A couple of days ago Gamereactor interviewed Jörg Neumann in a 23-minute video.

https://www.gamereactor.eu/video/547083/Microsoft+Flight+Simulator+Jorg+Neumann+Interview/

There is no transcript and not much of it is new, so I will provide a short summary of the interview.

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At first, Jörg talks about how intimidating it was to create a new instalment in a franchise with a huge legacy, but they were positively surprised by the reception of the new simulator. They were hoping to inspire a new generation of aviators, especially considering the current pandemic and pilot crisis, and they are pleased to see lots of young people and children embracing the product. They've lost about two weeks of development time because of the adjustments due to the pandemic, which did have an impact but not a large one.

As Jörg was interacting in various forums to see what people wanted most from a new Flight Simulator, the things that stood out the most were great graphics, a modern engine, and accurate world-wide scenery representation for VFR. The availability of such representation through Bing Maps was one of the things that greatly influenced the decision that now was a good time for a new Flight Simulator. When they started, machine learning methods to create a 3D representation out of elevation data and imagery was still in its infancy, but the power of Azure helped accelerate progress.

Back then, the best photogrammetry data they had was 7,5cm/pixel resolution but now it's down to 3cm/pixel, and they are very keen on addressing the variance of quality throughout the world. They see World Updates as a celebration of the planet, and it is important to nail down what makes the identity of each region, especially building types. For example, for France (the World Update comes in about 4 weeks from the time of the interview) they need castles, for Holland they need windmills, as well as different animal species unique to each region.

Choosing which region to update next mostly depends on new data availability, and since it can be very expensive, they are choosing to benefit from the Bing Maps roadmap. However they will continue to listen to the community, due to strong demand they have planned a South Korea update in 2022 and now they are looking at Italy. They are also considering regions that are less commercial but more meaningful for aviation. Jörg would recommend checking out Mont Blanc (which is getting a hefty upgrade) and the hand-modelled lighthouses.

About the Xbox version, their goal is to make it virtually indistinguishable from the PC version, and right now it looks good but more work is needed. Jörg specifically talked about native controller support, but some companies are already announcing Xbox peripherals specifically for flight simulation and they are very excited about that. In the end he expects that the experience for the hardcore simmer will be very similar to that of the PC version.

The team are very impressed with the amount of add-ons already created, with nearly two hundred aircraft in development. Jörg thinks that innovation in aircraft development will drive the hobby forward, and they are looking to give it more accessibility as well as structure.

Thanks for posting!

"For example, for France (the World Update comes in about 4 weeks from the time of the interview) they need castles "

Yes, as anyone who ever watched Tour de France in the Pyrenees can see !

What's interesting, is there are autogen castle models already, but they're very rare, Probably depends on if the OSM data for the building is labelled as a specific castle type.

Edited March 26, 20215 yr by Tuskin38

They're already pretty good at Castles in Spain. 🤣

8 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

About the Xbox version, their goal is to make it virtually indistinguishable from the PC version

I am afraid of that 🤣

8 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

important to nail down what makes the identity of each region, 

In the same spirit, he has also directed Asobo to dress all the airport ground personel with a beret in France, leather shorts in Germany and a bowler hat in GB

15 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

A couple of days ago Gamereactor interviewed Jörg Neumann in a 23-minute video.

https://www.gamereactor.eu/video/547083/Microsoft+Flight+Simulator+Jorg+Neumann+Interview/

There is no transcript and not much of it is new, so I will provide a short summary of the interview.

Thanks for the recap of the interview.

I don't want to start another drama, but we all should be very concerned by the statement "About the Xbox version, their goal is to make it virtually indistinguishable from the PC version"

Considering the huge difference between a high end PC and the new Xbox, this sentence means that the PC version will be virtually indistinguishable from the Xbox version. 

Edited March 27, 20215 yr by MrFuzzy

25 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

Thanks for the recap of the interview.

