Calm down

[b737800 470]

10 minutes ago, overspeed3 said:

Seriously:  Do some of you sleep next to your PC so you can be right near the P3D sim at night? 

 

No!

[gb09f 298]

10 minutes ago, overspeed3 said:

next to your PC

 

More likely the PC is in bed.

Oh, baby, flush my shaders and be my administrator!

** no offence intended - sarcasm only.

Edited January 30, 2020 by gb09f

[edpatino 1,960]

Something to think about and probably not mentioned or analyzed yet regarding the upcoming MSFS, is:

1. Minimum hardware requirements. According to what was informed during the public presentations done in Seattle and in London I believe, the PC's were equipped with the very latest CPU (and cooling I suppose) and 64GB RAM. The graphics card used were all Nvidia GTX 2080Ti. So, maybe it will require a certain investment on our existing hardware to make use of all the advantages of the new sim.

2. Internet connectivity. For the streaming, which is the base of the new sim, an up-to-date internet connectivity is required. I don't have any exact information, but read somewhere it would be needed a connection with a minimum of 40 Mbps and with a very high or non-existing cap in monthly data consumption. This point, together with point 1 above, will add cost to the equation.

Point 1 makes me remember the days in which FSX was released and everyone noticed it didn't run well on most systems due to the need of much more and robust hardware. In my case I was able to run FSX in a decent way only after I upgraded my system more or less three years after the FSX original release (I must admit that at the time flightsimming was not my No. 1 priority since I was very busy at work).

Any thoughts or someone with better information?.

Cheers, Ed

 

 

[azulkb 302]

Just now, edpatino said:

Something to think about and probably not mentioned or analyzed yet regarding the upcoming MSFS, is:

1. Minimum hardware requirements. According to what was informed during the public presentations done in Seattle and in London I believe, the PC's were equipped with the very latest CPU (and cooling I suppose) and 64GB RAM. The graphics card used were all Nvidia GTX 2080Ti. So, maybe it will require a certain investment on our existing hardware to make use of all the advantages of the new sim.

2. Internet connectivity. For the streaming, which is the base of the new sim, an up-to-date internet connectivity is required. I don't have any exact information, but read somewhere it would be needed a connection with a minimum of 40 Mbps and with a very high or non-existing cap in monthly data consumption. This point, together with point 1 above, will add cost to the equation.

Point 1 makes me remember the days in which FSX was released and everyone noticed it didn't run well on most systems due to the need of much more and robust hardware. In my case I was able to run FSX in a decent way only after I upgraded my system more or less three years after the FSX original release (I must admit that at the time flightsimming was not my No. 1 priority since I was very busy at work).

Any thoughts or someone with better information?.

Cheers, Ed

 

 

from interview (french interview, and sometime english interview) and both  last interview, (topic about that in this forum)

Required connection:
4Mbits for medium quality, 10Mbits for maximum quality.

Required equipment:
a very recent and high performance machine for the maximum level of detail and in 4K.
But switching to HD or removing 1 or 2 of the 20 levels of detail allows it to run very smoothly on an average machine.
The frame rate does not play on the calculations related to the flight dynamics which are processed in a parallel process to guarantee a fluid control of the aircraft.

[simmerhead 885]

2 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Something to think about and probably not mentioned or analyzed yet regarding the upcoming MSFS...

I'm sure you will need the greatest hardware money can buy to get the best possible experience, but how is this different from the current situation? 

If you want X-Plane or Prepar3D to be as rel as it gets, you need the exact same hardware. Possibly, the only difference is the need for broadband Internet, but it seems Microsoft has been kind enough to include such users too by having an offline mode - and the ability to pre-download scenery. 

Every flight sim since FS 2000 has been a pain in terms of hardware requirements, but I wouldn't want any software developer to make software adapted to the least common denominator. 

[divide 97]

Point 1. and 2. were already adressed a couple times. All you need is a gtx 1080 to play at 1080p with at max settings, a rtx 2080 is only required if you want to play at 4k.

