8 hours ago, 744 driver said:

.... No way I was ever gonna pay for a product twice. Glad I didn’t because here we have MSFS and it is the future....

But you probably would pay twice for PMDG or A2A aircraft in MSFS?

Karl

On 2/3/2021 at 3:27 PM, ErichB said:

That is exactly my position.

 

Likewise .

On 2/3/2021 at 9:29 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

I'm coming at this from a slightly different angle. Let's fast forward to the day when PMDG has released a 737 / 777 for MSFS. When you're up at FL350 and streaming the scenery just how different will the Earth look compared to P3D with FS Global, FTX Global and UTX Europe / USA Ultimate?

Individual buildings are not going to be visible in MSFS. Rivers will be but then again they're visible in P3D with those addons. Detailed coastlines will be virtually the same. So what big difference will MSFS give over P3D? I'm struggling to work that out.

The downsides are no historic weather and if it's a night flight you're downloading Mb of data that is virtually invisible. Only if you fly that route in daytime will the cached scenery be useful.

And will the flight engine in MSFS be significantly better than that in P3D? It seems to me that MSFS is a superb VFR simulator but has no huge advantage over P3D for IFR.

For me, XPlane with Ortho compared to P3D with the addons you suggest, is like night and day

I get the points you are making, but the reality is - looking down at satellite imagery from FL350 looks so much better than looking down at generic textures with landclass, terrain data etc

It's just completely different, IMO of course

Plus there is the immersion of just knowing that you're looking down at what the world looks like from that point on earth - MSFS is enabling us to simulate actually travelling from somewhere on earth to somewhere that looks very different, that's not something P3D and it's myriad of addons has done very well IMO

What MSFS needs now, other than a bit more patience from it's customers, is the steady migration of the amazing addons that DO put P3D ahead in some areas - it's airliners, GSX etc - as well as on-going performance tweaks from Asobo to make something like the PMDG 777 viable in this new platform

Edited February 8, 20215 yr by EGLD

7 hours ago, Bigt said:

I'm confused with comments like this and I see them a lot.  What type of flying are you doing? I'm legitimately curious. If VFR, then I can understand this. But for anyone who likes "Tubeliners" or "Heavies", how can you possibly not still be flying P3D?

You can add me to this group. Like Tom, it's not that I think the FBW A320 is perfect. It's got some weirdness that's still being worked out. But even in that imperfect condition I'm having a great time flying it in MSFS.

Sure, flying the FSL Airbus in P3D would have its advantages. Those are well known and I won't rehash them. But there are also some key disadvantages vice MSFS and the FBW. I'm not just talking about visuals, either (although being able to fly in Africa or Asia and not have the terrain look like it stepped out of 1993 is a big plus). Performance in P3D is terrible compared to MSFS, and the FSL pushes P3D to its performance limit. The Weather in P3D is much, much cruder.

Bottom line is that I can't go back to P3D. Does it do certain things better? Sure, for now. But I also think that in some amount of time, be it 6 months, a year, two years, MSFS will do all those things better, too. We'll see.

James

1 hour ago, EGLD said:

I get the points you are making, but the reality is - looking down at satellite imagery from FL350 looks so much better than looking down at generic textures with landclass, terrain data etc

It's just completely different, IMO of course

The scenery is much better. I'm not denying that. But with no external weather program permitted and no internal DLLs allowed it is not a very attractive offering for me. Hi-Fi are the masters of weather and with no drivers for my GoFlight modules they become dust-gatherers.

It's like having a fantastic looking girlfriend with few social or practical skills.

15 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But with no external weather program permitted and no internal DLLs allowed it is not a very attractive offering for me. Hi-Fi are the masters of weather and with no drivers for my GoFlight modules they become dust-gatherers.

I don't know about others, but I think the default weather engine is very good and immersive, as we said before, it doesn't have these transitions to change weather, you get the weather predictions as they are in the whole world when you look at Meteorblue weather maps. 

1 minute ago, omarsmak30 said:

I don't know about others, but I think the default weather engine is very good and immersive, as we said before, it doesn't have these transitions to change weather, you get the weather predictions as they are in the whole world when you look at Meteorblue weather maps. 

Exactly. Only two real issues I have with MSFS weather as implemented are 1) live weather occasionally breaking (this is pretty rare for me but others seem to have less luck) and 2) icing effects way overdone (this is not so much an issue with the weather itself but in the way it interacts with aircraft). Otherwise it's hands down the finest weather implementation I've seen in a sim.

