43 minutes ago, STK said:

I'd even argue that this is outside of the original vision of MSFS - the old tagline from the early 2000s was "As Real As It Gets". We went from Rod Machado providing lessons alongside John and Martha King doing promotions based on how close to life everything is....to Stranger Things. 

 MSFS franchise does need wide range customer base who are not necessarily hardcore simmers. That actually help customers like us who interested in more realistic content. Think about that company like Tesla that sell a lot of car to fund their Space X project.

I have met John and Martha King as well Rod Machado in person. They are more like aviation ambassador/entertainers. (by the way Rod could easily qualify for aviation stand up comedian! LOL) However, content they provide is more like "captain obvious" stuff and frankly some of the stuff little far fetched. So "as real as it gets" also involve some entertaining/ marketing.

In one of seminars, Rob recommended to practice "flight control failure" scenarios where student can learn how to land airplane by means of throttle, elevator trim, and rudder pedals. One of our instructors wanted to book lesson  with Rob (he operates from KSNA) so he can demonstrate this. But Rob politely declined citing that he "doesn't have much time" and "doesn't fly that often". 🙂     

Those who don't move with the times, get swept away by the times.

MS 2024 is what is - and, frankly, I like it. Wouldn't like to go back to Sublogic times. (yes, I was there).

And since FS1 we're using simulator softwares. Which are per definition NOT the reality.  So what...

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by MaGer1965

FSX had literal UFOs and ghost planes. 

1 hour ago, STK said:

Dune, Jurassic Park, Stranger Things...are we going to see Fortnight or Labubus next? Even in the unlikely event that Asobo resources are not being expended* on this...stuff, they are emphasizing and featuring it. We're moving away from realism towards what I suppose is indeed flight simulation via the strict definition, but flight simulation in fictional environments with fictional things. If I wanted that I'll play Ace Combat or Grand Theft Auto.

I'd even argue that this is outside of the original vision of MSFS - the old tagline from the early 2000s was "As Real As It Gets". We went from Rod Machado providing lessons alongside John and Martha King doing promotions based on how close to life everything is....to Stranger Things. 

Hello @STK,

For clarification, The Jurassic World add-on was entirely an Orbx creation; Microsoft/Asobo had no part in its development.

In the 5+ years since MSFS 2020 launched, there have been a total of three first-party releases that are fictional sci-fi/fantasy themed (Halo, Dune, and the upcoming Stranger Things DLC) compared to multiple dozens of releases simulating current or historic real-world aircraft. Surely only three releases in more than five years can't reasonably be described as the dev team "moving away from realism" or an indication of a "thematic shift". 

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

1 hour ago, STK said:

Even if fewer resources from internal Asobo developers are used, it's still promoting a thematic shift, or at least the acceptance thereof.

Oh, please. In the five years the current MSFS has been going there have been three of these official tie ins (Top Gun, Dune, and now ST). In the same time there have been over FORTY updates to the core sim (20 sim updates, 20 world updates, and several city updates.

There’s no evidence at all that these things are being prioritized in place of core improvements. It’s a bit of fun which you are free to ignore along with all the other of the hundreds (thousands?) of available products that you haven’t bought and default planes which you don’t use but somehow still manage to use the sim in your own way.

Or you could find another sim which doesn’t have these occasional tie-ins. There are options. Of course, if you choose XPlane, you’ll have to complain about how devs spend time on things like making passengers models falling out of hot air balloons, or Austin bobble heads, or Austin on the crapper etc. etc. etc.

21 hours ago, rick celik said:

....yes I'm aware there are different teams working on different projects within the sim, so can the team working on the "for the flight simmer" stuff tell me where they are, because we've heard from the wider audience team, we've heard from the bug and regression fixing team, where is the core sim innovation team gone? havent heard a beep. 

I believe there's some merit in this question. 

5 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

I believe there's some merit in this question. 

I think the question is fine, but it does ignore the atmosphere improvements, the lighting improvements, the terrain improvements, turbulence model, flight planning, EFB, ground handling improvements, inertia improvements etc. etc. etc. that 2024 has brought and continue to work on.

Still not perfect and still lots to be done, but to say there hasn’t been a beep from core innovation is just daft.

My bulky and expensive flight controller developed the twitches so I replaced it with a wireless XBOX controller that I like more.

I guess I'm not a core simmer anymore. 🤗

dd

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by Sky_Pilot071

34 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

I believe there's some merit in this question. 

 

Quote

so can the team working on the "for the flight simmer" stuff tell me where they are, because we've heard from the wider audience team, we've heard from the bug and regression fixing team, where is the core sim innovation team gone? havent heard a beep.

I think it's quite obvious the "core sim innovation" team and the "bug and regression fixing" team are one and the same, or have a huge overlap with each other. It's the same areas of code, and given the amount of bugs/issues in the core sim since MSFS 2024's initial release, that team have been busy fixing (and also doing some improvements) from SU1 through to SU4. Also from a software engineering perspective, when trying to fix a plethora of issues in the core simulation codebase, it makes absolutely no sense to also add new features to the same codebase. And rare is the case in large/complex software projects that there are separate teams for new feature work and bug fixing. There are sub-teams which owns sub-sections of the codebase and functionality of the product, and they'd be responsible for both new feature development as well as bug fixing for their codebases.

