51 minutes ago, hanhamreds said:

are there plans to improve water physics- Jorg stated at expo that they haven’t done anything with the water - imo this need much improvement

huh? No he didn't, In fact the opposite, it was said your movement in the water now visually matches the waves.

Boats will also bob and weave now, as seen in the trailer.

Edited September 6, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

22 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

but in terms of realistic weather, it can’t be beat.

I agree, when you refer to cloud "placement". That is in fact mostly stunningly accurate. However, this positive assessment is quickly clouded (pun intended) when one considers the deficits that exist:

• cumulus centric
• generic look
• mostly one single cloud layer
• missing or not convincing high overcast
• lower cloud density than presets
• low variety in cloud depiction
• no plausible storm depiction
• no high reaching CB
• virtually no lightning
• no stratiform overcast
• discernable METAR areas
• no real low visibilty (RVR)
• ...

As long as the argument that is constantly being made is: `Yes, it’s not optimal, but it’s better than anything we’ve had before or the competition`, we won't see MS/Asobo paying the same attention as they have done for stock aircraft and avionics (hiring WT crew, frequent AAU-Updates) or the Replay-tool (hiring Fabio Merlo to integrate his great Flight Control Replay instead of the clunky Asobo tool) or other areas of the sim. "Long live mediocrity" is somehow not a positive incentive for the further development of a flight simulator.

4 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Matt Nischan from Working Title said that MSFS could probably obtain FAA certification if they wanted to

Here's the document he'll need then:

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_61-136B.pdf

He could probably launch a balloon with that throwaway statement.....

12 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

agree, when you refer to cloud "placement". That is in fact mostly stunningly accurate. However, this positive assessment is quickly clouded (pun intended) when one considers the deficits that exist:

Yeah did you read my whole post?

14 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

However, this positive assessment is quickly clouded (pun intended) when one considers the deficits that exist

I think this is a blatant function of the volumetric cloud rendering method being used and the current state of computing power.  In simple terms there is simply not enough voxels per cubic volume to do justice to cloud depiction.  Here's some gold standard from the real world:

And when we conjure up cirrus we get this vast variety with lots of character and detail:

We can't possibly go here with the rendering method being employed and I'm guessing no one has a better method in a big way yet.  Right now with my 4090 if I fly thru the wrong type of clouds, typically thinner and I'm in the cloud layer, the GPU will go to 99% from its baseline which is around 55% and that because I have render scaling at 160 now.  And I limit frames to 45.   So to get the kind of particle (voxel) density we need to create clouds with very distinct morphologies we need either a new vastly more efficient graphics engine to or we need a giant increase in GPU computing power or some net increase therein.  IOW, for the moment I think we're stuck.  Just look at what is being called 'cirrus' in the trailer.  I think it's largely going to be thin flat plates w/ little of detail you see in the cirrus clouds in the screenshot above.  Who knows maybe there is some trickery to exploit to get away from oversimplified, dull 'cirrus'.  I'm not aware any other sim doing volumetric clouds is doing much better.

6 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

Yeah did you read my whole post?

Yeah, I have. But tbh I am very tired of statements like "I can’t think of any other sim giving a better global weather experience even with 3rd party injection" when there are so much glaring deficits. This is the No.1 argument to cut off any serious criticism of MS' lack of engagement in developing a proper flightsim. It supports the permanence of mediocrity.

Looking fwd to find any statement about precise visibility settings.

3 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

when there are so much glaring deficits

You can have a lot of glaring deficits, and still be the best.  Which sim(s) has the better global weather experience?  

14 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

Yeah, I have. But tbh I am very tired of statements like "I can’t think of any other sim giving a better global weather experience even with 3rd party injection" when there are so much glaring deficits. This is the No.1 argument to cut off any serious criticism of MS' lack of engagement in developing a proper flightsim. It supports the permanence of mediocrity.

Strange, I thought saying ‘the visual depiction (esp. clouds) has gone way down since launch and just makes me sad,’ would make it clear that I’m really dissatisfied with the clouds, which you expanded on with a long list of problems with the visual depiction (esp. clouds), but it seems that when I said ‘the visual depiction (esp. clouds) has gone way down since launch and just makes me sad,’, what you understood was *cough* ‘I support the permanence of mediocrity’.

And I thought I was a reasonably adept communicator….

1 minute ago, Noel said:

You can have a lot of glaring deficits, and still be the best.  Which sim(s) has the better global weather experience?  

And how is that an argument to not criticize the lack of any progress in that area since SU7, that admittedly improved the accuracy of cloud placement? Because there wasn't any, as all we have seen was incidental fixes to get it back to a reasonable depiction,  not taking into account the atmosphere calculation based on ARPC values, which was ultimately only carried out due to the initiative of a community member and the subsequent pressure from the community.

7 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

And I thought I was a reasonably adept communicator….

Maybe if you would have ommited the "I can’t think of any other sim giving a better global weather experience even with 3rd party injection", which kind of negates all your criticism. But I think we aren't that far apart in our assessment.

Edited September 6, 20241 yr by Tom_L

1 hour ago, sloppysmusic said:

Here's the document he'll need then:

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_61-136B.pdf

He could probably launch a balloon with that throwaway statement.....

There's zero doubt that if Microsoft wanted FAA certification, they'd get it easier than anyone else in the industry. And it isn't even a close competition.

2 hours ago, micstatic said:

Would be nice if they finally deliver a good ai model where airplanes land on the runways they are supposed to. 

If they really hired Kai from AIG then you bet there will be major improvements. 

4 minutes ago, Abriael said:

There's zero doubt that if Microsoft wanted FAA certification, they'd get it easier than anyone else in the industry

If they wanted to buy my Mom's recipe for Apple Crumble they'd get that easy too.

But they don't, and they won't. 

It would be a huge albatross round their corporate neck. You don't just GET certified , you have to STAY certified and with the regular amount of MANDATORY updates MS like to throw at all their products without notice to the user it's not something they would EVER want or even consider.

20 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

If they wanted to buy my Mom's recipe for Apple Crumble they'd get that easy too.

But they don't, and they won't. 

It would be a huge albatross round their corporate neck. You don't just GET certified , you have to STAY certified and with the regular amount of MANDATORY updates MS like to throw at all their products without notice to the user it's not something they would EVER want or even consider.

They won't not because the simulator would have any issue getting or staying certified.

They won't because they're simply not interested in that business, as they've said multiple times. They don't need additional revenue, since the simulator is actually popular, and they certainly don't need to do it for brownie points.