AIG AI Manager OCI for MSFS – Development Announcement

[pilatuz 141]

Asobo are arrogant in their dealings with customers priorities vs their own (and/or the suits at MS..). We get what we get, with very little considered as far as the end users requests.

I'm pretty happy with it so far, but it still doesn't replace P3D for me. MSFS still feels like a shiny cheap plastic toy far from a robust simulation tool that P3D has become. I look forward to talking to P3D at FSExpo this year and see what they have to say about the future.

The future for MSFS is going to be verrrry slow and painful for those hoping things like AI traffic will be improved.

[captain420 3,099]

25 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

The 2nd most spoken language in the world isn't important?

That's irrelevant. What does that have to do with MSFS?

How is having chinese localization in MSFS more important than other issues such AI traffic, lighting, weather, etc? Please stay on topic, you're taking this thread off track.

Edited September 18, 2021 by captain420

[Tuskin38 6,634]

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

How is having chinese localization in MSFS more important than other issues such AI traffic, lighting, weather, etc? Please stay on topic, you're taking this thread off track.

You're the one who brought it up. More languages is important because it gets more people to buy the sim, meaning more funding towards the other features (like AI). Besides the translation most likely won't be done by the core Asobo team but by a third party, or one of Microsoft's other divisions. It won't take time away from other features. People who do translation are not the AI programmers lol

The ranking does not equal Asobo's priority. It's just based on the number of votes for the thread(s) on the forums. Asobo isn't the one saying it's the 2nd most important, it's the customers voting on the forums.

If you want AI higher up, people need to vote for it.

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Tuskin38

[Manny 1,293]

 

I left KPhx today and I saw this many airplanes

[Tuskin38 6,634]

The big issue I've noticed with live aircraft, is that they only spawn within 20-30NM of your aircraft. Which is why you never seem more than 3-5 except when over busy airways/airports.

Meanwhile offline traffic spawn way further out. I don't know the exact range.

Edited September 19, 2021 by Tuskin38

[Kaiii3 1,980]

6 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

The big issue I've noticed with live aircraft, is that they only spawn within 20-30NM of your aircraft. Which is why you never seem more than 3-5 except when over busy airways/airports.

Meanwhile offline traffic spawn way further out. I don't know the exact range.

Offline spawing is within the same sectors as in FSX/P3D. Aprox 60-100KM around the User, depending oin the location on the globe.

[honanhal 1,427]

Well, this was a depressing thread. 🙁

Kaiii3, as much as we’d all like to see Asobo remedy the issues you’ve identified so AIG can release a package that meets your high standards, I’m struck that none of these problems on their face would seemingly stop AIG (or another outfit) from releasing a reasonably complete and feature-rich AI package for MSFS as it exists today. What would that look like?

1) Only native gITF models (caveats: not all models converted, converted models sometimes disappear in the sim)

2) ATC and AI behavior less than ideal until Asobo fixes them.

Maybe I’m crazy, but that…doesn’t seem that bad? Anyone who uses MSFS and is a fan of AIG’s work in FSX/P3D would surely be glad to get a package like that released this year.

Some others have mentioned Henrik’s ship package, which he recently updated and released though it’s missing wakes and some models that have to be converted. This is largely the MSFS addon paradigm — incomplete initial releases that are updated incrementally as fixes/conversions are complete. Has AIG made a final decision not to adopt that release model?

I understand you’re perfectionists, but I’d gently suggest that letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here could mean we all lack AI traffic in MSFS for years, since the fixes you mention depend on Asobo making changes to offline AI when their priority is clearly online AI. Indeed, it’s not impossible these fixes will never be made.

(And because AIG controls the models, the paints, and the flight plans, no one else will be (legally) able to release an imperfect-but-much-better-than-nothing offline solution. You’ve ensured that you’re the only game in town.)

James

[Tuskin38 6,634]

53 minutes ago, honanhal said:

And because AIG controls the models, the paints, and the flight plans, no one else will be (legally) able to release an imperfect-but-much-better-than-nothing offline solution. You’ve ensured that you’re the only game in town.

The person making the addon has to ask permission from the original artists.

Some of the liveries and models are not owned by AIG, AIG just has permission from the original artists to to use and distribute them with AIG flight plans.

There are some liveries however made only for AIG.

At least that’s how I understand it.

