Hello simmers,

As I read many topics about this, I wanted to say I don't think the question of MSFS being a game or a sim is not relevant. As long as you enjoy using it, gaming or flying, who cares?

What I wanted to say here is about the way to define a good professional sim. The first I flew into a professional full flight Level-D sim at Air France facilities, I was surprised to see the visual was terribly awful, not even textured, something similar to what we had in the early days of PC simulation with no 3D acceleration. The instructors and trained pilots didn't care much about this because the important points were:

1. The spatial environment: the most important for the pilot is to feel he is in the real aircraft. This is why the cockpit is reproduced exactly like the real one, most of the equipment (stick, levers, buttons, pedals) are EXACTLY the same as in the real aircraft
2. The systems must react exactly like the real ones, especially the ways they react in case of a failure. Professional sims are mostly used to simulate any kind of failure.
3. The visuals come in the last position. If the pilot can see the runway and land on it, with the possibility to add 1 other aircraft to train collision avoidance, that's enough.

Nevertheless, some time later I flew the last generation CAE sim at Airbus Training (when it was still existing) and the visuals were very good, not better than what we had in FSX, but it was good. Having good visuals is good, but some other parts of the simulation are more important to them.

In our field, it is different. Most of us give a high importance to visuals and cannot afford a real size cockpit, so let's stop the comparison between MSFS and real sims, let's enjoy it and that's it 🙂

Don't hesitate to comment, any reaction is greatly welcome.

"Yes, we love them for their mind, not their body and soul.'- Mr. Engineer

Most of the comparisons are not with regard to the multi-million quid real things they airlines use, they are the childish 'p***ing contest' between several home-based PC sims.

Personally I've never understood the need to do that; they all have their merits and it's not as if you have to sign your name in blood and swear an oath to one piece of software. MSFS is currently a bit cack if you want to simulate a super-duper real-world IFR 747 flight, but if you want to practice VFR circuits at your local airport, it's great. This is not a difficult concept to grasp.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Chock

I agree - the essence is what the user looks for and if he gets what he/she wants in a certain simulator.

Every offering on the market has different emphasis and strengths, and this is what keeps each of them viable and in the game.

If MSFS would be best not only in looks, but also in the other areas of a "flight simulation" then it would very quickly displace all the competition.

In the end it doesnt matter. Thats right.

But at least for a short moment i expect a Sim when the Software i just paid 120 Bucks for calls itself "Flight Simulator".

Who cares? If it wasn't important we would not discuss it at (you know the word.)

Let simmers discuss what they want even when they don't know what they are talking about. What a concept.

BTW, for some members, that's fun too. 😀

3 hours ago, Rocky said:

...The first I flew into a professional full flight Level-D sim at Air France facilities, I was surprised to see the visual was terribly awful, not even textured, something similar to what we had in the early days of PC simulation with no 3D acceleration. The instructors and trained pilots didn't care much about this because the important points were:

1. The spatial environment: the most important for the pilot is to feel he is in the real aircraft. This is why the cockpit is reproduced exactly like the real one, most of the equipment (stick, levers, buttons, pedals) are EXACTLY the same as in the real aircraft
2. The systems must react exactly like the real ones, especially the ways they react in case of a failure. Professional sims are mostly used to simulate any kind of failure.
3. The visuals come in the last position. If the pilot can see the runway and land on it, with the possibility to add 1 other aircraft to train collision avoidance, that's enough.

With Full Flight Training devices they have a lifespan of decades and most of the sims open to the public are of the older variety. The newest off the manufacture floor sims are generally booked with real world crew training. Regardless, the newest sims still do not use the graphics technology like what is used in MSFS. 

One of the reasons is the training sims MUST provide a solid 60 fps the entire time. This is not on a single monitor or a pair of VR goggles, but to a specialty trio of projectors that create an image across the 200 degree by 40 degree screen in front of the crew. This imaging technology is so advanced that position parallax is  exactly as you would expect in the real airplane. That is a spot projected on the screen and observed by the Captain (i.e. the touchdown markers) are faithfully represented so when viewed by the First Officer (and the Instructor station) it is correct. The scenery node on our latest FFS is run by six nVidia Quadro R6000 graphics cards (two in SLI per projector.)

