Active Sky faced difficulties in bringing the meteorological

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 554]

On 3/10/2023 at 5:17 AM, jarmstro said:

Ah! yes. If you change the time it's still using the current weather.  I see what Ray means now. 

Really, just now have you 'found' the problem?

[jarmstro 2,405]

Just now, Juliet Alpha said:

Really, just now have you 'found' the problem?

Yep.

[fppilot 4,391]

[Damian Clark 1,273]

On 3/11/2023 at 3:28 PM, MrBitstFlyer said:

No need for it in XP12 either, but its always good to have choices 🙂

No need for any add-on anywhere.  That's why they are add-ons.  They are all optional, not compulsory.  Everyone here finds value in add-ons.

The argument that only add-ons that are NEEDED by casual simmers should be allowed, is, well, telling.  It's best I bow out of this thread now, but I ask all to consider that perhaps all is not what it seems, and seriously, if you like the idea of having open integration and add-ons in all categories continue in this community, you might want to support that continued openness and not further restrictions.  All sim developers are listening.

Good luck and happy skies.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Damian Clark

[CO2Neutral 278]

On 3/10/2023 at 2:00 AM, Lucky38i said:

No, PC users are not restricted to what is available for Xbox, this is demonstrated by the numerous addons that use external programs, WASM compilations etc. that are all available on PC that are not on Xbox. If it hasn't already been shown, Both versions are compiled to different a specification, with the PC variant being standard, and Xbox having functionality removed.

That's false, WASM was selected due to the requirement to make MSFS available on XBox.  None of the existing development community wanted an abstraction layer to the hardware (WASM) and was the primary reason why it took so long for some 3rd party aircraft to migrate to MSFS while missing a slew of important features along the way and why some existing 3rd party aircraft still have never made it to MSFS.  Yes, being able to access the hardware directly is less restricting (and doesn't work on XBox) than having to hope a WASM layer can provide.

What about having computational fluid dynamics?  This isn't "new", been around for decades.  The implementation is the problem, when users are suggesting to add a "dead zone" to controller input then CFD is clearly broken or just not well implemented.

Weather modeling is frankly horrible in MSFS (both visually and in it's accuracy) ... but what's the point in modeling any weather if it can't be scanned to a weather radar with any level of accuracy?  Weather is kinda important to get right for flight, in fact it's the first thing I look at when planning any real world flight (as do most pilots that want to live another day).  Without historical weather and accuracy MSFS will NEVER get any FAA flight simulation certification.

I have no issues with MSFS being a game, but some of you seem to be very offended by that, why?

The MS Store ratings and Steam rating is feedback from users ... this should have been valuable data to MSFS.  I see no restrictions for any platform P3D, MSFS, XP12 that can't accommodate the beginner and be accessible out of the box?  Completely agree that P3D "out of the box" looks terrible, circa 2005.

Yes I know BlackShark.ai is used in MSFS and it's now available to any developer and is in fact being used by Lockheed Martin along with UE5 at a "global" level ... I guessed you missed this information?  

Please stop resorting to "troll attempt" comments, that's just a sign of weakness in your POV.

I want to like MSFS, I keep trying to like MSFS, but 3 years later and I'm just becoming less and less interested as I'm not seeing the kind of change that fits my desires in a flight simulator ... MSFS didn't even have an SDK on initial release ... don't you think that's odd?  Most developers did think that very odd ... Jorg at one point suggested MSFS wouldn't support a 3rd party community at all ... remember those private one on three phone calls? 😉 

 

[scotchegg 4,232]

1 hour ago, CO2Neutral said:

I have no issues with MSFS being a game, but some of you seem to be very offended by that, why?

I’m not personally offended by it at all, as the people who insist on either position in the very tiring and rather meaningless ‘sim vs game’ roundabout are usually simply using it as a vent that their personal bugbear hasn’t been addressed.

Not to say that I disagree with the idea that the weather needs a lot of work, but adding the yawn-inducing coda that ‘it’s a game until it satisfies my conditions’ is, well…yawn inducing.

[Stearmandriver 2,324]

4 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Without historical weather and accuracy MSFS will NEVER get any FAA flight simulation certification.

