2 hours ago, Kristofski said:

I'm reminded of the jump from Half-Life to Half-Life 2 on the source engine back in the day, and how monumental that technological leap was - physics based engines, HDR lighting for the first time really blew everything before that out of the water. Source engine became the new standard.......

I am so disappointed with Valve with respect to Half Life. I remember thinking that the seven years between the original Half Life and Half Life 2 was a huge span of time, but here we are twenty-two years after the release of Half Life 2, and no sign that there will ever be a Half Life 3. They even gave up on Half Life 2 : Episode 3 (which created rumours that Half Life 3 was just around the corner). They then released Half Life : Alyx for VR users only! Granted it was the "next step" in gaming evolution, but a bit of a kick in the teeth for most Half Life fans.

That Gravity Gun was the best weapon that I have ever used in a first person game, and I would love to be able to use it again in a next generation Half Life 3. We do not need VR or any other fancy controllers. We just want a decent progression of the Half Life story, lots of cleverly designed and interesting EARTH BASED levels (the alien parts of the original Half Life were garbage, as were the annoying ant lion nests in one of the Half Life 2 epsiodes), realistic physics, and the G-Man!!

Sadly, I do not think that we will ever get it.

DOUBLE POST due to Avsim (once again) being the most annoying website on the internet. Why are there always problems with it? I was hoping that the upgrade would have resolved these issues, but sadly that is not the case.

Edited July 6Jul 6 by Christopher Low

On 7/4/2026 at 10:20 AM, 787flyer said:

I hope its the last option in your vote list in order to get the best value out of what I have put into the sim so far, but to be honest it all depends when Microsoft pull the plug on their MSFS2024 servers. When that happens, streaming will not be possible and I guess the sim will be non-functional.

Again that date/year is influenced by whatever future sim platform may be launched and when and by whom!

Microsoft has not pulled the plug even on MS2020, and there is no indication that it will happen any time soon. What makes you think it is imminent for MS2024? Personally I think the servers are safe for a long time to come, as this became the new normal for flightsimming six years ago and there is really no going back. Just my opinion.

It’s worth remembering that MSFS 2020 was sold to us as a long-term platform, with a ten-year support vision that would supposedly carry it to 2030. I have my doubts.

21 minutes ago, LVPack said:

It’s worth remembering that MSFS 2020 was sold to us as a long-term platform, with a ten-year support vision that would supposedly carry it to 2030. I have my doubts.

No it wasn't. MSFS was, not MSFS 2020.

1 hour ago, LVPack said:

It’s worth remembering that MSFS 2020 was sold to us as a long-term platform, with a ten-year support vision that would supposedly carry it to 2030. I have my doubts.

We were promised that we'd have a PLATFORM for at least 10 years. The were specifically responding to fears that they'd one day disappear on us again like what happened with the Aces Team and FSX.

The good thing is instead of 1 Aces team now we have a thousand. 🤗

dd

2 hours ago, LVPack said:

It’s worth remembering that MSFS 2020 was sold to us as a long-term platform, with a ten-year support vision that would supposedly carry it to 2030. I have my doubts.

I read somewhere from an official thread that MSFS2020 will be supported until 2028 even with some MSFS2024 features ported over. When I read that I prayed for the ray traced cockpit shadows, that too bright eye adaptation effect inside the cockpit to be softened like MSFS2024 and perhaps the clouds that look much better in MSFS2024.

I love MSFS2024; I could never see myself going back to starting up MSFS2020. I think it's so much better; performance-wise, it's 100x better for me than in 2020. I think they have done a pretty good job on it. Do they have areas to improve and fix? Yes.

17 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I am so disappointed with Valve with respect to Half Life. I remember thinking that the seven years between the original Half Life and Half Life 2 was a huge span of time, but here we are twenty-two years after the release of Half Life 2, and no sign that there will ever be a Half Life 3. They even gave up on Half Life 2 : Episode 3 (which created rumours that Half Life 3 was just around the corner). They then released Half Life : Alyx for VR users only! Granted it was the "next step" in gaming evolution, but a bit of a kick in the teeth for most Half Life fans.

This is what I'm talking about for MSFS - Valve has said that any attempt at HL3 would fail to live up to two decades of higher and higher expectations, and would need to break ground in a way that hasn't happened yet. Alyx in VR was like Half Life 2.5, there was enough of a step into something new, but the technology for a 40-60 hour single player campaign isn't there for most people using VR as yet. The big difference when Source engine came out was that EVERYONE was ready to get on that page, move away from the Unreal engine, and start building the next generation of games with it. I remember playing the HDR demo over and over again, coming out of the dark and having your 'eyes' adjust to the light outside was insane at the time.

So for MSFS2024's successor, what more is there to envision that we don't already have? I can see career mode expanding into something more rewarding than chasing dollars - maybe a fully online MMO-style engine with 1:1 everything. I think I'd try an MMORPG flight sim with classes lol But we do have a swath of Mil-Sim games already - ARMA, World of Tanks, IL-2 etc.

I'd like to see native shared cockpits for multiplayer - its fun to fly in formation but flying together sharing the workload on some of the bigger planes would be a blast. I think it would also really help the community connect more with each other than just having silent multiplayer traffic visible. Shared radio channels would be cool too, if not abused. I can always see dozens of players at, for example JFK, but you can't interact with them in any way. I think that's the next logical step for MSFS to go in, they've done a great job creating a vast and pretty world for me to fly around in, but I have to basically live in that world alone.

Technology wise - as hardware gets better (and more expensive) you'll eventually get to a point where the car traffic is more dense and correct looking, crowds and people walking down the streets and on beaches would be huge, there's wildlife in some areas of the world, but never any birds! I think those touches would be nice, but require more hardware than the current market allows.

18 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

DOUBLE POST due to Avsim (once again) being the most annoying website on the internet. Why are there always problems with it? I was hoping that the upgrade would have resolved these issues, but sadly that is not the case.

AVSIM is the most unreliable website i frequent, but i assume there are too many users who do not pay anything versus their hosting bills. Hence all the ads we have been seeing. But i have no insider knowledge of this.

1 hour ago, RobJC said:

AVSIM is the most unreliable website i frequent, but i assume there are too many users who do not pay anything versus their hosting bills. Hence all the ads we have been seeing. But i have no insider knowledge of this.

The primary reason is bots. The management are aware of it and are attempting to resolve the problem.