Jörg Neumann regarding World Update 6 and future DLC

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

A new interview with Jörg has been posted on FSElite: https://fselite.net/originals/interview-with-jorg-neumann-on-wu6-helicopters-racing-esports-and-more/

It's rather short so here are just a few highlights.

DACH World Update

Quote

We also then had enough data to make new 3D cities. [...] They look friggin’ great – down to 7cm in some areas and some are even better.

The alps in this update are the difference between night and day. 30m – now 1-2m resolution. It’s near perfect.

[On World Update 6 Delay] I really wanted Vienna to look great. That’s what the delay was mostly about, to get the cities looking great. [...]  I basically started on the Germany update 1.5 years ago. I’m working on stuff right now for late 2022 / early 2023.

[On London] I have some regrets looking back when we did the England [World] update. We put it out when the time we said, but I still don’t think London is up to snuff to what it should have been. The photogrammetry data is complicated, but it’s massive. TBs of data and then crunch it into something we can stream. I’m going to re-do London.

Junkers Ju 52

Quote

Ended up picking a plane from Germany known as the JU-52. It’s a famous plane in Germany; a beloved plane. We scan the plane down to 1mm both internally and externally. This is a digital preservation effort.

We can get these planes and integrate it with the simulator and preserve it through some kind of virtual museum. In this case we worked with Bernd Junkers, grandson of Hugo Junkers.

My goal is to keep the pricing as affordable as possible and have as as many people as possible can fly this plane. It really does some service for aviation and the history of it. To bring some of these planes from the past back into people’s brains.

Volocopter/Helicopters

Quote

Its an eVTOL air taxi for urban traffic and they have a vision for how air traffic will work in the future. This is halfway between a helicopter and a drone with 12 rotors onboard.

The Volocopter is meant to be the near traffic air taxi for the Olympics in Paris. They already have landing positions in the city which they are talking to the government about, but we are basically trying to build for the future.

We are committed to bringing helicopters into the sim in 2022, but honestly, it’s going to be late 2022 given that it’s complicated. But we want people to get going with the Volocopter and I’m excited for that.

Air Racing/Top Gun DLC

Quote

Been working with RARA (Reno Air Racing Association) to bring the Reno Air Race into the simulator. We have been working on this for like 2 years and chatting to some of the most famous pilots in the races.

We had to update the multiplayer model significantly, but we have now added wing-to-wing precision. You can do formation flights, crazy stunts, tail-to-tail type of stuff.

The package will be paid DLC that will originally come with some base planes and then there are plans to bring out collectable planes which we can’t talk about yet!

We’re a platform and we need to lead and we put something out that brings the platform’s capabilities forward. In this case, it’s competitive multiplayer. You could do eSports in the future and construct something around it.

[On Top Gun DLC] Will come out with the movie. The movie is scheduled November 19th, and the DLC will release the day it’s out.

[On the Future] Next year is going to be just as crazy and fun!

 

[scotchegg 4,186]

Thanks as always for the work you put into the summaries.

[pmb 5,137]

One of the remarkable points is they will redo London. PG in general has certainly potential for future improvement, but varies considerably, and among all PG I've flown over so far I think London has been worst.

Kind regards, Michael

 

[steve310002 1,198]

Thanks for posting. 

It seems a rather scripted interview purely for marketing purposes. Not a single question or mention about any fixes after the SU5 debacle or about any upcoming improvements.

Not the greatest interview considering what has happened with the update and the division over it. From the many threads and comments over on the official MSFS forum, I am sure he is well aware.

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

22 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

Not a single question or mention about any fixes after the SU5 debacle 

You would have to be a total fool to even touch on that topic.

No matter whether you gave a full technical run down on exactly what went wrong blow by blow with a detailed discussion on how they intend to fix it or instead you just apologised profusely for all the grief it would just open up a huge opportunity for all the haters and detractors to vent and create a public relations nightmare.

The main reason people want some sort of comment on this is so they can jump in and rip them to shreds, hopefully they have more sense,

You see this time and time again in the 3PD developer threads.   Every single developer (even PMDG and Just Flight) will at times have issues that draw a scathing attack on the main forums about how the particular product is a scam and the poster is going back to a proper simulation such as P3D or XPlane. 

It is like dealing with a room full of petulant high school age children. The sensible devs actually sit back and keep their mouth shut. Any attempt to reply with information and a reasoned explanation of what is going on simply creates a massive flood of attacks that create much more negative publicity for their product than if they had just shut up.

TLDR - any attempt to communicate anything just creates issues, even trying to be positive.  Asobo need to grow a brain and stop communicating with the community completely and start releasing mystery updates with no prior announcements.

