5 hours ago, Franz007 said:

gamey-missions. And I have yet to see how high-resolution rocks will help imporving my flying skills. As if photogrammetry-stuff wasn't already an overkill for a flightsim (I switched it off because it doesn't add any benefit at all and looks more disturbing in the distance. But again, I can only speak for me).

Anyway, with streamed Orthos working now almost flawlessely for me and in partially better resolution in the distance than with MSFS using 400 LOD (see https://ibb.co/vk9SbKQ, https://ibb.co/F5Jpprx) I really don't see any single advantage in using MSFS anymore.

There is a magnitude of people posting about graphics in XP12, how good the lighting is and if only the autogen and textures looked better and we need better roads etc. to then proceed to pump the sim full of ortho imagery and spend loads on entire regions of TrueEarth and Xenviro and what not to then take to the forums to post about how good it looks. Meanwhile, MSFS comes up with new ways of creating scenery and it's overkill and nobody needs that because we care about the SeriousSimming™, which is ironic not just in the sense described above but because it used to be the go-to argument for XPers that MSFS merely does scenery well, which however has since has morphed into 'it doesn't even do that well'. Talk about insecurity and then spend a week in the MSFS forums harping on about the perceived shortcomings of the 'game' rather than spending the time enjoying one's own 'simulator' of choice.

Speaking of games, when did flying a helicopter in a storm out to sea to rescue people from a boat (which recently off the US east coast almost went very wrong if it hadn't been for some first class pilot skill saving the helicopter from being slammed into meter high waves by a microburst) or flying a widebody through a valley dropping hundreds of tons of fire retardant become a game? That's where the skill is at, not bobbling around VFR in perfect weather or pressing buttons at 38000 ft. Dedicated missions being included or not has no bearing on whether something is being gameyfied or not, it's literally just saving you the time to set up that scenario manually and how realistic the flight conditions then are is a completely different topic that is not influenced in the slightest by the existence of a missions menu. There are also people that still don't understand that missions don't magically make it impossible to fix PAPI lights and use that as an 'argument'.

/rant.

I don't mean to be confrontational but maybe this serves as a reminder of how ridiculously irrational most of these arguments are that ultimately are fueled entirely by 'my sim is better than your sim' (I am aware you own MSFS).

Edited June 24, 20232 yr by Nixoq

10 hours ago, rjquick said:

You're right of course. Who needs any of that silly stuff like PAPI lights and ILS approaches in a flight simulator? We're on to bigger things now. I'll try to get my head straight.

There is nothing wrong with the basic ILS systems in MSFS - at least in the US. I have a utility program that can read the data contained in the NAXxxxx.BGL files that define navaids, including the ILS parameters for MSFS airports, and compared the lat/lon coordinates of ILS localizers and glideslopes with official FAA data records at https://enasr.faa.gov/eNASR/nasr/Current

In every case the lat/lon placement, frequency, localizer orientation etc is 100 percent correct in the sim. I have never found the slightest discrepancy.

PAPIs are another matter entirely. An airport’s FAA 5010 data record will indicate whether a particular runway has a visual approach slope indicator, and what kind it is (VASI, PAPI etc.) But there is no official source that specifies the exact placement. PAPIs have to be placed by the scenery designer by zooming in closely to a georeferenced satellite or aerial image of the airport and dropping a PAPI object on the location of the actual PAPI. The problem is that the actual PAPI is not always readily apparent in a satellite image. It depends on the time of day the image was taken, the resolution and other factors.

Most of the default airports in MSFS were created by a semi-automated process. ILS localizers and glideslopes can be automatically placed into the scenery very accurately by using official government navaid data, but PAPIs would require human intervention for accurate placement 100 percent of the time, using aerial imagery as a guide.

This would normally be done in any custom high-quality 3rd party add-on airport scenery, but is not the case in default airports, of which there almost 40,000.

I published an updated version of my home airport KELM on flightsim.to, and in the process of creating it I found that the PAPIs on runways 24 and 28, and the VASI on runway 6 were all incorrect. They were placed on bare patches of ground in the satellite image, but not the right bare patches of ground. I only knew where they should actually go because I work at the real airport and am very familiar with the layout and could recognize the “real” PAPI in the aerial photo

Another problem is that runway markings in MSFS do not necessarily correspond to the actual runway markings at the real airport.

When defining a runway - either in the built in scenery editor in DEV mode, or using a 3rd party tool like ADE, you can define the lat/lon coordinates of the runway end, the width and heading, and the type of runway - either precision approach, non-precision approach or VFR only. If you define a runway as precision approach, the runway markings are automatically placed at a fixed distance from the threshold. The touchdown markers will usually end up reasonably close to where they should be - but not always - especially when there is a displaced threshold.

The only way to have 100 percent accurate runway markings is to use projected mesh objects. That would be fine for a custom scenery, but not feasible for the vast majority of default airports.

TL:DR Fixing all the PAPIs in MSFS at all 35,000+ default airports would probably take a team of 30 people doing nothing else - and would probably take many years of work. It is not a simple or easy task.

