MSFS 2020 is really getting there!

[Deimos 45]

I have all three sims, XP11, P3D and MSFS and I mostly fly VFR in unpressurised pistons and turboprops. That was doable in XP11 and P3D, but boy is it a world apart in MSFS. I never was in the my-sim-is-better-than-yours-war. And I intend not to be. I just bought what I wanted to fly in the respective sim and had fun. I know, this is actually not allowed, but I did.

Now the weather, I love it. Is it 100% accurate? I don't care, it looks great enough and will become better over time. Is the flight model perfect? Probably not. Is the BN-2 Islander I bought "sTuDy" level? Most certainly not. Do I enjoy myself? You bet I do. And for what its worth I think the FM is good enough for what I do. Flying in the normal flight envelope following normal procedures. It does not feel off to me and the planes react as one would expect. And it will just get better over time. The MSFS environment is quite new and the other sims had time to mature and grow.

The memory is always painting a nicer picture, I noticed. I fired up XP11 last Sunday and also uninstalled after that. I could not bring myself to fly longer than 15 minutes. That's not to say that I would not give a XP12 a try if it can compete. And that is the biggest thing for me. Someone pushing the boundaries by a big margin like MS did is great for us. Improvement pressure all around.

Also photogrammetry on!

 

Stay healthy!

seb

[tweekz 2,165]

5 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

That is, P3D and X-Plane will never go away, in the same way that FSX never went away, but they effectively become “maintenance sims” where if there is a critical problem, Lockheed Martin and Laminar will fix it but if there are no problems, there won’t be further development on it.

MSFS have improved massively on the flight model. Ground effect probably needs a bit toning down.

With quality addons coming to the platform, I really can't see why the majority of customers would go for another platform if not for bad PC performance.

This will of course impact the 3rd party market. Even though XP is somewhat of a passion project, 3rd party devs want to make money. They go where the customers are. XP12 might still bring something to the table. But I got so used to have ortho availabe world-wide without effort that it will be hard to compete.

Besides, while XP is a project of passion, Austin is involved in so many other porjects that I am not sure he is willing to invest a lot of money to keep up with MSFS while being unlikely to do so.

[abrams_tank 7,426]

1 minute ago, tweekz said:

MSFS have improved massively on the flight model. Ground effect probably needs a bit toning down.

With quality addons coming to the platform, I really can't see why the majority of customers would go for another platform if not for bad PC performance.

This will of course impact the 3rd party market. Even though XP is somewhat of a passion project, 3rd party devs want to make money. They go where the customers are. XP12 might still bring something to the table. But I got so used to have ortho availabe world-wide without effort that it will be hard to compete.

Besides, while XP is a project of passion, Austin is involved in so many other porjects that I am not sure he is willing to invest a lot of money to keep up with MSFS while being unlikely to do so.

This is what I think too.  Austin may have a lot of money, but if he is a smart businessman, he isn't going to spend his entire wealth fighting against Microsoft.  No matter how rich Austin is, the number of developers and resources he needs to compete with Microsoft will drive him bankrupt.  My guess is, if the sales of X-Plane for XP 12 does not justify the money that Austin put into developing XP 12, Austin will probably throw in the white towel and stop further development of XPlane (even if Austin throws in the towel for X-Plane, he can still milk the sales of X-Plane and other revenue from it until the end of time).

Same thing with Lockheed Martin.  Software is not Lockheed Martin's specialty.  I think Lockheed Martin only got into P3D because Microsoft left the Flight Sim market.  Now that Microsoft has re-entered the consumer flight sim market, I doubt Lockheed Martin wants to compete against MSFS in the consumer flight sim market.  However, Lockheed Martin will probably continue to make sales in the commercial market.  The question is, if Microsoft will focus on the commercial market at some point.  If MSFS keeps on improving, Microsoft certainly has a base simulator to go after the commercial market.

[tweekz 2,165]

I don't think Austin will throw in the white towel. As I said, it's kind of a project of passion. He will still keep on developing it. But probably not invest money to keep up with MSFS - more going back to the niche strategy again. XP was quite successful competing with P3D - but MSFS is a different story.

Marketing alone plays a big role there. XP12 could theoretically be better than MSFS and it would still not appeal in the same way. Most casual gamers don't even know about XP.

What will be funny, to wacth how the same XP users will be making backflips over the new eye candy of XP12 while trying to nitpick every detail in MSFS in that regard. 😄

[akita 429]

46 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

This is what I think too.  Austin may have a lot of money, but if he is a smart businessman, he isn't going to spend his entire wealth fighting against Microsoft.  No matter how rich Austin is, the number of developers and resources he needs to compete with Microsoft will drive him bankrupt.  My guess is, if the sales of X-Plane for XP 12 does not justify the money that Austin put into developing XP 12, Austin will probably throw in the white towel and stop further development of XPlane (even if Austin throws in the towel for X-Plane, he can still milk the sales of X-Plane and other revenue from it until the end of time).

wishful thinking speculations.

