FS11 release hint and animated people too!

[Guest tmilton]

Thank you Luis, your post is one of the best I've ever read on the forums.I consider my self a hard-core simmer, but I've seen something that puzzles me. I find that there are a few who call mislabel themselves hard-core flight sim "purists". These are the ones that want ACES to only concentrate on the core of flight sim, and ignore the other aspects of the sim, such as scenery objects, animated crew, passengers, ground vehicles, and the like.As you mentioned, they want a bare-bones sim. I won't call them "purists" at all, that term is a blatant misnomer. I would more appropriately and accurately label them [a href=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exclusionist]exclusionists[/a]. They only want a few central features in the sim, to the exclusion of other features desired by many other simmers.Luckily, it is apparent that the exclusionists represent only a small number of overall simmers. The true purists, as the term should really define, are those that want to see the sim emulate what truly occurs when we fly. We interact with and see the the world and its components whenever we fly. That means people, passengers, crew, employees on the airport tarmac. That means we see cars on the roads, trees, houses, birds, etc. The closer FS can get to rendering this reality, the more "pure" and realistic it becomes in our experience.Unfortunately what the exclusionists would have us all do instead is to do away with all that, and would prefer to have us fly in a vacuum, of their choosing. A vacuum that is a world devoid of its scenery and dynamism. A world of sterility instead of richness.The irony is that they can have the sterile world of their choosing anyway! They can concentrate on their few chosen central features by simply turning off the features they don't want. Now why they insist that ACES remove all the other rich features for everybody else that enjoys them, I'll never know.As you mentioned, ACES has got programmers that concentrate on different aspects of the sim. They work to improve all aspects of the sim, There is really no need to only work on some features to the exclusion of others. There is something for everyone to enjoy.If the exclusionists ever got their way and removed the gorgeous parts of FS that many of us simmers love, that would be a tragedy indeed.

[Toys_R_Us 0]

LuisYou say it well. In recent times I have opted more for a pleasurable scenic experience over techical perfection.I don't understand however why Aces, while providing great "eye candy" does not suppliment it with a great simple navigation module much like or identical too. FSNavigator.Knowing where you are at, distances, simple frequency entry, ILS scope are visualizations, "fly to", and "move to" are the core basics of casual flying. Especially when used on a second monitor. And virtually all video cards today come with this as standard.I just don't think they (Aces) "get it". This is what the casual user really needs to get started having an interest in this product and telling others about it. That, and of course something that runs correctly right out of the box !!!Bob (Las Cruces, NM)

[jwenham 1]

Tim, Although I do agree with most of what you said I think you may be missing the main point. I think the people that you are calling "exclusionists" are only saying that they would rather see more time and energy on the core of the sim. We all agree that the eye candy available now is great, but think how much more enjoyable it would be to land at KORD, KLAX, KATL or whatever airport you like best with nice fluid motion as well as the eye candy. If the exclusionists as you say didnt want the eye candy they wouldnt be spending so much time trying to squeeze every last drop of performance out of MSFS so they can have cars, clouds, water and AI. You probably dont have any of the 3rd party add ons because if you did then all you would have is pretty much the core sim as you would have replaced the Water, Sky, Clouds, AI, ect. You can always build a great looking house but build it on a poor foundation and you have nothing, all because of something you dont even see. That is what the "exclusionists" are saying. If ACES can put out a product that has a great core as well as eye candy equal to GEX, FEX, UTX, Fly Tampa, just to name a few Im all for it, but that sure is putting alot on one plate.Jim W:-)

[Guest tmilton]

>We all agree that the eye candy available now is great, but think how >much more enjoyable it would be to land at KORD, KLAX, KATL or>whatever airport you like best with nice fluid motion as well>as the eye candy.I agree with you on this. It would be fantastic to have a great core as well as well developed scenery, including the "eye candy". I think that is exactly what ACES is working and striving towards. I think they have a well balanced program to improve the sim in all these areas with each new version of FS. And when they announce the possibility of animated people to be a part of the advancement and realism of the sim, that is great as well.However, there is no denying there are exclusionists who are opposed to such improvements and seem to go into a tizzy at announcements like this. They also complain when other simmers express their wish to improve the sim's living dynamic world aspect. Some of these exclusionists are opposed to these advancements because they are under the mistaken assumption that it turns FS into some sort of an arcade "game".From reading some posts in this thread and others, it is quite clear they are opposed to these advancements and even ridicule them. Simulated birds are not needed in FS, said one. Some sarcastically call animated people "cheerleaders". Sometimes the ridicule even degenerates to a juvenile degree - one of them mocked the addition of animated people into FS by derisively saying the characters probably urinate and wet the ground as well. Everyone has preferences of what aspects of FS they would like to see emphasized, and that is fine. ACES has been on the right track by improving all the components and adding new ones with each new version. It's great to see FS improving and adding to its depiction of the "living dynamic world" that will edge the sim ever closer to reality.When I fly, I want to see a real living world around me, with birds, moving cars, people. Just like I would see in the real world. I don't want to fly into empty and lifeless cities and ghost towns. It's incredible to fly over the African savanna and see herds of animals roaming directly below you. It's great to see traffic on the roads as you fly over them. That's real life.Imagine the psychological excitement of seeing an animated crew with you on board, and even passengers, knowing that you are responsible for their safety as you fly.ACES has a talented group of programmers, and they are improving the sim on many fronts, the core components included. There has been a good balance, I feel. So, the complaints and the insistence on where ACES should be devoting its resources are unjustified and just plain unnecessary. If some don't like a few new features, then simply turn it off, and let the rest of us enjoy the sim to its fullest.

