9 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The PC version may eventually be game pass only

That will never happen. There’s no such thing as gamepass only games.

Plus not all games are on gamepass forever, some get cycled out. Though those might only be third party titles.

Edited April 29, 20215 yr by Tuskin38

3 hours ago, andy1252 said:

then get on an Amtrak to Chicago...

Will we be able to get a sleeper car? 

17 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

it's 3 peanuts in a peanut farm. The data is very heavily compressed BEFORE it's streamed (hence they aren't compressing in real-time because they have a static unchanging dataset), look at your data usage stats in the game. Most sites have the problem where the data changes so they have to use not only the HTTP compression but also ZIP or MPEG4 or similar while the server is running on the same network of servers they are streaming with. Since the data is static and only needs updating occasionally, it makes it dirt cheap to stream. They also don't have the issue Youtube or other sites have of taking uploads and needing CPU power to down-convert or compress it, since they are able to use static files.

It doesn't matter if they compress the data or not though.  What matters is the competing simulators don't have such a satellite streaming service, where the satellite data is also treated (ie. treated by Black Shark).  If P3D or X-Plane had such a service and it required a monthly fee, some people would pay for it.

Some people in this thread have already said they would pay $5 USD or $10 USD per month.  So there will probably be players of P3D and X-Plane who would pay $5 to $10 USD per month for a comparable service.

4 hours ago, andy1252 said:

Well, here goes.

I would actually be quite prepared to pay maybe 10 quid a month for a GUARANTEED and well maintained service. For that I would expect the option of either much better converted photogrammetry models, or better still, good quality 3d modelling available as an option in the areas where they do supply PG

Honestly, $5 USD per month for the existing satellite/photogrammetry streaming that MSFS provides is a reasonable price.  Or maybe they can have a package where you stream so many GBs of data for the players that don't fly MSFS as frequently.  Of course, I hope they continue to give the satellite/photogrammetry streaming for free in MSFS because that would save us more money.  Free is good so I'm not complaining.

Hopefully, Microsoft/Asobo make enough money from the MSFS marketplace that they can continue to give us free satellite/photogrammetry streaming for the next 5 years at least.

15 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

It doesn't matter if they compress the data or not though.  What matters is the competing simulators don't have such a satellite streaming service, where the satellite data is also treated (ie. treated by Black Shark).  If P3D or X-Plane had such a service and it required a monthly fee, some people would pay for it.

Some people in this thread have already said they would pay $5 USD or $10 USD per month.  So there will probably be players of P3D and X-Plane who would pay $5 to $10 USD per month for a comparable service.

I don't disagree, just saying MS already owned the imagery and pretty sure the blackshark thing was a one-time cost, so it isn't very expensive for MS to stream what they already own.

I don't doubt that there are a lot of people that would pay for it, but it would result in some significant usage loss across the entire population of users.

Edited April 29, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery

My MSFS downloads for the past  30 days according to the in game counter was 110GB ( I have an unlimited 250Mb connection ) .  About a quarter of that is probably updates and content. The rest would be streamed data.

Edited April 29, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

2 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

My MSFS downloads for the past  30 days according to the in game counter was 110GB ( I have an unlimited 250Mb connection ) .  About a quarter of that is probably updates and content. The rest would be streamed data.

Wow, mine was 36 GB and i was playing a LOT more than I should be.

You must be flying jets at 500+ or sometihng.

3 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

Wow, mine was 36 GB and i was playing a LOT more than I should be.

You must be flying jets at 500+ or sometihng.

No idea, though I do a lot of scud running in the G91 which likely does not help.

 

Also join multiplayer streams online with 40 or 50 planes 3 or 4 times a week, no idea what that does to bandwidth,

Edited April 29, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

5 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

No idea, though I do a lot of scud running in the G91 which likely does not help.

 

Also join multiplayer streams online with 40 or 50 planes 3 or 4 times a week, no idea what that does to bandwidth,

Sounds like a lot of fun, does the lag bug show up too much, I still haven't tried multiplayer yet really.

Just now, Alpine Scenery said:

Sounds like a lot of fun, does the lag bug show up too much, I still haven't tried multiplayer yet really.

The stutter can be avoided if absolutely everyone sticks to default aircraft and default liveries.

One person gets it wrong and its a stutter fest though.

20 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

I suspect that with our singular focus on simulation we may be missing the forest for the trees.

I wonder, if the streaming that Microsoft is doing is really all that much more strenuous than what many companies already plan to do with Stadia and other potential up-and-coming 4K streaming game services?

MSFS may simply be the Microsoft's prototype of their infrastructure to compete with Google and others in this arena. 

Not really the same.  Microsoft's xCloud service is already gearing up to compete on the cloud gaming front, but the considerations are very different, because the primary challenge with cloud gaming is latency - sending video outputs and controller inputs back and forth between your TV and a datacentre fast enough that it doesn't feel miserable, while still getting a high quality image to the end user.

MSFS's world streaming stuff isn't really sensitive to latency - it just needs to be able to sustain serving that much data to that many users, 24/7.  Multiplayer is a little different, but even then still a world away from the kinds of low latency required for actually playing something in a datacentre.

To the conversation in the thread, short of add-on sales completely drying up in the store, I don't think they'll ever charge for it over the life of the sim unless it gets to a point that MSFS is actually putting a strain on Azure's resources - which is unlikely both because flight simming just isn't on that scale of popularity, and because Microsoft are spending like $100 billion dollars a year continually expanding Azure's reach and capacity anyway.