The airports are divided into two levels, Class I and II fully detailed airports and anytown airports. Class I and II airports must be designed and modeled to strict criteria so from the airplane side of the buildings everything looks correct. Often our company far exceeds the minimum specifications, however eye bleeding graphics is not the goal here. Yes the scenery generator on the newest sims can handle a lot, however the scenery also has to fit on the sims made decades ago. Where our modern devices have 500 TB of scenery storage in RAID 10 the older sims are not as lucky. Even with all of the graphic processing power and the storage we cannot put all 400+ Class I and II airports onto the scenery server for the FFS. Other problems creep in. I also should not say 400+ airports, but 400+ airport areas. Take the New York area and you get KJFK, KLGA, KEWR, and KTEB as one airport area.

The FFS is run by a bank of servers. Ours are 32 core Xeons with 32GB or RAM on each blade. A number of blades are combined into a node for each function of the simulation. Scenery is just one node, you also have motion, sound, flight, systems (sometimes divided onto multiple nodes,) avionics, traffic, atmosphere and weather, the GNSS and SBAS constellations, IOS, and of course the master node that coordinates and combines everything. Below and behind the FFS in its own room are the server stacks. This is the stuff most pilots never see. The sim also carries a number of computers in the cab. When you look at the umbilical connecting the sim to the ground and realize there are a number of fiberoptic connections for communication with the server racks you start get the concept of the computational power of these beasts. 

I would not say that visuals are last priority for FFS, they are part of the whole. As pilots rotate through our new sims they are amazed in the increase in depth and quality of the sim. Advancements are continually made as they improve the various aspects of the systems that make up the visuals. 4K projectors, higher quality prisms, and moving from mylar to mirror screens. But the people who work in the scenery department have to continue to develop with older sims in mind. There may be only a few Class I and II airports that take full advantage of our advanced scenery systems and of course our sims can run older scenery.

I would love to see MSFS graphics into a FFS, but I doubt it will happen in the short term. The modern devices are more than capable, but you have to consider that 20 year old sim that is still making money training. At $14 million for a FFS they are not cheap to replace. 

It's a game under the simulation genre. A simulation game.

There I said it 🙈

Actually there is a flight simulator that is pretty much built with what the OP is saying in mind: it is Aerowinx PSX. It's a 747-400 simulation and it is wonderful. Not appealing for everyone tho, due to its essential external graphics.

Actually it's the only desk simulator I have seen in 40 years where actual pilots find no compromise at all.

Andrea

23 minutes ago, ADamiani said:

Actually there is a flight simulator that is pretty much built with what the OP is saying in mind: it is Aerowinx PSX. It's a 747-400 simulation and it is wonderful. Not appealing for everyone tho, due to its essential external graphics.

Actually it's the only desk simulator I have seen in 40 years where actual pilots find no compromise at all.

Andrea

True! That was pretty much the first real sim i used back in the days. And it was pretty expensive!

3 hours ago, KenG said:

With Full Flight Training devices they have a lifespan of decades and most of the sims open to the public are of the older variety. The newest off the manufacture floor sims are generally booked with real world crew training. Regardless, the newest sims still do not use the graphics technology like what is used in MSFS. 

One of the reasons is the training sims MUST provide a solid 60 fps the entire time. This is not on a single monitor or a pair of VR goggles, but to a specialty trio of projectors that create an image across the 200 degree by 40 degree screen in front of the crew. This imaging technology is so advanced that position parallax is  exactly as you would expect in the real airplane. That is a spot projected on the screen and observed by the Captain (i.e. the touchdown markers) are faithfully represented so when viewed by the First Officer (and the Instructor station) it is correct. The scenery node on our latest FFS is run by six nVidia Quadro R6000 graphics cards (two in SLI per projector.)

[...]

Thank you KenG for your answer, full of interesting information, especially for people like me who are interested in professional simulation.

As you wrote, FFS lifespan is counted in decades, which is why a company like Air France may have old ones (like the A320 sim I flew) and more recent ones, such as the ones for the A380. As you also said, the fidelity of exterior vision and the angle of vision are also important, I was amazed by the quality of it, especially when flying a pattern I could see the runway almost behind me.

