Feeling bad for Laminar and others

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

Soft mesh is fine in many cases if the orthoimagery is high enough resolution, but the ortho is low res...

At first I was ok with it, but the more I fly, the more it is bothering me, and now I really think the ortho should have been at least one nudge higher res and just make me wait longer to start a flight. Flights start fast, almost too fast.

Here is a preview of MSFS 2050 🙂

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

9 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

Soft mesh is fine in many cases if the orthoimagery is high enough resolution, but the ortho is low res...

At first I was ok with it, but the more I fly, the more it is bothering me, and now I really think the ortho should have been at least one nudge higher res and just make me wait longer to start a flight. Flights start fast, almost too fast.

Here is a preview of MSFS 2050 🙂

Or a preview of XP12.... 😉 

[Slides 1,552]

3 hours ago, HighBypass said:

But Asobo don't build military hardware... LM will be doing fine as long as there is a human race... 

Oh yeah. I'm more worried about the P3D team. They could vanish one day and no one at LM would even notice.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

2 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Or a preview of XP12.... 😉 

That would be amazing, but I think I'd need an RTX 9999 with 2 TB Ram to run those textures.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

2 minutes ago, Slides said:

Oh yeah. I'm more worried about the P3D team. They could vanish one day and no one at LM would even notice.

It definitely has more of a potential to hurt P3D sales than Xplane IMO, because more of the same crossover crowd.

[KBUR 178]

10 hours ago, mazex said:

The DCS and IL2 teams are naturally are a bit shaky as well, even though they might actually benefit from this new interest in flight sims in my opinion as there is no air combat in MSFS (yet - CFS4 anyone?). A newsletter this week from 1C Game Studios (that makes theIL2 Great Battles series) makes it very clear that they know where we are this week 🙂

LOL; yes, the IL-2 team wrote in their official letter on steam: 

Quote

"We are aware that many of you are sight-seeing in your Cessna or flying an Airbus today. We consider this activity a little perverse of course. Not that there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not our thing! However, with everyone being in a flying mood today, we have launched our REAL VIRTUAL PILOTS FLY COMBAT....."

Yes, 100 % agree , simulating a flying computer in a computer (like an Airbus) is really perverse  .  Combat simflying is the real stuff, but everyone has different preferences

E.g yesterday I saw a MSFS 2020 multiplayer video on youtube where a virtual moron has tried to launch a Boeing 747 from VNLK Lukla airport ; he had failed surprisingly , after chopping off the roofs of the adjoining houses.

All the best.

[LHookins 3,102]

36 minutes ago, KBUR said:

E.g yesterday I saw a MSFS 2020 multiplayer video on youtube where a virtual moron has tried to launch a Boeing 747 from VNLK Lukla airport ; he had failed surprisingly , after chopping off the roofs of the adjoining houses.

I saw a video where he succeeded. 😄 

All the while I'm thinking, "Thank goodness for flight sims."

Hook

[Paraffin 2,197]

41 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

It definitely has more of a potential to hurt P3D sales than Xplane IMO, because more of the same crossover crowd.

Probably, although there are a lot of GA and VFR pilots in X-Plane who will be drawn to the sightseeing aspect of MSFS. I think many will be flying both sims or moving to MSFS eventually when the aircraft hangar fills out.

Longer term, I think it will hit P3D harder due to 3rd party developer migration. There will still be a few 3rd party aircraft and scenery devs working in X-Plane for years, either because it's familiar and much harder to transition to MSFS, or because they're serving the Mac user base who have no other place to go for their civilian flight simming.

On the P3D side, and assuming all the kinks in flight and systems modeling are worked out, I don't know why any commercial developer wouldn't move exclusively to MSFS.

 

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

1 hour ago, tweekz said:

Where MSFS really does a great job is reducing differences between tiles like you have in the top right corner. Not talking about those numbers lol. 😄 At least in my area, with fields, MSFS looks lightyears better than my Google ortho imagery in XP although Google imagery has better resolution.

By analyzing the images and placing texture masks and 3D grass / trees this really results in an awesome experience. Must be especially great once VR is out.

You are right with the resolution tho. That is a little downside, but honestly, with all the generic objects on top, you don't even notice much of it in game.

One point that shouldnt be dismissed that MSFS has over X-Plane 11 and Ortho4xp is that fact that the data is being streamed from a central repository.  I spent the better part of a year setting up X-Plane with my own hi-res zoom level 17, with select area 18 and even 19 for some airports.  Sure it looked nice, but a) it took a TON of disk space, and b) I was the only beneficiary.

Since MSFS's data is on a centralized server, if and when they update an area's mesh and/or ortho resolution ... EVERYONE gets it right away.  Users dont need to go and re-run their own cumbersome software, they dont need to buy yet another SSD to stick in their laptop.  When Asobo releases the first of their promised region updates, the entire community will instantly benefit, most likely with a lot of new screen-shot posts etc.

I'll admit that I had some fun trying to trick out some scenery areas that I'd lived in with OSM data and orthos in X-plane, was quite proud looking at them especially in vr.  But as I posted in another thread, I was just blown away by MSFS's out of the box coverage of one of those very same areas to the point that I've boxed up all of my former efforts on a backup drive.