Xplane mobile=Xplane desktop=Xplane pro i.e. the potential market can be much bigger than MSFS. More if they open the mobile platform for some 3pd add-ons.(they already have a marketplace there too).

Both of us don't have the numbers, but LR actually growing (hiring more coders and art team) makes a valid assumption the Xplane world still make enough money, this is also backed up by current 3d party developers sales.

Now you are comparing a 2016 app vs a 2020 app when it comes to graphics...let's wait for the end of the year to see what v12 brings to the table, hopefully non-ortho based world rather a materialized procedural terrain to work with lighting effects unlike the horror show that is called ortho-imagery which destroys any scene's scaling.

Edited June 2, 2021 by akita

[abrams_tank 7,426]

1 minute ago, akita said:

wishful thinking speculations.

Xplane mobile=Xplane desktop=Xplane pro i.e. the potential market can be much bigger than MSFS. More if they open the mobile platform for some 3pd add-ons.(they already have a marketplace there too).

Both of us don't have the numbers, but LR actually growing (hiring more coders and art team) makes a valid assumption the Xplane world still make enough money, this is also backed up by current 3d party developers sales.

Now you are comparing a 2016 app vs a 2020 app when it comes to graphics...let's wait for the end of the year to see what v12 brings to the table, hopefully non-ortho based world rather a materialized procedural terrain to work with lighting effects unlike the horror show that is called ortho-imagery which destroys any scene's scaling.

No, I don't think XPlane can compete with MSFS on the desktop market.  The amount of money Austin would have to spend is just too much to compete with MSFS.  For XPlane 12, I assume that Austin had already devoted resources to making XPlane 12 when MSFS was announced and was subsequently released.  Any resources Austin put on XPlane 12 is a sunk cost that Austin can't recover that so it makes sense for him to complete XPlane 12.  Beyond XPlane 12 though, if the sales are not large enough for it, I can see Austin stopping further development beyond XPlane 12, for the desktop PC version.  

For the mobile version, I can see Austin exploring that market since there is no competitor in that market.  But unfortunately, for the desktop and PC market, it's very hard to compete against MSFS (maybe XPlane makes some money in the commercial market so perhaps Austin will keep a few developers to satisfy commercial customers).

[Dominique_K 10,150]

I would strongly suggest to the moderators of this forum to add to the list of the « not allowed words » : X-Plane, XP and Austin 😁. Frankly speaking the constant discussions around XP in the MSF forum of ex-XP simmers is tiresome. 

 

[mrueedi 702]

3 hours ago, pmb said:

There are a few amazing engines like Outerra or Unreal which could provide a base for a new sim, if an able company will take the challenge.

Why does Outerra support "bitmap overlays for selected areas for things like the detailed aerial photos of airports and the like"?

If the MSFS approach is required to get best result in Outerra just for selected areas, how could Outerra challenge MSFS, which does the same for the whole globe? 

My conclusion: Outerra is no match to MSFS.

Without the data, that MS extracts from the aerial images, Outerra can only build a scenery that looks how reality could look like, but never how it really looks.

Edit: see the flow in this link:

Outerra: Procedural terrain algorithm visualization

With this procedural approach everything is "invented". True, the landscape could look like that. But the probability, that the real valley looks the same is small. Add snowfields, vegetation, artificial elements and getting good representation of reality becomes utopian.

Besides, MSFS is not just a map tile imagery sim. It extracts a tremendous amount of data from the images to procedurally create 3D buildings and vegetation exactly where it's located in real world.

 

6 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

it may take a few years but LM doesn't need funding from end users and Austin seems comfortably wealthy enough to do things "his way" and in his time frame.

For MSFS fifty experts in KI, geo engineering, data scientists and realtime rendering joined their efforts to get what we have. They extracted the relevant data for 1'500'000'000 buildings from the global imagery. In Graz, they hired two PhDs in "rooftop reconstruction" just to get the building shapes right. Is Austin that wealthy? Imho, MSFS can not be challenged by any other sim. Too profound is the groundwork, that has been laid.

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by mrueedi
Added link and explanation

[abrams_tank 7,426]

21 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

For MSFS fifty experts in KI, geo engineering, data scientists and realtime rendering joined their efforts to get what we have. They extracted the relevant data for 1'500'000'000 buildings from the global imagery. In Graz, they hired two PhDs in "rooftop reconstruction" just to get the building shapes right. Is Austin that wealthy? Imho, MSFS can not be challenged by any other sim. Too profound is the groundwork, that has been laid.

 

^^^ This. Absolutely agree with mrueedi.

Microsoft forked out a lot of money to get MSFS to where it is today.  That's not easily reproducible without Austin forking out the $$$.  Similarly, I don't think Lockheed Martin will fork out the $$$ to match MSFS because software/games is not Lockheed Martin's core competency (Lockheed Martin only entered this market when Microsoft left it, and Lockheed Martin also got the FSX base code for P3D).

