I have said it before will say it again , it's a matrix and we will live in a virtual world and the AI will be sucking the neurons out of our brains

It's important to note that while Microsoft greenlit the new simulator because they saw a good opportunity to make a product that will sell thanks to the new technologies (Bing, Azure) and to promote the Xbox Game Pass by including a more niche product, the team at Asobo are very passionate about what they are doing, and they are truly making the effort to satisfy us. Else they wouldn't keep their eyes on the community channels all the time and create the Tech Alpha initiative.

Just be thankful that Microsoft allowed a reboot of the franchise and that they got an extremely competent and passionate team to do the task.

Don't forget that Bill Gates still owns Microsoft and has always had a self-confessed soft spot for flightsim. I wouldn't rule out his influence somewhere in the mix. Because the new MSFS will be an unprecedented virtual representation of the real world, I expect it will have a much stronger emotional resonance with people and can't help but give more perspective and respect for the planet. Right up Bill's street. And is it a coincidence that the MS project lead is a biologist who seems to have a passion for biodiversity?

Yep, it's a tendency we see also with X-Plane - they're really betting hard on the mobile version because the potential users base is so much bigger ...

War Thunder, my only flight simulator presently, runs multi-platform too, and it's a success.

Anyway, the MFS team was very clear about their compromise with the desktop version, in the very first place... OTOH, in my case and while I was using XP11, I would rather prefer to see the LR team concentrating on moving that platform fwd, correcting the many bugs and limitations, and FINALLY bring Vulkan, as long promised - instead they're on the Mobile arena mainly now in as far as developemnt goes, from what I gather from their last ( erased ) video...

This being said, I would really not have any problem going xBox and subsciption-based if MFS delivers the immersion I would like it to... Actually it was lack of imemrsion, updates, objectives, and the low development paces that made me move from other sims into War Thunder...

Stop answering! Stop answering!
The quote, it breaks the ignore function.... 😁

More seriously, everyone knows that Laminar is a non-profit organization😈, that xplane is open source...🤡

And then anyway it's Microsoft the bad guys and the others the good guys..., but then you don't have to use Google anymore either...

It doesn’t make any sense. Any version of Gears of war or Halo must have sold more copies than all Microsoft Flight Simulator versions all together.

Their Xbox division is making really good profits for a while now, without any flight simulator on their library. I’m sure the new simulator won’t make any difference on the profit margins.

The theory about creating a new world engine to run other kind of games seems more plausible than this one here.

Also they can put Bing tech on test, that way they can improve their corporate tools.

Are we sure that MS is not (also) looking at the professional market? I just came across this news

https://aviationweek.com/us-military-leaders-seek-open-source-simulation

which made me think that they could (also) may want to have their piece of the big "professional (e.g. military and/or airline) cake.

And our experience does certainly do no harm in helping MS to develop a great and universal simulation platform. 

promote azure ai, 

big return in world simulation,

selling games,

a global conspiracy to dominate us all....

the only thing we know for sure is that they want to make profit of it (what's the harm?).  
And that, according to them, it is the right time to return to the simulation field (technologies, network, PC, Azure). In short, they're here for first place and it's great for us.

So let them take all the benefits they want... and let it awaken the world of simulation. That's all I want.

but two pages to say that this project is not only for our beautiful eyes but also to make dollars, well done.

 

 

10 minutes ago, azulkb said:

promote azure ai, 

big return in world simulation,

selling games,

a global conspiracy to dominate us all....

the only thing we know for sure is that they want to make profit of it (what's the harm?).  
And that, according to them, it is the right time to return to the simulation field (technologies, network, PC, Azure). In short, they're here for first place and it's great for us.

So let them take all the benefits they want... and let it awaken the world of simulation. That's all I want.

but two pages to say that this project is not only for our beautiful eyes but also to make dollars, well done.

 

 

Are you out of your mind? They should be here to please the hardcore simmers. Any indication they have other intentions with this new sim and I will stick with my FS9.

8 hours ago, mSparks said:

That will depend entirely on whether you "need" access to the 2PB of scenery data, or if you are content with the low res stuff that fits on a blueray disk.

This is a myth! MS and Asobo have said numerous times that the scenery is derived from 2PB of data. That doesn't mean it consists of 2PB of data. Also, I'd be surprised if the new sim is made available on disk - it's much more likely to be a download like Steam games.

45 minutes ago, DocBird said:

Are we sure that MS is not (also) looking at the professional market? I just came across this news

https://aviationweek.com/us-military-leaders-seek-open-source-simulation

which made me think that they could (also) may want to have their piece of the big "professional (e.g. military and/or airline) cake.

And our experience does certainly do no harm in helping MS to develop a great and universal simulation platform. 

True. It worked for Bohemia Interactive whose Arma series of first-person military sims (sold as games) have been adapted and commercialised as military training software to a number of different countries. See;

https://bisimulations.com/products/vbs4

3 hours ago, vortex681 said:

This is a myth! MS and Asobo have said numerous times that the scenery is derived from 2PB of data. That doesn't mean it consists of 2PB of data. Also, I'd be surprised if the new sim is made available on disk - it's much more likely to be a download like Steam games.

sorry 1.5PB of scenery.

consisting of

1PB of hi res imagery

0.5PB of 3d buildings.

Its no myth that complete MSFS2020 scenery even after they flatten out the faults will be to large to store it all locally. Even the free XP11 high resolution scenery weighs in at around 500TB for the entire world. 150GB ish just for the UK from orbx, and the UK is tiny.

for them its a value add for gamepass. nothing more, nothing less.

 

Is it too late for Bill Gates  to run for President? If he runs on a FS  platform, he has my vote!

Yeah, no... not only do they not need this to “boost xbox sales”, but also the percentage of gamers who are into flight sims is minimal, so it would really not matter in any significant way.

I bet there's some belly laughs being had by people in the know reading wild speculation threads like this. Consider it some early Christmas cheer from Avsim 🎅