Sure, I'd love for there to be a historic weather option (and I'm hopeful some day there will be one) but I can't imagine preferring an addon to the weather engine that's already in the base sim.

1 minute ago, omarsmak30 said:

I don't know about others, but I think the default weather engine is very good and immersive, as we said before, it doesn't have these transitions to change weather, you get the weather predictions as they are in the whole world when you look at Meteorblue weather maps. 

Some of the cumulo-nimbus clouds look less than realistic but the most important thing is no historic weather. So if I want to fly out of LAX at 09:00 local I can only do it at 17:00 British time. But I want to fly at 10:00 British. I can set historical wx in P3D but cannot in MSFS.

The weather needs icing toned down, but also needs to feel... threatening? No lenticular clouds. I can fly into anvils and cells without issue. Lack of hail and cirrus and fog etc.

It's the best we've had. With a little more work it could be perfect.

1 minute ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Some of the cumulo-nimbus clouds look less than realistic but the most important thing is no historic weather. So if I want to fly out of LAX at 09:00 local I can only do it at 17:00 British time. But I want to fly at 10:00 British. I can set historical wx in P3D but cannot in MSFS.

Well these will be improved as Asobo already mentioned the default weather will be always on-going improvements. For the historical weather you are right about, I will hope it see it implemented in MSFS.

Anyway Ray, try MSFS first (when you can) and then we can debate about it further 🙂   

1 minute ago, omarsmak30 said:

Well these will be improved as Asobo already mentioned the default weather will be always on-going improvements. For the historical weather you are right about, I will hope it see it implemented in MSFS.

Anyway Ray, try MSFS first (when you can) and then we can debate about it further 🙂   

Unless Asobo state historic weather will be implemented it's unlikely I'll be buying it for that and the other reasons given.

1 hour ago, EGLD said:

I get the points you are making, but the reality is - looking down at satellite imagery from FL350 looks so much better than looking down at generic textures with landclass, terrain data etc

It's not just that. Think of when people complain that Ortho looks horrible on low altitudes. MSFS not only gives you worldwide free ortho coverage (which is already great by itself), it also puts objects like grass or fitting textures according to the satellite image so it looks great even when flying low.

Also the generic objects are not only placed correctly but also look plausible.

With MSFS I can truly look out of the window and recognize where I am - not guess by streets, rivers, terrain etc.

The immersion is just fantastic. Take that as an example.

 

42 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

it doesn't have these transitions to change weather

True, I find sudden wind changes on cruise or going from CAVOK into overcast condition on final approach way more immersion breaking than not 100% correct weather.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Unless Asobo state historic weather will be implemented it's unlikely I'll be buying it for that and the other reasons given.

I'd venture you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Of course we all have different things we consider essential but I'd be willing to overlook the lack of historic weather once "study level" tubeliners have started to appeared in MFS. And at that point the lack of DLL gauge support shall be a non-issue (might even be a blessing as it means less hobbled legacy stuff floating around in the new sim). Having said that I generally fly VATSIM so I have to use live weather, even if I set time back 12 hours so it's daylight for me. I've always found the MFS live weather very good and frankly don't want third party payware developers messing with it, creating discreprencies between players in the online environment.

Whilst there's no historic weather for now did you know you can manually set the weather however you want? So it's quite possible to get it matching a historic metar, although this would be a manual process it is relatively intuative. You could use live weather above FL100 (since it's probably not that different to a few hours ago) then set it manually again as you descend to lower levels.

Having said all that, you may as well stick with P3Dv4 or v5 until some tubliners appears. Although personally I haven't felt the need to return to P3Dv4 I've scratched my IFR itch with the WT CJ4. I see you're still clutching onto P3Dv3 for the Concorde, I was in a similar boat with the PMDG JS41 and FSX but ultimately I just couldn't face going back to the OOMs, so coupled with a lack of storage space on my system and I had to abandon it.

Edited February 8, 20215 yr by ckyliu

@ckyliu, Clutching onto P3Dv3? I use it for the 32-bit FS Labs Concorde and only Concorde until such time as the 64-bit P3D version is available. I don’t get OOMs because I use sensible settings.

You seem very sure quality aircraft from FSL and PMDG will appear in MSFS. Well not until the SDK is complete. Have Asobo given any indication when that will be completed?

Setting the weather manually? No thanks. That would be like going back 20 years. And it’s not just surface weather. It’s upper winds which are important.

I’m more than happy staying with P3D v4 for the foreseeable future. And I’m not alone either.