Unigine certainly looks impressive, but as far as I understand is unable to be extended to a full-blown world-wide global simulator. As fas as I recall, that ambitious "Next Generation Simulator" project selected the Unigine engine as a base around 2015 - and failed, just because of this aspect.

Maybe there are more clever people out there those days, but if it would be simple someone already would have done it.

Kind regards, Michael

2 minutes ago, pmb said:

Unigine certainly looks impressive

so does MFS now look impressive,

we sometimes forget what we actually have…

23 minutes ago, craigeaglefire said:

so does MFS now look impressive,

we sometimes forget what we actually have…

Exactly. It's more impressive than those Unigen tech demos, in certain ways, because it's doing everything in real-time, with all the simulator, UI, networking, etc., code running, unlike those tech demos.

Also, with Unigen, as far as I've read about it, every object in the world would need to be "handcrafted" and placed in the world manually, and I don't see any mention of an actual weather system, despite varied cloud types looking good.

As I said in my previous comment, again, those videos are tech demos. Engine tech demos usually look far superior than the end, real-time result.

11 hours ago, RXP said:

Only if you can find one... 🙂

 

Interesting. A quick online search here in South Africa and I found several Series X consoles for sale online with next day delivery or a 20 minute drive to pick one up at a store. Roughly 500GBP is what they cost here as well.

If I didn't already own a gaming PC I would certainly consider a console if I wanted to get into simming now.

Barrier to entry much lower on console and not exclusively built for MSFS. I built my PC to run MSFS and that only. 3000USD for a system is prohibitive to most. This is a case of the chicken and the egg, without the console demand Im betting MSFS would not have came out as its simply not profitable enough for just our PC niche group. 

20 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

...there are more XBOX sales than PCs is not accurate (in terms of hardware).  The sales number vary but consistently show the PS5 ahead (global numbers):

XBOX series X/S sales 6-8 Million

PS5 sales at 11-13 Million

PC sales at 84 Million

That's a disingenuous comparison. 84 million PC sales but how many of those are running integral graphics, sat in offices, or company laptops for home working? Out of 84m I'd be surprised if a quarter had discrete graphics and were capable of running MFS to a reasonable standard. Them of course they need reasonable connectivity for MFS too, which is not a given for much of the world.

I really need a new PC (current playing MFS on a 2nd gen i5 Sandybridge from 2011) but I cannot stomach graphic card prices.

Edited December 24, 20214 yr by ckyliu

@JSmith2112 I'm glad you've managed to find one in YOUR country! I don't believe this represents the current world wide availability though 😉

1 hour ago, March Hare said:

As I said in my previous comment, again, those videos are tech demos. Engine tech demos usually look far superior than the end, real-time result.

You might be right here, because this reminds me this other demo:
“We got to get this right with you guys first, and by you guys I mean the people that really have been propping up this thing for the past 35 years”

Nevertheless, I'm sorry for the off-topic post about Unigine but someone posted the following video yesterday and this shows an actual simulator based on Unigine. This shall give an idea:

What is impressive in this video:

- Video published 4 years ago! Dec 7, 2017
- 4320x2560 @ 60 Hz
- 3 visual channels (single GTX 1080 + Barco F70-4K6 projector)

NB: this is really off topic and only for illustrating and answering @Adrian123 question about what it is that @Rob_Ainscough was talking about.

[off-topic-off]

I agree with Bob on this. Gamepass users don't have to pay to try MSFS, its part of their netflix like subscription. There is no risk in trying it out and its practically totally free to try out and use.  So the stat is misleading.

Now the big question is : Are X-Box users purchasing more addons than the PC users ? That would be a stat to keep an eye on.

1 hour ago, ckyliu said:

but I cannot stomach graphic card prices.

I tried pricing out an incremental upgrade to an 11th gen CPU, with an mITX MB, 32 GB of memory, and m.2 NVMe without the GPU for the present. I was already over $1K for those items alone. Yoicks!

