Jörg Neumann regarding the 40th anniversary

[fppilot 4,368]

3 minutes ago, NZ255 said:

The simple answer is, it’s nuts how long things take. There was an interview with an xplane developer about rewriting parts of the atc system and he’s been doing it for a year. That doesn’t include the less common actions like emergencies etc. Things just take a lot of time when you’re creating them out of nothing. And getting them to production level takes even longer.

I repeat, rush to market.  I understand and I have enjoyed what was/is there,. But unmistakably there was so much already available that was cast aside. There is little if any argument with that.  I refer to my list in my previous post.  We have a great improvement, and I am enjoying. But oh what-if....  And after two years most of the what if-is still fleeting.... 

But we have air races and such...  To each his own.

[lwt1971 7,400]

31 minutes ago, fppilot said:

But how could they allow their chosen developers to ignore already existing simulator developments like more deeply modeled aircraft models, realistic ATC, OEM-based avionics, live weather infusion, improved weather textures, live traffic, etc.  What was used was mostly their own satellite assets (Bing). That admittedly was a clear improvement over previous satellite based photo-real scenery in prior sims. Great for simple VFR flying,  However.  If there was a Hall of Fame here they would fall short, all things considered.  Too many already readily-available features were ignored or cast aside.  Likely much was due to a rush to market.  But then why after two years is so much of that in pre-existing capability still trailing until who knows when.......

Not quite sure if I understand all what you're saying, but if MSFS default aircraft and avioinics were to be compared to FSX's default birds then that surely was an improvement. Live weather wise, it was and is nothing short of stellar for default weather compared to any sim present and old. Yes the default birds' flight models are still very lacking, but more importantly the core MSFS aerodynamics/physics *enables* for very realistic aircraft  to be implemented as seen in all the great birds that got released in May ranging from GA to airliners. And now even the default aircrafts are being beefed up big time for free with the likes of the iniBuilds A310, Milviz Beaver, helicopters, gliders, etc.

If you're implying that MS/Asobo ignored or cast aside readily-available features prior to August 2020, I'm not sure I can agree given that what they set out to do necessitated writing from the ground up given entirely new ways of doing things and new technology stacks... but maybe I'm not understanding what you exactly mean by that.

With MSFS as it stands at SU9, along with some birds like the Milviz C310, PMDG 737, Fenix A320, Maddog MD80, or Bae 146 in your hangar, it's pretty much a best of all worlds with great world simulation/rendering, and deep flight models, and deep systems models, and of course outstanding visuals that blows everything else out of the water... this is a compelling simulation experience rivaled by no other, even with current warts like ATC, AI, ground handling, and some other issues. But Asobo/MS are also clearly not standing still and are striving to continuously deliver features/improvements and bug fixes. Ya I'll take that happily and without reservation say it's the best flight simulation experience I've ever had, and I've had many since the 1980s :)

Edited June 15, 2022 by lwt1971

[FrankPilot 124]

Almost too good to believe. Fantastic stuff. The development team’s commitment and dedication is nothing less than remarkable. Loving it! Cheers. 

[fppilot 4,368]

17 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Not quite sure if I understand all what you're saying, but if MSFS default aircraft and avioinics were to be compared to FSX's default

That is a light year from what I said!  I clearly and absolutely referred to progress from developers in several supporting fields from 2006 to 2020 that have been ignored or cast aside.  Nothing I stated compared 2006 FSX default to 2020 default.  Please go back to my mentions.  Deeper aircraft models, avionics, real live weather, respectable ATC, weather textures, live traffic,..... And much of those capabilities from developers has been thwarted by lack of a compete SDK.   Name just one feature that I mentioned that was an available add-on capability in FSX/P3d/xPlane in 2019 that the MSFS team, even on their own initiative found a way to provide own their own in MSFS 2020. 

