https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/flight-simulator-2024s-huge-ambition-means-you-can-now-exit-the-plane-walk-around-you-can-land-on-every-ship-and-it-looks-like-a-first-person-shooter-environment/

 

Not a whole lot of new info. Confirmed you can get out and walk around on container ships if you land a helicopter on one. I know they already confirmed walk arounds, but I didn't expect to be able to do it on random ships you've landed on lol

He says every lighthouse is modelled, I guess OSM data + generic models because that would be a lot of lighthouses to model by hand.

Edited August 8, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

Looks like 2024 will be a world simulator, with the option to fly. There’s probably going to be all sorts of non-aviation related addons. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Quote

‘You can now exit the plane, walk around, in 2024. You can literally walk your favorite mountain path to your favorite hut in the mountains. Sit on the lake. See the sunset. It is truly a digital twin you can absorb.”

 

I would love to be able to wake up in a mountain cabin, make myself a cup of coffee take a canoe ride around the lake then catch an Uber to the airport to begin my flight home as a passenger!

 

That would be epic!

Ever since Skyrim I thought "how cool would it be to have a Planet to explore and not just a Map restricted by it's size?" and ever since then I've played all sorts of games where the Map sizes have been forever getting larger, No Mans Sky & Starfield alongside Elite Dangerous gave me the wow factor for space and MSFS2020 did a fine job of recreating the Digital Twin - but it was the first step and whilst awesome it was lacking in lots of areas, but it clearly paved the way for what's to come.

MSFS2024 might not be that dream I had, but it's certainly getting closer and if we can get more detail onto the roads and in the towns & cities then it'll be another step closer to that Ultimate Sandbox.

Ok so you can get out and walk pretty much anywhere.  No confirmation we can climb up and go horseback riding yet 😁

Idea: fly to Lukla then do the trek to Everest base camp. Sooner or later Parallel42 will release an addon that simulates altitude sickness and mountain climbing.

Edited August 8, 20241 yr by Cpt_Piett

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Looks like 2024 will be a world simulator, with the option to fly. There’s probably going to be all sorts of non-aviation related addons. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. 

 

I agree it really baffles me why people are against other stuff it helps the sim I like the fantasy to able to walk around the area I land in its fun.

Edited August 8, 20241 yr by Silverbird

It would be nice for scenery developers to model the insides of terminals so we can walk to our plane. It would be nice to have a crew room modeled to where we can make a simbrief flight plan, and then use charts to look at weather. Then, walk to the airplane and fire it up. Over kill for someone who already does this a s a job but if this was possible, it would bring my 8 yr old dreams alive. I thought back the. Of how awesome that would be in flightsim.

I think it's a great acknowledgement that aviation isn't just you sitting there in the cockpit twiddling buttons.

I find it strange when people are against functionalities like walkarounds, visible cargo / passengers, full cabins, etc
That's just as big a part of actually operating any aircraft.

If you're a corporate pilot it's about managing the experience for passengers.
Ag pilots, helicopter pilots, bush pilots all have to deal with so much stuff outside of just handling controls that makes it really unique.  
It's solving problems using the medium of aviating which has a massive potential to be interesting territory for a simulator.

I heard someone say that it's a pilot sim not an airport sim. But actually, where you fly into is a huge part of it too. 
Scenery, terrain, surfaces, weather, all of it is just as important as anything else.

Exciting stuff.

3 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Idea: fly to Lukla then do the trek to Everest base camp. Sooner or later Parallel42 will release an addon that simulates altitude sickness and mountain climbing.

Or:  fly to KMRY then play 18 holes on Pebble Beach with Blair O'neal 😉

My older brother may he rest in peace and I played online remote PC golf for decades and had a total ball pardon the pun simulating PGA Tour Season schedules.  Some of our tournaments were worthy of televising I swear 🤣

We are just scratching the surface of where this is going though it wouldn't hurt to have a quantum computer to run it on 🤑

Edited August 9, 20241 yr by Noel

It would be nice if we had a command to center aileron trim. There is one for rudder, not for aileron. There's Set Parking Brakes, Toggle Parking Brakes, but no parking brake on and parking brake off command.

Imagine a GA taildragger with a switch labeled Toggle Parking Brakes. A dozen people would die a year landing.

Then live ships in FS2024.

Live Trains in FS2028?.

Live Intergalactic UFOs in FS2032, reported by radars in real time e.g.?

At some point in the near future, this simulator will be so realistic that in VR, you'll feel like you're flying and walking around in real life.

10 hours ago, MarcG said:

No Mans Sky & Starfield alongside Elite Dangerous gave me the wow factor for space and MSFS2020 did a fine job of recreating the Digital Twin - but it was the first step and whilst awesome it was lacking in lots of areas, but it clearly paved the way for what's to come.

MSFS2024 might not be that dream I had, but it's certainly getting closer and if we can get more detail onto the roads and in the towns & cities then it'll be another step closer to that Ultimate Sandbox.

I think as MSFS's digital twin earth matures and gets better, there will be even more add-ons and mods based on it.  In MSFS 2020 already, we already have boats add-ons for people that want to sail the world, and automobile add-ons for people that want to drive around the world.  It's just a matter of how good Microsoft and Asobo can make the digital twin earth look, and I think there will be a version of MSFS (maybe not MSFS 2024, but maybe MSFS 2028 or MSFS 2032) where the digital twin earth looks so good, people that aren't really interested in flying will suddenly become interested in making add-ons and mods for traveling the digital twin earth in a future version of MSFS.  I predict when MSFS hits that level of detail at ground level, there will be an explosion of people using MSFS for non-flying reasons (ie. boats, automobile, trains, etc).

Arma is an example of this. The Day Z mod, that became really popular, is based off the Arma 2 or Arma 3 engine.  I can see a huge boon in boat/automobile/train add-ons or mods flooding MSFS, once the ground looks very good in whatever future version of MSFS makes it look really good.

Now there are some people that are hoping MSFS dies.  The irony is, as the digital twin earth becomes more mature for MSFS 2024, MSFS 2028, etc, the use of MSFS will probably grow and attract interest from people using MSFS for its digital twin earth replication and not for flying.  When this critical mass of people is reached, Microsoft will never kill MSFS, they will just dump more money on making the digital twin earth part of MSFS even better.

The digital life is the future, no one has to live a normal life anymore, you live your own dream life connected to a supercomputer instead while AI takes care of the world around us.