SergioCosta

It's called sarcasm. I told you I don't take myself seriously.

I'm disappointed. I was expecting a bit more of reverence from you, of all people.

Yeah, I do. I like being part of discussions, pitching in, giving my opinion. It's what being part of a community is. I'll also keep doing it whenever I feel like it. Not because I take it seriously, but because I enjoy doing it. Which is why most of us are here anyway. And...? What's your point exactly? That I am being "too serious" about it? Perhaps I am, because I would like for it to be a good product for everyone. That's what I've been doing during the last 8 years, with some degree of success. All because of my opinions. It's not like I'm taking the fact that someone posted a link to an opinion seriously to a point where I am criticizing people and reaching a point where I even say people are revering that person. It's almost funny. Not that I don't deserve to be revered for having opinions, mind you. I fell like a god because I have a website and everyone should pay homage to me and bow. But we don't all get what we want, I guess. I can't wait to see this last sentence be used out of context somewhere.

@jcomm just shared my article for others to read, enjoy (or not) and discuss if they thought worth if discussion. You're the one making it a lot more than it actually is with all that talk about deference and how it's just an opinion. Yeah. It's exactly that. We all have our opinions. You're taking it too serious. Not even I take myself seriously.

It is. I still have faith they may add an option to fly those missions freely. There's a thread over at the official forums about it: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/career-mode-sandbox-option/671640

If it was a paid review, I would have said so. I don't do paid reviews, though, although I do get products to review, for free.

Exactly. It would be free flight, but using the new mission features.

I can imagine some eyes rolling already!

Twice 🙂

@kkbelos check this thread here in the AVSIM forums: And this quote in the last post on that thread. Perhaps this is it but people decided to freak out?

From what I remember seeing some time ago, when we purchase something on the marketplace, we pay real money that are transparently converted to a currency, which is then what's used to purchase the addons. I think that is done for legal purposes and we never get to see that translation (as far as I can remember). I hope that's the case here.

Here's the thing: I don't care about career mode. I don't want to do the career mode. I don't want to have my own company. None of that interests me. I just want to be able to do crop dusting, sling loading, search and rescue without having to go through all that. Just hit free flight, select a mission type and fly it. I don't care about points, credits or anything else. Yet, I can't do the things I do like and want to do because they are behind the career mode gate.

I've seen that but I am not sure how much that is true or speculation. I think that's a very bad call, if it happens. But considering the recent acquisitions Microsoft has done, and the fact that they need to ramp up profits, I don't see it as being impossible. That would be very, very disappointing.

@lwt1971 thank you very much. Both for reading, your feedback and your always amazing support to everyone here in the forums. I do want to write a review on the sim. I wouldn't be doing anyone any favors by reviewing it now. That article will have to be enough for the time being. @MarcG I was invited back in 2019 for the MSFS2020 event. I was invited to the 40th anniversary edition and I was invited to this event in September. So, this wasn't the first event they invited me to and I have a good relationship with them. I am very proud to be have a good relationship with most developers, not just MS and Asobo. Nonetheless, they all know that I will always be open and honest with them and the community. Don't expect me to bash people and companies but don't expect me to sugar coat it either. We don't gain anything from either stances. I try to be as neutral, open and honest as I can. That doesn't mean I will always be able to, but I try. So, I appreciate your comment and your feedback.

I've decided not to use the sim until at least the load times improve to me. 15 minutes at a time, plus the eventual CTD makes the whole experience excrutiating.

Hey guys. Thank you very much for reading the article and for your kind words. And a shout out to @jcomm and my thanks for sharing it here. This is my point of view. While I welcome a structured way of doing things, which onboards new simmers and provides a sense of progress, I personally have no interest in that. "Early on" still forces me to fly a fixed wing aircraft, which I have no interest on doing, at least 4 times, which translates to a couple of hours or more. I do not enjoy doing that. I used to a long time ago, but I haven't flown fixed-wing aircraft in years. I just don't find it fun anymore. Being forced to fly missions to earn credits to get the next certification is also not fun to me. I have seen people saying that "that's what you do in real life", to justify it. Well, this is not real life. Flight simulators have always been somewhat of a sandbox for us to enjoy aviation freely. By forcing me to grind to be able to do the things I want to do, both that freedom and fun are removed from the equation to me. I am not saying the current system should be removed. I am perfectly fine with people enjoying themselves the way they want to. I would like for us to have the option to not do it that way, so that I too could enjoy myself the way I want to. We all like different things. When we force people to follow a path, we will be preventing people from following other paths.

If you don't see value in anything else the new sim brings, don't bother.

You're welcome. Those are my thoughts based on the information I got. I actually think the bandwidth use will be less for everyone. If we consider the initial installation alone, there are huge savings there. On the day-to-day usage, it will probably be the same and I dare to say less than the usage we have right now. If you think from a commercial standpoint as well, less bandwith also means less expenses for Microsoft. Having so much data being downloaded is not exactly brilliant for them.

It's all changed and all the same. Confusing, I know. So the sim itself is a lot leaner. So once it's installed, it will load a lot faster. Once you select an aircraft to fly, you'll download that aircraft if you don't have it yet. But that aircraft will have a smaller size because of the new compression algorithm. You should only have to wait a minute or two. Perhaps a bit more. But it's the same if you buy a new aircraft, right? Once it's installed, it's installed. You don't fly the 787? No worries. It will not install itself. I don't fly fixed wing. So no fixed wing stuff for me. Then you say that you want to fly at a certain location. The sim will download exactly what it downloads now. All the data and textures. Again, with a better compression algorithm. As you fly, you will eventually "stream" the data and textures you need, exactly like now. But, again, using less bandwidth since the compression algorithm is better. Here's what I think is happening: with the word "stream" and the fact that the requirements now mention high speed internet connections (which I think it's just a way for MS to cover themselves by exaggerating on what is needed), people got confused. Now, full disclaimer: I can be completely wrong here, OK? I am not saying this is it for sure. What I'm telling you is what I understood from what Sebastian Wloch told me during, before and after the interview. It's kind of normal for us to geek out with this stuff off-the-record (but we never talk about stuff we shouldn't) since Sebastian knows I have a technical background. But this is my understanding, from the conversations we had and as a technical person.

That's the thing. No. It's the opposite. That's exactly the misunderstanding I tried to explain the article. We will have less things to download and even the compression algorithms were reworked. Let's assume the size of the sim is the same as in MSFS2020. It's probably not but let's assume it is. In the extreme case where someone wants to download everything, they will be downloading smaller files, since the compression is far better. What happened before was that we downloaded a bunch of files and we wouldn't need most of them. With 2024 we will NOT download them until they are needed. And then they will be happily living in our drives from where MSFS will read and use them. People ear the words "streaming" and immediately make wrong assuptions about how the system will work.

That depends on the person reading it. Some do, some don't. We do our best to inform people. Everyone sees it the way they want and apply critical thinking or not. I do like the ones that apply critical thinking and ask me stuff. I like to understand other people's perspectives. It's always interesting.

There's nothing on any footage of helicopters that will actually show anything in particular. Assessing flight dynamics on a video is pretty much impossible. You need to get your hands on the controls and see how it goes. Not to mention all footage would be from the inside and that doesn't help either. It's cool to watch but doesn't really help in trying to find out how it feels. Unfortunately, the amount of time we had was not a lot so I can't make a proper assessment either at this time. I did found a possible bug, though.

Career mode is one of the available modes. Carrer, Challenges, Photography and yes, Free Flight.

I would say the same as with a lot of presales out there: folks get it because it may run out of stock 😛

I was confirming it was. The guy on the right on the second video is quite handsome, by the way.