This has nothing to do with FAA certification. (No desktop sim platform has ever received any FAA certification BTW, even as an FTD - that has a lot more to do with hardware.  The Redbird model whatever has FTD cert for instance; not X Plane.  The FAA could really not care less about visuals in an FTD..  No desktop sim could ever be certified as a flight simulator of any level though.)

But historical weather is meaningless for training purposes.  There seems to be a huge misunderstanding in the sim world of the level of weather depiction that exists in real sims.  It's nowhere NEAR what we have in MSFS ;), and I'm talking in brand new level Ds.

But yeah, in even the level Ds, there is no historical weather.  There is no real time weather.  There is only user definable, global weather.  When the weather needs to change during a training event, it changes all at once as the instructor manipulates it.  You see the weather "popping" that folks whine about in desktop sims ;).

The only thing MSFS really needs to be more than good enough for use in an FTD is user-definable visibility.  It's endlessly frustrating to me that the rendering engine is very capable - VERY capable, the best I've ever seen - at displaying a specified visibility from a METAR, but there is not a simple field in the user definable weather where I can type in .6nm. But we'll get there eventually lol.

But yeah, historical weather has no value at all for training use, the FAA does not care about that.

[Sky_Pilot071 580]

I agree.  Basically if you need historical weather then create it.

sp

[jarmstro 2,405]

2 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

The only thing MSFS really needs to be more than good enough for use in an FTD is user-definable visibility. 

Asobo did introduce haze in a SU. (I forget which). But it was so widely condemned and loathed that they seem to have removed it. 

Edited March 13, 2023 by jarmstro

[scotchegg 4,232]

18 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Asobo did introduce haze in a SU. (I forget which). But it's was so widely condemned and loathed that they seem to have removed it. 

Metar-based haze is still there (afaik).

Edited March 13, 2023 by scotchegg

[Lucky38i 1,101]

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

That's false, WASM was selected due to the requirement to make MSFS available on XBox.  None of the existing development community wanted an abstraction layer to the hardware (WASM) and was the primary reason why it took so long for some 3rd party aircraft to migrate to MSFS while missing a slew of important features along the way and why some existing 3rd party aircraft still have never made it to MSFS.  Yes, being able to access the hardware directly is less restricting (and doesn't work on XBox) than having to hope a WASM layer can provide.

WASM was chosen because of the security it provides over compiled DLLs, do you know what WASM is? I have no idea what you mean abstraction layer to the hardware. WASM is a an assembled module to run on a browser engine, in this case the CoherentGT that MSFS uses. 3rd parties take long because it's a new sim, it doesn't maintain the commonality with P3D or FSX, almost everything is entirely new from modelling, texturing, animations as-well as systems SDKs. All of these have allowed devs to take things to new heights, I have no idea why a developer would simply transplant their existing aircraft in a new sim without trying to take advantage of everything new to offer. Have you done any kind of development for MSFS or just parroting things you've heard.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

What about having computational fluid dynamics?  This isn't "new", been around for decades.  The implementation is the problem, when users are suggesting to add a "dead zone" to controller input then CFD is clearly broken or just not well implemented.

What does this have to do with your original comment that MSFS is limited by being on Xbox? Nothing. Having to add a dead zone to controller inputs is nothing new, especially with the introduction hall effect sensors that pick movements from extremely tiny movements. This is a hardware "issue" not to do with MSFS. Yeah CFD has been around for years, it's the first time it'd been implemented in a mainstream flight sim, what's your point?

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Weather modeling is frankly horrible in MSFS (both visually and in it's accuracy) ... but what's the point in modeling any weather if it can't be scanned to a weather radar with any level of accuracy?

It's funny that you'd argue we should have no weather modelling because we can't have weather radar but I'll leave it up to you to see the logic in that statement. We can all agree that the weather modelling needs improvement and the Asobo should provide an SDK for scanning weather data and terrain data(something that's planned in the roadmap, if you cared to look) and possibly an API for 3rd party weather devs to provide their products to MSFS (sadly not being investigated atm). However, again what does this have to do with your original comment, you're going on a tangent to draw focus away from your silly comment.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Weather is kinda important to get right for flight, in fact it's the first thing I look at when planning any real world flight (as do most pilots that want to live another day).  Without historical weather and accuracy MSFS will NEVER get any FAA flight simulation certification.

