In-depth interview: Jorg & Seb on MSFS 2024 after FSExpo'23

[lwt1971 7,457]

https://msfsaddons.com/2023/06/25/exclusive-interview-with-jorg-neumann-and-sebastian-wloch-we-are-in-the-pursuit-of-the-perfect-sim/
 

Lots of new info in here... Jorg's answer to the question about ATC was the most interesting to me since he says they have just scratched the surface about the information/details given so far,  and they are still holding back on details of various other aspects of the sim for the coming months.

Jorg: "Maybe. Maybe so. We only talked about a fraction of what we are making. But, you know, to some degree this is going to be the fun we’ll have over the next year, talking about all the other things we haven’t talked about. We heard everybody and we’re paying a lot of attention to the people and what they want. There’s lots of positive news coming."

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by lwt1971

[lwt1971 7,457]

Some interesting bits to me (bolding my own):

• career mode in addition to missions
• their goal is to simulate all aspects of aviation, with 100% realism
• not a 10 year project but longer, "we have extended it beyond that" ... team is twice as big now as it was in the beginning
• not going to stop supporting 2020.. "We’ll continue updating it. It won’t have the advantages we talked about earlier, like the changing tech to enable more, but in the context of what 2020 was, we’re going to keep adding to it."

  • Jorg: World updates will change a bit. As we showed, how the ground textures are going to work may not be possible in MSFS 2020. However, if we have a photogrammetry city that comes into our world, that should be involved. The same is true for city updates, they will be updated but maybe slightly different. MSFS 2024 goes a bit further on certain things. We’ll keep doing Aircraft and Avionics updates as well as Sim Updates, and evolve it as needed. This could evolve with new hardware releases or something like a new graphics card.

  • Sebastian: Also, we’ll continue working on bug fixes and crash fixes. There’s still some overlap between the two sims, so if we find a crash in MSFS 2024 that’s also in MSFS 2020, we can fix it in both. We’ll continue to support and address any new issues that come up, as they always do.

• on keeping up with pace of new technology:

  • Jorg: Technology is unpredictable, and some areas are accelerating much beyond anything we could have predicted. The rise of AI is just the beginning. We’re using machine learning for terrain detection, for example, but we don’t know where it’s going to go over the next five years. So, this move is born out of our analysis of the trend line. There was no preplanning for an MSFS 2024; we didn’t sit there in 2020 saying we’d launch another one in 2024. The acceleration in all areas, and the development of 3,000 add-ons in just a few years, was unexpected. If you extrapolate that, you might end up with 10,000 add-ons. So, our world updates, and many other things, have just evolved in response to these trends. We’re now at 300GB and at some point we’ll be at 1TB. It’s not feasible. So we need to go [and] we need to do something.

• due to thin client, the only needed content is streamed .. "So even with more stuff, it might actually end up being less bandwidth, which is great."

• Sebastian: Just look at the biomes and all the tree varieties. We’re doing hundreds of species of trees. Without streaming these, you would have to put them on your hard drive, which would take so much more memory. This enables us to do more, better, with more variety and quality.

• On ATC: 

  • Vasco: Talking about other future features, like, for example, improvements to the ATC. You didn’t mention anything about that.
    Jorg: We did not
    Vasco: You did not (laughs). Is there anything planned?
    Jorg: Maybe. Maybe so. We only talked about a fraction of what we are making. But, you know, to some degree this is going to be the fun we’ll have over the next year, talking about all the other things we haven’t talked about. We heard everybody and we’re paying a lot of attention to the people and what they want. There’s lots of positive news coming.

• Wear & tear, also has interactive visual component (i.e. landing on dusty surface gets plane dirty) ... If you break the plane, you don’t do as well. If you do all the procedures, pay attention to RPMs, avoid hard landings, you don’t break the aircraft. This is now integrated. There’s also failures [and] it depends a lot on the aircraft. There can be failures on different systems and this is also integrated with the activities. ..... If you’re overstressing the engine, it can catch fire. Some people have done that already. If you don’t pay attention to the oil levels, you can have a fire. It’s directly related to the activity system and simulating real life. 

• On doing same content as 3rd party add-ons: Jorg: I mean, that’s the nature of an open platform. I pay attention and ask our Marketplace team to reach out to all the plane developers and ask them to share their roadmap with me so I know what they’re working on, with the intent to stay clear if there’s an overlap. The A380 from FlyByWire is a good example: we’re not going to make an A380 because they’re making one. A lot of the planes that we’re making are historical planes. There’s not much overlap there .......... Now, we need to look at things that are a little more interesting. Let’s call it the guts of the system. We need to be careful. This needs to be maintained for a long period of time, and we need to be comfortable that any collaboration is maintainable, otherwise it could potentially harm the platform. An area where we have taken this approach is with Working Title. They are making avionics and improving our base sim, and our confidence in them is high.

• Vasco: You said yesterday that MSFS is not a game…
  Jorg Neumann: It isn’t.
  Vasco: Does that mindset create any kind of boundaries in terms of the decisions that you guys make for the development of new features?
  Jorg: Not all the time. There are many dimensions to this question. Should we dumb down anything? And I think the answer is always no. We should provide assistances. But Seb is the right person to answer that.

