Thought some might find this interesting...

Microsoft Flight Sim has doubled its players twice – and there's a plan to attract even more users

 

 

Very interesting indeed. This caught my eye:

"India has just joined the open data initiative; something common in much of the rest of the world, and a scheme that Microsoft is a part of. The Indian government has also announced plans to fund the scanning of the top 100 cities in the country, creating exactly the sort of data needed to craft Flight Simulator’s ‘digital twin’ of the earth."

I'd love to see India upgraded.

Sorry, wrong thread.

Edited November 17, 20223 yr by Alvega

Thank God for "casual gamers" and the Xbox. Without them, we'd still be stuck with creaky legacy sims years past their "best eaten by" date. 

India update incoming!  Been waiting for this since day one.  Great news.  Made my day that has.🙂

Satellite & photogrammetry is the future of flight simulation. In the article:

Quote

India has just joined the open data initiative; something common in much of the rest of the world, and a scheme that Microsoft is a part of. The Indian government has also announced plans to fund the scanning of the top 100 cities in the country, creating exactly the sort of data needed to craft Flight Simulator’s ‘digital twin’ of the earth.

“And then I get a phone call, like I oftentimes do, and some dude from India says 'We're doing cities in India, are you interested in that?' Like, yep! When you got 'em,” Neumann adds.

“So at some point, we'll make an India update and we'll try to do justice to the country and speak to its heart.”

 

 

 

 

Autogen is the past . It will be interesting to see how the satellite & photogrammetry improves in the coming years.

j

Edited November 17, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

Anyone still curious about how they could afford to give us so much new material for free in the latest update, this article should help explain it…

It’s also interesting that Jorg says that in Japan alone, there are 50K to 100K players playing MSFS on a daily basis. I didn’t expect those numbers, 2 years after the release of MSFS.

If those numbers are true, there could be over a million players playing MSFS in the entire world, 2 years after it’s release.  I know MSFS supposedly hit 1 million in sales within 6 months after its release, but usually the casual simmers lose interest pretty fast. Anyways, if there is still a million players that play MSFS, that is a very good ecosystem for 3rd party developers to make some money.

Edited November 17, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

Nice! I really hope they will consider doing a world update for southeast Asia!

15 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Satellite & photogrammetry is the future of flight simulation. In the article:

Autogen is the past . It will be interesting to see how the satellite & photogrammetry improves in the coming years.

j

Good one!

Try and convince the other platforms of this - Kinda the obvious!

27 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Satellite & photogrammetry is the future of flight simulation. In the article:

Autogen is the past . It will be interesting to see how the satellite & photogrammetry improves in the coming years.

j

That has no importance unless technology (hardware and servers) improve massively. Even New York, which arguably has great photogrammetry in MSFS, looks like the apocalypse (i.e.: worse than autogen) from a certain distance, even with LOD at max. This is only because the current hardware and network technology cannot cope. I don't see that changing any time soon, so don't write off autogen until then!

23 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

That has no importance unless technology (hardware and servers) improve massively. Even New York, which arguably has great photogrammetry in MSFS, looks like the apocalypse (i.e.: worse than autogen) from a certain distance, even with LOD at max. This is only because the current hardware and network technology cannot cope. I don't see that changing any time soon, so don't write off autogen until then!

I'm still reliant on third-party developer city packs and autogen as photogrammetry often looks like this:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/uploads/default/original/4X/5/b/5/5b5b962b8fe8d5d64b9eba84348fca172e2a2b91.jpeg

Though when it works as it should, photogrammetry is amazing:

https://msfsaddons.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/portugal-spain-iberia-update-msfs.jpg

 

1 hour ago, Ricardo41 said:

Thank God for "casual gamers" and the Xbox. Without them, we'd still be stuck with creaky legacy sims years past their "best eaten by" date. 

Yup! The numbers brought in by the Xbox crowd has been truly next level.
There's a balance to be had between improving the platform for the 'serious simmer' and for the 'casual gamer'. Yet without the latter, I don't think we would ever have had this amount of continual development on the sim.
 

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

A bit confusing what Jorg said about Japan. If you judge by the hundreds of add-ons developed for airports in Japan (and maybe japanese developers), I doubt they were new in flight simulation.

And now, I'm more and more worried about their servers!, hahaha.

Edited November 17, 20223 yr by edpatino

12 minutes ago, edpatino said:

A bit confusing what Jorg said about Japan. If you judge by the hundreds of add-ons developed for airports in Japan (and maybe japanese developers), I doubt they were new in flight simulation.

Japan was indeed neglected by the Legacy Sims +  Addon devs. There was very few freeware and not more than a couple of (lazy) payware developers with exorbitant prices.

ORBX (and others, as far as I recall) stated at that time there were very few GA airports in Japan (that was what they were focusing on at that time), users only being engaged in video games, they saw only few FSX/P3D users in telemetry etc. etc. May have been a chicken/egg issue, no addons, no users, no request for addons...

But you are right, there is now plenty of fine Freeware available and in addition quite a number of nice payware addons. I love flying in Japan and have a hard time to keep pace.😉

Kind regards, Michael

Given the nature of Japanese gamers it is surprising there are no big Japanese Flightsim Gaming/Cosplay Cons or other events.