November 27th, 2019 – Development Update

[SnakeP 39]

31 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

Asobo, please feel free to include as many first party aircraft as you wish. Some of us rather enjoy choice.

🙄

Again. Casual “gamers” equals many OOTB planes. Hard-core simmers equal just a few planes with great instrument depth. 

[irrics 1,517]

Asobo could announce a “free $500 for each user” and some of you would still find something to complain about. 

It is incredible how cynical and negative some are. 

Edited November 30, 2019 by irrics

[snglecoil 1,828]

3 hours ago, maggussje said:

🙄

Again. Casual “gamers” equals many OOTB planes. Hard-core simmers equal just a few planes with great instrument depth. 

Congratulations, you have just made the single most moronic statement I’ve read today.

[Brandon01110 407]

4 hours ago, maggussje said:

If you were running a business like this, would you provide everything for free for your customers...?

Is that what you got from my comment?  Interesting.......

[Scottoest 1,561]

On 11/28/2019 at 9:03 AM, Claviateur said:

Yes that's what they mentioned. But I hope it's Asobo that will keep the contract for this simulator during the next decade...

Even if there are great gaming studios here in North America, I doubt a studio here would have had the same vision and attention to details as they do... 

Asobo understand what Immersion means... Is this the first first civilian simulator title developed in Europe? 😉

 

I actually anticipate this will end with Microsoft acquiring Asobo outright, to be the new stewards of Flight Simulator, along with their other teams working on games.

Microsoft have been on an acquisitions spree the last couple of years for new first-party studios, and have repeatedly emphasized that they aren't done yet.  They've also acquired some of their recent second-party devs like Playground (Forza Horizon) and Undead Labs (State of Decay).

[JRBarrett 3,070]

9 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

I actually anticipate this will end with Microsoft acquiring Asobo outright, to be the new stewards of Flight Simulator, along with their other teams working on games.

In which case the name will change to “Absorbo”😜

[Scottoest 1,561]

19 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

In which case the name will change to “Absorbo”😜

*RIMSHOT*

But honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if conversations are already ongoing.  If they aren't, it might simply be because Microsoft don't/didn't know if Flight Simulator is a big enough "thing" financially to dedicate a studio towards, like they have with Halo and Gears of War.

I seem to recall reading rumours after E3 this year, that Microsoft were genuinely shocked by the reception the Flight Simulator trailer got, with many people calling it one of the best surprises of the entire show - and keep in mind this is a GAMING focused event, not a simulator one.

[neilhewitt 493]

Definitely good news for cockpit builders in this video. Multi-monitor, multi-window was what we needed to hear. SimConnect++ also great news. This should hopefully mean that a lot of add-ons will not need much porting. 

I knew that they had built a sim in their offices but until now we hadn't seen it. There's only a few frames of it in the video, but enough to see that they have a 180-degree wraparound screen which means the camera system must be able to do multiple outside views that can be warped and blended by something like Fly-Elise NG Immersive Display Pro. Which suggests that alpha testers with a multi-projector setup may be able to get the same visuals they can in P3D or X-Plane. Probably too much to hope for that they might add warping and blending capabilities to the product itself, but from my own POV if I can convert my existing P3D viewgroups then that will make things 1000% easier for me and others with the same kind of display systems. And given how good performance seems to be in general, perhaps multi-channel rendering won't even be needed for GA sims. Though the big sims - Boeings, Airbuses - will still need multiple PCs for avionics etc. 

Consider me a happy bunny after seeing this.

[Krakin 5,763]

On 11/28/2019 at 7:59 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

We still don't know how much this is going to cost. The quality might be reflected in the price.

Yep, another one of those worst case scenario guys on Avsim

[Krakin 5,763]

6 hours ago, maggussje said:

And why is that?? You also pay this amount of money for Spotify, Netflix, HBO and god-knows-what. 
Them streaming content to us means costs for servers and bandwidth to be constantly available for us. 
If you were running a business like this, would you provide everything for free for your customers...?

Why would it be free when we're paying $60???

[Scottoest 1,561]

2 minutes ago, Krakin said:

Why would it be free when we're paying $60???

Your $60 for what is on "the disc", represents a return on the investment Microsoft have already made over the past 5+ years to create the sim, plus basic post-release support (patches, bugfixes, whatever).  It'll be up to Microsoft to determine if it financially makes sense to include access to the "live" Azure version of MSFS as part of that price, or as some sort of separate cost - or even if it doesn't make financial sense to include it, but they eat the cost anyway for some associated business reason.

We simply don't know about what the sim's actual business model will be yet.  If, for example, Asobo are going to be selling their own add-ons, they may simple "subsidize" access that way.

