Fresh video from MS on the topic: Microsoft Flight Simulator - Xbox Series X|S Accolades Trailer - YouTube

On 8/10/2021 at 8:24 PM, Ianrivaldosmith said:

https://metro.co.uk/2021/08/08/microsoft-flight-simulator-is-boring-so-let-sega-make-the-top-gun-dlc-15055086/

At least the gamer in that review confirms, that MSFS is not a game but a simulator...

5 hours ago, neil0311 said:

Oh come on now. 😁😁😁😁

I had every one of the X-Plane versions through 10, and trying to “fly” in it was like an arcade game. And the world you flew in was bare and lacking and resemblance to the real world. And I don’t remember the panels and controls being all that realistic either.

P3D may have enabled more accurate panels and control simulation, but it was still the same old FSX flight model and scenery engine from 2005.

And just curious, have you ever been PIC of a real aircraft?

To be clear, I find that it's sometimes essential to put emoji into every post to ensure folks know, "that I was only joking" ; of course MS is a flight simulator, gees.😁 I will have to remember those emoji's.

I have MSFS, have now done a fair bit of flying, and it has some amazing pros and certainly like all sims a bunch of cons. I have not yet updated to SU5 and all the hotfixes, too busy on other real world issues. The fact that it comes stock with Ortho and Lidar is what is so amazing obviously.

However, I do have XP11.55+ as my main sim.  The thing is XP absolutely requires a bunch of work to upgrade the out of window experience.  But, once you have done that, and with the payware planes that are available the technical flying experience is amazing. But this takes plenty of time and money. I only fly in ortho with overlays in XP.  I have made 1/3 the ortho myself.  I only use LV16 and LV17 (mostly).  The quality of the out of window is superb.  I have quality ortho for All of Europe (Great Britain, to Spain, to Baltic's including places like Poland, Serbia and such, Japan, Philippines, New Zealand, All USA, much of the southern part of Canada (all of BC and Alta), Eastern Africa - Kenya, Rhodesia, Uganda blah blah, Brazil, and a few other smaller areas.

The disadvantage of XP in this regard is the 16 TB's of data that I have had to compile and maintain. But with my addons my flying experience is superior.  There are now addons for volumetric clouds, weather of course, motion effects and sounds. But it doesn't come this way out of the box. The suite of planes are amazing as well, all the stuff I need.

Agreed on P3D, while I still have this, it sits idle, I use only MS and XP each having its own value.

I have never been and am not a licensed pilot.  I do have vast flying experience, I grow up an air force brat to a father who flew bombers in WWII and transports after the war.  In my career as a professional forester I have literally a 1000 flights and so many hours flying in DH Beavers, Otters, Goose, Cessna's, King Air, Bell Jet Rangers, Long Ranger, I have flown into more "armpits" of remote areas in Canada than many actual pilots. I have undertaken vast aerial insect assessment flights, aerial photography flights, prescribed burning flights and supervised and managed aerial ignition of large forest areas.   Basically I know a thing or two about flying!

Cheers 

EDIT

These are just my work fights in smaller GA, not my traveling experiences where I drink wine and wear Hawaiian shirts, 100s.

Edited August 13, 20214 yr by 1st fltsimguy
Clarification

8 hours ago, neil0311 said:

It’s for those who want to play a computer game that gives them some components of the simulation of flight. That includes those who don’t need to have the gates at an airport retract or the plane be pushed back by a tractor. They just want to fly.

But the simulator aspect implies a certain level of learning curve before you can "just fly." Those who want to turn on MSFS for the first time and "fly" without learning anything about flying are up for disappointment. Those who are expecting some sort of level-progression game like Afterburner are up for disappointment.  I never said you have to all but get a pilot's license to use MSFS right, but the idea that it should be a normal game with progressively higher objectives and levels is one that's, frankly, just silly.

I don't expect Chessmaster to be a platformer, and I don't expect Sonic the Hedgehog to let me drive an F1 car.  People who get MSFS and then express surprise that it isn't something that no one ever said it was are not highlighting a problem with the title because the "problem" they object to is entirely self-generated.

 

 

18 minutes ago, eslader said:

Those who want to turn on MSFS for the first time and "fly" without learning anything about flying are up for disappointment.

Not at all. You can literally load a discovery flight with easy settings selected, and that is that. Fly away. You don’t even need a cockpit view. 

