February 20th, 2020 – Development/Insider Update

[Casualcas 830]

13 minutes ago, jpc55 said:

I do too, but I was not doing any of the arguing! Some people can't seem to comprehend SIMULATION. This maker laugh a lot.  

Edit: Oops forgot to add, Lmao

Yeah, I think it pretty comparing the sim to real life, but pretty unreasonable at the same time. This weekend I was going to start comparing MSFS, to fsx and xplane in those areas and then fall out of my chair. 

[Mace 1,902]

11 hours ago, Jim Young said:

If a member updates an airport, can he zip up the airport, add it to the AVSIM Library for anyone to download and try themselves? 

Well of course they will.  Doesn't that go without saying?

I mean, to NOT be able to do that, would be a major fail.  That won't happen.

[Jeff Nielsen 1,385]

9 hours ago, Chock said:

Whilst I can't say I'll be especially upset if it turns out that the runways are all flat in Microsoft's new flight sim, the fact is there are plenty of runways which have considerable undulations in them, as well as elevation differences from one end to the other in terms of the threshold height.

Exactly.  We have an airport here in KC (KOJC) that we have to DAPP in to if landing the other direction.  Most times performance numbers won't allow for it even with 2 pilots if it's wet.  This affects landing and take off performance and affects flights all the time in the real world.

And yes, SLOPE is an entry in the FMC at least on Boeing aircraft.  

Also, I thought I saw in one of the dev interviews that ALL surfaces are land-able now and the sim is able to parse out the slopes?  Something to that effect.  Not sure if that applies to the airports or not, but most RWY slopes are depicted on the charts.  I wonder if the RWY slope is a part of the AIRAC data?  It would be cool to see if MS could add that to the sim.  Theoretically it should be doable based on the terrain model already present? 

Edited February 21, 2020 by n4gix
Removed rediculously long quote!

[Drumcode 1,892]

I waited for 20 years to see a flight simulator to come to this and finally it does. Absolutely outstanding!

[Murmur 3,941]

Nice episode! Each new video looks more impressive than the former!

At this point, my main wish is that features like ATC/AI have been made fully multicore, so that they can be maxed out with no effect on performance.

I think in past interviews ASOBO already hinted this was the case, but we'll only know when it will be released.

 

[Casualcas 830]

1 hour ago, bashope said:

We can look at it any of two ways. But at the end of the day, when it comes to choosing which sim to fly, I will compare the best experience I can have, on any of them. So, regardless if it's fair or not, I will compare the best experience I can have, on X-Plane, compared to the best experience I can have on MFS, and choose.

For example, I would never want to fly with X-Plane's default weather engine, that's why I bought ASXP. So I will compare X-Plane's weather with ASXP, to MFS (default or with any add-on that might come out for it). I think this is what most people will do...

That's fine for you, you already have your choice,  that's you, but not the population,  or noobs. They will look at xplane and MSFS, and say hmmm msfs has nice clouds, if I buy xplane, I gotta buy what else??!! Forget it. 

[bashope 112]

2 minutes ago, Casualcas said:

That's fine for you, you already have your choice,  that's you, but not the population,  or noobs. They will look at xplane and MSFS, and say hmmm msfs has nice clouds, if I buy xplane, I gotta buy what else??!! Forget it. 

I speak about myself and the people I know, mostly from IVAO. Not sure about the population, but I'm sure I don't really want to argue about it 🙂

[MikeT707 1,181]

3 hours ago, dfanucci said:

*Shaking my head*

What has been shown regarding this sim is so far beyond anything *any* civilian sim has brought to the table is just jaw dropping.

And folks are complaining about blades of grass.

In a flightsim.

Blades of grass!?!?

Unbelievable.

 

3 hours ago, bonchie said:

It blows my mind that anyone can watch the video in comparison to what we have now, claim it looks like an RC simulator, and say "I'm not that impressed." 

Honestly, I commend Asobo for not losing their freaking minds with some in this fanbase at this point. I'd have been tempted to throw my hands up a long time ago and I certainly see why ACES disconnected from the community back during FSX's production.

I am not trying to get into an argument at all, but it might be important to point out that the original comment is not a complaint. Rather it is valuable feedback by someone not in the Alpha with the hope that this feedback is hopefully received by the MS/Assobo product/development team.

To add, the feedback is not just about blades of grass. It is about visual scale.

Scale is important to any visual depiction and in the case of the picture in question, the large scale of the grass makes the plane and buildings look miniature. Hopefully this would be something that can be and will be refined by the team.

