scotchegg

 No FM changes to the PC6 then?

I'm very interested in the ozone / visibility effect; is there any way for it to be injected based on local weather reporting / forecasting?

Does it work with live weather?

35 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

If you don’t want to see that a sim like XP having been built as a physical-tool for aerodynamics used for the professional market doesn’t have any advantages over a sim made for the masses and adressing a different market (although they do overlap), then I really don’t know what to tell you more.

It’s like you read every word I wrote and understood none of it.

5 hours ago, Franz007 said:

Many of them are still mostly using their sim for entertaining reasons but it already shows that from this unique group the preferences for MSFS vs XP melts down to 3:1 - 1:4 when MSFS is supposed to have how much 10x, 20x, 30x more users in total? So what really would be a better indicator is to have these results filled out only by people making at least a PPL, having professional interests for aerodynamics or advanced aviation physics. That’s what I mean with having interests in core-aviation.

‘Melts down to 3:1 - 4:1’?! That’s a rather self-consoling expression for the idea that in XP’s core desktop market, people prefer MSFS by 3 to 4 times! 

It looks like you’re only interested in the opinions of people qualified to talk about aerodynamics and aviation physics. I’m not qualified, don’t compare sim performance with charts, and never make definitive claims about the physics. But fm quality is not irrelevant for me and I believe I have some feel for authenticity. It strongly influences what kind of flying I do. For example in Microsoft Flight, I did mostly bush flying in the Maule, in XP10/11 I did mostly short hand-flown hops in the default 172 (because there was always a 50-50 chance that when I input a flight plan in the not-very-good autopilot, XP’s atc would vector me into terrain), in MSFS for the last year it’s been mostly 2hr hops in the COWS DA42. But the one that really felt authentic for me was the default 109s in IL2. word not allowed, those things felt so real, especially the inertia and stall buffeting, but I just couldn’t really sustain my interest in a poorly-rendered 1930s Russia, and am not really into shooting stuff up.

I use the DA42 in MSFS because even though the world obviously looks much better, most of the default planes still struggle with inertia (although I haven’t tried most of them recently so maybe they’ve changed) so bush flying isn’t so satisfying. The DA42 gives a good IFR experience with the excellent (default!) avionics, and feels good enough on the tarmac, take off roll and landing to be satisfying in the parts of flight I’m not using AP. 

All of which is to say, I’m obviously not the kind of qualified aerodynamics professional to whom you like to defer to asses a simulator. You seem to want ‘core aviation’ to be defined by, and desktop commercial simulators to be assessed on, only the one element you believe XP to be superior in. But frankly, when I want to experience a truly authentic feel of aerodynamics only, I fire up IL2 again and not XP.

MSFS is still often disappointing in inertia and weather interaction, but the signs for 2024 are promising, and if they improve those I’ll probably start doing a lot more bush / hand flying. In the meantime, I’m sure XP will introduce another feature that MSFS doesn’t have (e.g. the recent weather radar with tilt), and when confronted with the probability that MSFS’ fm has closed most of the remaining gaps with XP’s, you’ll move on to that new feature as evidence that XP is still the superior core aviation experience.

But for most of us who want a good balance of solid fm, avionics, atc, weather, and world, it just isn’t currently. I like Austin a lot and who doesn’t want the underdog to win. If the other stuff in the core aviation experience (not just the aerodynamics!) gets better in XP I’ll come back.

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

Its grown by 600,000 since March 2018, and 50,000 in the last 9 months.

I’m sure that represents 600,000 new, real, distinct paying customers🤩

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

your method of pulling them from where the sun dont shine...... IMHO

What numbers have I pulled from anywhere, including my squeaky clean derrière, in this thread?

5 hours ago, mSparks said:

if the xplane.orgs 1.1 million registered users is a niche then what do you think that makes the msfs in sim stores 1 million registered users?

1) A niche is a specialized subset and can be any size. Counting the civil and military sims, it’s possible we’re looking at a hobby of about 20m. 

2) Users registered at the org?! *******, you really do grab at any old number floating around. Once you take away all the dead accounts and duplicate accounts from people who got banned before (😅) you’re probably left with about 50,000. Even I’m still registered there!

3 hours ago, Franz007 said:

Same. If you’re stucked in your beliefs, it’s useless to try having a rational discussion. You will simply believe what you want. Again: there are many other reasons why simeone prefers a sim, not all being part of core-aviation (even within « hardcore simmers »)

 

Yep! Keep going! You’re so close!

4 hours ago, mSparks said:

This fundamentally misunderstands how Laminar Research functions as a company. You might as well proclaim Harvard University targets a narrower audience than Asobo. I mean sure, technically you can make that case and find plenty of evidence for it, but probably don't expect us to take you seriously when you go on to use it to proclaim that Asobo is "better" than Harvard University at anything ever, which is pretty much what you did there.

My dear Sparky, if you look carefully you’ll see that I didn’t say Asobo IS better, I said the serious simmers market that Franz likes to point to as XP’s niche clearly perceives it to be better. I’m very serious when I say your English is (assuming it’s not your first language) unusually good, but man, your deductions sometimes….

5 hours ago, Abriael said:

Nah it's in Ryogoku. But yeah, TONS of stuff is missing in Shibuya, of course.