As far as I'm concerned you nor I develop flight simulators, and so you nor I know the first thing necessary to get FAA certification, as if your current version of xplane is FAA certified.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

I have no issues with MSFS being a game, but some of you seem to be very offended by that, why?

When was this brought up? Who cares what title you wanna put on it, they're all games.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

The MS Store ratings and Steam rating is feedback from users ... this should have been valuable data to MSFS.

I'm pretty sure you can agree steam and MS Store ratings are not representative of the entireity of the simmers and they're varying needs. That's pretty much what the developer and msfs forums are for and they do a good job at that.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

I see no restrictions for any platform P3D, MSFS, XP12 that can't accommodate the beginner and be accessible out of the box?  Completely agree that P3D "out of the box" looks terrible, circa 2005.

To ignore the efforts MSFS has gone to continuously provide its users with content like the Reno, Maverick, historical aircraft etc. As-well as the continuous world updates, means the devs have gone out of their way to bring flight simming into the general gaming market. P3D practically requires you to have a degree in .ini editing just to have it stable, not to mention breaking the bank to make it visually appeasing. Xplane OTOH is much more approachable but still doesn't have the accessibility the MSFS offers.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Yes I know BlackShark.ai is used in MSFS and it's now available to any developer and is in fact being used by Lockheed Martin along with UE5 at a "global" level ... I guessed you missed this information?  

I guess you failed to read the exact article you linked. This is a missions-based venture, not a replacement to P3D.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Please stop resorting to "troll attempt" comments, that's just a sign of weakness in your POV.

Then make better arguments, cause there's holes everywhere.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

I want to like MSFS, I keep trying to like MSFS, but 3 years later and I'm just becoming less and less interested as I'm not seeing the kind of change that fits my desires in a flight simulator ... MSFS didn't even have an SDK on initial release ... don't you think that's odd? 

What are you talking about? The SDK documentation was right there on release? It was pretty bare but it existed.

9 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Most developers did think that very odd ... Jorg at one point suggested MSFS wouldn't support a 3rd party community at all ... remember those private one on three phone calls? 😉 

But they do now, again what does this have to do with your original comment??

[Krakin 5,832]

Well done @Lucky38i! You did an excellent job of responding to all that malarkey.

[JRBarrett 3,118]

12 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

That's false, WASM was selected due to the requirement to make MSFS available on XBox.  None of the existing development community wanted an abstraction layer to the hardware (WASM) and was the primary reason why it took so long for some 3rd party aircraft to migrate to MSFS while missing a slew of important features along the way and why some existing 3rd party aircraft still have never made it to MSFS.  Yes, being able to access the hardware directly is less restricting (and doesn't work on XBox) than having to hope a WASM layer can provide.

That is absolutely incorrect. WASM is a sandboxed framework environment to run code written in the C++ programming language. There is no requirement to use C++ (or WASM) in any MSFS aircraft.

MS/Asobo’s preferred development language for aircraft and systems is JavaScript/HTML. That is the language used for all MSFS default aircraft on both the PC and XBox. The initial SDK was almost entirely oriented to supporting JS/HTML as the primary development environment.

Third party developers like PMDG, Leonardo and Aerosoft use WASM because they have 20+ years of finely tuned and tested C++ code from their previous products on FSX/P3D and it was far easier for them to bring those products to MSFS quickly by using the extensive C++ codebase they already had, than by trying to re-write everything from scratch in JS/HTML.

If that was a requirement, (using JS/HTML only) we would not yet have a PMDG 737, or Leonardo MD80 or Aerosoft  CRJ in MSFS. 

[lwt1971 7,453]

15 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

That's false, WASM was selected due to the requirement to make MSFS available on XBox.  None of the existing development community wanted an abstraction layer to the hardware (WASM) and was the primary reason why it took so long for some 3rd party aircraft to migrate to MSFS while missing a slew of important features along the way and why some existing 3rd party aircraft still have never made it to MSFS.  Yes, being able to access the hardware directly is less restricting (and doesn't work on XBox) than having to hope a WASM layer can provide.