• a lot of their own add-ons are made by 3rd parties: In MSFS 2024, there’s a new set of aircraft coming in. It’s not possible to avoid all overlap, but if there is, I engage with the team that has done something similar and see if we could work something out. Sometimes there are elements, like camera systems, where there could be collaboration. Many of the planes we’re making now are made by third parties and that’s working great. Airports, the same thing. The Asobo team can focus on the platform while we make airports with Gaya, Orbx, NZ Simulations.

   

   

   

Edited June 25, 2023 by lwt1971

[Farlis 2,319]

And to settle one specific discussion once and for all, right from the horses mouth:

Vasco: You said yesterday that MSFS is not a game…

Jorg Neumann: It isn’t.

[lwt1971 7,457]

And more clarity on another recently hotly debated topic here re: 2020 success and 2024 (underlining mine):
 

Vasco: Going a bit further into the future, you’ve talked about Microsoft Flight Simulator being a ten year project. Is it still a ten year project or is it now like a seven year project?

Jorg: I think we’ve just extended it. When we started, we said, “Hey, Microsoft Flight Simulator, we’re going to do this for ten years.” It was not exactly how we stated it, but that’s the idea. The success we’ve had so far enables us to make a full-on sequel with new tech and new content. This just shows how much energy there is in our community and to me, that just means we’re going to keep going.

The team is literally twice as big now as it was and I think that’s all just great news for the hobby. And as some people have asked, we’re not going to stop supporting MSFS 2020. We’ll continue updating it. It won’t have the advantages we talked about earlier, like the changing tech to enable more, but in the context of what 2020 was, we’re going to keep adding to it. This new one broadens it even more. We can do more things and people are always asking us to do more and more. MSFS 2024 is the architecture that allows us to do that.
 

Edited June 25, 2023 by lwt1971

[ca_metal 2,033]

4 minutes ago, Farlis said:

And to settle one specific discussion once and for all, right from the horses mouth:

Vasco: You said yesterday that MSFS is not a game…

Jorg Neumann: It isn’t.

But… brah… Xbox… GAME of the year edition… Game pass… brah… it’s a game 😂

 

Jokes aside I’m really interested on the career mode. Dovetail tried that approach on Flight Sim World, I liked, but unfortunately they gave up on t right after that and never finished the mode.

Before anyone start yelling “Game!!!!!”. What I want is what we already have on fseconomy, fshauler etc, but with steroids and totally integrated within the base sim.

[ZLA Steve 377]

It's evident DTG just didn't have the right folks in charge to help FSW evolve. It always felt like just another title in their catalogue versus Asobo/MS wanting a genre-defining program. I, for one, and happy that's how this worked out.

5 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

What I want is what we already have on fseconomy, fshauler etc,

Yes. It will be nice to not have to depend on various others sites/plugins/addons to get this same style of PLAY 😉

[omarsmak30 4,068]

Also one important point, all our premium delux aircrafts will be carried over! 

[Epgd 144]

let me understand.... why should FS2020 be supported further if we are moving to a more modern platform, which is also supposed to be compatible with the previous one.??

what's the point of wasting  time on this?

 

[The Flight Level 2,119]

Very cool read. MSFS2024 is basically born out of technology. Seems like the core programmers are always chasing the pace of tech and graphics. I predict a good leap in progression of the scenery visuals down low. Insert AI and we really don't know what the sim will look like in 2 or 3 years. ... as Jorg says "unpredictable". Remember orthos and tiles??? Remember CD's and DVD's 🙂

[scotchegg 4,240]

Liking this thin client idea. 100s of tree species streamed, noice.

[lwt1971 7,457]

16 minutes ago, Epgd said:

let me understand.... why should FS2020 be supported further if we are moving to a more modern platform, which is also supposed to be compatible with the previous one.??

what's the point of wasting  time on this?

As we've seen here and on the official forums there is a lot of demand to keep supporting 2020 after 2024 (for those users who don't want to pay up for a new base sim). Given MS/Asobo's doubling of team size (as of now, and maybe even more later) I guess it's certainly possible.  What's not clear is how long they'll keep supporting 2020 after 2024 releases.. might even be forever but in lights-on mode and critical fixes only (i.e. say months after 2024 releases)
 

Edited June 25, 2023 by lwt1971

[Mike T 211]

44 minutes ago, Farlis said:

And to settle one specific discussion once and for all, right from the horses mouth:

Vasco: You said yesterday that MSFS is not a game…

Jorg Neumann: It isn’t.

The FAA just called. They said its a game.

[ca_metal 2,033]

That is interesting, I think Jörg is hinting a new alpha insider program:

Then we’ll go in and alpha and beta. We’ll get input from simmers and make sure that the thing is ready to go before we lock in a ship date. We always have a ship date target. But it’s software development. The reality is you have to keep your head a little bit flexible on these things and seeking feedback is key, actually.

[lwt1971 7,457]

29 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

That is interesting, I think Jörg is hinting a new alpha insider program:

Then we’ll go in and alpha and beta. We’ll get input from simmers and make sure that the thing is ready to go before we lock in a ship date. We always have a ship date target. But it’s software development. The reality is you have to keep your head a little bit flexible on these things and seeking feedback is key, actually.

Yup! Thinking alpha will be restricted & invitees only, and maybe beta with a wider field and applications to join by anyone and acceptance of. Regardless, good that they are looking to get testing and feedback from users.
 

Edited June 25, 2023 by lwt1971

[Epgd 144]

why there is no word about VR support???

for me personaly there is no FS simulator without VR...... 

since start using reverb G2 I ended with 2D monitor...