Nice. I live too far away to get there regularly, but I try to get to Ryōgoku every now and again for the Mongolian food, and to eat next to sumo wrestlers.

Let me know next time you’re in town. I’ll introduce you to the delights of Kamata (NB There are not many delights, but it’s near the airport and the gyoza is out of this world)

2 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

That doesn’t mean that it simulates core aviatic better, many other factors playing a role in deciding why using a sim over another.

Oooooh! Keep going! You’re nearly there!

49 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

it’s a bit a wacky way of coming to the conclusion that MSFS simulates aviatic-things as good as XP when it doesn’t.

I didn’t claim or deny that in part or in whole. I very clearly claimed the serious simmer market has obviously decided by a 3:1 or 4:1 margin (using the numbers you deploy so often!!!!) that MSFS is the better simulator.

52 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

But the tendency is there and cannot really be denied.

Dude, the XP devs literally put Austin on the crapper in a default plane. (NB, love it, always put Austin’s bobblehead on the dash of every flight I did in the 172 in XP11. Having Austin in my toilet or on my dash never made it less or more of a simulator, if you get my drift).

41 minutes ago, Abriael said:

but the tower itself isn't there physically, there's just an empty lot, since it was built in 2018.

Shibuya?

55 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

So this proves my point that there is a bigger part of so called « serious » simmers in XP and a smaller part of those in MSFS.

That’s logical given its history, dev team, focus etc. MSFS is going for a broader audience, they say they’ve got distinct groups such as serious simmers, global tourists, goal / mission hunters. Obviously XP is only interested in the first group, and I don’t think anyone denies they do it very well.

What both data and common sense show though, is that even for that one ‘serious’ segment, the market overwhelmingly feels MSFS does it better for them. It was a new product suddenly dropped on the market, and from the get go the serious market immediately jumped to it, and have largely stayed, to a level of 4:1 by your own reckoning.

Certainly the pie is bigger which benefits everyone, and only fools wish for fewer companies participating in the hobby, but this continued grasping at EXTREMELY spurious numbers like the frankly daft PMDG revenue estimate provided by the ever credulous Sparky, or your wildly shaky interpretation that this navigraph ratio of 4:1 or 3:1 shows that serious simmers actually prefer XP, doesn’t alter the simple fact that even the serious simmers, the one market that XP excels in, as a whole don’t feel it’s good enough to move them away from MSFS. And neither is it a commercial failure for MS/Asobo, or 3PD.

3 hours ago, Abriael said:

It certainly helps, but it'd still be nice for the photogrammetry of such a major city not to be from prehistory 😂

In many European cities that might seem a strange thing to say, but given the pace of (especially commercial) real estate development in Tokyo, it really makes a difference. That’s one of the reasons I really like Ken’s sceneries, he updates Tokyo so regularly, and even includes models of big buildings at different stages of their construction.

1 hour ago, Sticky said:

Funny thing is, those poking fun or minimizing my statement have never been a CFI and soloed a student,

Are you saying that you, or some flight schools you know, are soloing students without correcting such a simple, fundamental, easily understood idea that you can’t actually fly through dense clouds like you can in most home-use desktop simulators?

1 hour ago, Abriael said:

Especially Tokyo's photogrammetry is from 2014 (ask me how I know lol). 

I was going to recommend Ken Ochiai’s scenery but then I went to the official forums and saw you already started a thread about them.

1 hour ago, Sticky said:

They're literally convincing future pilots that it's ok to fly through storms.

People hoping to be pilots should be clever enough to understand not everything possible in a simulator is advisable / legal in real life #omgyoucanflythroughtrees

4 hours ago, ca_metal said:

They are no more working with Blackshark. They are reworking the autogen in-house. Jörg said the BS system was too limited.

I’m guessing there’s not much BS can offer Microsoft that they can’t do better themselves now.

1 hour ago, lwt1971 said:

the 24hr historic "everything" always stored and not just basic weather data (as per traditional historic weather data) but *all* weather data/happenings the sim used on the server-side, and then also AI traffic, ships/boats traffic, etc

That is very cool. I was interested in the idea of historical weather, but didn’t really want to fly in yesterday’s dusk with today’s mid-morning GA traffic.

Looks like they’ve solved that, but that is a hell of a lot of data they’re keeping just for 24 hrs.

There are some people saying these things, but it's a bit of a stretch to say the community are saying them. Still, hearing it from a voice with some standing in the community may help a bit.

23 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

I didn't see any pop-ins, but the rendering distance seems low for the crop fields and grass (it doesn't pop-in, but we can see it being rendered, smoothly though).

That’s what I was talking about. Technical correction accepted!

8 hours ago, Krakin said:

@jcomm

 

Not at all the focus of the video, but it does show some nasty pop in with those new ground crops. Hopefully optimization will allow us to increase the LOD, because if it’s that close to the camera, it’s gonna be a big distraction. 

Other than that, quite pumped for gliders in 2024. Haven’t really touched them much but with better thermals and turbulence, might pay more attention to them!

That’s a good question. Out of all the animals you’d have thought would be relevant to a flight sim, birds must be up there…

I’ve always been a bit disappointed with the tech they used to mask clouds on the orthos. The textures it creates are so low res. It must be possible to have the AI make a composite of the surrounding textures rather than having a small library of low res replacements.