Microsoft - thank you for listening

[tweekz 2,165]

47 minutes ago, eaim said:

As much as I love what I'm seeing so far in MSFS, I'll not get too excited about the other 37,000 airports until I see how they compare to real life, if 37,000 default airports are inaccurate in any major way, certain local/holiday or major hub airports I'll certainly buy as addons.

As I already mentioned in the main thread. I expect the basic layout to be edited. Like in the glimpse they gave us. Taxiways, parking positions, building locations. I do not think that those buildings will resemble reality very closely tho. But that's OK.

Quick maths supports this theory. If they've done 37 000 airports. Assume an experienced developer takes 15 minutes for creating aforementioned basic features, then a dev would need 1 156 days for creating all airports (working 8h a day full time on airports). If they would assign this work to 10 people, it would take 116 days. This sounds reasonable.

More detail would not be possible, except if they outsourced this to a company with a lot more people working on it.

Edited February 21, 2020 by tweekz

[pmb 5,137]

8 minutes ago, eslader said:

Orbx is probably, justifiably, nervous yeah.

Probably not. Asobo certainly does neither have the capacity nor the desire to rebuild all the ~150 ORBX airports, most of them with really lovely detail, for MSFS. There may be a hand full of the bigger regional ones becoming obsolete, but that's it. Plus, I am personally convinced, MSFS will have a much larger user (and potential add-on buyer) base than Prepar3d, FSX and XP together at present, compensating for the loss, if any.

The asset to loose value will be their regions, the former FTX regions as well as the recent TE ones (plus the Global/OpenLC product line). They may continue to produce them for the remaining Prepar3d and XP users, but I doubt that will be profitable over the large run.

Kind regards, Michael

[Beru 41]

29 minutes ago, pmb said:

Probably not. Asobo certainly does neither have the capacity nor the desire to rebuild all the ~150 ORBX airports, most of them with really lovely detail, for MSFS. There may be a hand full of the bigger regional ones becoming obsolete, but that's it. Plus, I am personally convinced, MSFS will have a much larger user (and potential add-on buyer) base than Prepar3d, FSX and XP together at present, compensating for the loss, if any.

The asset to loose value will be their regions, the former FTX regions as well as the recent TE ones (plus the Global/OpenLC product line). They may continue to produce them for the remaining Prepar3d and XP users, but I doubt that will be profitable over the large run.

Kind regards, Michael

Agreed. They will be around. I'd expect Asobo to continue deliver content in future updates, but Orbx and other airports devs will have their space developing areas where Azure or Asobo couldn't do job with good detail.

[FishermanIvan 110]

Every time people have said “Microsoft won’t be able to do this, so there’s room for aftermarket” there’s been a video showing people to be wrong.  Or very close to wrong.  
 

it’s weird that people don’t want the default game to be amazing.   I’d love to buy the game and not spend another penny on it.  

[Claviateur 789]

2 hours ago, Deleted said:

I think a lot is feasible in the area of night textures. That is the only "negative" point that I can note so far.It's okay, but it would be much better. 

Night textures could be obsolete with the dynamic lighting capability in the engine. A light source illuminates anything at any given angle and range.

Building windows could be dynamic or decals/masks I am not sure...

Even to reflect seasons... imagery can be adjusted dynamically in terms of hues / saturation etc. 

[ca_metal 2,015]

1 hour ago, FishermanIvan said:

Every time people have said “Microsoft won’t be able to do this, so there’s room for aftermarket” there’s been a video showing people to be wrong.  Or very close to wrong.  
 

it’s weird that people don’t want the default game to be amazing.   I’d love to buy the game and not spend another penny on it.  

I partially agree with you. They can do anything any of the 3rd parties can, and they can do it better. They have way more resources than any of the 3rd parties, even the big ones.

The real question is what they want to deliver in the base sim and airports is something they made it clear they won’t try to cover all of them with custom made objects. Based on the last video, we will have 80 enhanced airports, really close to the real ones + 37k+ airports partially handmade, based on the imagery.

That’s pretty good to me, better than anything we had so far. But we can still expect some space where the 3rd parties could fill in the gaps. But that’s about it for the sceneries. I can’t any other gaps besides some specific airports.

