I think its a great idea, and probably fairly straightforward to tackle as a freeware mod.  My time's been completely absorbed by my current film project so I havent been able to work on any scenery addons in a while, but if no one has done it by the time I'm free I'll give it a shot.

To the OP, dont worry about the curmudgeon's.  They like to stamp their feet and moan, but no one really cares what they say anyway.  Its people with ideas like yours and the army of modders and developers that are pushing cool new features like this all the time that will continue to elevate this virtual world we are flying in.  The complainers will only reap the benefits in spite of themselves.

12 hours ago, garlicbread11 said:

Its MY opinion, and entitled to post.

Didn't say you were not entitled to post it.  Just pointed out that if it is put out there then those with the same opinion as you are free to ignore its existence. I honor the ability to make that choice.  In the same vein, others are entitled to choose for themselves as well.

16 hours ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

many more antennas and water towers

In case you don't yet have this amazing freeware...

https://flightsim.to/file/2605/we-love-vfr-region-1

https://flightsim.to/file/16674/we-love-vfr-region-2

Speaking of Live Events at sports venues, it would make an incredible mod if the Car Racing Circuits were alive with racing, that would be amazing!

3 hours ago, MarcG said:

Speaking of Live Events at sports venues, it would make an incredible mod if the Car Racing Circuits were alive with racing, that would be amazing!

I so wish I had the Google Maps version of my house opposes to Bing.  Google must have taken the image on the day both my truck and race car were sitting on the driveway so every time I go to Google Maps my car and truck are in the image 🙂  

I "may" have flown over some of the race tracks I frequent that have cars embedded in the images to see if they caught my car on track somewhere LOL...  

7 hours ago, steve310002 said:

In case you don't yet have this amazing freeware...

https://flightsim.to/file/2605/we-love-vfr-region-1

https://flightsim.to/file/16674/we-love-vfr-region-2

Thanks for that!  Tried it.  According to the dev, MSFS doesn't like to show thin objects so I don't see antennas and they're not lit right now.  At least the smokestacks with the smoke is a nice addition.  It'll get there.

 

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by Gregg_Seipp

On 10/17/2021 at 8:07 AM, KERNEL32 said:

I love these responses, and IF we abided by these rules we would have FS1 for all time. I started with Sub Logic and, well... things have slightly improved since then. Why do we need ground / road lights? Why do we need clouds? Do we really have to have a 3d cockpit? I'll bet Thanks for your input!

Yep. Agree 100. I go back to Sublogic days as well. It's as if developers can only do one thing at a time. The whole series has a long history of folks who always thought that the flight dynamics was the only thing to be worked on and any improvement on those vector graphics was a waste of valuable time and resources. Lol.

First they need to optimize this platform and fix the bugs. Then we can start overloading it with these cool environment enhancements. I like the idea only if it doesn't leave a massive footprint and cause performance bottlenecks. 

48 minutes ago, Drumcode said:

First they need to optimize this platform and fix the bugs. Then we can start overloading it with these cool environment enhancements. I like the idea only if it doesn't leave a massive footprint and cause performance bottlenecks. 

Pretty sure this sim is about as optimized as it is going to get.  If you need better performance, you will need to throw more powerful hardware at it.

Bugs are a fact of life in flight sims and I would expect Asobo to be bug-fixing for the life of the sim.

I think it is a given that NOBODY would be interested or talking about this potential mod/add-on if it caused massive performance issues (though why would it?!).  

1 minute ago, PlumCrazy said:

Pretty sure this sim is about as optimized as it is going to get. 

Are you sure about this? It sounds to me like they're still refactoring a bunch of code. 

14 minutes ago, PlumCrazy said:

Pretty sure this sim is about as optimized as it is going to get.  If you need better performance, you will need to throw more powerful hardware at it.

Bugs are a fact of life in flight sims and I would expect Asobo to be bug-fixing for the life of the sim.

I think it is a given that NOBODY would be interested or talking about this potential mod/add-on if it caused massive performance issues (though why would it?!).  

Three good points.  A very sensible post.

Nobody wants extra features that destroy the smoothness of the sim, but like you say, I cant see something like this doing it.

On optimisation, I hope DX12 will eek out a little bit more performance, but I am not expecting much, and Asobo have already said they might use any overhead to enhance clouds and reflections etc., so better hardware it is!  The 4000 series Nvidia cards and AMD equivalents will keep up with it I think, but we just need more accessible prices on the cards.
  
However, I am looking forward to this new direct load to GPU system that should bring down loading times.

Edited October 18, 20214 yr by bobcat999

... also we should all keep in mind that if this is indeed a "10 year" project, the likelihood that you will still be using the same hardware at the end of that 10 years as you do now is quite unlikely.

Hardware will continue to improve so any features roadmap stretching into the future would be remiss if it didnt try to take advantage of more powerful processors and graphics cards that will come available.

I would propose the motto should be "fix bugs for today, but design features for tomorrow"

(all that said, turning on a few stadium lights on a time schedule wouldnt effect performance of even the most minimalist system)

2 hours ago, Drumcode said:

Are you sure about this? It sounds to me like they're still refactoring a bunch of code. 

I said pretty sure.  The only thing I am 100% sure of is death and taxes.  But I am certainly not holding my breath waiting for Asobo to squeeze any more significant optimizations out of the core code.  Some have hoped DX12 would be some kind of magic performance booster, but I believe even Asobo has stated it will not boost FPS 

13 hours ago, MarcG said:

Speaking of Live Events at sports venues, it would make an incredible mod if the Car Racing Circuits were alive with racing, that would be amazing!

I did actually say this to the developer of the freeware Goodwood Aerodrome add-on, saying how great it would be if we get to the point that there could be on track action (or at least cars on the grid) along with spectators in period dress at Goodwood Revival. He was enthusiastic about the idea (though I realise a lot would need to happen 'under the hood' for that to become reality).