You seem to know very much about this sector, what company are you working for?

If you are a specialist, there is one thing, I should even say the ONLY thing that breaks the realism of professional simulators: the amount of light. If you fly by night, this is OK, perfect. But if you fly at day, even if the exterior visualization is bright, it is nothing compared to the real light from the sun, even in a cloudy sky. Real pilots often wear sunglasses, I don't expect to wear sunglasses in a sim, but I often had to turn additional lights on to read the charts even during the day. I still didn't find a solution to this problem, I am still searching 🙂

This discussion might diverge from the original subject, getting further and further to MSFS, but I think it is interesting.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Rocky

Some time in the 2000s clever  folks coined the term "study level". This allowed companies to charge a premium for their toys. Of course, these emperors weren't wearing any clothes, but they managed to convince gullible simmers that by using their stuff they'd be at least three steps closer to the real thing. Furthermore, slick marketing lingo like "tested by real pilots", "7000 pages of original manuals", "numbers exactly like the real thing", "Boeing/Airbus approved" made it seemed like Airbus or Boeing were just a phone call away from offering you a coveted spot in the left seat of the real thing. 

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Ricardo41

22 hours ago, Rocky said:

You seem to know very much about this sector, what company are you working for?

I don't name my company because of strict social media policies. I can talk about what I do, but I cannot bring my company's name into the discussion. However, there is a very good chance you flew one of our products since we are the largest sim manufacture in the world.

22 hours ago, Rocky said:

If you are a specialist, there is one thing, I should even say the ONLY thing that breaks the realism of professional simulators: the amount of light. If you fly by night, this is OK, perfect. But if you fly at day, even if the exterior visualization is bright, it is nothing compared to the real light from the sun, even in a cloudy sky. Real pilots often wear sunglasses, I don't expect to wear sunglasses in a sim, but I often had to turn additional lights on to read the charts even during the day.

I am a chief instructor and have been involved in certification and testing of sims. Thus I have a little more behind the scenes knowledge than an average instructor, but I don't build them or maintain them. Yes, the projection technology results in a dark cab with FTD and FFS. There is no getting around this. The sims with mirrors are a little better, but ultimately the projectors and prisms cannot replicate real world lighting. The newer sims also use creatively located LED lights to help brighten up the cab, but even that is a balance act of enough light versus washing out the projected image. Generally we turn up all of the cockpit lighting in the sim, like preflight at night, for flying during the day. Since most of our clients have moved to iPad minis for charts and manuals it is not as bad as it use to be. 

On 12/19/2020 at 5:55 AM, Chock said:

Most of the comparisons are not with regard to the multi-million quid real things they airlines use, they are the childish 'p***ing contest' between several home-based PC sims.

Quite. Any comparisons between a level D sim and any desktop sim will begin and end with "I wish I had millions of dollars so that I could buy a level D sim instead."

 

The game vs sim debate around MSFS really I think got its start with the p3d licensing thing. Somehow people decided that because Lockheed is contractually obligated to say that their game isn't a game so they don't get sued by Microsoft, that means p3d actually is a full-fledged flying simulator that's somehow in the same league as actual training sims even when installed on a home user's desktop and flown with a $50 joystick.

These are the same kind of people that are convinced by marketing that there's a material difference between a "designer dog" and a mutt. 😉

 

Edited December 20, 20205 yr by eslader

My issue with a  hardware based cockpit or equipment is what do you do to fly multiple types of aircraft.  You can make it exact for say the A320 or the 172, but not both.  I like the Honeycome Bravo approach for this that somewhat will bridge that gap. VR still for me is the best emersion approach, and brings the various cockpits shrouded around me.  Someday will have touch (glove based?..) technology for all the switches and knobs.

The Game or Sim  question to me lies more in the potential capabilities than the current state.  MSFS will absolutely be able to do and exceed everything that its rivals do now.  It will take time and outside development and talent, but I don't see the others matching the visuals of MSFS without a monumental step forward in both world depiction approach and licensing partnerships.  Anyway,  2 days  till VR!.....