Regarding the RAM, it's very unlikely you'll need 64GB. As a matter of fact, all testers have 32GB.

Regarding 2. you only need a 10mbps to stream the max quality. 

[bonchie 2,305]

3 hours ago, edpatino said:

As far as I know, P3D is preparing the launch of v5 and X-Plane is going to v12, so that's where they are going to. They will do their marketing too.

Life continues and for the best of flightsimming.

Cheers, Ed

XP12 isn't right around the corner. And as a former XP fan (that just got fed up), don't expect much in the way of major, long standing issues being solved. That's not Austin's development philosophy. 

As to P3Dv5, my suspicion is that it'll be no more groundbreaking that v4 was. They are very much on an incremental upgrade path that meets their professional goals. They've been great to simmers as well, and I think they do truly care about that demo, but there's no evidence they are redoing everything to a next-gen level like MSFS is. 

I do leave an outside shot that LM contracts MSFS's new tech to develop on the way they originally did ESP. 

Edited January 30, 2020 by bonchie

[bonchie 2,305]

47 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Something to think about and probably not mentioned or analyzed yet regarding the upcoming MSFS, is:

(snip)

On point 1, you've gotta remember that 1080P gaming requires much less than 4K gaming. Even with the latest and greatest graphically intensive games, a 1070 will do 1080P just fine and you'll see very little benefit from a better card. It's only for 4K that you even need the RTX cards at this point. 

I suspect if you want 4K, you've gotta have a 2070 or higher. If you play at 1080P, the last generation GTX cards will do just fine. They are still very powerful. 

On the topic of RAM, if you've used orthos before, you know it requires 16GB of RAM minimum and 32GB is preferred. That shouldn't change with MSFS as it's still just orthos. 64GB will be overkill IMO. 

On point 2, the original content creator event last year was done on a shared 25mbps connection. That's a very modest connection speed. You don't need a 100mpbs hook up to get full quality. 

 

[b737800 470]

4 minutes ago, bonchie said:

64GB will be overkill IMO. 

 

Memory you didn't think would be useful. Runway behind you. Altitude above you. All useless things.

Admittedly I run lots of virtual machines and, for example, being able to hold a 32GB SQL database in memory while running another 16GB Virtual machine and still having 16GB available for the desktop is wonderful.

Too much memory is a bit like too much intelligence (so they tell me). You don't need it to survive, but boy can you make use of it.

[Paraffin 2,197]

7 hours ago, tweekz said:

We can assume that the flight modeling is well done.

First, there have been some trustworthy real world pilots and Youtubers that have confirmed that the planes fly comparably to X-Plane.

Second, you could see the flight model at work in the feature discovery episode about aerodynamics. It looks very similar to X-Planes. Indeed there were even more forces calculated! Most notably for the rudder, elevator as well as several forces on the fuselage.

So the foundation is layed. All we need is someone who creates a proper model of an aircraft. If the default aircraft cannot compete, I am almost certain there will be high quality third party addons!

All in all, I am not scared a bit in that regard.

I'm not scared, I was responding to a post that said it "will be light years ahead of its predecessors in the past!…that I can guarantee."

That's with no knowledge whatsoever of how the flight model, systems and engine modeling compare with what's currently available in the way of gliders, heavies, vintage radial engines, mil jets, and helicopters. There's a wide range of aviation out there beyond the light GA aircraft that MS/ASOBO has shown so far, and that is being flown by the Alpha test group.

This isn't to say that MS/ASOBO isn't up to the job and that it doesn't look very promising. It does! I just think hyperbole isn't appropriate at this stage of the game except with regard to what we see outside the cockpit, where the world and the weather (provisionally) does look spectacular.

We don't know enough about the rest to say it will be "light years" ahead of what's been done before. And in some cases like helicopters, it may be quite some time before we know how it compares to the best we can fly now in XP11 and DCS.
 