[Krakin 5,763]

1 minute ago, Scottoest said:

Your $60 for what is on "the disc", represents a return on the investment Microsoft have already made over the past 5+ years to create the sim, plus basic post-release support (patches, bugfixes, whatever).  It'll be up to Microsoft to determine if it financially makes sense to include access to the "live" Azure version of MSFS as part of that price, or as some sort of separate cost - or even if it doesn't make financial sense to include it, but they eat the cost anyway for some associated business reason.

We simply don't know about what the sim's actual business model will be yet.  If, for example, Asobo are going to be selling their own add-ons, they may simple "subsidize" access that way.

We've gone over this a lot in this forum so I won't spend much time on it here. There simply is no precedent for what you're saying and people have been exaggerating what it will cost MS to stream information to us. I've seen games get released this gen with staggering post-release support (No Man's Sky and Gran Turismo Sport to name a couple) while for the most part, only asking for the regular $60. You also have a game like Crackdown 3 which uses Azure to calculate environmental destruction in the multiplayer mode...again...just $60. You have to remember MS promised us that we would be using the cloud to make our gaming experiences better as far back as 2013 and they have never once mentioned providing this at a premium. 

[B777ER 2,486]

On 11/28/2019 at 2:19 AM, Theboot100 said:

I would assume we would still need to make software to interact with these variables through the SDK. I doubt microsoft would model and code all the different 3rd party gauges to be plug and play (who knows, maybe they will!)

What this does mean though, is an answer to questions that have been floating around within the last couple months.  Yes FS2020 will support 3rd party gauges and periphals and home cockpits.

 

 

 

I would be shocked if it can do out of the box all the things that a paid version of FSUIPC can do (which is what is needed by those of use with various types of high end hardware). Assigning axis, calibration, adding in slope curves for rudder and ailerons, brake pedal sensitivity settings that also include slope curves to mimic pressure on the brake pedals,  mapping a 2 throttle setup for payware 4 engine aircraft, profile specific settings for different payware aircraft, key mapping for external programs like PTT button interfaced with vPilot, the list goes on.... No way I see MS being able to do all that type of stuff. Never mind all the functionality that LINDA allows with the MCP2 from VRInsight. What worries me is he said in the video that there will be no need for external programs. I read that to mean, FSUIPC and LINDA is not planned for as far as compatibility with the SDK.  Still not convinced at all for users of more advanced hardware from this video. A one sentence line from someone in a short video that the sim will have more variables to use with hardware doe not have me rushing to drop all my FSUIPC and LINDA modules into the desktop recycle bin. 

Edited December 1, 2019 by B777ER

[188AHC 2,138]

Interesting. I haven't seen anyone comment on  the framerate comment by Mathias. Watch the video again and listen to what he actually says. Interesting. 

 

[Scottoest 1,561]

2 minutes ago, Krakin said:

We've gone over this a lot in this forum so I won't spend much time on it here. There simply is no precedent for what you're saying and people have been exaggerating what it will cost MS to stream information to us. I've seen games get released this gen with staggering post-release support (No Man's Sky and Gran Turismo Sport to name a couple) while for the most part, only asking for the regular $60. You also have a game like Crackdown 3 which uses Azure to calculate environmental destruction in the multiplayer mode...again...just $60. You have to remember MS promised us that we would be using the cloud to make our gaming experiences better as far back as 2013 and they have never once mentioned providing this at a premium. 

I'm aware we have gone over this, and I also know I provided you with precedents for games that charge for access to server infrastructure (specifically in the MMO genre).  You've also provided a few unique edge-cases like No Man's Sky and Crackdown 3 to try and bolster your position.  GT Sport has microtransactions to subsidize their ongoing development (and they charge a truly appalling amount of money for certain cars).

No Man's Sky's post-release development has been extra-ordinary in every sense of the word.  I suspect they are able to do it because Hello Games are a tiny studio, and No Man's Sky sold millions of full price copies at launch (based on hype from misleading marketing).  They've spent years trying to make good on that initial wave of outrage and disappointment, and only this year did Sean Murray really emerge from hiding to start talking publicly a little bit again.  We've already talked about C3 in the past, so I won't re-hash that.

"The power of the cloud" talk has never precluded adding an additional cost for that power.  Particularly as Microsoft focuses more and more on being a "services" company.  Project xCloud is going to be another example of them charging a fee for access to Azure bandwidth/computing.

I honestly don't know if there will be a cost associated to the live Azure mode of the sim.  My gut two months ago would have said yes, and now I'm less sure.  There's a ton of considerations they are likely making about how the sim's economic model will work.  What I find odd, is your assumption that it's a fait accompli they would never dream of charging an additional fee for it.