8 minutes ago, Gulfstream said:

They release, by far, the greatest flight simulator ever.  They give 13 world updates for free.  12 simulator updates, free.

It certainly wasn't the greatest simulator at release, the updates have massively improved it though.

Will wait to see what comes out when information becomes available, before either jumping up and down with joy or criticising MS though...

 

G

12 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

No body asked for them, and I’m sure most people would have happily paid for them if they wanted them. They could have spent that time employing teams to fix AI, ATc, weather, morphing scenery, taking DX12 out of beta.. etc etc etc.

This! FSX had its "world updates" made in the form of ORBX and UTX, it was payware and i was fine with it. Asobo seemed to take an effort to place a few landmarks and "custom airports" more and thats it. I can add all that by myself, thats what addon devs and the community is for. I deliberatly bought the standard version because I didnt need premium deluxe airports and default planes I will never fly after the first PDMG plane gets released. Plus, some regions outside the G7-countries just feel dull and not accounted for. Asobo seemed to take a lot if efforts to please the "hey I can see my house in there" people instead of fixing the mechanics that really matter for flying in a way that I dont need to run 20 additional background programs to call it a simulator.

Give me world updates for the global south, I pay for it. Give me a Hifi-style weather engine, ill pay for it. Give me a good ATC addon, ill pay for it and the casual folks can skip this one if they want. Dont spend time on world updates or "flight adventures" no one asked for.

Tbh I am not even complaining about the fact that next year I need to buy a new sim. I dont even want Asobo to be busy developing it.

Edited June 12, 20233 yr by Soulflight

5 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Small percentage? Have you seen the wish list over at the official forums? Have you see the moans and groans here in avsim? Every time I visit these forums, someone is moaning about lack of good AI or working ATC. I would hardly call that a small percentage. 
 

And what are the other teams supposed to work on? I have no idea, as I do not know what teams they have, nor do you. You’re assuming. Here’s a novel idea, increase the team that handles the base sim issues such as AI and ATC and weather etc, and FIX THE BASICS! 

AI, ATC,, weather programs, planes  ...  i just assume external developers will deliver these. Like my last set-up of flight simulator had about eight add-ons that really improved the whole simulator. Maybe its different now but i just dont look to default for these things. Just a good platform piece of software to build on.

Maybe im totally missing something, lol, but i have never thought MS would handle these things...

14 minutes ago, Gulfstream said:

They release, by far, the greatest flight simulator ever.  They give 13 world updates for free.  12 simulator updates, free.

But no, let's bash them because they release this as a new version.

Odd how X-Plane goes from version 11 to 12 and everyone's excited, but Flight Simulator goes from 2020 to 2024 and it gets comments like this.

Like they can never put out a new version and actually bring in some income to continue the excellent work.  Nope, 2020 should be the last version ever and everything should be free, forever.

That's just not how it works.

Well stated! Many on this forum lose site of the big picture! Appreciate what has been accomplished in contrast to dwelling on aspects of a flight that still need fixing in the sim. The hobby has never been better with the advances in Flight Simulator that cost $60. Pretty good bang for the buck entertainment!

1 minute ago, icewater5 said:

AI, ATC,, weather programs, planes  ...  i just assume external developers will deliver these. Like my last set-up of flight simulator had about eight add-ons that really improved the whole simulator. Maybe its different now but i just dont look to default for these things. Just a good platform piece of software to build on.

Maybe im totally missing something, lol, but i have never thought MS would handle these things...

Well, Asobo to this day refuses to give 3rd party devs full access to the inner workings of MSFS' weather mechanics.

5 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

sometimes I feel like the only rational person on this planet. I don't get the point about complaining about something we don't have the full info about yet.

Maybe not on the planet, but you are one of the few rational persons on Avsim, that's for sure.

It so feels like déjà vu. We've been there, four years ago, about FS2020: "It will only cater to the XBox crowd! It will not accept addons! It will turn its back on the community! It will be MS Flight 2! You guys are delusional if you think they will provide free updates for that thing, they just want to squeeze our wallets!" Some of those who made these comments and predictions ended up buying the software and (sometimes grudgingly) admitted that it's one heck of a great simulator. 

All I know is that I've had almost four amazing years on FS2020, despite all this doomsaying. MS financed and Asobo created something I never, ever expected to happen: a modern civil flight simulator. So based on this experience, I think they deserve a bit of benefit of the doubt before throwing them under the bus.

