Wild speculation post, but I have to wonder if there are gaming plans beyond MSFS building on the same engine/real world data sources?  With all of the development work and money that has gone into the platform perhaps there are plans to expand it into additional gaming uses.  Two things come to mind for me:

A new combat flight sim

It wouldn’t be uncharted territory for Microsoft to get into an open ended combat flight simulator based on a civilian flight simulator based on the MS Combat Flight Simulator series.  

But could you imagine having the world that is being created for MSFS available as a base for combat flight simming?  Simulate conflict anywhere in the world, do training missions on any range or out of any Air Force base world wide.  The possibilities could be endless.

A new train sim

Perhaps less likely and a bigger stretch for the MSFS game engine/world, but could a new MS Train Simulator eventually spawn from this?  Some may recall that there was a MSTS2 in the works before Aces was shut down.  One of the features was to be a world-wide “atlas” in game of railroads and basic scenery that people could then use as a base to expand upon and improve, allowing for virtually limitless route creation.

Sounds kinda like what we are getting with MSFS, only much better than could have been contemplated back then?

Either one of these could be pretty awesome, who knows one or both might become reality someday.  Might seem far fetched, but if you told me two years ago what would be released on August 18th 2020 I wouldn’t have thought it was possible either 🙂

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by regis9

A new driving sim?

I hope they do, really. The more they sell the platform, the better it will be. And as I already said here on the forums, would be nice to have a “living world” where we could all play together.

Truck schedules, flight schedules, bus schedules, trains schedules. Everything working together on a large network of simmers (not just flight simmers, but truck simmers, train simmers etc).

For now it is just a wild dream, but who knows.

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by ca_metal

What I see as most likely is stuff that ties directly into expanding possible MSFS multiplayer gameplay, possibly in DLC packs. Skydiving (and wingsuits!) would be an obvious one. Maybe also things like a ship or sailing simulator, which could be interesting if helicopters come into play at some point.

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by Der Zeitgeist

I would love another train sim. It would be cool if they were interconnected somehow. Planes bringing in goods, trucks hauling them to stores ect. 

Thing is that at this point the tech doesn't seem ready for simulating ground based stuff. When you see people fly low into photogrammetry stuff the buildings look really weird. You don't notice it when flying at let's say 1500ft, but up close and personal the buildings dont look so good. They get all warped and stuff - like bing map has been wrapped around a frame, and it got a bit distorted in the process. 

 

It would be an easy quest once (all or most) the infrastructure is in place.  But we don't even have helicopters yet.  With them a dev could create an Air Rescue addon.

Alot of cool stuff has been created in the Second Life online sim with the base language.

Regards

bs

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by bean_sprout

14 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

Thing is that at this point the tech doesn't seem ready for simulating ground based stuff.

It may not be there right now but could be a base for future development.  Much of the needed data is there I would say.

Reading more about the cancelled MSTS2, it was planned to use an evolution  of the Flight Simulator engine, which would have had the same issues.

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by regis9

10 minutes ago, regis9 said:

Reading more about the cancelled MSTS2, it was planned to use an integration of the Flight Simulator engine, which would have had the same issues.

Indeed, it was being developed on a modified Flight Simulator X engine. At the same time Aces were also developing the Flight Simulator 11 engine, so perhaps it was going to be some sort of hybrid between the two. I have the feeling that those modifications would actually be aimed at being able to deliver more detail on the ground rather than focusing on rendering a huge part of the world at once with tons of objects, which means those issues would likely not persist.

With the new simulator's engine though, even if the scenery can look quite ugly when you fly low, I think that's more on the scenery itself and not on the engine. Considering that the airports can now be rendered with a lot more detail along with ground operations and everything, it feels like it wouldn't take too much effort to modify the engine into being suitable for a train simulator and more. It is now fully modern and right up there with other AAA game engines, if not more advanced.

Well, finally have waves with motion that correlates to wind conditions, so if we get bathymetry data and interaction with the shoreline, we could have a surfing simulator, and then fly around in the Icon A5, land and drop anchor outside of the surf lineup, catch some tasty waves, and then take off again and chase the swell conditions from one spot to another.  It'd be like a virtual "Endless Summer". 

Maybe we could get this guy as one of the simulated pilots!

 

Ship-sim most likely, since the water and weather quality is already so excellent, and it is more do-able as only the coast would have to be modelled more accurately. I definitely do see this coming.

CFS4 mmm.. But the work to implement weapon systems, damage modelling, AI, missions etc. correctly would be rather big - and DCS does that really good today. 

But a Sopwith Camel as one of the default aircraft would be a nice nod to their heritage 🙂 Who needs a throttle to fly a plane? 

 

 

1 hour ago, regis9 said:

A new combat flight sim

 

1 hour ago, regis9 said:

A new train sim

 

I would buy both, if MS decided to return back to those roots.

3 hours ago, regis9 said:

Wild speculation post, but I have to wonder if there are gaming plans beyond MSFS building on the same engine/real world data sources?

.. could a new MS Train Simulator eventually spawn from this?  Some may recall that there was a MSTS2 in the works before Aces was shut down.  One of the features was to be a world-wide “atlas” in game of railroads and basic scenery that people could then use as a base to expand upon and improve, allowing for virtually limitless route creation.

Sounds kinda like what we are getting with MSFS, only much better than could have been contemplated back then?

Either one of these could be pretty awesome, who knows one or both might become reality someday.  Might seem far fetched, but if you told me two years ago what would be released on August 18th 2020 I wouldn’t have thought it was possible either 🙂

Yes, absolutely the MSFS data base can and will be used for other purposes beyond flight simulation. For example a recent video by a professional photographer illustrating the possibilities was amazing. A train simulator built around it would open the door to creation of long distance routes that have been in short supply up to now -- for instance, trans-continental routes. Right now you can't even drive a train from New York to Boston!

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by cobalt
original reply omitted somehow

I fully suspect there's gonna be stuff build off of it, when you've got a entire Earth built why wouldn't you try and reuse it? As for what they could reuse it for, there's a million possibilities well beyond what was intended. For example I watched a video about someone talking about how they think it could be useful for photography by going to areas in the simulator and playing around with lighting and weather to get a idea how it will look in real life. Never would've occurred to me, but that's a pretty good use for it honestly.

Now one thing that I think is certain at some point is getting the simulator certified as a simulator actual pilots can use for training like with X-Plane & Prepar3d. Makes too much sense to not pursue it, it would probably bring in good revenue and I don't imagine would require a ton of effort to do with all the basics already done.

Now Combat? Honestly kind of doubt it, they don't have anywhere near the damage modeling needed. And I don't think the Azure scenery would be useful assuming you want to cover any era that's not modern day, which I think's quite important for a combat sim. I feel like you'd need to basically build a new sim from scratch, and honestly I doubt it would be able to do anything that DCS & IL-2 can't already do, personally I don't think it would be worth pursuing that.

Train Simulator I feel mixed on, I don't think the scenery in its current form it would be great, MSFS looks really reasonable on the ground, but I think it's just short of what you'd want for a ground based sim like MSTS2. Not to mention you'd still have to redo a lot of things to support trains I'm sure. Having said that it would still probably look a whole lot better than the FSX based MSTS2 even in its current state. I'd also say there's more value to having a competitor in that space than in combat flight sims. Dovetail's Train Simulator 2020 is still the go to despite how old it is, only Dovetail's own Train Sim World comes close, and that is way behind it in many ways. Having someone else enter the field could push the genre forward considerably, especially if it was someone like Microsoft and if it brings something like the Azure scenery which hasn't been seen in a train sim before.

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by Jnin