4 hours ago, Dillon said:

The Cloud concept is troubling especially when it can all change on the whim of Big Tech. When the plug is pulled it won't be like it was with FS9/FSX where we had our own working copy to keep enjoying the sim.

If the NSA or whatever pull the plug on the Cloud you are going to have more important things to worry about then whether your flight sims still work.

Imagine a global DCS or Battlefield/COD? Imagine driving across the country virtually? Grand Theft Auto Europe? The gaming implications are massive but this does not stop there. The uses of this technology are endless. Microsoft couldn’t kill MSFS if they wanted because this is the start of it all.  

15 hours ago, Fielder said:

"117 million lakes."

I was wondering how many lakes were available to possibly land on, nice to see that MS has counted them all.

That's a big increase over my first ever flight simulator (Psion Flight Simulator for the ZX Spectrum 48k), which had 2!

14 hours ago, ThrottleUp said:

I was thinking about something while on American Truck Sim the other night - how cool would it be if MS one day released a train sim, ship sim & truck sim...into the same virtual earth as MSFS.

I wonder what Dovetail is thinking now. Imagine next summer Microsoft announces "Microsoft Train Simulator" built on the world of MSFS. Microsoft bring their original properties back to prominence would be crazy.

14 hours ago, Dillon said:

The Cloud concept is troubling especially when it can all change on the whim of Big Tech. When the plug is pulled it won't be like it was with FS9/FSX where we had our own working copy to keep enjoying the sim.

The world is a dangerous place....so let's enjoy and trust things while we can!! 😀

The entire thing's a house of cards and we have become inextricably dependent on all aspects of it!   Just look how easy it has been to pull off ransomware, and if you really want to get a taste of what we have traded for convenience read Ted Koppel's book, Lights Out.

Humanity is in deep deep trouble, everyone senses and knows it, and I see no way out as we aren't smart enough to look and commit to future.  We are shockingly analgous to metastatic cancer, which as we know always ends up killing its host.   

2 minutes ago, Noel said:

Humanity is in deep deep trouble, everyone senses and knows it, and I see no way out as we aren't smart enough to look and commit to future.  We are shockingly analgous to metastatic cancer, which as we know always ends up killing its host.   

I think we can savely say that this is doom-mongering. Taking the development of a flight simulator as proof for the end of humanity is something special! 🙂

11 minutes ago, crimplene said:

I think we can savely say that this is doom-mongering. Taking the development of a flight simulator as proof for the end of humanity is something special! 🙂

Absolutely doom-mongering, it's that bad.  But no, nothing to do with dev of an FS for sure that is the least of modern culture's issues.  And it won't be end of humanity, but will be the end of life as you currently know it, in very big ways.

Edited July 16, 20214 yr by Noel

1 hour ago, Noel said:

nothing to do with dev of an FS

This might give you a clue about how appropriate your comment was in a flightsim forum.

The last few comments are way off topic. Keep on topic please.

47 minutes ago, crimplene said:

This might give you a clue about how appropriate your comment was in a flightsim forum.

It was an offshoot of Dillon's segue into quasi-political commentary about control by a few companies, and then Wildblue's followup comment that the world is a dangerous place an we should therefore eat, drink and be merry, both of which also have nothing to do w/ flight sim forums, that's all.   Don't worry we'll be back on topic forthwith.

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I just hope MS add or allow someone to add ... cough cough ... the 391,000 types of vegetation rather than the current 14.  🙂

Cheers, Rob.

Seems like the perf impact of that change, or a least moving towards a lot more types of veg won't be too terribly badl, and my prediction is it will likely come to pass.  Sounds like a very tedious to do project however, but would be well worth it, especially as a free update