Edited September 19, 2021 by Tuskin38

[DMullert 216]

13 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

The 2nd most spoken language in the world isn't important?

Eeerrrr - Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world........Google it!  🙂

[Kaiii3 1,980]

1 hour ago, honanhal said:

Well, this was a depressing thread. 🙁

Kaiii3, as much as we’d all like to see Asobo remedy the issues you’ve identified so AIG can release a package that meets your high standards, I’m struck that none of these problems on their face would seemingly stop AIG (or another outfit) from releasing a reasonably complete and feature-rich AI package for MSFS as it exists today. What would that look like?

1) Only native gITF models (caveats: not all models converted, converted models sometimes disappear in the sim)

2) ATC and AI behavior less than ideal until Asobo fixes them.

Maybe I’m crazy, but that…doesn’t seem that bad? Anyone who uses MSFS and is a fan of AIG’s work in FSX/P3D would surely be glad to get a package like that released this year.

Some others have mentioned Henrik’s ship package, which he recently updated and released though it’s missing wakes and some models that have to be converted. This is largely the MSFS addon paradigm — incomplete initial releases that are updated incrementally as fixes/conversions are complete. Has AIG made a final decision not to adopt that release model?

I understand you’re perfectionists, but I’d gently suggest that letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here could mean we all lack AI traffic in MSFS for years, since the fixes you mention depend on Asobo making changes to offline AI when their priority is clearly online AI. Indeed, it’s not impossible these fixes will never be made.

(And because AIG controls the models, the paints, and the flight plans, no one else will be (legally) able to release an imperfect-but-much-better-than-nothing offline solution. You’ve ensured that you’re the only game in town.)

James

Hendrik has the advantage to be the developer off all of his models, so he can convert them from time to time to the new format.

AIG has premission for around 60-80% of the needed models so far to convert. For some of them our team has the original files and "build" them directly in the new glTF format, for the rest we need MCX to do this conversion process and from what I have heard last is that the process in MCX is not that stright forward at the moment and is taking quite some time, but Jay is is contact with Arno about it already. So these can be converted at a later stage.

Models we do not have premission yet incl.: FAIB (we are in contact with the developer but there are currently other things on the priority list for him), OSP (author inactive) and some russian stuff.

If we would now skip all models we have not yet converted or do not have yet premission the skies will be kind of empty. MDLX was our "fallback" for this case and that has worked till SU5 without major issues. The textures of all FAIBs have been updated and the the FDE been developed so they work in MSFS, but SU5 killed the MDLX compability so we basically can no longer release any prodct containing these models. Based on the original fallback our guys have started with models to convert that had no FSX version so we could get them in MSFS first.

So basically SU5/WU6 have scrwed my inital roadmap and added one if not two new varaibles in the release plans.....

All above is only about the "visibility" with in the Sim, but there is actual much more. The internal AI system of FSX/P3D is close to the point of collaps when adding that much 3rd party AI to it as we do with our addon (100% installation).

The fact that MSFS has a "reduced" AI System (online and offline) compared to FSX/P3D is not helping the case here. The good thing is that the internal AI system of MSFS is shared between Live and Offline, so each update is for both system the same. Running the same seztup in P3D/FSX and MSFS currenly results in MSFS in far more issues (go arounds, timeouts, missing gates, ATC spamming, ...)

Hendrik has done a great job with his Ship AI package, but you can not compare Ship AI with Aviation AI in this sim, for his project he mostly needed to upgrade the SimObjects and the rest is still based on the lagacy code within MSFS (at least as far as I know). For Aviation AI almost 90% of the stuff has changed and adapting to this is currently a very time consuming task and each updated so far has pushed us even further back.... If we would have released before SU5, I would have to remove around 90% of the content cause it is no longer working.

If you do not want/can not wait for a "all in one package" to get released feel free to build up your own AI setup as it was normal before AIG has released OCI back in 2018 😉 Btw: The transition from FSX/P3D (32bit) to P3Dv4 (64bit) took more then 2 years with a stable Simulator in the backend and the transition to P3Dv5 is not even fully done yet. AIG has never released something incomplete and we will not start with that now just because of MSFS, we will release AIM has an public beta at some point to test the software.

 

Btw: AIG is not controlling as much as you all thing: AIG has the copyright on a few models, liveries, soundpacks (not required in MSFS) and our flightplans. The majority of models and liveries is not released under the AIG banner and is not under the control of AIG. The copyright remains by the individual developers (many of them work closely with AIG and this might result in misunderstandings).