2 hours ago, edpatino said:

Something to think about and probably not mentioned or analyzed yet regarding the upcoming MSFS, is:

1. Minimum hardware requirements. According to what was informed during the public presentations done in Seattle and in London I believe, the PC's were equipped with the very latest CPU (and cooling I suppose) and 64GB RAM. The graphics card used were all Nvidia GTX 2080Ti. So, maybe it will require a certain investment on our existing hardware to make use of all the advantages of the new sim.

2. Internet connectivity. For the streaming, which is the base of the new sim, an up-to-date internet connectivity is required. I don't have any exact information, but read somewhere it would be needed a connection with a minimum of 40 Mbps and with a very high or non-existing cap in monthly data consumption. This point, together with point 1 above, will add cost to the equation.

I think the developing consensus on hardware is that if you can play a AAA game right now in 1080p or 4k at a decent frame rate,  you'll be able to fly at a decent frame rate in the sim.

That means a medium-spec gaming computer for 1080p and a high-end gaming computer for 4k. Just a general guideline there, and a guess at what MS is aiming for. It's too early to say exactly how it will compare to what's needed for XP11 or P3D at the same frame rates, because the sim isn't optimized yet.

Regarding connectivity, it's also too early for an exact recommendation, but they seem to be shooting for 10mpbs as the most you'll need, and it will run with less under reduced settings. It's early days though, we don't know what the final requirement will be.

Whether you need an unlimited connection or it will work with a cap isn't known yet either, because it will vary for everyone. It depends on how much you fly every month, how wide an area you cover, and how much space you have available to cache on a hard drive. Lots of variables there.

[edpatino 1,960]

1 hour ago, bonchie said:

On the topic of RAM, if you've used orthos before, you know it requires 16GB of RAM minimum and 32GB is preferred. That shouldn't change with MSFS as it's still just orthos. 64GB will be overkill IMO. 

I tend to think you still need a bit more RAM to cope with the amount of bits coming in from the streaming. This is kind of raw data that has to be stored in some place to be afterwards processed by the simulator (we're talking about microseconds or even less), so you'd process it in your availableRAM or on a SSD. This is just my guess, not being an expert on this.

Cheers, Ed

[n4gix 4,947]

3 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

Seriously:  Do some of you sleep next to your PC so you can be right near the P3D sim at night? 

How did you get into my bedroom!

Nah, just joking. I do have a laptop in the bedroom, but that's only for browsing if I have trouble falling asleep.

[bonchie 2,305]

22 minutes ago, edpatino said:

I tend to think you still need a bit more RAM to cope with the amount of bits coming in from the streaming. This is kind of raw data that has to be stored in some place to be afterwards processed by the simulator (we're talking about microseconds or even less), so you'd process it in your availableRAM or on a SSD. This is just my guess, not being an expert on this.

Cheers, Ed

I don't think so, but regardless, here's what everyone has to remember. 

This is still a game from a major studio. They have to make it accessible. They're not going to release a game that requires 64GBs of RAM and a 2080ti because they can't sell millions of copies of a game like that.

It's not 2006 anymore in the sense that games seem to been designed now to run well on more widely used hardware vs. "future hardware" no matter what genre we are talking about, as well as being GPU dependent so it's easy to upgrade if you do have a slow card. 

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by bonchie

[tweekz 2,165]

24 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I'm not scared, I was responding to a post that said it "will be light years ahead of its predecessors in the past!…that I can guarantee."

OK. I think you have to put that into perspective.

IMO it will not be light years ahead in terms of flight dynamics compared to X-Plane. We don't know any details, but it looks very much like the fundamental tech is pretty good.

For all the rest I think it is safe to say it will actually be light years ahaed.

Scenery, weather simulation, graphical quality ...

[b737800 470]

15 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Nah, just joking. I do have a laptop in the bedroom, but that's only for browsing if I have trouble falling asleep.

I saw it. Next to the Kleenex.