The only reference I could find was this one from the Interview with Jörg,

From my recollection of all the interviews I have watched and read, when asked about seasons they said they couldn't confirm or talk about it. In the recent FSelite interview on YouTube, I think Joern says something along the lines of if they do seasons, that they want to do it properly and not something half baked. Everything seems to indicate that they are taking it seriously based on community feedback but with no firm commitment for release. I'd be surprised if they are not working on it. Why come so far with amazing real world weather and lighting but then not be able to depict seasons on the ground in some way. 

On one of the interviews from Seattle they don't have seasons planed on the release product same with VR but will look at it in a future update. 

20 minutes ago, rjfry said:

On one of the interviews from Seattle they don't have seasons planed on the release product same with VR but will look at it in a future update. 

As one of my customers once said to me "my hatred of your product is at an all time low". Which was quite the compliment from him.

Here's hoping we can all say the same on release.

1 hour ago, norfolkmike said:

Interesting, thanks. Needless to say, I've never experienced a commercial simulator (737 for example), but most of what I've seen on YouTube seemed to suggest the terrain was of low importance . Admittedly, I had to Google the word Collimated, and yes, I can imagine such a feature brings a cockpit to life.

I'm pretty obsessed with the 737 now myself. No SO obsessed that I can justify even considering a cockpit, but hopefully VR might go some way (if implemented) to making the experience more...erm...complete? 

This video shows what I believe was at the upper end of the commercial sim visuals a few years ago (2013), and they don't get updated all that often. It is comparable with some pretty basic P3D scenery along with a few ground service add-ons and some rather low polygon count aircraft models.

Watch all the way to the end and you'll see snow coverage, but nothing spring / autumn like that I can fathom.

16 hours ago, domkle said:

Flight dynamics is a fundamental factor for me, I wouldn’t be interested in a lovely landscaped sim with realistic weather if there was not the challenge of flying convincing dynamics.

What Asobo seems to have understood and what I like very much in their vision, is that flight simulation is a holistic experience. Flight dynamics,  aircraft systems, weather and relief have to be at the highest level reachable and intertwined as never before. 

As their project is very ambitious, they have to make compromises at first if we don’t want to wait two more years. We don’t. The no-season is a reasonable compromise. I don’t like it but it is reasonable.

True... But I should have underlined the word only  because yes of course flight dynamics are super important in a flight simulator but flight dynamics alone today, are not enough to make the experience believable.

24 minutes ago, Claviateur said:

...flight dynamics alone today, are not enough to make the experience believable.

talk about snoring bears in winter seasons! 🎅

Can I make a book recommendation for this thread? In all honesty, this is a fabulous book by the way.

 

Spoiler

 

4 hours ago, ErichB said:

Does anyone have any ideas as to whether they will be doing winter/autumn/spring textures by using shaders - or do you think it'll be winter photo imagery?

I would be expect shaders as having good imagery  for cloudy seasons is a problem.

But Neumann and the Asobo team seem very much innovation driven so Heavens know what they are cooking.

6 hours ago, Max50 said:

AI, weather, all gone backwards from what I have.

How is weather worse than what you have? No flight sim has a weather system like FS2020 has.
 

As for the AI, we know almost nothing about it yet. So you really can’t comment on that. We know it exists, but not the capabilities.

Edited November 26, 20196 yr by Tuskin38

4 hours ago, SierraHotel said:

Can someone point me to the article from the developers where it said that it would be released without seasons? No, I couldn't either! The only reference I could find was this one from the Interview with Jörg,

That gathering of you tubers a few months ago, one of them asked about seasons and they said it wasn’t planned for launch.

I don’t remember which YouTuber it was, sorry. I watched a lot of vids that week.

The display system / simulation engine that is the closest to MS/Asosbo's MSFS in terms of world simulation technology is Unigine:
 

 

Edited November 26, 20196 yr by Claviateur

9 hours ago, steve310002 said:

I currently live in Switzerland and we get stunning autumns and plenty of snow here.

I attended my high school years in Leysin, Suisse at the "American School." The first day when I arrived I noted that there are two "front doors." The seven story building is built on the rather steep slope of the Bernuse, so that about half of the lowest two stories are actually underground.

The actual "ground floor" on the uphill side of the building is at street level, and the story above (4th floor) has a set of entrance doors as well that enter into a lobby nearly identical to the normal entry.

When I asked what the extra doors were for, the headmaster smiled and said "those are the winter doors." I blurted out in shock "you mean the snow gets that deep?"

Winter entrance 4th floor:

 

On 11/25/2019 at 8:50 AM, ryanbatcund said:

Your thoughts on what your plans are?

Oh I'm buying it whether it has seasons or not for certain.  I'd prefer it to have seasons, but if it's full time summer I'm still getting it.  The ability to fly anywhere with scenery this realistic is just too good to pass up over snow now and then.

In the Seattle interviews, they said that seasons weren't planned for launch, but that's not necessarily definitive - they've also said that plans can evolve based on community feedback. The more recent FS Elite interview certainly suggested they were thinking hard about seasons - with, you know, migrating ducks and such.

One point that came up the last time we talked about seasons, but hasn't been mentioned in this thread (or if it was, I missed it) - much as we like our seasons, there are problems with the current texture-based ones that are somewhat similar to the problems with endless summer.  In my part of the world - the Mid-Atlantic region of the US - we rarely get snow cover that lasts for more than a week.  Sometimes the snowfall is massive - we had a three-foot accumulation in 2010 during an event that's known locally as "snowmageddon" - but more often, our real-life textures are winter, not hard winter.  When I fly P3D in winter, I often set the date to November 30 in order to get rid of the snow cover, since the snow cover breaks immersion on what might be a 55F January day.

I'd much rather have procedural seasons that pull real-time snow-cover data from a source like Windy.com, than have to deal with a one-size-fits-all winter approximation.  And that's the main reason why I'm willing to wait for seasons.  We stand to gain so much from procedural seasons that I, at least, would rather do without them at first.  I don't need MS and Asobo to go all the way to ducks on first release, but I'd prefer they take the time and do it better that the P3D baseline.

Edited November 26, 20196 yr by Alan_A

2 hours ago, n4gix said:

I attended my high school years in Leysin, Suisse at the "American School."

Leysin is right next door to me! I live down the mountain in the town of Aigle 🙂 Such a small world.

Edited November 26, 20196 yr by steve310002