If SU4 is the level of quality which both Asobo and us end-users can say is at a satisfactory quality/stability level, then I'd expect that some or most of the core dev team to be free'd up in in 2026 to start focusing on highly requested improvements and new capabilities.
 

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by lwt1971

SU4  will be fantastic but the only real immersion breaker that Asobo really need to try and figure out is the audio sound stutters that plague larger photogrammetry areas.. we have now high frame rates but the sound crackling ruins it somewhat..

 

H.

1 hour ago, SeedyL said:

FSX had literal UFOs and ghost planes. 

Hello @STK,

For clarification, The Jurassic World add-on was entirely an Orbx creation; Microsoft/Asobo had no part in its development.

In the 5+ years since MSFS 2020 launched, there have been a total of three first-party releases that are fictional sci-fi/fantasy themed (Halo, Dune, and the upcoming Stranger Things DLC) compared to multiple dozens of releases simulating current or historic real-world aircraft. Surely only three releases in more than five years can't reasonably be described as the dev team "moving away from realism" or an indication of a "thematic shift". 

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

That's interesting to hear that MS/Asobo had no part of Jurassic development. So, it wasn't commissioned by MS, there was no testing and integration work with Asobo as part of the software dev life cycle, and certainly no marketing or endorsement of the theme. I guess my eyes deceive me. 

I also presume that the Microsoft's product analysts aren't looking at the market impact of all of these "Pop-Culture DLC" releases, two of which have been advertised by MS in the past four weeks, unless I'm imagining it. Here's hoping the MS bean counters who's focus is on increasing shareholder value don't see the success that adopting these brands into the sim has on the customer base.

Seems like this is the path that's been decided. The next iteration of the MSFS series will be enlightening. 

 

From "As Real as it Gets" to promoting this.....wow.

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by STK

10 minutes ago, STK said:

That's interesting to hear that MS/Asobo had no part of Jurassic development. So, it wasn't commissioned by MS, there was no testing and integration work with Asobo as part of the software dev life cycle, and certainly no marketing or endorsement of the theme. I guess my eyes deceive me. 

Where did you get the information that the Jurassic Park add-on involved Microsoft or Asobo? Can you link your source?

16 minutes ago, STK said:

That's interesting to hear that MS/Asobo had no part of Jurassic development. So, it wasn't commissioned by MS, there was no testing and integration work with Asobo as part of the software dev life cycle, and certainly no marketing or endorsement of the theme. I guess my eyes deceive me. 

Yes, that is 100% the case. The Jurassic World add-on is a third-party mod developed entirely by Orbx on their own initiative. Microsoft did not commission it, nor were we responsible for any development or testing work, nor did any Asobo devs work on it. Microsoft's only responsibility was ingesting it into the Marketplace (a few weeks after it first went on sale from Orbx's own store). It's no different than, say, the PMGD 737 or A2A Comanche in that respect.

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by SeedyL

2 hours ago, SeedyL said:

FSX had literal UFOs and ghost planes. 

Hello @STK,

For clarification, The Jurassic World add-on was entirely an Orbx creation; Microsoft/Asobo had no part in its development.

In the 5+ years since MSFS 2020 launched, there have been a total of three first-party releases that are fictional sci-fi/fantasy themed (Halo, Dune, and the upcoming Stranger Things DLC) compared to multiple dozens of releases simulating current or historic real-world aircraft. Surely only three releases in more than five years can't reasonably be described as the dev team "moving away from realism" or an indication of a "thematic shift". 

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

Thats a good point. 

14 minutes ago, SeedyL said:

Yes, that is 100% the case. The Jurassic World add-on is a third-party mod developed entirely by Orbx on their own initiative. Microsoft did not commission it, nor were we responsible for any development or testing work, nor did any Asobo devs work on it. Microsoft's only responsibility was ingesting it into the Marketplace (a few weeks after it first went on sale from Orbx's own store). It's no different than, say, the PMGD 737 or A2A Comanche in that respect.

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

100% the case....got it. I'll just go back to reality....I guess I imagined the endorsement and no-one else can see this page. https://www.flightsimulator.com/jurassic-world-archipelago-by-orbx/

Also looking forward to seeing devs ingest additional content. I'm sure they'll be exited to know that no testing is needed. 

Good luck with MSFS2028 or whatever the next iteration is...looking forward to the new dinos.

As real as it gets. 

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by STK

11 minutes ago, SeedyL said:

Yes, that is 100% the case. The Jurassic World add-on is a third-party mod developed entirely by Orbx on their own initiative. Microsoft did not commission it, nor were we responsible for any development or testing work, nor did any Asobo devs work on it. Microsoft's only responsibility was ingesting it into the Marketplace (a few weeks after it first went on sale from Orbx's own store). It's no different than, say, the PMGD 737 or A2A Comanche in that respect.

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

You have the patience of a saint. You've been doing an excellent job as a community manager and we're very glad to see your increased engagement with us over the recent months.