One good reason to keep an older sim is if it has an aircraft you want to fly that isn't available in the newer sim.  People are still flying FS9, after all. 🙂

Hook

7 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I do not believe anything but observe that the Navblue flyer 4th paragraph (I wouldn’t call that a partnership update by any means) is ambiguous. As much as I discard any streaming subscription, I wouldn’t be neither surprised nor shocked by a « post launch »  chart updating subscription. MS has been shying away from the topic for too long for not raising the issue. 

By the way, if I am not mistaken, there was no screenshot in any update showing how the data integrates into the sim. Not yet in the alpha ?

Traditionally “nav data” has two components: the core nav data that controls the placement of navaids in the simulator environment i.e. - the physical locations of VORs, DMEs, NDBs, ILS localizer and glideslope transmitters, marker beacons and (in recent P3D versions), military TACANS, along with frequencies, service range etc.

Secondarily in core nav data are things like named waypoints and airways.

Since the days of FS5, and in all succeeding sims in the MS franchise (including P3D), navaids have been “baked into” the scenery, which makes updating the core nav data difficult.

Fortunately, in recent years, we have had the ability to over-ride the “baked in” core nav data thanks to the work of freeware developers like Hérve Sors, and payware developers like FSAeroData. P3DV5 comes by default with much newer core nav data, but it still will become “stale” as time goes by, and it is still baked into various BGL files.

X-Plane, since the very beginning, chose a much different technique - nav data is not “baked” in, but resides in plain text files, which can be easily updated and edited. In XP, I can open the file containing all worldwide VORs in Notepad, change the frequency of my local VOR, save the edited file, and the next time I load the sim, the VOR will be tuned using the new frequency.

I would hope that the MSFS has adopted a similar system to XP, keeping physical navaids, and procedural data (like waypoints, airways and approaches) in a separate database file (or files), independent of the scenery.

If so, the “integration” of updated core nav data provided by NavBlue will probably be transparent to end users. If, (for example), a particular real-world VOR or NDB has been decommissioned, then after running an update, the decommissioned nav aid simply would not exist in the sim environment anymore.

The second part of the equation is nav data used by aircraft systems like FMS or GPS. One thing that I found very positive in the NavBlue announcement is that nav data for MSFS will be provided in ARINC-424 format. This is the format that almost all real-world FMS systems use. ARINC-424 encodes every possible type of navigation data in a highly standardized way, including physical navaid locations, waypoints and airways, and procedures like SIDS, STARS, ILS approaches, RNAV approaches etc.

One problem with current FMS emulations in add-on aircraft for FSX and P3D is that every add-on developer has their own proprietary format for FMS nav data. PMDG uses a different format than Aerosoft, which is different than Majestic, which is different than Leonardo etc.

AIRAC services like Navigraph receive the master data records from Jeppesen in the original ARINC-424 format, but then have to translate those records into the unique proprietary formats required by specific add-ons.

If NavBlue is providing FMS nav data directly in ARINC-424 format, I assume that any default FMS-equipped aircraft that come with MSFS “stock”, like the Airbus 321 and Boeing 747-8, will use the same FMS data.

The question is: will this also apply to 3rd-party add-ons? It would certainly make sense for developers like PMDG to use the standardized ARINC-424 data provided by NavBlue for their products, rather than continuing to use their own proprietary format.

In fact, in the case of PMDG, I believe they have already had long-term plans to eventually move to ARINC-424 for their FMS emulations - (and those plans predated the announcement of MSFS), so if they are going to make that change, this would be the time to do it.

For other add-on developers looking to port existing products to MSFS, it may require substantial re-coding of FMS logic to use ARINC-424. I suppose that there would be nothing to prevent them from continuing to use their proprietary formats, but if the sim is going to come with standardized FMS data, regularly updated, then it would be worth the effort to change their systems to use it.

One current “stand alone” simulator that already uses ARINC-424 FMS data natively is the Aerowinx PSX 747-400, and for the past two years that data has been supplied by none other than... NavBlue.

X-Plane 11 also has the ability to optionally use standardized ARINC-424 nav data - specifically CFIP database files that can be downloaded for free each month from the FAA web site - but those files only cover airports and procedures in the USA.

Edited June 26, 20205 yr by JRBarrett

19 minutes ago, tweekz said:

2.06% of XP users have used VR in 2019. That's what I call a minority. 😄

But I guess VR will come to MSFS as well.

A sample of games/sims that have implemented VR, despite the reported extra difficulty of doing so: One wonders what factors they are considering, that some here perhaps are not, that made doing so worth it..... 🤔

• FlyInside Sim
• P3D
• Aerofly
• X-Plane
• IL2
• DCS
• War Thunder
• Ace Combat 7
• UltraWings
• Vtol VR
• Uhawk
• Flying Aces

 

7 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

A sample of games/sims that have implemented VR, despite the reported extra difficulty of doing so: One wonders what factors they are considering, that some here perhaps are not, that made doing so worth it..... 🤔

 

Considering the niche market, I guess it's just no priority to them as they have a lot of other stuff to finish first.

Edited June 26, 20205 yr by tweekz

I'm not a VR user, but this title BEGS for a good VR implementation. I hope they eventually deliver a killer VR experience to match the killer graphics.

I hope this is not illegal.

 

1 hour ago, BigDee said:

 

That pic makes it harder to wait once again. I wiil feel like a little boy.

Can some find out where that is?

edit: OK, found it... the original has better resolution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_Sound_Airport

Edited June 26, 20205 yr by tweekz

12 hours ago, Kopteeni said:

It seems like every time they have an option to go with either boring or dramatic they go with the dramatic option. The end result then is not realistic or immersive but cartoonish and overblown.

It's not like it's a conscious choice by the devs, it's all automated.

Unless they have access to data that tells them how tall trees are, every area isn't going to be 100% accurate.

I'm guessing all they have data wise is where the trees are, not what kind or how tall.

And considering how big the Earth is, it would be possible for them to hand check the entire planet.

Edited June 26, 20205 yr by Tuskin38

22 minutes ago, tweekz said:

That pic makes it harder to wait once again

It's not about the place, it's NO watermark on it.

19 hours ago, Shug said:

Like the Asobo statement from many months ago that there will be 2 million cities in the Simulator. Complete fiction.

I did some research on it and was quite surprise how they came up with that number. There may be 2 million settlements worldwide in total, but cities? 

There is no data about that, but estimating an average of 200 per country would mean there are 38.400 worldwide. Considering that many countries do not even have 200 cities, that number is probably too high.

8 minutes ago, polosim said:

It's not about the place, it's NO watermark on it.

Yes there is. It's just for some reason that poster edited the picture to cover them up. The original picture in the OP has it unedited.

Edited June 26, 20205 yr by Tuskin38

18 minutes ago, polosim said:

It's not about the place, it's NO watermark on it.

Yeah I noticed, Nevertheless I wanted to comment on that pic anyway. 😄

1 hour ago, polosim said:

It's not about the place, it's NO watermark on it.

Yes it has. It's just melded in the trees and a short name.

6 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

Yes it has. It's just melded in the trees and a short name.

The image they quoted has most of the white ones edited out, but the original image on the main website (and first post of the thread) doesn't.

Sorry, I didn`t mention in my post that I removed the watermarks from two screens of the current progress report.

Basically a little Photoshop editing by copying textures and some brush corrections.

So I hope this is not considered illegal.

 

One word about the trees or any other scenery topics: 

For me I won`t complain a word, because if we compare the scenery with current competitors, FS2020 offers a new dimension. That will push flight experience hopefully combined with good physics to a new level.