Where is Microsoft heading ???

[Christopher Low]

If MSFS 2024 had been provided as an addon to MSFS 2020 (rather than an entirely new product), would it have also needed to be compatible with DX11?

Edited January 23 by Christopher Low

[Tom Wright]

I'm certain it wouldn't have been possible to sell 2024 simply as an add on for 2020.

The move to a thin client/streaming model, surely must be a large enough change in the core codebase that the above simply would be impossible. Yes the two sims might look broadly similar visually, but they have quite different architecture underneath, necessitating the need for a new standalone product and not simply an extension of the existing sim.

The Career stuff could have been an add on, but the above most certainly couldn't.

Edited January 23 by Tom Wright

[lwt1971]

7 hours ago, jspilot said:

The direction they took 2024 was basically to add career mode into the same sim, tweak the flight characteristics and release a whole bunch of poorly to far below standard aircraft with essentially the same ATC service.  Clearly that’s not good enough for consumers anymore.

Quote

It seems like they are going in the direction of asking customers to pay 70 bucks for what is essentially a paid add on.

Nope, far from it. First of all the changes in 2024 are far more than an addition of career mode and "tweaking" of flight characteristics.  Among the features/changes listed below, there are areas that are revamps and complete re-writes (such as ground handling physics, lighting engine, etc). Let alone the debate about if all these changes are worth $70 or not, this notion that such changes could be delivered as an add-on to 2020 makes no sense whatsoever. Let's say they are delivered as one paid add-on, then does that mean if serving a customer not having bought the add-on the old lighting engine, ground handling system, etc are somehow used?.. similarly for the weather changes, 3D trees, seasons, etc. Effectively they'd have to maintain two sets of services and cloud backends to serve MSFS 2020 customers with the add-on and without (and this becomes even more unwieldy if these features are delivered as multiple paid add-ons). Given the scope and breadth of the changes, and the need to maintain different sets of services, it more than justifies a new version of the sim. The execution and delivery and bugs is another topic of course and they well should've waited a few months at the least to polish the sim further. But for the features and enhancements, a $70+ new sim version makes sense.. noting also that they'll be enhancing and adding features for free over the course of the next few years of 2024, like they did for 2020.

- improved flight dynamics, improved aircraft creation/development tools
- much improved and revamped ground handling and related physics, water physics
- much improved ground details (which also goes hand in hand with the ground physics above)
- new atmospheric photometric lighting engine, ray-traced cockpit lighting
- default birds like the ini A330, ini A321LR etc which by all accounts are of considerable fidelity for default, along with the various other default birds that have improved FMs/systems/avionics/etc
- improved rendering of clouds, clouds density, clouds lighting, new cloud types, etc
- 24hr historical snapshot of the MSFS world (not just all the MSFS weather served for the past 24 hrs but also traffic/other data)
- seasons, 3D trees, multiple diverse biomes
- a default capable and complex flight planner, LIDO charts, etc
- native dx12 support
- better multi-threading
- aviation activities, and related new physics (soft-body, load carrying, etc) and interaction with flight dynamics
- an already payware-grade avionics suite default in 2020 further improved in 2024.. and new Primus Epic 2 & Universal UNS-1
- new default EFB, improved default systems, wear and tear
- more and diverse type of AI traffic aircraft types and better livery matching
- thin client
 

Edited January 23 by lwt1971

[edpatino]

11 hours ago, Ron Attwood said:

Amazing figures. I thought flight simming was the centre of gaming universe. I got the impression that we were awash with an influx of would be pilots. Seems not.

When Asobo/MS go and make a pigs ear of what we hold dear, it appears they're not upsetting very many of us.

And I thought we were special. 😕

Not everybody wants to be a pilot...