It will be hard to compete (to the degree that scenery detail and beauty are a thing) with this centralized distribution model vs one that requires users to do all the heavy lifting as the months go by.

[ThrottleUp 617]

10 hours ago, mazex said:

 

 

Now that 👆 is how I was hoping Offline Mode was gonna look like in MSFS! I'd have bought it already if that had been the case!

 

 

11 hours ago, mazex said:

I really am feeling bad about the teams at Laminar and Lockheed that for many years has kept this hobby alive. Lockheed has some other

I wouldn't worry about LM - they make trillions in the military business, a bunch of civvies not buying their ESP-derived flight sim is not gonna hurt them at all. 

X-Plane is like that quiet nerdy student in the back of the class. Overshadowed by the giants but chugging along quietly led by an enthusiastic and extremely knowledgeable Austin Meyer. They've been around a long long time and will be around a long long time! Their sim is popular, mobile app even more popular and as someone else pointed out XP11 is FAA-certified with the proper FAA hardware setup. A set number hours in it can count towards a license. 

 

 

8 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

I think I am one of the few people that purchased MSFS 2020 and then went back to buy FSX, lol!  But the lessons in FSX are so good, I need that information to get more out of MSFS 2020.  I just wished MSFS 2020 had all the lessons from FSX (not sure why they couldn't have ported it over).  I'm sure in 2 to 3 years, there will be a lot of good 3rd party add on lessons for MSFS 2020 but I can't wait and I want to learn now.

I totally agree with you. For an utter flight sim n00b I would suggest getting FSX just for the excellent lessons. It can be had for so cheap these days. You did a good thing, the lessons will serve you well. Unfortunately these days many people only want the eye candy so the thought of getting a sim from 2006 will make them shudder. I actually plan to re-install FSX since I have some great Orbx scenery for it!

 

 

5 hours ago, Paraffin said:

In terms of scenery... Austin has deprecated the ortho-based scenery approach in the past. It's not his thing

I didn't know that, cool info! Im glad he feels that way as I feel the same, never been a fan of ortho & any kind of photo scenery and I hope he doesnt change his mind with XP12!

Edited August 22, 2020 by ThrottleUp

[Slides 1,552]

23 minutes ago, ThrottleUp said:

I didn't know that, cool info! Im glad he feels that way as I feel the same, never been a fan of ortho & any kind of photo scenery and I hope he doesnt change his mind with XP12!

I think the market has pretty much decided what they like and it's not Austin's vision. 

And it's clear from all of these comments that even for hardcore serious flight simmers, visual fidelity is important.

[SpiritFlyer 987]

1 hour ago, Slides said:

I think the market has pretty much decided what they like and it's not Austin's vision. 

And it's clear from all of these comments that even for hardcore serious flight simmers, visual fidelity is important.

Yes it is. It feels good too.

When a simulation both looks and feels right the way FS 2020 does, it's over for me.

Others may make a different choice. After all, in this community we are often known for our contrariness anyhow.

Kind regards,

Spirit Flyer 

Stephen

[Adrian123 1,015]

4 minutes ago, SpiritFlyer said:

contrariness

I had to look that up in a Dictionary. Opinionated also. 🙂

Edited August 22, 2020 by Adrian123

[SpiritFlyer 987]

7 minutes ago, Adrian123 said:

I had to look that up in a Dictionary. Opinionated also. 🙂

Contrariness, opinionated, and stubborn too! Those are necessary well rounded attributes for people like us.

Anyone that stuck with the flight sims we (once) had, and worked on them for the hundreds (or thousands) of hours the way we did, needed them all,

and then some.

Kind, contrary, opinionated and stubborn regards,

Spirit Flyer 

Stephen

 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

2 hours ago, VFXSimmer said:

One point that shouldnt be dismissed that MSFS has over X-Plane 11 and Ortho4xp is that fact that the data is being streamed from a central repository.  I spent the better part of a year setting up X-Plane with my own hi-res zoom level 17, with select area 18 and even 19 for some airports.  Sure it looked nice, but a) it took a TON of disk space, and b) I was the only beneficiary.

Since MSFS's data is on a centralized server, if and when they update an area's mesh and/or ortho resolution ... EVERYONE gets it right away.  Users dont need to go and re-run their own cumbersome software, they dont need to buy yet another SSD to stick in their laptop.  When Asobo releases the first of their promised region updates, the entire community will instantly benefit, most likely with a lot of new screen-shot posts etc.

I'll admit that I had some fun trying to trick out some scenery areas that I'd lived in with OSM data and orthos in X-plane, was quite proud looking at them especially in vr.  But as I posted in another thread, I was just blown away by MSFS's out of the box coverage of one of those very same areas to the point that I've boxed up all of my former efforts on a backup drive.

It will be hard to compete (to the degree that scenery detail and beauty are a thing) with this centralized distribution model vs one that requires users to do all the heavy lifting as the months go by.

The overlay is good in MSFS, but the quality of the ortho can be pretty dreadful. Firstly, its Bing - which is way behind Google and Arc for mostbof the world - and secondly Its streamed.

The sins of the ortho are partially hidden by the nice houses and insane number of trees placed everywhere. But if you look, the ortho itself is often not a pretty sight. Nothing like the ZL17 you mention building yourself.