Scottoest

One thing I was thinking watching this, is it would be great if their AI algos could figure out glass office buildings to make them reflect the sun etc. Might be too much to ask of the technology at this point, since it's PG and not autogen.

I would completely blow out my installation and sim folders, then reinstall completely vanilla and see if that runs. I would also consider doing an uninstall and clean reinstall of my video drivers. If that didn't work, I'd consider rolling back my drivers a revision or two and see if that's the issue. I'd probably also consider doing some stress testing of my hardware to see if there's an issue, depending on whether there's other symptoms of problems. Beyond that, like others have said - BIOS, fresh Windows, etc.

I'm still not clear on how this is doing anything to their customers. They haven't rendered existing purchases obsolete. They haven't announced they're ending support for existing customers of their P3D line. All they've done is remove the possibility of NEW sales. There's been no sunsetting of anything, or notice of pending obsolescence. If there was some P3D product of theirs you hadn't bought up to now but were maybe considering for the future, I'm not sure how this warrants more than an "aww darn". The sheer fact that they've determined immediately removing these existing products from sale completely makes business sense for them, means there's some cost somewhere involved with new P3D sales that has become unprofitable for them. If they suddenly pulled the rug out on P3D customers and said they would no longer support those purchases or something, I would completely understand people feeling miffed. Same for if people could suddenly no longer download their existing purchases. But neither is the case here. Selling something became unprofitable for whatever reason, so they stopped selling it.

Haha! I don't really have any big issue with Ray, though I've absolutely noticed how often he likes to make sure people know he has no intention of using MSFS lol. Any MSFS talk in P3D threads also tends to get shut down immediately as 'off-topic', though they'll happily indulge other tangents in threads. However that particular tendency extends beyond Ray.

The sheer amount of free stuff they've "given away" as part of their continuous updates, the fact that they greenlit a sequel, and the fact that the team working on it has grown at a time in which the gaming industry is struggling with layoffs and stuff, should all give you an idea of how successful MSFS has been for them. They've given away multiple payware-quality aircraft for free, made by actual payware developers. You're not doing things like that unless you're doing very well.

Capacity will never be an issue with Azure. The only question would be cost. However, when it comes to cost I suspect Microsoft have deduced that having far more people using your sim and buying add-ons from your embedded marketplace makes them more money than charging a monthly fee for their data-serving costs and having way fewer people using it as a result. They also probably use MSFS as a valuable and visually flashy marketing point for what Azure is capable of, in selling it to businesses.

Presumably there's either a cost on the front-end in selling the products, or on the back-end in supporting new customers, that has made it not worth it relative to whatever volume their P3D products were still selling. They aren't going to remove profit from the table for no reason - unless it's not profit at all. That simple really. I took the comments as pretty clearly indicating PMDG are just not selling P3D stuff any more, but like pretty much every company they aren't going to categorically rule out ever bringing them back for no reason. Other companies might have different setups that change the cost calculation for them, and so they'll keep selling them.

Why did anyone think their settings would be lost? Azure went down - the datacenter SSDs didn't all explode, haha. Looks like things are starting to come back online. Appears to have been a major outage affecting all Microsoft services, as well as several other applications/services presumably using Azure for their backend. Be interested to find out what happened.

There's a whole bunch of stuff beyond the Xbox services that went down at the same time. Looks like it may be an actual Azure backend outage.

I agree, and there are MSFS 'fans' who can be just as irritating. But it's also a pertinent detail that this is the Microsoft Flight Simulator subforum - the designated place where the MSFS users congregate and talk. To the extent any MSFS 'fan' is going to the P3D or XP subforums to pick fights or "just ask questions", they should consider my post applicable to them as well.

If it was PMDG it would tell you to sign your name on your posts.

Never get tired of grown adults squabbling about XP vs. MSFS like kids on Reddit. Also never tire of how threads like this just happen to attract XP users like flypaper, because they can't help themselves. When I looked at the thread title and how many pages it was, I already knew what happened.

They haven't said one way or another, but you can be 99% sure the answer is no.

Because people like to jerk their knees and bellow "FLIGHT SIM IS GAEM?!" any time they use gamey-sounding terminology.

It never stops blowing my mind when people don't understand this. They modulate their presentation for the audience. At an Xbox showcase, they're going to try and make MSFS look like something a gamer or someone casually interested in aircraft might want to give a try. Casting a broad net is what allows them to have 800 people working on the sim across 25 teams, AND it makes the hobby bigger at the same time lifting all of those third-party boats. That audience doesn't want to hear Seb going on about wake turbulence improvements. The FSExpo audience does. I think the whole "MSFS IS GAEM???" thing is mostly weaponized disingenuousness from people who don't want to be seen as bog-standard platform loyalist, so they try to dismiss the sim by category error instead. And there's nothing a 50 year old with plastic pedals and a plastic yoke in a dining room chair likes less than having their entertainment called a... game *shudder*.