Cognita

From the last development stream, my impression is that the WASM issues have always been there but as iniBuilds worked to get the NEO working at an acceptable performance level they discovered the WASM issues. They likely need to be fixed for the NEO but they also likely need to be fixed in general for the sim to keep developing so they are committed to put the work into it. As much as I am disappointed by the delays, I am pleased that they are taking the beta seriously and trying to work out issues -- this is our last update to 2025 -- or for most of us here whenever 2024 releases -- and we will all be much more frustrated if it is released with a critical bug. They seem to be doing what many asked them to do in the early days, test fully and take the necessary time.

Yes, I have to agree from reading the two threads, it seems pretty much divided as to what AS brings to the table. Some like the cloudscapes it generates others are not so impressed; Some are willing to trade local/regional weather for a global present to get what they feel are better looking clouds; others cannot part from the depiction of "fronts". Same with the turbulence effects with some saying they are more "realistic" and others preferring live weather turbulence. From my own experience, I have played around with it a great deal and I find myself also divided; sometimes preferring one portrayal or the other. The product is new and developing so I am interested to see what comes next. What I hope mostly is that Asobo notes the discussion and that they are helped to further refine the live weather option.

I wonder if this will be one of the bespoke 2024 airports... But, great that they released Milwaukee, right in my neck of the woods and as someone mentioned above, ignored through all the FS releases. Great news and thank you iniBuilds! There seems to be two reasons. For some people PG affects performance significantly while others just do not like the look of the buildings as sometimes they look "melted".

Maybe sometime in 2025. I sure hope another developer does not just decide to do the Q400 before Majestic is ready.

I only got the standard version, which I think was 70 dollars, and I have used the game extensively for 4 years, so less than $20.00 per year. Given that I have flown for 500 hours (0.14 cents per hour) and had many other enjoyable hours looking around and learning about aircraft, airports and, recently, weather, I do not think it could be a better value. Not to mention that the title has received constant updates and attention and built a good sized community around it, for our niche hobby. Yes, some of those udpates broke things, some of them introduced retrogression, but overall my experience has bent upwards over these past 4 years. I am more than happy to pay another 70 or 80 dollars for another two or three or four years, to support Asobo and invest in the continual development of the hobby. And probably this time I will get the Premium Deluxe version.

I had never really thought about this until I saw the depiction and then started wondering if, indeed, clouds move in straight lines. I did look at a couple and yes basically straight but there seems to be a lot more internal movement in the clouds than I can see in the simulator.

Maybe, I am learning a lot about weather...

But, do they move is straight lines at a constant speed?

There may be weather parameters on the client system, but I am confident Microsoft is never going to give write access to those fields, much less to anything on its servers, as this would open a security vulnerability. It could be mitigated but this would likely require work to the architecture and would require ongoing active threat monitoring and I just do not see them doing this; even with mitigation efforts and monitoring there is still a vulnerability there and they are not going to risk their infrastructure to allow a third-party developer to generate weather on a 60 dollar game -- no matter how many people complain and express their hopes and wishes on AVSIM. Maybe they will take a different approach in 2024, but from what I can determine about 2020, that is just not going happen.

I hope this is Nairobi, it is a great location for the 777 when released!

Interesting... Those clouds appeared to move in precise straight lines, almost like they have been vectored to their destination.

I am quite happy for them to take whatever time is needed because once that SU drops their teams will fully focus on 2024, so if there is some bug that slips through we may be stuck with it until January 2025 or until we adopt 2024, whenever that comes out.

Maybe Orbx dies not have the new version yet. It is quite a nice update. The new cargo ramps are there now finally, the inside has been fully modeled quite nicely and the performance is finally acceptable.

Yes, I think people have taken the "about another week" statement quite literally and put 7 May down, but we will have to see. It seems they are collapsing their planned work for SU15 and SU16 into one SU now and so it is expected that it will take time. Is PMDG holding for SU15 too, or is that an assumption? I am not that interested in the 777 but I was looking forward to the Dukes. It if pushed much longer though I will hold off until the fall because the warmer weather is nearly here.

I suppose a way around it is to give others an SKD of all the data fields related to weather that are on the client side -- so that a company like REX or Active Sky can easily insert data to your particular installation of MSFS. These companies have now figured out how to do this in a preset, likely to a limited degree, but then have to turn off live weather -- as live weather and a preset are mutually exclusive. An SKD of client weather might help, although what can be done in a preset is likely more circumscribed so it may also entail building out data fields related to those presets. Maybe Asobo will do this, but it does it at its own expense. But it is hard for me to visualize how Asobo can give access to the live weather client fields without creating a security threat that a client installation could be used or configured to be used to access and attack Azure servers. When you run Active Sky r Rex you are giving those companies access to your computer; MS does not really care about this as you are taking all the risk. But opening live weather, even providing a detailed SKD of it, opens potential vectors to attack, and there are bad actors out there always looking for attack vectors. I just don't see a way around that given the current design.

