On 12/20/2019 at 11:08 AM, pmb said:

I never understood why MS left the addon market after around FS98(?) They had great addons like New York, Southern California, and the like. Plus, they certainly had some insider knowledge on optimizations and such.

Kind regards, Michael

That raises an interesting question about what Microsoft plans to do with Microsoft Flight Simulator post initial release...

They are certainly in the best position to make use of any future Bing updates and while we might be expecting them for free, it could either mean we need a subscription or we have to pay for them as a one off. Take the autogenerated London scenery for example, I don't think you can update Bing maps with photogrammetry, run AI over the satellite imagery, upload to Azure and boom you are done.

I think there is a lot more to it than that so that cost has to be carried down to the consumer doesn't it?

Microsoft must have more plans we don't know about, if they are not releasing a new product every 2 years then what are they releasing other than free patches...

(you can probably guess right!)

On 12/19/2019 at 1:45 PM, Murmur said:

The world has officially chosen FS2020 as the abbreviation to be used anyway:

That's too bad, because it is coming out next year, it should actually be FS2021! 😛

Searching for the tooth fairy does not make it real!

On 12/19/2019 at 9:23 PM, Scottoest said:

I think it'll depend on how lucrative the post-release market is for Microsoft.  An eventual new sim lets them charge a whole new base price again.

However, if Asobo crank out lots of add-ons and other assets they can sell post-release for decent money, Microsoft will likely be happy to just continue along that route.

Agreed. Microtransactions are usually frowned upon but if we're getting around 18 high quality default planes, and the ad-ons are also of a high quality, the sim community will look the other way lol.

15 hours ago, Krakin said:

Agreed. Microtransactions are usually frowned upon but if we're getting around 18 high quality default planes, and the ad-ons are also of a high quality, the sim community will look the other way lol.

Development also costs money, and the $60 you pay for the final product isn't a down payment on FUTURE development - it's a financial return on the investment Microsoft already made over the last five+ years, making the sim.

If Asobo's plan is to support MSFS for at least 10 years, they' ll need a revenue stream for Microsoft to justify that cost.  You can't rely on constant new sales of the base product for a decade, as sales are typically frontloaded - much like most big movies make the majority of their money the first week or two.

So yeah, I predict they might sell new planes and stuff.  And if the base product is as stuffed with planes as it sounds, I'm totally fine with that.  Might also drive down the prices of some third-party add-on planes, as you can bet Microsoft aren't going to be trying to charge $100+ for a single plane.  They'll price them to try and appeal to a broader cross-section of simmers.

On 12/24/2019 at 6:05 PM, dtrjones said:

I don't think you can update Bing maps with photogrammetry, run AI over the satellite imagery, upload to Azure and boom you are done.

I think there is a lot more to it than

I thought that's more or less all it takes.

Here’s what Neumann said in an interview:

Golem.de: Is the world created entirely algorithmically or is it reworked by hand?

Neumann: There are around 300 sights such as the Space Needle in Seattle, which we build manually […]. Otherwise we use algorithms.

(translated from German https://www.golem.de/news/interview-die-liebe-fuer-den-flight-simulator-war-immer-da-1911-145260-2.html)

And as they said many times, Bing updates will automatically show in MSFS. So as I understand it, they’re not modelling the world manually (apart from these sights and custom-made airports such as Courchevel), rather they “teach” the AI how to model it based on the data from Bing and other sources.

Edited December 31, 20196 yr by Shack95

20 hours ago, Krakin said:

 Microtransactions

What about landing fees ? What about paying for the virtual fuel ? As real as it gets, they say...

😈

Microtransactions are the scourge of the gaming industry.