[eslader 1,774]

5 hours ago, pmb said:

Probably not. Asobo certainly does neither have the capacity nor the desire to rebuild all the ~150 ORBX airports

 

Kind regards, Michael

Agreed, definitely. But I had the impression (which could well be wrong) that the bulk of their sales were the non-airport sceneries and meshes.

4 hours ago, FishermanIvan said:

Every time people have said “Microsoft won’t be able to do this, so there’s room for aftermarket” there’s been a video showing people to be wrong.  Or very close to wrong.  
 

it’s weird that people don’t want the default game to be amazing.   I’d love to buy the game and not spend another penny on it.  

Of course we want the default game to be amazing. And it's looking like it will be. But realistically unless MS/Asobo starts up a development house that rivals Rockstar, CDPR, Ubisoft, and EA combined, they simply don't have the manpower to accurately hand-detail the entire world. And even then, it'd be a tough project. So they're bound to leave stuff out simply because it's not possible to get to, and some of that stuff is likely to be stuff that simmers want to see, which gives 3rd parties an opportunity to provide it.

 

 

[GACSavannah 227]

I personally feel that the third party developers, like Orbx, will begin to simply specialize on making really really nice smaller airports and the larger ones will remain with the now much higher quality defaults. Perhaps you will get packs of 2 or 3 small airports in a geographic area instead of one larger airport. Imagine what someone like Orbx could do with true back country, seat of the pants flying rough strips if they put their mind to it. That's just for the FS customers of course. I don't think everyone will abandon the other platforms, such as X-Plane, so they can continue developing there as they have before.

[RALF9636 1,876]

7 minutes ago, GACSavannah said:

I personally feel that the third party developers, like Orbx, will begin to simply specialize on making really really nice smaller airports and the larger ones will remain with the now much higher quality defaults. Perhaps you will get packs of 2 or 3 small airports in a geographic area instead of one larger airport. Imagine what someone like Orbx could do with true back country, seat of the pants flying rough strips if they put their mind to it. 

I really hope they (and others) do.

Edited February 21, 2020 by RALF9636

[Carts85 1,203]

Perhaps I’m alone here but I actually think there’s scope for regional packages. I live in the North West of England not in a large well known capital and I want local landmarks to be modelled accurately like you would get in Orbx True Earth England. What I’d expect to change is the price of these packages to come down but with a bigger audience I guess they could.  

[RALF9636 1,876]

11 minutes ago, Carts85 said:

Perhaps I’m alone here but I actually think there’s scope for regional packages. I live in the North West of England not in a large well known capital and I want local landmarks to be modelled accurately like you would get in Orbx True Earth England. What I’d expect to change is the price of these packages to come down but with a bigger audience I guess they could.  

I agree that there should be room for 3PD when - alongside with smaller airfields - it comes to landmarks and points of interest outside of the well known areas.

Edited February 21, 2020 by RALF9636

[Amon1973 1,421]

3 hours ago, ca_metal said:

I partially agree with you. They can do anything any of the 3rd parties can, and they can do it better. They have way more resources than any of the 3rd parties, even the big ones.

The real question is what they want to deliver in the base sim and airports is something they made it clear they won’t try to cover all of them with custom made objects. Based on the last video, we will have 80 enhanced airports, really close to the real ones + 37k+ airports partially handmade, based on the imagery.

That’s pretty good to me, better than anything we had so far. But we can still expect some space where the 3rd parties could fill in the gaps. But that’s about it for the sceneries. I can’t any other gaps besides some specific airports.

I'm sure if Asobo/MS had any long term plans to produce additional content be it scenery or aircraft etc, and they were lacking any particular talented dev in that area, they would have the pulling power to attract any devs required from even the major 3rd party dev companies.

[ryanbatc 12,770]

There will be plenty of opportunities for 3rd party devs!  Believe me!

[Mace 1,896]

10 hours ago, FishermanIvan said:

big sweeping terrain add-ons are done. 

I hope this is true, at least.  

I have never really liked the way those types of add-ons integrate with the existing sims, nor do I like the inherent side-effects some of these add-ons cause.  It's like a nice medicine you have to take for your health, but it has some side-effects that you do not like. 

If we end up having 'big sweeping terrain add-ons' I at least want them to get themselves out of the way of the sim.  A lot of that of course depends on the architecture of the new sim.

[Bear242 68]

I just want to thank Microsoft for making a stable sim again without needing to tweak 100+ hours.