I don't want to start another drama, but we should all be very concerned by the statement "About the Xbox version, their goal is to make it virtually indistinguishable from the PC version"

Considering the huge difference between a high end PC and the new Xbox, this sentence means that the PC version will be virtually indistinguishable from the Xbox version. 

Why would that be a concern?  The Xbox has a CPU, GPU, ram and a hard drive that’s probably more capable than the average PC out there today.  There’s plenty of AAA games that run just fine on both console and PC.

Edited March 27, 20215 yr by Gilandred

4 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

I don't want to start another drama, but we should all be very concerned by the statement "About the Xbox version, their goal is to make it virtually indistinguishable from the PC version"

Me neither, but this resonates with what I've posted in the past:

Discussion: Sim Update 3 (1.14.5.0) - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

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This is simple logic, but my logic my not be working correctly at this time maybe. I’ll try to rephrase: if you build a software to run on a console which hardware specs are fixed from the get go, and if in a few years from now a new tech comes up in all NVidia and AMD cards which can double your fps but requires using a special NVidia and/or AMD driver + code implementation, you won’t get any advantage of this tech if the software is designed for both PC and XBox because in this case, it will always boils down to the least common denominator.

If it wouldn’t be the case, you’d already have in FS2020:

• DLSS 2.1 or clear announcements using it. (although NVidia could maybe plug DLSS2.1 as the tech empowering their DirectML API, but will it offer the same level of perf/config or will it be “simplified” to fit the DirectML constraints?)
• RTX Ray Tracing for lights, reflections, shadows, maybe even some of the cloud rendering.
• Maybe more of these…

 

Discussion: Sim Update 3 (1.14.5.0) - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

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 they didn’t add the community folder to the PC version, they will remove it in the Xbox version instead because there is no user accessible file system. The game logic, features, even the UI, are all the same and working the same based on the same code. There is no provision in the application right now for any specific PC only technology, not even Force Feedback which requires using an API (DirectInput) which is only available on PC and not on Xbox.

 

Live Dev Q&A: Guided Question - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

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@Jummivana Force Feedback codebase is not there at all and I believe Martial is thinking about XBox Controller Rumbling instead. This has nothing to do with Force Feedback though otherwise I believe it would be picked up automatically if FS2020 is already implementing both XInput and DirectInput isn’t it?

Rumbling is an XInput feature:
Getting Started With XInput - Win32 apps

XInput is an API that allows applications to receive input from the Xbox Controller for Windows. Controller rumble effects and voice input and output are supported.

Furthermore, XInput has support for force feedback with rumble, and just rumble. Calling the force feedback functions do nothing, and the XInput caps structure reports force feedback is not available. Xinput only supports rumble, not full force feedback. XInput was build to support the Xbox360 controller and only supports features those controllers provide, it has no provisions for additional buttons, axes or full force feedback. All that stuff from DirectInput was left behind to create a much simpler API.

Force Feedback is a DirectInput feature:
DirectInput | Microsoft Docs
DIEFFECT Structure | Microsoft Docs

 

Discussion: February 4th, 2021 Development Update - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

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When I look at the VR update and especially this one which I can’t imagine taking more than 1/2 day work, tests included: “Scaling Slider / Settings (not started / TBD)”

I can’t help thinking it is just about multiplying the matrix returned by OXR by another one to make a translation and optionally a rotation to keep the same focus point, and adding a slider in the UI which value would determine the matrix values representing such position/rotation.

It begs the question whether they are under staffed, can’t change the code because the lead rendering engine developer is working on something else and can’t work on the FS2020 engine until a certain time (and it is not the first time they’re saying so in a Q&A for many other questions related to the visuals and the rendering). Or maybe they can’t change the code because it is not in a maintainable state, or they don’t consider this is important because there is no VR on the XBox.

Whatever the real reasons, I understand adding a matrix multiply might be disruptive in the great scheme of things, but listing this as “Not Started/TBD” for one of the most asked for feature in VR, while being maybe the simplest to implement, is not showing much love to the simmers and VR to me either.

And what about the status of the many other requests and bugs, some having more votes than 2, or even 69, yet not visible in the feedback snapshot?