 

2 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

The fact that it comes stock with Ortho and Lidar is what is so amazing obviously.

MSFS does not just have Orthos. Orthos is a term from the older sims. Most of the time, in MSFS you see a single digit percentage of orthos when looking out of the window. In MSFS, the satelite imagery is just the baseline to place 3D objects all over the earth surface. 3D objects is what you see primarily. Trees, water, buildings, grass, ....

2 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

I have made 1/3 the ortho myself.  I only use LV16 and LV17 (mostly).

Orthos are still orthos. Flat and liveless. No morning sun is reflected from the building fronts. One of the amazing experiences in MSFS for me was taking off e.g. in Pisa in the morning and see the tall buildings of port of Livorno (14 km away) shining in the morning sun. On Orthos you could not even see, that there is a city... 

2 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

The quality of the out of window is superb.

I doubt that.  On FL300 maybe.

8 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

Orthos are still orthos. Flat and liveless. No morning sun is reflected from the building fronts. One of the amazing experiences in MSFS for me was taking off e.g. in Pisa in the morning and see the tall buildings of port of Livorno (14 km away) shining in the morning sun. On Orthos you could not even see, that there is a city... 

Most do-it-yourself XP (and AFS2) sceneries are indeed orthos made by Ortho4XP, complemented by OSM-based buildings/trees, often made using some flavor of W2XP. Leaving aside Photogrammetry, a new quality is reached in MSFS by creating "orthos" plus "cultivation" organically together by Blackshark.ai. This way, not only lighting but the whole view represents much more unified, while notably in AFS2, but also in XP using Ortho2XP/W2XP, you usually can tell it's buildings/trees scattered over the orthos, even if they are roughly in the right places.

Kind regards, Michael

14 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

 

MSFS does not just have Orthos. Orthos is a term from the older sims. Most of the time, in MSFS you see a single digit percentage of orthos when looking out of the window. In MSFS, the satelite imagery is just the baseline to place 3D objects all over the earth surface. 3D objects is what you see primarily. Trees, water, buildings, grass, ....

Orthos are still orthos. Flat and liveless. No morning sun is reflected from the building fronts. One of the amazing experiences in MSFS for me was taking off e.g. in Pisa in the morning and see the tall buildings of port of Livorno (14 km away) shining in the morning sun. On Orthos you could not even see, that there is a city... 

I doubt that.  On FL300 maybe.

You do know that orthophotography IS satellite photos right?  Not to get too far off topic here in this thread but you posted the "doubt" which to me is a question.  FL1 to whatever, my ortho scenery is a superior product and in some ways better than the lidar elements in MS. Depends upon your point of view.  Not popping, no smudged look in distance and such.

A couple of screenies of My Vancouver and Fraser Valley Ortho with Overlays.  I think you may not a full grasp of the potential and ability for XP to look amazing out the window. Of course one needs to "add" the 3D elements which are readily available and easy to do if you know how. Morning sun, sunsets, shadows, whatever it is all there. And with planes that are, well, quite good.  

A couple shots I posted somewhere else recently for a guy. You either like it or not, I can't help you there. I deliberately darkened the clouds with an addon I have testing out how it might look with darker clouds.

6 hours ago, mrueedi said:

At least the gamer in that review confirms, that MSFS is not a game but a simulator...

To me it will be a simulator if :

- it has a very enhanced SDK so a home cockpit can be connected with everything working  (Prosim)

and 

- it has multi monitor support + NVsurround fix

If not it is a game to me. A very nice one though 😎

3 minutes ago, pmb said:

Most do-it-yourself XP (and AFS2) sceneries are indeed orthos made by Ortho4XP, complemented by OSM-based buildings/trees, often made using some flavor of W2XP. Leaving aside Photogrammetry, a new quality is reached in MSFS by creating "orthos" plus "cultivation" organically together by Blackshark.ai. This way, not only lighting but the whole view represents much more unified, while notably in AFS2, but also in XP using Ortho2XP/W2XP, you usually can tell it's buildings/trees scattered over the orthos, even if they are roughly in the right places.

Kind regards, Michael

Right! And depending upon the "efforts" of the person "making" up the ortho, the representation can be very good. And actual buildings can be placed into the scenery such as the Vancouver effort above, it looks dang real.  But not totally as accurate as MS/Asobo approach which is also dang cool!.  We the consumers are just getting better and better flight sim experiences.  Keep the competition going I say.