5 hours ago, Franz007 said:

I am truly fascinated about how much MSFS-users have sleepness nights because of XP's existence. And wishing its dead. Again and again. A typical sign of insecurity.

Yes these "final nail in coffin" comments are silly and don't help with the discourse of course, and I'd say there are far less of them these days than in the beginning days when MSFS first came onto the scene. No one should be rooting for failure of competing products as the more there are, the better it is for us users. That said, I hope you realize these insecurities goes both ways as there is a *lot* of that on the XP side, including Meyer himself given that weird recent interview. MSFS always seems to be brought up far more in the other forum than the vice versa here and it leads one to conclude that MSFS lives rent free in those heads who supposedly don't care for it 🙂 I for one will take and love all the flight sims out there that manage to compel me.. it's just that as of now for me it is only MSFS, as of now.
 

5 hours ago, Franz007 said:

In the world of an XBox-gamer it must be truly disturbing to imagine that some people use a sim for something different than just for gaming and for getting self-confidence because he is using a game with the last generation image-technologies or/and crushing all other sims to death.

Umm sure ok 🙂 ... not sure how to unpack this except to smile lol.
 

5 hours ago, Franz007 said:

And they still don't get the point that the more gamey and eye-goodie MSFS becomes, the more hardcore-pilots will switch back to XP. I have already seen that a lot in the last 2-3 years. And XP/Laminar Research who was the most popular sim before MSFS 2020, has now even a bigger dev team and could benefit from these disappointed MSFS-users who haven't been using sims before. I know, it will be painful for some to live with that reality. Perhaps doing sports to gain self-confidence instead of wishing the dead of another company?

Another smile, you sound rather ruffled up here... so based on the details known so far about MSFS 2024, it is becoming more "gamey and eye-goodie" lol? Well I suppose one has to keep telling themselves whatever it is to comfort themselves and validate their viewpoints/narratives. I strongly suggest you take a look at your own words and take your own advice 🙂 
 

6 hours ago, Franz007 said:

And from what was presented yesterday, only the technical/weather part sounds for people like me really interesting. But then i want them to make the weather impacting my aircraft and not just as a visual thing (like the clouds now) and trying to satisfy again only the gamer folks. But i keep skeptical because they already promised a fantastic weather engine and flightmodel when MSFS2020 was launched and i was stupid enough to be excited as well and seriously thinking that it would be THE sim. Hence the big disappointment. A bit later, CFD was added. And now what are they announcing? "Hey guys, let's improve our flightmodel". Wuaw, great. What did you sell us then in the past 3 years? MS/Asobo are champions for advertising products. And many will get overexcited again and throw their money at the devs, as we already can see with such comments above. Nothing wrong with that. Just not for me anymore.

I sense some anger and bitterness here... if you really know about current flight model tech in MSFS (the initial multi-surface modelling and newer CFD tech) you'll realize the problem has always been how MSFS doesn't currently allow for fine-grained and more flexible aircraft geometry definition (i.e. especially for CFD that really needs a well defined aircraft surface model to shine). So as part of the new aerodynamics and physics engine they are addressing this. The proof of course will be in the pudding so we'll need to wait to see, but this was a much requested thing from many aircraft devs, and the fact that the ex IL-2 lead engineer and flight model expert Andrey Solomykin is also now spearheading this effort along with Seb, is a great sign.
 

6 hours ago, Franz007 said:

As someone flying in real, i don't need walking lions or elephants to train for my flights or any gamey-missions. And I have yet to see how high-resolution rocks will help imporving my flying skills. As if photogrammetry-stuff wasn't already an overkill for a flightsim (I switched it off because it doesn't add any benefit at all and looks more disturbing in the distance. But again, I can only speak for me).

Yes obviously realistic visuals and other real-world objects/life at the level of detail shown in MSFS 2024 is not really needed to improve one's flying skills. Doesn't mean other simmers don't want them and desire them, and doesn't mean a good flight sim can't have *both* high fidelity visuals & world representation and also help you increase flying skills (I know, mind-blowing concept). Hey, and that is sorta kinda possible when you have the amount of resources and devs like MS/Asobo now seem to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

6 hours ago, Franz007 said:

I really don't see any single advantage in using MSFS anymore.

Oh look, one of those rogue delusional X-Plane posts in the MSFS section, liked by the local X-Plane crowd that is about to derail the conversation.

2 minutes ago, Sethos said:

Oh look, one of those rogue delusional X-Plane posts in the MSFS section, liked by the local X-Plane crowd that is about to derail the conversation.

not helped by constantly feeding them 😘

back to topic, of those 175 at MS/Asobo I wonder how many work on the weather engine itself? Can't imagine it's one bloke in a cubicle, gotta be at least 4-5 I reckon.

@lwt1971 @Sethos

Thanks very much for your answer. But I was explicitely answering to guys making these silly comments about XP.

Thank you very much and have fun 😉

11 minutes ago, Sethos said:

liked by the local X-Plane crowd that is about to derail the conversation.

Triggered by likes.  That's new.  

well this one has run aground.