3 hours ago, MSFLYER5856 said:

I agree with Bob on this. Gamepass users don't have to pay to try MSFS, its part of their netflix like subscription. There is no risk in trying it out and its practically totally free to try out and use.  So the stat is misleading.

I agree, these numbers are highly inflated due to the Game Pass.

In case of doubt, just look at the achievements stats... as far as I can see, most of them have been obtained by 0 - 3% of the players. It's enough to download (or even start downloading) the game to be counted as playerbase.

I never had so many golden achievements in other games 🙂 After 18 months from release.

Edited December 24, 20214 yr by MrFuzzy

I have known many real world pilots over the years, as well as tech savvy people that I worked with. It was very rare for me to find anyone really interested in flight simming, in fact I can only recall a few, over a 30 year span. I think when MSFS was put into game pass, because of all the buzz by MS, many people gave it a try, flew it a couple of times, and  that was that. My guess is that market place purchases for X box, are fairly small. 

7 hours ago, craigeaglefire said:

so does MFS now look impressive,

we sometimes forget what we actually have…

It's true--when I look at the most graphically impressive content from the Unigine videos to me MSFS is the closest thing to Unigine Sim 2 in existence today in a desktop flight simulator, and in many places it's just not all that far off either--it's in the ballpark at least..  Plus, I have no idea what Unigine would do to satellite imagery as it's a method to create virtual worlds, not necessarily worlds ultra well matched to our world.  Despite looking fabulous unless it matches our real world you're going to lose something, IMO very critical to immersion, in the translation as you do w/ land classed based art found in XP/FSX/P3D, sans TruEarth.  I believe that is a main reason why we stick w/ MSFS despite its current shortcomings.  

Here's a little peak from a flight earlier today, at CYOW:  looks decent, doesn't it?

I guess a very important question is:  if Xbox users are very transient, what possible role can the Xbox port become any kind of meaningful piece to help keep MSFS financially afloat?  Plus, they have to operate servers in the background, and that has to cost a few bucks.  Quite clearly MS decided it was worth doing, but as some would surmise part of the lack of full on dedication to bring MSFS up to fully worthy competitors to P3D/XP in terms of a complete FS may well be the effect of considering how these addition features relate to Xbox users.   If it's somewhat clear already that the console port isn't really generating enough $$, then one might think MS will re-aim towards the PC domain going forward--but would they, becomes the relevant question.  The whole question might be moot since they are allegedly porting to Playstation?

Perhaps we're entering a crossroads at this very moment, not necessarily unlinked to the holiday MS/Asobo is taking at least publicly.  It would help to answer this question if we knew how many total users are truly heavy users as it were--several times a week, or in my case any time I possibly can, which is nearly daily, and how many of those heavy users are on Xbox with or w/o plans to migrate to PC MSFS.   I've said I feel the next 4-6 months will be very telling for MSFS' future, and I think it's still likely to be the case.  

22 minutes ago, Noel said:

I guess a very important question is:  if Xbox users are very transient, what possible role can the Xbox port become any kind of meaningful piece to help keep MSFS financially afloat?  

I'm wondering the same as they don't need to buy it outright. I guess they are hoping to sell the digital content and possibly even eventually pulling the plug forcing players to buy it after buying the digital content. I'm only speculating here because I can't figure it out..

After seeing me fly MSFS on my XBOX with Thrustmaster One HOTAS my cousin went off and bought an XBOX with the same stick purely to learn how to fly. XBOX is so much cheaper than a PC of even close spec and Games Pass make it so cheap to own the base MSFS as well as being to able to add the Deluxe packs etc. My cousin has not even owned a console before. I suspect that this is not un common. I myself have moved from MSFS on high end laptop which ran it perfectly at 1080p to me Series X which runs it even better at 4K. Further it required no extra software payment at all as I already owned it via Games Pass on the PC and also my Deluxe upgrade ownership is shared for free across the two platforms. It seems to me that to maximise your sales of MSFS products of any type - hardware or software then you are going to want to support XBOX console too.

CJ