7 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ve always thought of it as a brilliant low-level VFR sim. I’m very much controlled by the decisions FS Labs take with Concorde. If there’s no version for MSFS then P3D will remain on my system. If they create a version for MSFS then it becomes a far easier decision.

Whether Radar Contact can ever be made to work in it is unknown. I would really miss that program.

You can always run P3D on a modest pc as a WidevieW server with all sliders to the left.

And a fast pc with MSFS as outside view pc….

Theb you can fly your P3D aircraft.

 

7 hours ago, neilhewitt said:

@abrams_tank has it right. Bandwidth is super cheap right now. There is a boatload of unused fibre out there. Even with 2 million users all hitting the CDN for MSFS at the same time with 100Mbps+ connections, I doubt it's more than a blip on the Azure traffic radar. Server hardware is a fairly small % of the cost of building and maintaining the cloud, too (networking gear is much more expensive); the scale that Azure and AWS (and even GCP) work at is so mind-bogglingly big that having even a few thousand VMs dedicated to running the MSFS back-end is not a top-10 workload for Azure. Nowhere near. If you or I were doing it it would cost a few million a year, but for Microsoft it's much much less than that. 

Hi, I think this explains it very well!  Maybe I can quote this excerpt in the future.  As @neilhewitt explained it, this is why it's cheap for MSFS to stream the data.

too much invested in P3D , they will have to drag me kicking and screaming , which is going to happen at some point i guess !

2 hours ago, GSalden said:

You can always run P3D on a modest pc as a WidevieW server with all sliders to the left.

And a fast pc with MSFS as outside view pc….

Theb you can fly your P3D aircraft.

 

I’ve read that a few times but I still don’t understand your logic. I will only ever use one PC for flying and it will always be the fastest I can afford.

2 hours ago, GSalden said:

You can always run P3D on a modest pc as a WidevieW server with all sliders to the left.

And a fast pc with MSFS as outside view pc….

Theb you can fly your P3D aircraft.

Not sure I would really want to do this, but I'm ever curious how exactly please Gerard?

2 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

Not sure I would really want to do this, but I'm ever curious how exactly please Gerard?

Gerard is describing a hybrid multi-channel setup. Wideview 2020 supports this model - a P3D host and MSFS client. I would be concerned about slight mismatches in scenery positioning, though - if you're landing on a runway you can see in MSFS but the P3D object is off to the right or left you could end up landing on terrain on the host; same if the airport elevations were different. Really you'd want identical scenery in both sims and that's just not possible.

It's an interesting concept, though. I might experiment with the idea at some point to test it out. @GSalden is that how you're doing it in your setup now? If so, how well does it work?

it is an interesting concept.  But it also makes me sad.  I mean Microsoft (asobo) had a clean slate to deliver us a fantastic next gen sim.  They got some things right.  But failed on many others.  And now we sit here and have to discuss a concept like this.  

Edited December 17, 20214 yr by micstatic
add word

17 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

It's cheap because Microsoft owns Azure.  Also, this topic was discussed in more detail here: 

The consensus in that discussion is, it's cheap for Microsoft.  In addition, it becomes harder to stop the streaming now that MSFS has been released for X-Box.  

As Gulfstream in that thread said:

 

I know that MS owns Azure. Anybody who thinks it’s not expensive to run that, is delusional, sorry. MS is not in the business of wasting money. 

1 hour ago, neilhewitt said:

Gerard is describing a hybrid multi-channel setup. Wideview 2020 supports this model - a P3D host and MSFS client. I would be concerned about slight mismatches in scenery positioning, though - if you're landing on a runway you can see in MSFS but the P3D object is off to the right or left you could end up landing on terrain on the host; same if the airport elevations were different. Really you'd want identical scenery in both sims and that's just not possible.

It's an interesting concept, though. I might experiment with the idea at some point to test it out. @GSalden is that how you're doing it in your setup now? If so, how well does it work?

Yes but how exactly do you set it up Neil?

Does this need the Pro-plus version of P3D?

25 minutes ago, flycln said:

I know that MS owns Azure. Anybody who thinks it’s not expensive to run that, is delusional, sorry. MS is not in the business of wasting money. 

Then read what @neilhewitt wrote, just a few posts before yours:

Quote

@abrams_tank has it right. Bandwidth is super cheap right now. There is a boatload of unused fibre out there. Even with 2 million users all hitting the CDN for MSFS at the same time with 100Mbps+ connections, I doubt it's more than a blip on the Azure traffic radar. Server hardware is a fairly small % of the cost of building and maintaining the cloud, too (networking gear is much more expensive); the scale that Azure and AWS (and even GCP) work at is so mind-bogglingly big that having even a few thousand VMs dedicated to running the MSFS back-end is not a top-10 workload for Azure. Nowhere near. If you or I were doing it it would cost a few million a year, but for Microsoft it's much much less than that. 

Those are @neilhewitt's words, not my words, and he even gives a technical breakdown of why it's cheap for Microsoft. No offense @flycln, but I think you are misinformed.  

Edited December 17, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

You have no idea which company I work for and what I do for a living. That’s all I’m saying. 
 

If MSFS sales go down significantly and development is discontinued, the servers will not stay up. It’s neither as cheap as he claims, nor will MS waste even little amounts of money. That is not how the sub-divisions work. 

Edited December 17, 20214 yr by flycln

I wanted to mention that JP Garraio from FSiPanel seems to still be actively developing for P3D (even with putting out MSFS stuff).  I noticed he recently posted a video showing FSiPanel in action with the iFly 737.  And the program is currently on sale on Simmarket and his website.  Yes.  I just bought it.

1 hour ago, flycln said:

You have no idea which company I work for and what I do for a living. That’s all I’m saying. 
 

If MSFS sales go down significantly and development is discontinued, the servers will not stay up. It’s neither as cheap as he claims, nor will MS waste even little amounts of money. That is not how the sub-divisions work. 

I'm sorry, but I take @neilhewitt's explanation over yours, any day.  @neilhewitt was willing to go through the technical explanation of it, including the reasoning of the costs in his technical explanation.

Edited December 17, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

I have the feeling flycln might not be able to speak as freely as he would like to on this issue, maybe because of his proximity to the subject of discussion...

I’m a strong believer that P3D has a future since it’s still in active development. I’ve seen comments about P3D compared to FSX and that it’s a natural path of evolution of simulators. New comes out, old dies, we all move on. FSX wasn’t developed anymore as many previous versions from Microsoft, that was just the model back then. P3D is different. If LM stops development then I’d say that P3D doesn’t have a future.

I tried MSFS and really want to like it to the point to be the main sim but it’s just not there. And it shows, to me at least, that gorgeous graphics, and even satellite imagery isn’t enough for me to move over. The update policy, stability and lack of high-fidelity modern airliners outweighs the positives of the sim for me.