[Tuskin38 6,634]

2 hours ago, DMullert said:

Eeerrrr - Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world........Google it!  🙂

Yes, looking at only native speakers (first learned language), Mandarin Chinese is first and Spanish is second. But if you include non-native speakers (not their first language), English is first, Mandarin is second and Spanish is fourth.

Edited September 19, 2021 by Tuskin38

[Sigwolf 222]

4 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Ah my bad, the list I was looking at was total speakers not just native speakers.

You were not incorrect, it is Dennis who is mistaken.  If you actually click that first link that Google gives as the answer, it shows that Spanish is the second most among native speakers because first is Mandarin.  In terms of total speakers or native speakers, Mandarin is still higher than Spanish, so your original point was valid.

[hanhamreds 592]

Kaiii3, with regards to the SU changes which keep derailing your product - can you see anything with those changes which would indicate that Asobo are working on something themselves? 

[Kaiii3 1,980]

10 minutes ago, hanhamreds said:

Kaiii3, with regards to the SU changes which keep derailing your product - can you see anything with those changes which would indicate that Asobo are working on something themselves? 

not really, the SU5 performance boost was a good direction regarding AI (at least I had hoped so), but without fully working AI at the moment I can not compare....

[honanhal 1,427]

1 hour ago, Kaiii3 said:

Hendrik has done a great job with his Ship AI package, but you can not compare Ship AI with Aviation AI in this sim, for his project he mostly needed to upgrade the SimObjects and the rest is still based on the lagacy code within MSFS (at least as far as I know). 

I brought up Hendrik's project not as a direct comparison in general with AIG (you're right, a lot of apples to oranges between the two), but as an example of a (very typical for MSFS) incremental release model. His initial release was far from ideal, as he said repeatedly. Even his current release is missing what some might see as essential features. But look at how many downloads he's gotten. The fact that it's not yet able to do everything he wants obviously hasn't hurt its popularity!

1 hour ago, Kaiii3 said:

If you do not want/can not wait for a "all in one package" to get released feel free to build up your own AI setup as it was normal before AIG has released OCI back in 2018 😉 Btw: The transition from FSX/P3D (32bit) to P3Dv4 (64bit) took more then 2 years with a stable Simulator in the backend and the transition to P3Dv5 is not even fully done yet. AIG has never released something incomplete and we will not start with that now just because of MSFS, we will release AIM has an public beta at some point to test the software.

Thanks, no. I spent literally hundreds of hours compiling a custom worldwide AI setup first in FSX, and then painstakingly converting it all to P3D 64-bit. To be honest, when I think about how much time it took -- and the maddening fact that I was unable to share the fruits of all that time and effort with anyone else, and that everyone else who wanted AI had to do the same thing all over again -- I can't help getting frustrated. What an incredible waste that was. (Yes, maybe unavoidable due to IP issues, but let's be clear that that doesn't make it any less of a waste.) I literally could have learned another language in the time I spent doing what hundreds or even thousands of other people were also doing, reinventing the wheel simply because we weren't free to share with each other.

Sorry, I didn't come into this thread to beat this particular drum, so I'll leave it there.

Thanks for the clear answer that AIG is ruling out an incremental, "less than perfect" approach to releasing for MSFS. IMHO, if AIG's approach remains that the platform has to be both a) stable and b) feature complete before you'll even really commit to the project (let alone release), you're going to miss the boat in MSFS. It's as simple as that. That would be a real loss for everyone, and I really hope you guys will reconsider.

1 hour ago, Kaiii3 said:

Btw: AIG is not controlling as much as you all thing: AIG has the copyright on a few models, liveries, soundpacks (not required in MSFS) and our flightplans. The majority of models and liveries is not released under the AIG banner and is not under the control of AIG. The copyright remains by the individual developers (many of them work closely with AIG and this might result in misunderstandings).

My point is that, in the current flightsim ecosystem, AIG has built what amounts to an IP monopoly on the combination of ingredients you need to produce a comprehensive AI package. No other group is going to be in a position to do that legally in the space of the next few years. What that means is that when it comes to offline AI in MSFS, it's really either you guys or no one, which is why I'm frankly heartbroken that "no one" seems more likely all the time. ☹️

James