Microsoft FS2020 confusion

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

9 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Why I need to know that another's aircraft has errors is a complete mystery...

When you are a customer who just paid money for the "other" aircraft? But I'm not sure that I understand the "gripe", not really. As a developer, you would turn off the others until your project is clean anyway - won't you?

I'm sorry, but this topic always gets my blood pressure up. I have spent countless hours hunting down bugs going on Application Server Exception logs saying basically "gee, something seems to be wrong" - with the customer literally breathing down my neck. My wife is still in enterprise app development, and she is actually doing nothing else currently - 9 to 5, on 5 days a week. This is not something that is good for ease of mind or motiviation, but it still has to be done. And here comes the P3D world, where the sim finally has a method to report errors - and people tell me to just turn off the logging. Thanks a lot.

Best regards

Edited November 28, 2019 by Lorby_SI

[n4gix 4,947]

16 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

When you are a customer who just paid money for the "other" aircraft? But I'm not sure that I understand the "gripe", not really. As a developer, you would turn off the others until your project is clean anyway - won't you?

I  have to move every other aircraft's files out of range of the P3D folder structure (which I do) in order to generate a "clean ContentError.txt" file. That isn't difficult because I simply created a ..\Hangar folder and moved the other aircraft's folders there.

However, that does not solve the problem of customers complaining about a ton of errors in their ContentError.txt report, which they ascribed to our aircraft (which has no errors whatsoever), because they don't know how to properly interpret the report!

I've begged L-M/P3D for the past few years to please adjust their ContentError.txt generator to limit the scope of the scan to only the currently loading aircraft, all to complete silence from the P3D team. I'm just sick and tired of being blamed for other developer's sloppy errors!

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

1 hour ago, HighTowers said:

Wasnt too thrilled about hearing a legacy mode.  We have been through that enough.  Anything from the past could very well cause performance issues, bring in more bugs, and just doesnt take advantage of all the cool new features imbedded in the sim.  Further, I hope it doesnt give an excuse for bare minimum ports and then charge for it.  If the old FSX/P3D addon gets ported, it should be held to a higher stand that clearly MS/AS has set.  

I don't have much of a horse in the race, but Microsoft is an expert at moving forward while retaining legacy support. As for minimum effort ports, it's up to the consumers right? I certainly wouldn't bother buying that. But I can imagine people wanting to use their old PMDG. There's no reason some things like complicated internal systems should have to be re-written.

[Christopher Low 5,354]

2 hours ago, FishermanIvan said:

If the 748 is anything to go by, I wouldn't spend a penny on anything that was in FSX.  The bar has been raised.  Time for people to meet it.

We have seen the external model of the 747-8i to date.....and that's it. How have you determined the new position of the bar based on so little data?

[Wobbie 938]

Not overthinking a future Xbox game?

[FishermanIvan 110]

On 11/28/2019 at 2:20 PM, Christopher Low said:

We have seen the external model of the 747-8i to date.....and that's it. How have you determined the new position of the bar based on so little data?

Because he was talking about adapting an FSX model to FS2020 and nothing that was made for FSX will look anything like that 748. 

[n4gix 4,947]

4 hours ago, FishermanIvan said:

Because he was talking about adapting an FSX model to FS2020 and nothing that was made for FSX will look anything like that 748. 

You are correct, no FSX model will look anything like the 748, at least unless it has been modified to use PBR textures at least...

...or was designed from the ground up as a P3Dv4.x model with PBR textures.

[dtrjones 356]

On 11/28/2019 at 10:41 AM, Richard McDonald Woods said:

So it appears to me that Microsoft could take one of the following three routes in their development:

1. Develop their own aircraft simulators largely to demonstrate and test the new SDK
2. To provide a library of all required simulation objects that developers require for embedding in their own aircraft simulators
3. To develop their own fleet of simulated aircraft in partnership with at least Boeing and Airbus.

Can anyone caste light for me?

This is a somewhat confused message which I don't think has been properly answered, please allow me to give this a shot!

I think you'll struggle to find the definitive answers you seek because that information hasn't been made public, we can only infer on the limited knowledge we have been given.

Microsoft have clearly looked as a spread of several aircraft - we don't know exactly how many, which meet several different requirements, bush flyer, trainer, sports, business, commercial jets etc. This allows the player to have a wide experience of flying aircraft of different sizes and complexities but it also allows Microsoft to develop its feature set and ultimately an SDK to support these aircraft.

The current partnerships also highlight this and it means they will have access to more information to aid in the accuracy of the simulation. More partnerships are also expected. It appears Microsoft have developed at least a single model for each partnership but some of these models may have several variations.

• Airbus
• The Boeing Company
• CubCrafters
• Daher
• Diamond Aircraft Industries
• ICON Aircraft
• Robin Aircraft
• Textron Aviation

Microsoft have made the current objective of the SDK they intend to release at the end of the year very simple. To support development of new aircraft, scenery and missions. 

The existing fleet of default aircraft have been developed outside of the SDK as far as I'm aware so I don't actually know how far the SDK goes to achieving capabilities beyond the default aircraft, the same could apply for the scenery as well but I do wonder if Courchevel was an example of utilizing the SDK internally.

Typically an software developers kit (SDK) would provide tools, configuration scripts and assets to provide building blocks for an aircraft or scenery but 3rd parties would typically develop there own assets and then hook these into the simulator using configuration scripts or Microsoft's application programming interface (API) to develop more complex features. 

That's as much as I know, I hope it helps! People please feel free to correct me, thanks!

Edited November 30, 2019 by dtrjones