1 minute ago, Turpentine said:

It so feels like déjà vu. We've been there, four years ago, about FS2020: "It will only cater to the XBox crowd!

should dig up those threads and link them here (obviously don't post in them)

16 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

sometimes I feel like the only rational person on this planet. I don't get the point about complaining about something we don't have the full info about yet.

 

People talking about airliner stuff. We saw an A330 in the trailer, with an actual licenced livery from TAP.

Also the Iberia A320 again, which they showed us in a trailer back in 2020 but it was never actually in the sim.

The complaining is more to do with communication being non existent 

2 minutes ago, Soulflight said:

Well, Asobo to this day refuses to give 3rd party devs full access to the inner workings of MSFS' weather mechanics.

There's a good reason for that.  It's because it's not just on the FS side.  The WX engine also goes through Mateo's servers.  You can't a have a million plus users pinging both companies a million times per second.  It would take them both down.

IRC, they're trying to come up with a secure method (which they currently don't have).

Version 2024 will be released and DX12 will still remain in "beta" in the previous version. 🤡

This type of simulator begs for the Vulkan API, but it will never happen.

13 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Small percentage? Have you seen the wish list over at the official forums? Have you see the moans and groans here in avsim? Every time I visit these forums, someone is moaning about lack of good AI or working ATC. I would hardly call that a small percentage. 
 

And what are the other teams supposed to work on? I have no idea, as I do not know what teams they have, nor do you. You’re assuming. Here’s a novel idea, increase the team that handles the base sim issues such as AI and ATC and weather etc, and FIX THE BASICS! 

Yes, a small percentage of MSFS users participate in these forums or even know they exist. A small percentage vote on feature requests and bugs in the official forums. The rest are busy flying in the sim.

I don't know what teams exist inside Asobo, but it's no assumption that different teams work on different parts of the sim, as job descriptions posted on this forum have confirmed. As far as "fixing the basics", I could care less about built in ATC and AI. I'm sure MS/Asobo get plenty of telemetry data on what features are most used in the sim and plan their roadmaps accordingly. The qualms I have with the sim have already been addressed in developer videos and I'll wait patiently for improvements. 

3 minutes ago, Gulfstream said:

They release, by far, the greatest flight simulator ever.  They give 13 world updates for free.  12 simulator updates, free.

Well, looks like there went the chances of having one for this corner of the world...

Seriously talking, my fear is whether all the airliners under development (yes, 95% of my flying is airliners) will be compatible and/or further delayed. Wait and see...

I'm surprised how mixed the reception to this new announcement is.

Looking at what the team at Microsoft/Asobo accomplished over the last few years is just astonishing and to me they proved their commitment to this platform with their continuous updates and their pricing policy regarding base sim updates.

MSFS is a complex piece of software, a tremendous undertaking, and there are many things still left for them to address (ATC, AI, Systems, etc.). But it's obvious that while that takes time, they do show willingness to tackle these issues.

Sure, MSFS features a lot of stuff that is targeted at more casual simmers/gamers. But the community has to accept that this platform can cater to multiple groups simultaneously. If not, there are still other alternatives out there you may find more appealing.

Having such a large installed base ensures that the platform is alive and will continuously be enhanced. This includes features that you might not care about and others where you do.

Concerning how this new version will be deployed/adopted: I see no room for both games to coexist. It's not feasible to host two versions of the same cloud architecture for a game that is so heavily dependent on it. And there is no need to, since this product is obviously an evolution. Benefitting from all the system and game updates developed through the years.

As such, it's in Microsoft's best interest to have a smooth transition to this new version and migrate the current user base in an easy manner. Addons and existing purchases are part of that and I don't see any reasons why they wouldn't just carry over. We are not in the FS8/9/10 era anymore, where every two years a new version comes out, receives little updates, and disregards backwards compatibility.

To me, today's announcement shows a commitment from MS to support the FS platform for many more years to come.

Edited June 12, 20233 yr by megasus
Typo

1 minute ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Well, looks like there went the chances of having one for this corner of the world...

There's still a couple unknown World Updates on the calendar showed on the last Q&A.

Edited June 12, 20233 yr by Tuskin38

4 minutes ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

There's a good reason for that.  It's because it's not just on the FS side.  The WX engine also goes through Mateo's servers.  You can't a have a million plus users pinging both companies a million times per second.  It would take them both down.

IRC, they're trying to come up with a secure method (which they currently don't have).

Thats interesting, but from a technical side I dont get why this should prevent them from providing a decent injection method for 3rd party addons. It doesnt add server traffic if default live weather isnt used. REX tried but was noticeably limited.