[BoeingGuy 0]

Bravo Tim!I heartily agree with you on this. FS needs a better world. To be honest, I didn't see the picture I'd hoped for when I moved from FS2004 to FSX. I was hoping the world would be something like you said, and I'm looking forward to the next version just to see something like you are saying. It would be nice to have extra A/C detail as well.All this...and don't forget a more performant game.

[jwenham 1]

I am with you and would like the extras added. Hopefully ACES can do it in a way that will allow all that with good performance. I guess we will all have to wait till 2010 holiday and see what happens. By then we will all have Nehalem CPU's and faster Ram and MOBO's. Is it 2010 yet? How about now? :-jumpy

[JSkorna 137]

Interesting to see that even before FS11 is anywhere near being released we have splintered into groups again!When FSX came out we had the "stick with FS04" group and the "FS/MS a really excited user" group.Now we have the "exclusionists" and the "real world" group.I wonder out loud if we, as a community, are making things easier or harder for MS by doing all of this. Is the ACES team sitting there, reading all this (as you know they are) and saying "holy sh#@, there is no way we are going to be able to satisfy all of this. We have announced ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and yet look at the debate."?Or maybe it's like: "There goes those crazies again over at AVSIM."Or even: "Well, they are not even our target audience."Even after meeting some of the team, I really wonder what they think of some of this stuff.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Guest tmilton]

>I wonder out loud if we, as a community, are making things>easier or harder for MS by doing all of this. I think we give ourselves way too much false importance if we even think that any discussion here will put MS into a quandary. They are a large competent corporation and will do what's right for themselves. Discussion or no discussion that takes place on these forums, they have plans that they will follow through regardless.Sure they may glance over at some of the posts and possibly obtain some ideas and some feedback, and may incorporate a few good ideas, but I doubt there's a major influence here that will cause ACES to radically alter any of their carefully thought out business plans.They've got a good, intelligent, highly trained and experienced professional team that will lead them to implement the right decisions to achieve their interests. To think that a few posts on a forum will confound them in any way is truly laughable. :D

[chatman 29]

Well, first thanks Phil that you still participate in the community - your comments are very appreciated!Given the fact that FS 11 is still some time away and features are not yet decided: WHO decides about them? Or let's say: how much are comments from the community taken into consideration? Which influence do you have in this process as you are the one with the most knowledge of users wishes (at least that's my impression)regardsMartin

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

I hope that everybody will forgive my enthusiasm. As I work on this scenery, and add more elements, it all does better represent exactly what this discussion means concerning the need for different elements in certain types of flights. Here is a picture of the real hang glider launch in Austria from my project:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/190896.jpgIt is full of buddies and girlfriends waving their hands, tourists taking pictures... Sure, none of that is necessary for flight, but then neither are pushback tugs, fuel trucks, animated jetways, or even detailed airports. But, they add to the realism.Anyway, I added an animated person, my virtual buddy, Alexiy who took part in the missions, and here he is waving his hands:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/190897.jpgBy coincidence, there happens to be a thermal right there (a first for FS X!), and by turning on the natural representation, I can fly with the eagles:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/190898.jpgYou can see one just above and to the right of the Variometer, and another below the crossbar.Incredible to fly with birds right next to you!I have the sound of the wind (and the big floor fan that I use to cool the computer sends a breeze in my face), and birds in flight. It would be nice to have animated cows in the fields and I shall add the sound of them lowing as well as the occasional dog barking.Now, if only the guys at ACES could add the smell of the cow dung and the bratwurst on the grill! Not really needed in a 737 at the Flight Levels, but definitely part of the experience in this kind of flying.Best regards.Luis

[jwenham 1]