Edited June 2, 2021 by abrams_tank

[akita 429]

47 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

No, I don't think XPlane can compete with MSFS on the desktop market.  The amount of money Austin would have to spend is just too much to compete with MSFS.  For XPlane 12, I assume that Austin had already devoted resources to making XPlane 12 when MSFS was announced and was subsequently released.  Any resources Austin put on XPlane 12 is a sunk cost that Austin can't recover that so it makes sense for him to complete XPlane 12.  Beyond XPlane 12 though, if the sales are not large enough for it, I can see Austin stopping further development beyond XPlane 12, for the desktop PC version.  

For the mobile version, I can see Austin exploring that market since there is no competitor in that market.  But unfortunately, for the desktop and PC market, it's very hard to compete against MSFS (maybe XPlane makes some money in the commercial market so perhaps Austin will keep a few developers to satisfy commercial customers).

Read again: Xplane mobile code=Xplane desktop code, for the most part.

[tweekz 2,165]

52 minutes ago, akita said:

Xplane mobile=Xplane desktop=Xplane pro i.e. the potential market can be much bigger than MSFS. More if they open the mobile platform for some 3pd add-ons.(they already have a marketplace there too).

It's funny anyways, cause the cult around XP is about it NOT being a game but ultra realistic - and then it got a mobile app... 😄

[akita 429]

36 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

Why does Outerra support "bitmap overlays for selected areas for things like the detailed aerial photos of airports and the like"?

If the MSFS approach is required to get best result in Outerra just for selected areas, how could Outerra challenge MSFS, which does the same for the whole globe? 

My conclusion: Outerra is no match to MSFS.

Without the data, that MS extracts from the aerial images, Outerra can only build a scenery that looks how reality could look like, but never how it really looks.

Edit: see the flow in this link:

Outerra: Procedural terrain algorithm visualization

With this procedural approach everything is "invented". True, the landscape could look like that. But the probability, that the real valley looks the same is small. Add snowfields, vegetation, artificial elements and getting good representation of reality becomes utopian.

Besides, MSFS is not just a map tile imagery sim. It extracts a tremendous amount of data from the images to procedurally create 3D buildings and vegetation exactly where it's located in real world.

 

For MSFS fifty experts in KI, geo engineering, data scientists and realtime rendering joined their efforts to get what we have. They extracted the relevant data for 1'500'000'000 buildings from the global imagery. In Graz, they hired two PhDs in "rooftop reconstruction" just to get the building shapes right. Is Austin that wealthy? Imho, MSFS can not be challenged by any other sim. Too profound is the groundwork, that has been laid.

 

Procedural, photo realistic etc are a matter of a very wide range of vague definitions.

A scenery can be procedural AND photo realistic too, or completely fictional, depends how it is cut and for what purpose. Procedural texturing simply refers to a texturing tech so that you can blend multiple materials resulting in greater scale, more small PBR details etc.

Microsoft experts really has no "hidden secrets" when it comes to graphics, industry standart graphics features all over the place just like P3D DCS XP and others will catch it up soon. So the quoting by Microsoft 50 super ultra talents really is just a marketing hype. Anyone claiming otherwise is: 1) marketing, so you and others will quote those articles here.  or 2) have no idea how gaming industry works when it comes to graphics features. 

[abrams_tank 7,426]

3 minutes ago, akita said:

Read again: Xplane mobile code=Xplane desktop code, for the most part.

I don't think you understand mobile development.  A lot of features that XPlane can push for the desktop PC to compete with MSFS is not available for mobile devices. For example, as of this post on September 2020, X-Plane does not support DLSS. The overwhelming majority of mobile phones do not support DLSS.  So why would Austin push for DLSS in the mobile version of X-Plane?

As for MSFS, Asobo has talked about looking into DLSS in the future. Because Asobo is targeting the desktop PC market, where DLSS makes sense.

Get it?  This is where X-Plane and MSFS will diverge on the PC market if Austin drops future development for X-Plane on the PC market.

[akita 429]

11 minutes ago, tweekz said:

It's funny anyways, cause the cult around XP is about it NOT being a game but ultra realistic - and then it got a mobile app... 😄

Ok, so other than provoking a bit more, how does your comment contradicts mine?

[akita 429]

19 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I don't think you understand mobile development.  A lot of features that XPlane can push for the desktop PC to compete with MSFS is not available for mobile devices. For example, as of this post on September 2020, X-Plane does not support DLSS. The overwhelming majority of mobile phones do not support DLSS.  So why would Austin push for DLSS in the mobile version of X-Plane?

As for MSFS, Asobo has talked about looking into DLSS in the future. Because Asobo is targeting the desktop PC market, where DLSS makes sense.

Get it?  This is where X-Plane and MSFS will diverge on the PC market if Austin drops future development for X-Plane on the PC market.

The only difference are shader stages in the pipeline which can be easily skipped AKA graphics settings, this is due to mobiles not having powerful GPUs yet.

Also if speaking specifically DLSS is proprietary for Nvidia.

Edited June 2, 2021 by akita