I've watched a yt vid or two but I don't think I get it.

I heard one saying that when you fly around it will constantly be download the terrain/autogen into your computer.

How does this make it easier for my computer to process this? My computer still has to draw all of this doesn't it?

Can someone explain this to me, keep in mind I'm not a computer hardware guru, so keep it simple, thanks.

It makes it easier because your computer can’t otherwise hold the data needed to simulate the entire world in such detail. It’s not about performance. 

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by bonchie

You would need a data center at home to store all of the Azure data. 

Likewise you would need a data center at home to store the entire Netflix library so you stream it or download segments offline if you need to but never the entire library.

The streaming brings you chunks of the imagery to be processed. The whole FS20 planet imagery is several thousands of terabytes heavy. No local storage solution exists that can answer the need. The computer will then process it as usual. 

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

You can play completely offline, so there must be a terrain mesh in the files already. Maybe being online streams a higher quality one that would be too big for any reasonable person to store.

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by Tuskin38

I’d still like to know what the download sizes are for a typical 2-3 hour flight. 

4 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

I’d still like to know what the download sizes are for a typical 2-3 hour flight. 

And you will find out on August 19 🙂

52 minutes ago, briansommers said:

I heard one saying that when you fly around it will constantly be download the terrain/autogen into your computer.

How does this make it easier for my computer to process this? My computer still has to draw all of this doesn't it?

Can someone explain this to me, keep in mind I'm not a computer hardware guru, so keep it simple, thanks.

Yup. How it makes it easier is not too different for what you probably do in FSX or P3D, or at least should do, which is to untick all the scenery on the other side of the planet which you have installed in your scenery library, if you are only flying from say, Moscow to Paris, because for that flight you don't need Nellis Air Force Base or JFK and downtown New York or the forests of Papua New Guinea to be loaded into your sim when you are not going to be flying near them.

Same thing with streaming stuff. Basically the sim is going to scan ahead of your flight path in a corridor, based on your detail radius preferences, loading where you are going to fly over or near to. But on the return flight along that same corridor, that data will already be there on your HD, having already been streamed.

Whether or not this will be extended to be more intelligent in the way it can work remains to be seen. A possibility here would be for example, to have you plan an airliner flight from say Manchester to Barcelona, with an alternate of Madrid, the sim then knows your route and can cache the scenery say fifty miles either side of your magenta line, but not cache the scenery along your diversion route unless it picks up that the weather you are downloading is deteriorating in the region of Barcelona, making a diversion likely. This sort of fancy AI tweaking is probably what companies such as HiFi will be looking into when it comes to producing add-ons.

This is basically why more RAM is a good thing and your RAM bus speeds will have a bearing on this too. It is also why an SSD is not a bad idea.

You are going to need 90 Gb free for the initial installation, and your're probably gonna need 10 Gb spare for a medium haul flight. On the plus side, if you like it, then binning off P3D or FSX with a few fancy add-ons would probably get you in the ballpark for this. Standby for all those hardware upgrade questions on Avsim to shift toward what's the best SSD/RAM, rather than what's the best GPU, although needless to say, a decent GPU (minumum 6Gb VRAM and preferably more than that) is going to be necessary.

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by Chock

30 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

I’d still like to know what the download sizes are for a typical 2-3 hour flight. 

I had asked this question yesterday on this forum, but didn't received an answer yet. I youtuber claimed that he gained 7 GB data for 10h flying time.

I really would like to know, how much GB freespace I need to download a whole country like UK or Germany? Another question I asked was: What kind of servers does Microsoft use? How do they generate the energy for it?

The MS servers are powered by the tears of unicorns.

4 minutes ago, Chock said:

The MS servers are powered by the tears of unicorns.

Is that sustainable or rather not?

It's contentious, what with the Unicorn Lives Matter campaign gaining traction every day.

7 minutes ago, Chock said:

It's contentious, what with the Unicorn Lives Matter campaign gaining traction every day.

In this case I will make an affort and inform all relevant ngo's that deal with animal welfare. Looks like release date is going to be postponed, until Microsoft finds a solutions for powering the servers without getting into ethical dilemas.

Seriously, how do they power it? I am just curious.

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by 737_800

6 minutes ago, 737_800 said:

Seriously, how do they power it? I am just curious.

Fossil fuels:

Quote

To clean up their carbon footprints, these companies lean heavily on a tool known as a renewable energy credit, which is basically a token representing a utility’s green energy generation. RECs are how companies like Google and Microsoft can claim their data centers are powered 100 percent by renewables while still being connected to grids that use fossil fuels. In reality, only a fraction of each company’s energy comes directly from solar or wind installations; the rest comes from RECs.

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-google-microsoft-green-clouds-and-hyperscale-data-centers/

 

Edit: reading all the article, Microsoft data centers are powered at 60% by renewables (70% in 2023) (token excluded)

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by Mirach

Yup, unfortunately, most carbon offsetting stuff by companies is more of a being seen to be doing something box ticking exercise than it is of actually being a genuine effort to do that sort of thing.