Wrong on many levels. WASM is not a layer that all aircraft add-ons need to use or develop on top of. It is one of various *options* in terms of frameworks to use when developing for MSFS.  For example, those aircraft devs who want to use their existing or new C++ codebase, *and* want to make their aircraft available to *both* the PC and XBox platforms (i.e. PMDG) would then need to go the WASM route. So obviously this does not impact those add-on developers who only want to the cater to the PC platform (i.e. Fenix) and/or those have no C++ code, who don't then need to touch or worry about WASM at all and can have code with more direct access to the hardware/OS/etc.
 

15 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

What about having computational fluid dynamics?  This isn't "new", been around for decades.  The implementation is the problem, when users are suggesting to add a "dead zone" to controller input then CFD is clearly broken or just not well implemented.

Yes yes we all know the science of CFD has been around for decades. The point here is your original nonsense about how MS/Asobo don't care about flight complexity and are holding back to cater to the XBox gaming crowd.. you see, if that were the case, why would they be wasting their dev effort on all these features like CFD being used in flight models, CFD being used in atmospherics simulation, deep detailed avionics simulation in the default sim that's head and shoulders above any other sim, etc etc? And actual experts, i.e. iniBuilds who've employed CFD in multiple aircraft of theirs for MSFS like the A310, the FSReborn dev who made the Sting S4, etc have all given positive feedback about how CFD is implemented in MSFS.
From the iniBuilds discord,  just a little sampling of the iniBuilds team's comments on MSFS's CFD:

https://discord.com/channels/535246634448191499/535249224254619648/1017423315771596880
Josh — 08/09/2022 09:17: Asobo are also making big strides in improving their physics with the new CFD simulations

https://discord.com/channels/535246634448191499/1040653493914058873/1041129939333820477
Josh — 12/11/2022 18:18: Yeah we're super happy with it, blessed be CFD

https://discord.com/channels/535246634448191499/535249224254619648/1038458656456458334
Josh — 5/11/2022 10:23: The C172 with CFD flies really nice

And re: the "dead zone" like Lucky38i says, a hardware and calibation issue isn't it... nothing to do with CFD.
 

15 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Weather modeling is frankly horrible in MSFS (both visually and in it's accuracy) ... but what's the point in modeling any weather if it can't be scanned to a weather radar with any level of accuracy? 

Your opinion. Weather modeling in MSFS is frankly stellar and outclasses all other civilian sims both visually and in accuracy, that's my opinion and of many others who also enjoy MSFS. Weather radar integration not being where it should be is besides the point, and has nothing to do with the quality of weather simulation in MSFS.
 

15 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

Yes I know BlackShark.ai is used in MSFS and it's now available to any developer and is in fact being used by Lockheed Martin along with UE5 at a "global" level ... I guessed you missed this information? 

I guess you missed this information: https://www.helisimmer.com/news/lockheed-martin-unreal-engine-p3d-prepar3d
Lockheed Martin: "We carefully consider the impacts on all product stakeholders when road mapping our products, and we have no plans to make major architectural changes that would undermine existing third party add-on compatibility with the platform. We are so appreciative of the flight sim community for the innovation, feedback and on-going dialogue to continue increasing capability and training realism."
 

15 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

I have no issues with MSFS being a game, but some of you seem to be very offended by that, why?

Oh, not offended at all 🙂 .. and yes it's a game, it's a sim, and its various things to various people.. but if you come in here spewing misinformation and make various nonsensical claims, expect responses ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Edited March 13, 2023 by lwt1971

[Noel 4,551]

14 hours ago, CO2Neutral said:

I have no issues with MSFS being a game, but some of you seem to be very offended by that, why?

Let's put this nonsense to rest once and for all.  Here it is and it's super simple:  if ANYONE thinks they're aren't playing a game, be in MSFS, P3D, XP, DCS, XYZ or anything else, they're living in a fantasy world designed 100% to inflate their ego--and they don't even know it!  The ONLY folks not playing a game are RW pilots where everything matters all the time and that is never the case in ANY flight simulator.  As one gets deeper into the "sim game" they absolutely acquire knowledge and skills--just like bridge players do who get deeper into their game.  But make no mistake:  they're all games.