[eslader]

4 hours ago, jcomm said:

People will only get into it if "flying" is some sort of passion in their minds.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with that. We've seen people on here talk about how they just want to fly around and look at scenery without learning how to fly beyond how to point the plane in the direction they want to go. And I don't think someone with a "passion" for flying would stick a large commercial airliner on St. Bart's over and over again, yet when I fly in live mode I see stuff like that more often than not. There are a lot of people who want to just donk around and be goofballs in MSFS, which is fine - I'm not one of those gatekeepers who think they should go away - but I'm also not inclined to view them as having a "passion" for flying.

 

[Aglos77]

9 hours ago, anavsun said:

Preocupación por el futuro de MSFS. ¿Por qué?

Si mañana sale la noticia de que Microsoft/Asobo cerrarán el 1 de febrero de 2025, no creo que importe mucho siempre que se pueda jugar sin conexión, es decir, sin fotogrametría ni Marketplace, por ejemplo. Después de todo, actualmente no hay mejores opciones. Simplemente no veo a la gente volviendo a otros simuladores de vuelo. Con las versiones actuales de MSFS, el futuro de los simuladores de vuelo está sucediendo ahora.

If they close tomorrow you will be left with a digital paperweight, do not expect miracles as Google Stadia users did not.

By the way, right now without being rush hour there are almost 700 xplane 12 users on Steam.

[AnkH]

27 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

better livery matching
thin client

"better livery matching" which helps nothing because all of the sudden the parking codes have no impact anymore. Impressively, the AI engine of MSFS2024 is a regression over MSFS2020, which was already bad in comparison to FSX/P3D days. 

And "thin client": I still do not get why this was a thing anyway. SSD storage was never more cheap and those 150GB which are "saved" compared to MSFS2020 result in more issues than benefits. 

The rest is spot on, I also tend to forget the good things of MSFS2024. 

[Sticky]

Yikes...heads are gonna roll at Asobo. Well at least they should.  2024 is a nearly a disaster due to poor project and scope management. 

[anavsun]

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

....and no Bing photoscenery. In short, MSFS offline is worthless.

I don't think I'm the only one using MSFS 2020 with photogrammetry turned OFF.

I find MSFS 2020 totally usable (and I suspect 2024 also), and much better than other currently existing sims as long as cached locations and items purchased on the Marketplace are also made available offline.

[anavsun]

32 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Not everybody wants to be a pilot...

But everybody wants to know what the place they live in looks like from the air...

[Bobsk8]

7 minutes ago, anavsun said:

But everybody wants to know what the place they live in looks like from the air...

You can buy a drone for a couple of hundred dollars and see what it really looks like in 4K.

[jcomm]

4 minutes ago, anavsun said:

But everybody wants to know what the place they live in looks like from the air...

Indeed! and in this area, MSFS 2020 and now even more 2024, rulezzzz !

I have started flying different Missions under the career mode, and chose the first few from airfields I hadn't visited since I own FS 2020 ! 

Wow!!! just WOW!!!! 

Some of them are familiar to me from RL soaring, most overflown but well memorized because they can always work as alternative landing spots just in case.

I do not have the Graphics settings at the higher settings, but even at Mid / Low I get simply astonished by the detail of the scenery. 

Even if I continue to say I don't like the "feel of flight" in MSFS, heck, I have to love the sim for all of the remaining features, and since some aircraft are even convincing enough for my desktop flying needs, I find myself playing specially now this Career thing like a kid with a new and shining toy in his hands 🙂

And from ASOBO's first introduction to what FS 2024 would bring as new features, there are a few important items that will impact flight dynamics. I believe we just have to wait for developers to correctly explore those nuances 🙂

LOVE IT !

[Ianrivaldosmith]

I compare MSFS2020 to FS9 (The golden era) and MSFS2024 to FSX - Which led to Flight. (A Disaster it never really recovered from for over a decade)

Edited January 23 by Ianrivaldosmith

[anavsun]

3 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

You can buy a drone for a couple of hundred dollars and see what it really looks like in 4K.

Can you do this from inside the comfort of your room in the dead of winter? 🙂

[anavsun]

7 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

I compare MSFS2020 to FS9 (The golden era) and MSFS2024 to FSX

Yes.