1 hour ago, eslader said:

But the simulator aspect implies a certain level of learning curve before you can "just fly." Those who want to turn on MSFS for the first time and "fly" without learning anything about flying are up for disappointment.

 

 

Not at all. My 25 year old son did just that.

Now can he fly “correctly?” Maybe not from the standpoint of what would happen in the real world. But so what? He’s not looking to do an ILS practice approach and intercept the localizer, etc.

4 minutes ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

Right! And depending upon the "efforts" of the person "making" up the ortho, the representation can be very good. And actual buildings can be placed into the scenery such as the Vancouver effort above, it looks dang real. 

I don't disagree here. As far as I know, ORBX TrueEarth Sceneries for XP are basically done using ortho photos plus some more advanced version of W2XP, developed by Tony specifically for ORBX. These look indeed excellent (I would say they are in the same class as, say, GB in MSFS, and btw. better than their P3D counterparts). However they are commercial addons, cost ~30 $ per region, need plenty of disk space and are only available for a few select regions of the world.

Kind regards, Michael

8 minutes ago, pmb said:

I don't disagree here. As far as I know, ORBX TrueEarth Sceneries for XP are basically done using ortho photos plus some more advanced version of W2XP, developed by Tony specifically for ORBX. These look indeed excellent (I would say they are in the same class as, say, GB in MSFS, and btw. better than their P3D counterparts). However they are commercial addons, cost ~30 $ per region, need plenty of disk space and are only available for a few select regions of the world.

Kind regards, Michael

Yes, one needs to be aware of the data storage imprint. You highlight one of the big pros of MS vs XP, availability of select regions means lots of work by XPers of course and comes stock with MS. Fortunately, it is getting cheaper and cheaper, faster as well. I was proposing that the XP community should look to some sort of repository for ortho + overlays that folks could access streaming.  Laminar has clearly stated that while they are making many great enhancements to 3D elements, that they will not be doing data streaming. Pretty obvious with their current infrastructure, team of experts and such they are not in the same league as MS/As.  Time will tell of course.

9 hours ago, pmb said:

I don't disagree here. As far as I know, ORBX TrueEarth Sceneries for XP are basically done using ortho photos plus some more advanced version of W2XP, developed by Tony specifically for ORBX. These look indeed excellent (I would say they are in the same class as, say, GB in MSFS, and btw. better than their P3D counterparts). However they are commercial addons, cost ~30 $ per region, need plenty of disk space and are only available for a few select regions of the world.

Kind regards, Michael

MSFS has landmark pakkages, city packs, water packages etc.

Eg : Try to get the UK as detailed as the 3 Orbx True Earth packages for XP/P3D and you will be spending much more money for MSFS even with the free PR terrain + AG….

 

11 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

A couple of screenies of My Vancouver and Fraser Valley Ortho with Overlays.  I think you may not a full grasp of the potential and ability for XP to look amazing out the window. Of course one needs to "add" the 3D elements which are readily available and easy to do if you know how. Morning sun, sunsets, shadows, whatever it is all there. And with planes that are, well, quite good.  

From my understanding, even if you use satellite ortho in XP, they are still flat 2D images and become very noticeable and ugly if you fly low and slow (especially for helicopter simmers who fly low and slow).  For MSFS, the 2D satellite is converted to 3D buildings and houses by Blackshark AI.  And then you have photogrammetry in MSFS which looks quite good, assuming you have a good internet connection.

For that reason, XP is really ugly to me.  The flat 2D satellite images are very noticeable on takeoff and landing, and if you fly low and slow, on the Youtube videos I have seen.  This is where XP looks like a simulator from 10 years ago using 10 year old technology.

Since I also like to fly around Vancouver, there is a huge potential for Vancouver scenery to get much better once Bing has photogrammetry for the metro Vancouver area.  Photogrammetry actually works really, really good for residential neighborhoods with mainly houses.  Right now, there isn't much photogrammetry for Vancouver and it's mainly limited to downtown Vancouver and a little outside downtown Vancouver.

However, you can fly around metro Seattle where there is a lot of photogrammetry, especially the residential areas of metro Seattle.  In the residential areas of metro Seattle where there is photogrammetry, MSFS looks really, really good to me.  So I think once metro Vancouver gets more photogrammetry coverage, the gap between Vancouver in MSFS and Vancouver in XP will diverge even more.

Edited August 14, 20214 yr by abrams_tank