To illustrate, here are some of my wish list topics to get started (please vote!)
Cockpit Size and World Scale in VR
EFIS Screens Problems and Solutions for higher legibility
Ambient Night Lighting illuminating more than a full moon
Provide a Sharpen strength setting, and more post-processing effect controls in VR
Implement a metering system better suited for VR
Increase distance threshold to see other aircraft navigation and strobe lights
TAA is transforming road traffic into ghosts (self-cancelling moving pixels)
Render the Sun with a fading disk when bloom is disabled
Bake Ambient Occlusion in the cockpit when Ambient Occlusion is disabled
Night lighting issues still present - The community solutions
Can you please add a “Sun Glasses” mode 😎 ? (not a joke)
Add support for mouse wheel to change the UI settings sliders
Let users adjusting the Render Scale setting by increments of 5 or 1 (instead of 10)

 

 

Edited March 27, 20215 yr by RXP

13 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I am afraid of that

That is nothing to be afraid of.

  

6 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

I don't want to start another drama, but we all should be very concerned by the statement

No we shouldn't.

Edited March 27, 20215 yr by Tuskin38

5 hours ago, Gilandred said:

Why would that be a concern?  The Xbox has a CPU, GPU, ram and a hard drive that’s probably more capable than the average PC out there today.  There’s plenty of AAA games that run just fine on both console and PC.

My concern with that is that they'll intentionally dumb down the PC version to insure that they do in fact look the same.  However, I've said many times that I don't think that's going to happen, and the fact that the Community folder exists at all on the PC version is evidence pointing to their intentions of equality being more talk than reality.  You are right that today, an XBox is more powerful than a good percentage of the PC rigs out there, but the XBox won't change for 4-5 years, while the PC world will move on.  By the time the XBox gets refreshed, PCs will be quite a bit ahead of where they are now.  To limit a 2022 or 2023 PC to the capabilities of the software written for a 2020 XBox will handcuff a lot of people unnecessarily.  

I simply do not see that happening, especially when I think Microsoft's long term goal is to eliminate the XBox altogether (though there may be PCs intended as a TV table device), and just cash in on the software side of things (most especially through subscriptions), as they literally lose money for every XBox sold.

If it turns out I'm wrong, and they do in fact go out of their way to dumb down the PC version so that the two are "virtually indistinguishable", then I might have to eventually walk away from the franchise, and I'm a guy who is so dedicated to flight simming on MSFS that I literally bought it twice when my first install was having problems that weren't getting resolved in a reasonable amount of time.  (I figured I was better off to just bite the bullet and pay the relicensing fees than spend the amount of time it would take to otherwise fix it, which wasn't even guaranteed to work.)

So, to summarize...  They better word not allowed well not!!

That statement isn't concerning at all.  The sim can already be used with a controller on a PC and Asobo have been pretty transparent that their goal is to have difficulty and assist settings that accommodate hardcore simmers and novices alike.

I don't see a lot of hardcore simmers using the XBox version.  Hopefully some XBox users may eventually become hardcore simmers, and I think indeed that is inevitable, but I just don't see someone like myself going out of their way to use the XBox.  Hell, as soon as I get a new TV (which is gonna be as soon as Uncle gets me that fresh gubmint cheeze), I'm planning on getting rid of my XBox entirely as the new TV surely will be able to run the VOD apps that are the only reason the XBox still is connected at all.  I haven't gamed on it in several years, and don't plan to start again, especially since most XBox titles that I might have an interest in are also available on PC.

7 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

Thanks for the recap of the interview.

I don't want to start another drama, but we all should be very concerned by the statement "About the Xbox version, their goal is to make it virtually indistinguishable from the PC version"

Considering the huge difference between a high end PC and the new Xbox, this sentence means that the PC version will be virtually indistinguishable from the Xbox version. 

There is something sinister in it ......

.......as well as different animal species unique to each region.........

Yeah!!!   Bring on the burning pig and chicken farms.  

Is Asobos sponsored by the Farmers Defence Force or what??