The product so far looks great and almost everyone is really looking forward to it, but it is important to be able to raise issues or concerns. Especially at this point where things are less expensive to fix or refine. 

[bonchie 2,305]

8 minutes ago, MikeT707 said:

 

I am not trying to get into an argument at all, but it might be important to point out that the original comment is not a complaint. Rather it is valuable feedback by someone not in the Alpha with the hope that this feedback is hopefully received by the MS/Assobo product/development team.

To add, the feedback is not just about blades of grass. It is about visual scale.

Scale is important to any visual depiction and in the case of the picture in question, the large scale of the grass makes the plane and buildings look miniature. Hopefully this would be something that can be and will be refined by the team.

The product so far looks great and almost everyone is really looking forward to it, but it is important to be able to raise issues or concerns. Especially at this point where things are less expensive to fix or refine. 

There's nothing valuable about saying it looks like an RC simulator while ignoring the entire 8 minute video of material. It's hyperbole.

Edited February 21, 2020 by bonchie

[Casualcas 830]

9 minutes ago, bashope said:

I speak about myself and the people I know, mostly from IVAO. Not sure about the population, but I'm sure I don't really want to argue about it 🙂

No. But the community would like to hear opinions 

[bonchie 2,305]

1 hour ago, bashope said:

We can look at it any of two ways. But at the end of the day, when it comes to choosing which sim to fly, I will compare the best experience I can have, on any of them. So, regardless if it's fair or not, I will compare the best experience I can have, on X-Plane, compared to the best experience I can have on MFS, and choose.

For example, I would never want to fly with X-Plane's default weather engine, that's why I bought ASXP. So I will compare X-Plane's weather with ASXP, to MFS (default or with any add-on that might come out for it). I think this is what most people will do...

I've used Ortho4XP extensively. But at the end of the day, it's not a viable way forward for 95% of simmers to operate. It takes gobs of storage if you want anything over ZL18, it's extremely time consuming, and there's no correction made to the tiles graphically, so you get all the flaws of the raw orthos in the game. The placement of buildings and trees is also extremely hit or miss. Getting Ortho4XP even half right is a bit like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. What MSFS is doing is a step above, perhaps multiple steps.

It's an excellent thing for XP11 and gave it new life for me, but it's time for something more polished and integrated.

Edited February 21, 2020 by bonchie

[MatthewS 761]

59 minutes ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

Also, I thought I saw in one of the dev interviews that ALL surfaces are land-able now and the sim is able to parse out the slopes?  Something to that effect.  Not sure if that applies to the airports or not, but most RWY slopes are depicted on the charts.  I wonder if the RWY slope is a part of the AIRAC data?  It would be cool to see if MS could add that to the sim.  Theoretically it should be doable based on the terrain model already present?

I would have hoped they took that approach, implementing undulation based on the underlying mesh instead of apparently just flattening the entire airport surface (like in FSX/P3D).

Of course, Xplane's implementation is a little extreme, Asobo could be "smarter" and smooth the underlying mesh a little.

However Asobo seems to be taking the easy way out and just flattening the entire airport.

Why did they not bother to show us undulating runways/taxiways/aprons in the video? Such a feature would be worthy of 30 seconds at least. But no, we see nothing because they have nothing. That's the only reasonable conclusion to draw.

Asobo apparently read this forum.  How about Asobo post a screenshot of undulation and address it in their next blog post? Put any conjecture to rest.

Of course they won't, because they can't, they have not implemented undulation of airport surface based on the underlying mesh.

[MatthewS 761]

15 minutes ago, MikeT707 said:

Scale is important to any visual depiction and in the case of the picture in question, the large scale of the grass makes the plane and buildings look miniature. Hopefully this would be something that can be and will be refined by the team.

Yep...  Asobo seem to have a real issue with scale 

Grass, trees, unnatural arrangement of lighted windows etc.

[Kopteeni 819]

3 minutes ago, MatthewS said:

Yep...  Asobo seem to have a real issue with scale 

Grass, trees, unnatural arrangement of lighted windows etc.

Yes. This is a serious issue. But I'll probably be too busy enjoying the flying part of this flight simulator to take notice.

Edited February 21, 2020 by Kopteeni

[tweekz 2,165]

7 minutes ago, MatthewS said:

Asobo apparently read this forum.  How about Asobo post a screenshot of undulation and address it in their next blog post? Put any conjecture to rest.

Of course they won't, because they can't, they have not implemented undulation of airport surface based on the underlying mesh.

 

Flat runways aren't that nice, true. But no reason to go into Hulk mode while still in Alpha.