I am not sure the issue is storing data. I don't have the impression that live weather in MSFS is generated by reading a data file and then displaying weather according that file; that sounds like how weather was handled in FSX. In such an approach data is not a big deal. Take all the METAR reporting stations in the world and add some NOAA forecast data and it will probably not be more than a few GB, and that can be stored and served up easily. What MSFS seems to do is to interface and read Metroblue's NMM forecast weather model. That model requires a supercomputer, probably several supercomputers, to run. It runs twice a day and produces updated forecasts based on a stream of weather inputs about every 3 hours at different resolutions around the world. Metroblue is not the only weather forecaster but it is one of the biggest; this is where your local TV station is getting its forecast from when it does its weather segment. MSFS takes the forecasted data directly from that model and uses it to generate weather. While MSFS will certainly have data fields they are likely populated directly by Metroblue's servers to Azure servers. And there will be a host of security arrangements and protocols to protect that data transfer and use. This arrangement allows Asobo to sidestep sourcing and maintaining weather data, it just worked out a partnership that would provide its servers with the data needed to generate a evolving live weather scenario in MSFS. It is actually a brilliant idea. But it meant that it cannot allow read access to the data -- as that data is propriety and the source of Metroblue's income -- or to write to those fields as this would open up glaring security vulnerabilities to both Azure and Metroblue. They may have taken time to adapt the architecture in MSFS2024. They already expanded it to be able to include METARs -- these may very well come from Metroblue too, as Metroblue collects all of these as part of the input to its data model -- so it is possible Asobo have made further changes to let users access that weather forecast back in time by 24 hours, the life cycle of one model run, which is what is needed to provide forecasts around the world. It will be interesting to see but unless they have made a deep architectural change, I do not see weather read/write access becoming open to third parties.

Yes, it seems that with all the delays to SU15, the roadmap has changed and SU16 has been pushed to next year. SU15 is basically the end of the line for 2020.

If I understood what was said -- I was working at the same time as listening so the stream did not have my full attention -- it is one world, whether you are in 2020 or 2024 all the world data is the same; so the two editions share a lot in common. It will not be an issue to keep both operating and I suspect they will leave 2020 for quite a few more years; it really does not cost them very much. Because it is one world, any update to Bing or world updates to photogrammetry will apply to both editions, 2020 and 2024. These features will port backwards naturally. However, while I am sure there will be some sim updates for 2020 after SU15, I suspect these will largely focus on security and bug squashing and ensuring the sim remains accessible as hardware and operating systems change. I would not anticipate many further features, unless it is a feature developed for 2024 that is naturally ported backwards. 2020 is essentially complete after SU15.

I think I can assume now that SU15, which is going to be delayed yet again, will basically complete core development on 2020, with it now transitioning to legacy. So, all focus is now on 2024.

It also does not mean that every one of those people is an FTE dedicated to MSFS. Some may be allocated .5 FTE or .1 FTE for MSFS, depending on what they do, and then they have responsibilities for other titles.

I also think that they are basically ready to release the 773 but like Black Square are awaiting SU15 to be in people's hands. Once this actually happens we can expect them to crank the hype machine up to high and we will hear a good deal from them.

I have come to think that this is their actual intention. I recall from one of the development streams the response to questions about the lack of cirrus clouds was along the lines that "different types of clouds do not actually exist in nature; clouds are just water vapor and we have made up names to describe formations that look similar to us." (A very French philosophical approach) But this may be why we are seeing basically a single cloud type trying to be made to look like every cloud type.

Yea, that is a good point about fronts really just being clouds. AS has been a worthwhile investment but it also reminded me of how substantially the weather in MSFS has regressed since its release. I really hope they address this in 2024.

Yea, this pretty much sums up the conclusion I came to -- there is a choice now to be made. In the end, after a lot of back and forth over the weekend, I chose to go with the AS Preset because in the final analysis what is most important to me is the airspace immediately around my aircraft, where I interact with the air, navigate and fly. I really wish I did not have to make this choice but with the exception of this limitation, AS appears superior in every way. I will re-evaluate when 2024 is released but until then it is AS. A worthwhile 25 dollar investment -- to be honest, I would have paid more.

This is largely true. Part of my work involves writing online and one of the first things I was told is that "people do not read online; they skim". Only after skimming do they determine if this is something they want to invest time into reading. So a lot of thought now goes into things like the size of the headline, the length of paragraphs, where things are placed on the page -- sometimes I feel more attention is given to this than to the actual content! But, back on topic, I just climbed out of Long Island and for the first time in years -- since SU7 -- I felt like I was flying in weather again. Like someone said earlier, it is like a new sim.