I have read all of this thread and have actually posted a few times in it, and have come to the conclusion that this is pointless. All I have read about in the past is performance this, performance that, why cant I get decent FPS on a brand new computer, FSX is a slide show with scenery cranked up..... I can go on and on with threads of people beating the FPS issues to death. More than half of the threads in the FSX forum are about how to get better frames and performance. Now this thread comes along and all people want is eye candy. I too like the eye candy but dont want the performance to be the same as or worse than FSX. I would rather see better performance with the current goodies I doubt any of you are actually able to enjoy a flight with all eye candy at max with the current sim except for a few of you out there. So yes, lets load up FS with all the eye candy you can stand then load up a flight and watch your head bump off the dash as you make a 5 FPS landing! Sounds like great fun to me. As I have said before, give me a soild core foundation for the sim, keep the eye candy where it is and let the developers have at it. Call me a exclusionist or what ever you want but deep down inside you all know that it is performance that you want as the eye candy can always be added later. I will now step off the soap box and let someone else have a turn.:-wave

[slashed2 53]

It's funny, and this shows the diversity in the community but moving car traffic is the one thing that really does it for me. Everytime I fly real world be it a 737 out of Philly or C172 out of Chester County I see cars on the highway. 95 out of philly and route 30 out of chester county, both of which are near the airport. When flying into Philly I actually find 95 to check the traffic for the ride home.Landing at a major airport there is a bustle of activity, baggage handlers, people directing aircraft, police, passengers, fuel trucks etc.....Flying FS9 felt like flying after the armageddon, where did all the cars go? Thankfully, aircraft traffic was available.What's funny is this discussion was prevalent during the FSX release, the same points made. As long as the ability to turn off the eye candy then there really shouldn't be much of a yes it's good for the sim, no it's not and that's what makes FS such a good series, the ability to customize to ones liking.I too hope they focus on the weather engine. Imperative in my opinion and others may disagree and I can't argue that. I like chocolate ice cream and do not like vanilla and no argument no matter how heated is ever going to dissuade me from that preference.Some good points made in the thread, but put me in the immersion group.

[Geofa 108]

I guess that is the part I don't get either.I got good performance on fsx the day it came out on my at the time 4 year old dated machine by turning off only two eye candy items-autogen and water effects. It was a slight sacrifice but with the new high res textures I found I didn't miss autogen all that much, and the water I really didn't care about. (I did have car traffic at 25% because that new eye candy item added much realisim to me, along with some of the other new eye candy items).When I got my new machine almost a year ago I moved those two sliders along with most others almost all the way forward-now everything is pretty much maxed with good performance.So it seems to me the performance demanders can always get good performance by turning down that new eye candy that is not important to them in the first place.The eye candy lovers can turn on/off that eye candy that is important to them.Then we can upgrade our computers at some point during the sim cycle and get it all.:-beerchugLooking at your last statement-yes I have always wanted performance.A sim that doesn't run at least at 25 isn't going to cut it with me.Why I expect to have to not run a new MS sim incarnation with maxed sliders when I first get it.The eye candy can and is always added later-with a new slider/new system combo. Don't we have this feature presently?My blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Jim,You are right, of course. From the start, people have complained of the bad performance. And from the start, the reply has been that they must turn down their settings. It is that simple, but many refuse to accept that. Instead, they insist on keeping at high precisely those settings that will stress their hardware, then spend long and frustrating months trying to "tweak" their computers to get better performance. Finally, they give up and go back to FS 9, when they could just have turned their settings down in FS X to the equivalent of FS 9, such as - no bloom, - lowest autogen,- terrain textures at 5 meters- LOD radius to Small- water effects to 1x Low- no freeway, boat, or airport vehicle traffic,- etc.Anybody who does this will get the same performance that they got in FS 9.I have a 6-year old computer, single core AMD, 512 MB RAM, and GeForce 5200! And yet I run FS X and have since the betas, with no Blurries. Why? I turn down my settings to appropriate levels, and of course, I do not fly above 120 KIAS. If I had the hardware of most people here, I could still get no Blurries flying above 120 knots, simply by turning settings down.So, it is not so simple as to say that the supplementary scenery elements are to blame for bad performance. In fact, we all choose our slider settings and then suffer the consequences.Best regards.Luis

[MatthewS 761]

See the link herehttp://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?f=186&t=85328"Actually, we did remove all the code for shadows. FSX used at least 3 different shadow techniques depending on what was casting or recieving shadows. All the groudn scenery used projected shadows onto a plane, and once you are near the ground they look horrible. All the existing shadow code was ripped out. We will be replacing the lighting and shadowing system over the next year to bring the engine up to date with current shadowng techniques." (Steve Heijster Graphics Programmer Microsoft Game Studios)