9 minutes ago, Ink-With-Gold said:

• India / Pakistan
• South East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Papua! )
• Middle East (Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi, Yemen, Jordan)
• China
• Russia (Yes, it's still on the world map last I checked and it's huge)
• Baltic Region and Turkey (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)
• Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Finland)
• Mediterranean (Morocco, Greece, Malta, Egypt, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Tunisia)
• Horn of Africa (Cape Town, Johannesburg, with Mozambique and Madagascar added)
• Safari regions and more fauna as part of a general Africa update
• Central America (Mexico, Panama, Honduras, and all of the Caribbean region, Jamaica, Haiti, etc...)
• South America (Take your pick.. Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia)

That's all and good, but alas, no, let's release a Halo space craft and do USA again so we keep exploring the same places over and over, defeating the entire purpose of the sim and the discovery tours. I'm shaking with rage and anger. 

Okay, maybe not that much, but it's disappointing. Off to Florida again I guess...

 

Lol I was with you about how it'd be nice if they're able to do other regions of the earth but then that Halo comment makes one think twice about taking you seriously.  Jorg did promise earlier to do the USA again since their first USA WU attempt wasn't that great (compared to consequent WUs) and given the 40th anniv and all that it makes sense. There's also the fact that data is hard to source for various other regions on earth, but I'm sure they're doing all they can to get as much as they can. They've said the next world updates are in August and October so let's see if those are something outside of North America and Europe.

Also, from your list they already did a world update for Scandinavia via WU5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgaj4NGVfR0

 

Mmm, interesting.

As a person who has bought a huge number of addons for this sim (over 500 payware products, most of which will be airports and cities) I have mixed feelings about this. Some of the PoI's in the video are very impressive and will no doubt add hugely to my fun, but at first glance I must admit to wondering how many of my US addons might now be rendered unnecessary, or worse still, unusable.

I'll happily admit I haven't closely examined the details yet to see what might be affected, but it would be nice to think that MS/Asobo might have taken at least the major 3pds into consideration. I guess I'll find out later.

It'll be interesting also to see if the post-SU9 problem of low frame-rates on the ground around several major US airports/cities has in any way changed, or if any of the new areas also suffer. I doubt that I'll get a chance to do my update and check things out for a couple of days, but I'll pop in here occasionally to see whatever impressions get posted. At least the World Updates can be removed, unlike the System Updates, if the need is felt.

I realise this sounds a bit negative - not meant to be. More hesitant than negative. Like I say, lots of the stuff in the video looks amazing, just hoping I'm not going to get too many clashes.

Oof, they got the labels on the Washington DC World War II Memorial reversed, they have the Pacific battles on the Atlantic side, and Atlantic battles on the Pacific side..

Edited June 14, 20224 yr by Tuskin38

32 minutes ago, Ink-With-Gold said:

That's all and good, but alas, no, let's release a Halo space craft and do USA again so we keep exploring the same places over and over, defeating the entire purpose of the sim and the discovery tours. I'm shaking with rage and anger. 

This is a tad dramatic. I'm just happy we have a sim that actually gets updates every month and have a development team thats transparent about its future plans. We've never had that in the history of flight simulation. Who cares if there's a Halo space craft? Don't download it. If they have to make this stuff to attract a wider audience, thus continuing to give this platform success which we'll reap the benefits of...so be it. 

29 minutes ago, andy1252 said:

Mmm, interesting.

As a person who has bought a huge number of addons for this sim (over 500 payware products, most of which will be airports and cities) I have mixed feelings about this. Some of the PoI's in the video are very impressive and will no doubt add hugely to my fun, but at first glance I must admit to wondering how many of my US addons might now be rendered unnecessary, or worse still, unusable.

I

That is exactly the reason I have spent very little on add ons. As they update MSFS, many of these add ons will be worthless. 

57 minutes ago, Ink-With-Gold said:

That's all and good, but alas, no, let's release a Halo space craft and do USA again

USA has by Far the most pilots, aircraft, airports, so it makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

Not really a complaint, but I sure wish Canada would get some more attention. Some of the ortho imagery is very subpar. Some of Google's imagery isn't that good either, but in most cases it is superior to Bing. Unfortunately, Canada's relatively small population compared to the USA means fewer flight simmers giving MS the incentive to improve it.

29 minutes ago, turnandbank said:

Unfortunately, Canada's relatively small population compared to the USA means fewer flight simmers giving MS the incentive to improve it.

Agreed, such a great area of the world. As soon as Honeycomb makes hardware compatible w/ moose hooves, there will be a sudden uptick in Canadian users and the incentive will be there!

2 hours ago, enright said:

Here are the top ten countries ranked by amount of passenger air travel (from Wikipedia):

Rank	Country	Airline passengers carried	Year
1	United States	926,737,000	2019
2	China	659,629,070	2019
3	Ireland	170,161,850	2019
4	India	167,499,120	2019
5	United Kingdom	142,392,530	2019
6	Japan	130,233,350	2019
7	Russia	115,482,740	2019
8	Turkey	111,028,630	2019
9	Germany	109,633,750	2019
10	Brazil	102,917,550	2019

The next few logical countries would be China, Ireland, and India. They only JUST completed the Chinese localization - so it certainly makes sense that they haven't focused on it previously, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was next. 

BTW - I'm surprised that Ireland has more passenger traffic than the UK. I get that it's a huge hub, but I thought Heathrow was much busier that either Dublin or Shannon.

 

Ireland having more passengers than the UK and Russia?  Hmm, are those numbers accurate I wonder.

2 hours ago, Ink-With-Gold said:

Okay, maybe not that much, but it's disappointing. Off to Florida again I guess...

 

I m sure its getting there on these countries but not for about a year is my guess

The USA update looks very good, but I'm hoping for India, S.E. Asia and Indonesia before long.

5 hours ago, SubtotalGuide said:

All this secrecy over WU USA II? What was so special about it?

Next up, WU Japan II

I can only assume the fact it was the USA again is why they were secretive, they are getting tired of people complaining about how poor a job they are doing and are more than ever trying to cut that down as much as possible.

4 hours ago, LOT737 said:

But the payware Block Island which I have bought is actually from Gaya… if it’s a different developer it’s one thing, but this time it’s exactly the same airport?!? I mean.. it’s still on sale everywhere.. why if it’s free now? I don’t get it…

Yep, not impressed with this, I was thinking it must be a different version, but nope, I’ve wasted money now, and on top of that it’s still available to buy in many stores including the in sim marketplace, that’s pretty disgusting honestly, especially when you can’t get a refund.

21 minutes ago, White Hawk said:

I can only assume the fact it was the USA again is why they were secretive

No, It's because Microsoft wanted something they could show off at the X-Box Gameshow as a World Premier. They also had a short video of them walking around one of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum buildings. There's nothing nefarious going on here, they even said during one of the Q&As last year that there were would be a second USA update eventually.

 

 

Oahu got imagery updates, at least around Honolulu and PHNL. The end of Runway 8R is no longer covered by clouds

Edited June 14, 20223 yr by Tuskin38

31 minutes ago, White Hawk said:

I can only assume the fact it was the USA again is why they were secretive, they are getting tired of people complaining about how poor a job they are doing and are more than ever trying to cut that down as much as possible.

I suggest you stop assuming then. They were not secretive about anything, period. And the number of people complaining is way less than you think.