Understand I am not in any way stating that the MSFS team should have reached out and selected any of those 3rd parties,  Just saying that there were clear sim capabilities, even as add-ons, that were not provided upon first release, and most not even now, in the new core sim, after two years of updates,  

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by fppilot

[lwt1971 7,400]

32 minutes ago, fppilot said:

That is a light year from what I said!  I clearly and absolutely referred to progress from developers in several supporting fields that has been ignored or cast aside.  Nothing I stated compared 2006 FSX default to 2020 default.  Please go back to my mentions.  Name just one feature that I mentioned that was an available add-on capability in FSX/P3d/xPlane in 2019 that the MSFS team, even on their own initiative found a way to provide own their own in MSFS 2020. 

Understand I am not in any way stating that the MSFS team should have reached out and selected any of those 3rd parties,  Just saying that there were clear sim capabilities, even as add-ons, that were not provided upon first release, and most not even now, in the new core sim, after two years of updates,  

 

Ok well good that you clarified, since it was hard to understand your initial post. Even if the features you mentioned were available as add-on capabilities in FSX/P3D/XP in 2019, could MS/Asobo easily have purchased/licensed some of that tech for the initial release of MSFS? I'm not so sure it's that simple/easy... part of the reason they're easily able to bring in 3rd parties now is due to the initial success of MSFS. And from your list, the ones they could have potentially tapped 3rd parties for are maybe avionics, ATC, and live traffic... as for weather, given the whole new way it's done in MSFS not so sure existing sim weather technologies would've been a good fit (and also it's important to note they did tap into non-sim 3rd parties like Meteoblue for weather). As for flight models in default aircraft, again not sure how feasible it would've been for them to tap into 3rd parties before release, but I also think they could've scaled back on the number of default aircrafts and focused on putting out maybe at most 5 nicely simulated ones. And as for avionics, well they did bring in Working Title not too long after release and that's been very beneficial as we know.

Anyways, I'll firmly stand by my opinion that it's great that we got MSFS even in its initial state in 2019, and have gone along for the ride thru two years to now having this amazing flight sim, headed for more great advancements in the future. I say that comfortably since for a great many sims I've used in the last 30+ years, I've had to wait much longer than two years to get to enjoy any of them as much as I'm enjoying MSFS now.

Edited June 15, 2022 by lwt1971

[reignman40 450]

I think I am more excited about MSFS today than I was in June 2019 when it was announced and the summer of 2020 waiting for the release. And that is saying alot! 

[abrams_tank 7,409]

Quote

The Airbus A310 is a big deal and makes me very happy. The conversation I had with Ubaid (Ubaid Mussa, CEO of iniSimulations) clearly showed that he has a vision of what he cares about. They’re at the very high end of what’s possible and I think he was really sold when I told him that I wanted the aircraft for free and not as a $60 payware aircraft. I wanted everybody in the sim to be able to enjoy it, and he wanted to be part of that.

We’re also making some other stuff. The reason why I wrote the press release the way I did is that I think of this as a long-term relationship. The 310 is a good entry-level, obviously a slightly older plane, but it’s very complex, so if you really want to go deep into the systems, this is a good one to start with, and then we’ll announce more as we go.

Let’s go beyond the 40th anniversary. This is, in my opinion, a long-term relationship. That’s what I want. That’s what Ubaid wants, so… You know, not all the plans are set in stone. We’re talking about all kinds of things.

What Jorg wrote about iniBuilds and Ubaid (the CEO of iniBuilds) is interesting. Based on what Jorg said, the partnership between Microsoft and iniBuilds is much more deeper than I thought when iniBuilds announced the A310 would be free on MSFS, and announced they are now an MSFS partner.

If what Jorg wrote is true, and what Ubaid thinks is the same, then I don't think iniBuilds will start another new airplane project for XPlane anymore, since Ubaid would be in for a long term partnership with Microsoft and MSFS.  Not only this, but now there is a possibility that iniBuilds won't bother to even port their planes to XP 12.  I originally guessed that iniBuilds would port their planes to XP 12 if it wasn't a lot of work.  I even thought iniBuilds would port their planes to XP 12 despite the discount that iniBuilds offered on their XP 11 plane lineup recently.

The discount that iniBuilds offered on their plane lineup recently caught me off guard, like I didn't understand why they were offering the discount, if they were going to port their planes to XP 12 anyways.  It would have been more rational for iniBuilds to keep their planes the same price, if they decided to port to XP 12, and maybe even charge some type of an upgrade fee for those that wanted an XP 12 version.  But discounting their planes, didn't make any sense at all, at the time. Nevertheless, I didn't think that discounting their plane didn't mean they wouldn't port their planes to XP 12.

