Microsoft - thank you for listening

[jymp 168]

 Hoping they will build a sim that we don't need to spend one more cent on, thanks MS.

[Adrian123 1,015]

17 minutes ago, jymp said:

 Hoping they will build a sim that we don't need to spend one more cent on, thanks MS.

Now that there is some funny stuff, I dont care who you are. 🙂

 

[bonchie 2,305]

13 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. 

There aren't any night textures. It's all dynamic lighting like XP11.

Not much an addon developer will be able to do with something that proprietary.

[Casualcas 830]

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Microsoft got it. Thank you

[Noodle 626]

1 hour ago, Adrian123 said:

Now that there is some funny stuff, I dont care who you are. 🙂

 

How is that funny?

Purchasing addon airport sceneries and aircraft is perfectly reasonable, but the need to purchase untold numbers of autogen packs, landclass packs, vector packs, cloud textures, weather generators, joystick configurators, bouncy head utilities, camera utilities, and scores of others, were the symptoms of an underperforming and undersupported series of MSFS titles.

ACES did their best and I've had many great experiences with every version of MSFS since FS4, but this idea that users should be content with the idea that they will need to apply endless .cfg tweaks and addons to ameliorate shortcomings in the stock simulator is like Stockholm Syndrome.

I want the vanilla MSFS to be as content and feature rich as possible in order to minimize the number of additional purchases required. To Asobo's credit, from the available media, it looks like I might just be content flying the stock airplanes around the stock scenery for a not insignificant period of time.

Something I've not done with any version of MSFS since the internet became a thing.

[eslader 1,783]

Back in the day a lot of us flew bone-stock FSX. Especially at first, before the 3rd party guys had started churning out products that took advantage of the new stuff in FSX, we were happy with stock. It was great, for it's time.

 

But then I remember being amazed by "Kaboom!" on the Atari 2600. For it's time, that was a great, and difficult game. As technology progressed and Nintendo came out, the Atari became less attractive. The same thing has happened with FSX - it's just hard to remember how much fun we had with stock FSX when it first came out, because the addons have made it a very different experience today.

 

Edited February 22, 2020 by eslader

[ca_metal 2,017]

9 hours ago, eaim said:

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.

Exactly my point. If they want to implement something, they will implement it. They’ve showed that already with the seasons (snow so far), for example.

But about airports (And the scenery in general), they’ve said more than once on the interviews that they are aiming to use as much automation as possible. Which made me think they don’t want to use a lot of dev hours to fix/improve the scenery. And custom made airports are something that demand time/devs.

That said, delivering the first version of the sim with 80 enhanced airports is good enough to me. How many did FSX had? I don’t know for sure. And the  rest of the 37k+ airports are looking good enough to me, even more if they release a SDK easy to use and modify the airports. In a matter of months we will have a lot of the airports improved by the community.

[Deleted 250]

16 hours ago, Claviateur said:

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. 

it's not just about the windows. I still don't see red flashing lights on tall buildings. I don't see any traffic light ferns yet I still don't have colorful billboards. There is so much room for improvement. 

[tweekz 2,165]

5 hours ago, Casualcas said:

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Microsoft got it. Thank you

Nice quote. Captures humanities native egoism quite well. 🙂

[tweekz 2,165]

3 minutes ago, Deleted said:

it's not just about the windows. I still don't see red flashing lights on tall buildings. I don't see any traffic light ferns yet I still don't have colorful billboards. There is so much room for improvement. 

There indeed is enough space for addons. Those 37k manually edited airports won't look like a decent addon scenery. They will look great for a default scenery. So there is that.

Then there are only a few photogrammetry cities. Enough room for addon landmarks which will further enrich the VFR experience on a already great base scenery.

Not to mention all the aircraft addons. MS won't model every aircraft and probably also not to the extent a devoted addon dev does.

[threexgreen 3,139]

6 hours ago, tweekz said:

Those 37k manually edited airports won't look like a decent addon scenery. They will look great for a default scenery. So there is that.

This is of course subjective for the most part, but I actually think the enhanced default airports that we have seen in the episode look like some of what you get as payware at this point. Though obviously not up to airports from, say, Flightbeam.

6 hours ago, tweekz said:

Then there are only a few photogrammetry cities.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall there were 400 photogrammetry cities.

[tweekz 2,165]

3 minutes ago, threegreen said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall there were 400 photogrammetry cities.

I don't know the number, but for example cities like Vienna or Cologne are not included. So there is some void to be filled.

[RALF9636 1,951]

Here is a list of the cities:

Most of the cities are in the USA, many I have never heard of. There are a lot of major cities missing, in particular outside the USA (e.g. London and Paris). So enough room for the 3PD to cover more cities in high quality.

 

 

Edited February 22, 2020 by RALF9636

[Anthracite 131]

On 2/21/2020 at 3:12 PM, 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

I imagine they will be excited more than anything - more performance overhead to work with better visuals and an opportunity to create photorealistic imagery - that’s every 3D modellers wet dream right there.

I’m not big on buying lots of addons. Actually I’ve never paid for an addon. But it’s possible that the potentially increased market makes pricing more competitive and if I see something good I’d be far more likely to pay for it

 

[Claviateur 789]

On 2/22/2020 at 3:53 AM, Deleted said:

it's not just about the windows. I still don't see red flashing lights on tall buildings. I don't see any traffic light ferns yet I still don't have colorful billboards. There is so much room for improvement. 

If you compare these basic features (that by the way are already present in actual flight simulators engines) to the more complex and more advanced features Asobo implemented and previewed in their videos, you can simply conclude they are not a big deal to implement. And I would be very surprised if it won't...

Edited February 24, 2020 by Claviateur