An article on FS20 in a French magazine, nothing new really but I liked  the end. Translation is mine so would be the errors.

We have been focusing on some relevant priorities for a flight simulator, in particular according to the feedbacks from our testers, but we keep on beefing it up. We will refine our representation of the Earth, for instance, adding the road or maritime traffic, forest fires or animal migrations, up to be near of having a digital twin. But that will take years. 

An ambitious project which goes beyond a flight simulator proper in the long run . But as the saying goes, in the long run we are all dead so let's have a good simulator in 2020 😋 !

https://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/physique-rendu-3d-sensations-de-vol-flight-simulator-repousse-les-limites-du-realisme.N953861

[Nous nous sommes concentrés sur certaines priorités pertinentes pour un simulateur de vol, notamment en fonction des retours de nos testeurs, mais nous continuerons de l’étoffer. Nous allons affiner notre représentation de la Terre, par exemple, en ajoutant le trafic routier ou maritime, les feux de forêt ou les migrations des animaux, jusqu’à nous approcher d’un jumeau numérique. Mais cela prendra des années.]

 

Edited April 25, 20206 yr by Dominique_K

The notorious Google translation:

We’ve focused on some relevant priorities for a flight simulator, especially based on feedback from our testers, but we’ll continue to expand on it. We are going to refine our representation of the Earth, for example, by adding road or maritime traffic, forest fires or animal migrations, until we approach a digital twin. But it will take years.

Either it's really wrong... or your translation's pretty good.... 🙂

Dominique_K translation is accurate... Now do we understand that the initial release will not have road /maritime traffic at least. Or did I misunderstand the final statement.

Edited April 25, 20206 yr by Claviateur

Just now, Claviateur said:

Dominique_K translation is accurate... Now do we understand that the initial release will not have road /maritime traffic at least. Or did I misunderstand the final statement.

I found the article thanks to a retweet of Sebastian Wloch which didn't carry any comment or correction. 

There is no indication of an implementation calendar which has, of course, started some times ago. So we may have the traffic at release and not the ducks and geese.

 

Edited April 25, 20206 yr by Dominique_K

Just now, WarpD said:

The notorious Google translation:

 

 

 

I am French, no need for Google 😏.

10 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

So we may have the traffic at release and not the ducks and geese.

 

Hopefully, as for now, I did not spot in any screenshot yet, any data driven roads overlays unless I am mistaken.

Just now, Claviateur said:

Hopefully, as for now, I did not spot in any screenshot yet, any data driven roads overlays unless I am mistaken.

There are two kinds of road traffic : one artificially generated by the sim and one feeding on real live data. We can have the first at release and the second one afterwards.

Well in our flight sim community, we have had available to us at least a good representation of the road, maritime, forest fires, and trains for years.   

The migrations are a welcome addition (to add to the adventure), but if we are going to have migrations, then airport terminals/ramps should be full of people that actually board the planes (AI planes too) and we should be able to see them in every view. This is to represent the simulated world with more of a logical priority. PBR or DL being more important than ATC, like it is currently, is an example of illogical priorities....too much a game, not a simulator. 

Maybe insects and earthquakes will be next??? 🤪😂  

It is very encouraging to hear that it is still in the plans to support the simulator for years, continuing to work both on the implementation of newer Bing data as well as the add-on ecosystem. I'm wondering if their goal is to have those hundreds of aircraft available in the in-game marketplace eventually. Hopefully Microsoft will not set a strict sales target in order to allow all this development to continue.

26 minutes ago, Claviateur said:

Hopefully, as for now, I did not spot in any screenshot yet, any data driven roads overlays unless I am mistaken.

I have seen traffic passing through buildings in the early Video`s AKA FSX style. 

Just now, ChaoticBeauty said:

  Hopefully Microsoft will not set a strict sales target in order to allow all this development to continue.

 I start to believe people who say  that MS is not only after a flight simulator but aims at building a more generic platform for  other mobility games and also other applications (tourism) . 

 

 

I love the vision. It is just what i hoped.

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

There are two kinds of road traffic : one artificially generated by the sim and one feeding on real live data. We can have the first at release and the second one afterwards.

I am not a pro in programming but is it that hard to add real life road traffic for a team like them? (assuming they have solid data source of course)

Edited April 25, 20206 yr by Noooch

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

There are two kinds of road traffic : one artificially generated by the sim and one feeding on real live data. We can have the first at release and the second one afterwards.

Sorry I was referring to the actual road network being an overlay from data like Bing or OSM etc. The roads we see are the ones "baked" in the aerial or Photogrammetry imagery. However, the light poles are there and these are usually procedural (i.e: placed on each side of a road). If this is the case, it means the lights are placed based on a road network in a database but the physical roads are somehow not there yet. I could be mistaken...

3 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

 I start to believe people who say  that MS is not only after a flight simulator but aims at building a more generic platform for  other mobility games and also other applications (tourism) . 

 

 

As you know a flight simulator like all the civilian simulators we had for our home PCs, by definition, were never destined to simulate a specific aircraft model like the professional simulators.

Thus all our civilian PC simulators were meant to be very broad in terms of possibilities and use, relatively speaking.

Now the popular use case of these simulator was to fly airliners from one continent to another and this somehow became like an illusion of what PC Flight Simulators are.

But in reality, many users preferred to simulate bush flying, helicopter operations in urban areas and of course, the global general aviation / VFR fans as well...  

Yet, these users were never served well in terms of an out of the box World Engine that offers to them the proper immersion in the low, slow, urban or exotic type of flights. 

So I believe a living and true to life VFR  virtual world like the one Asobo are developing, will make at last, the VFR, bush and helicopter users have finally the proper immersion as it should be. And all this without installing extra addons (if available).

Therefore all these living things in the world of MSFS will make, in my opinion, a PC flight simulator become finally the real broad platform that has something interesting for every type of flying... 

But you might be right as well, it could be that MS will leverage the long term investment in MSFS to make the Asobo World Engine host other forms of simulation or games as well...

Edited April 25, 20206 yr by Claviateur

5 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

I have seen traffic passing through buildings in the early Video`s AKA FSX style. 

Yes you are right, the early demos featured FSX like road traffic. It was just there to make the videos interesting I suppose, the code was then "disconnected" in the Alpha builds I presume.