With this announcement of a partnership with Microsoft/MSFS, the discount is starting to make sense now.  I get the feeling that iniBuilds was looking at a long term partnership with Microsoft/MSFS, and was thinking of leaving the XPlane platform.  The discount would be a last minute way to make some extra money, before they leave the XPlane platform and announced their partnership with Microsoft/MSFS.  I could also be wrong, and iniBuilds ultimately ports their planes to XP 12, and even announces entirely new planes that they want to develop for XP12.  But somehow, I doubt this because it would not be good for their partnership with Microsoft/MSFS (plus, I wouldn't be surprised if in the agreement they signed with Microsoft/MSFS, they may not be allowed to develop new products for other flight simulation platforms, especially since iniBuilds was likely paid by Microsoft for their A310).

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by abrams_tank

[lzamm 143]

6 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

And then we launched on Xbox, and that basically doubled our audience.

This may be the reason for most of the other issues with the sim, but you can see it makes sense. How does a flight sim make money when everyone has a copy and is pushing the dollars to third party developers?

At least it looks like we're not going to get caught in the cycle of paying up every few years for what is (let's face it) an incremental update on what we had before.

Edited June 15, 2022 by lzamm
Typo

[Shack95 2,658]

7 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I can tell you, Top Gun has been super successful. I think two weeks ago, 50% of all flights were related to Top Gun. That’s like ten million flights, just for Top Gun in a week or so.

So that would be roughly 3 million flights a day in total. Is that a lot? 

[pilotter 254]

It's nice to see so much passion and commitment. I think I will definitely celebrate 40 years, and hope that our community will stay friendly as a group off aviator enthousiasts.

There is enough word not allowed in the world, so I will just enjoy flightsim, and am very pleased with every FREE  ( don't forget this ) upgrade. 

 

the future of the sky looks bright, this has been very different a couple of years ago.

Thank you Asobo and Microsoft  ( but do keep out bringing updates for performance and AI 🙂 )

Edited June 15, 2022 by pilotter

[saifs 153]

I feel guilty now buying stuff from other stores and not the Marketplace 😔. 

Marketplace it is for me from now, just to give back a little to msfs. 

[jcomm 5,928]

Great news, some of it we already knew was in the work, but it's nice and opens even more our horizons, to see how the Project Manager at MS sees the future of MFS.

After what happened to MS FLIGHT this sounds like Amazing !

[mrueedi 702]

1 hour ago, Shack95 said:

So that would be roughly 3 million flights a day in total. Is that a lot? 

I would say so.

Given the 20 million flights per week, we have to guesstimate the average number of flights per user per week to get the estimated number of users.

So how many flights would the average user do per week? My optimistic assumption (making the following user estimate conservative) would be 5 flights per week. 5 flight on average per week to me appears optimistic because a huge number of users surely flies less (e.g. me),  so the power users need to balance that by flying a lot more. It is a bit like the average speed on a journey: if you have to drive 100 km and for 40 km your speed is slowed down to 50 km/h, you need to drive 300 km/h for the rest to get just a 100 km/h average.

So, given 20 million flight per week and 5 flights per user per week, we get a user count of 4 million users.

For a flightsim that is a fabulous number. There were estimations, that e.g. the number of XPlane users would be at max somewhere in the region of 50k. So MSFS would have almost two magnitudes of order more....

Also consider, that we are talking about users actually using the sim, not just installations.

 

[The Moose 1,177]

37 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

My optimistic assumption (making the following user estimate conservative) would be 5 flights per week

I'd be interested to know the real number, if only to see quite how much of a no-life looser I've become 😂

It would also be interesting to know exactly what they call "a flight"  Every time you hit "fly now"?   Every take off?   Every take off with a landing?

Still, using any of those metrics I'm well above average, which is nice to know 😆

Edited June 15, 2022 by The Moose

[MarcG 2,974]

Nice interview to read, but as ever these marketing interviews are just to appease - ultimately actions speak louder than words - let's see what SU10 brings.