 

 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Glenn Fitzpatrick

[HiFlyer 9,359]

20 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

You see this time and time again in the 3PD developer threads.   Every single developer (even PMDG and Just Flight) will at times have issues that draw a scathing attack on the main forums about how the particular product is a scam and the poster is going back to a proper simulation such as P3D or XPlane. The sensible devs actually sit back and keep their mouth shut. An attempt to reply with information and a reasoned explanation of what is going on creates a massive flood of attacks that create much more negative publicity for their product than if they had just shut up.

I've had a few developers explain this to me a few times in pretty much the exact same way.....

 

[steve310002 1,198]

24 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

It is like dealing with a room full of petulant high school age children. The sensible devs actually sit back and keep their mouth shut. Any attempt to reply with information and a reasoned explanation of what is going on simply creates a massive flood of attacks that create much more negative publicity for their product than if they had just shut up.

Yes Glenn, God help those of us who have critical thinking skills and don't blindly worship how great the sim has become since SU5. What terrible enthusiasts we are for calling a spade a spade.

Also, a fact based observation is not an attack as you put it. It's an observation based purely on facts. I see we are still of the mindset that anything that doesn't praise is some sort of attack. 

[Moria15 950]

39 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

TLDR - any attempt to communicate anything just creates issues, even trying to be positive.  Asobo need to grow a brain and stop communicating with the community completely and start releasing mystery updates with no prior announcements.

 

 

And then people complain about devs not being on the official forum...   seriously, if you expect a dev to go on there you have to be a brick short of a chimney.

Graham

[Noooch 1,084]

"When we bring helicopters to the sim, we know we need to put heliports everywhere."

That will be awesome!

[Nemo 1,305]

J. Neumann: " I really wanted Vienna to look great. That’s what the delay was mostly about, .... "

That made my day. It is my hometown.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Nemo

[Chock 17,769]

2 hours ago, steve310002 said:

It seems a rather scripted interview purely for marketing purposes. Not a single question or mention about any fixes after the SU5 debacle or about any upcoming improvements.

All such interviews are, generally speaking, for marketing purposes, and there would be unlikely to be any questions about a previous update when the topic of the interview was about update 6, helicopters, racing, Top Gun tie-in and other stuff along those lines. These are all 'upcoming improvements', with the guy even mentioning re-doing some scenery for London.

The Ju52 is the one I'm particularly interested in personally. Although it's not going to be a freebie default aeroplane - and the sim is sadly lacking a default 'old banger - it is nevertheless going to be pretty inexpensive and so I'm sure it will be very popular, being the iconic aeroplane it is, although of course it can be potentially a bit controversial too. I doubt there'll be a livery of of D-2600 Immelmann II, or any of those late-thirties Lufthansa ones with a contemporary livery, for obvious reasons!

[regis9 4,014]

Interesting to get an insight into just how much lead time there is in developing the world updates, DLCs etc.  Also makes it very clear why the DLCs push toward release when there are still bugs in the sim…the two timelines are not related.

[edpatino 1,964]

2 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

A new interview with Jörg has been posted on FSElite: https://fselite.net/originals/interview-with-jorg-neumann-on-wu6-helicopters-racing-esports-and-more/

It's rather short so here are just a few highlights.

Thanks for posting this.

I would rather prefer they put an effort to make the sim more stable as a first priority. At almost every update something happens that break the sim in different aspects, the SDK included. SU5 was not a successful update, at least for the PC users, and that's the reason why they postponed the WU6 for two weeks. Hopefully they'll pay more attention to this.

[pmb 5,137]

2 minutes ago, regis9 said:

Interesting to get an insight into just how much lead time there is in developing the world updates, DLCs etc.  

Indeed. Plus, that 10-year-goal certainly is not something they said out of the blue or wishful thinking but has been detailed with milestones for that timeline.

There, of course, isn't any guarantee, the 10 years will be realized according to schedule or will be realized at all - they certainly will make reviews and modifications in-between, according to how their business plan will work out.

On the other hand, I doubt they will deviate from that broad strategy in dependence what we like or vote for. We certainly can vote for a LOD slider or  better ground handling, but I am sure the broad strategy including relation betweeen X-Box and PC, gaming and hardcore elements, just is not up for debate.

Kind regards, Michael

[rayharris108 259]

1 hour ago, steve310002 said:

Yes Glenn, God help those of us who have critical thinking skills and don't blindly worship how great the sim has become since SU5. What terrible enthusiasts we are for calling a spade a spade.

Also, a fact based observation is not an attack as you put it. It's an observation based purely on facts. I see we are still of the mindset that anything that doesn't praise is some sort of attack. 

Agreed, but what we might be after isn’t a full explanation, but maybe further reassurance that these issues are being addressed (they already referred to CTDs v briefly a few weeks ago) and that we are confident they are resolved for WU6. The suggestion here is the delay was more about getting the Photogrammetry right (which is nice to have but I don’t care so much about) rather than resolving the CTDs and getting the sim to be stable (which I really do care about).

For many of us this has ruined our experience since SU5. I don’t see the harm in saying that, even though I think the sim is a truly amazing achievement otherwise.