Scottoest

Yes, they almost certainly looked at MSFS's codebase and realized that making some of the bigger systemic changes to core behaviours they wanted would require a more fundamental rebuilding of parts of the sim. That's very difficult to do with a product that's already live, without just putting out a brand new version. And of course, I'm sure business considerations factored into it too. After four years of free updates and even a bunch of free add-ons, I'm not going to balk at buying a new version - especially if my add-on collection will carry over. They've said the vast majority of add-ons should just work, but that (I believe) they'll require a small amount of work to fully utilize changes to things like contact points on aeroframes. So your Fenix or whatever will still work, but it'll work the same as it does now unless they update it for 2024. If anything breaks, I suspect it'll be add-ons that do deeper tinkering with the sim.

I would imagine it goes beyond just sheer cost. It would require a level of direct access to Google's satellite data that I don't believe Google really give anyone - and yes, it would be expensive too. And because XP's overall userbase is a small fraction of the size of MSFS, you can't dilute the cost through economy of scale. MSFS having streamed mapping data was a very specific synergy that is pretty much unique to Microsoft alone - a company that owns Bing Maps, plus Azure cloud to distribute the information to a large userbase, plus makes their own flight simulator. And because they're all "in house", they can choose to eat these costs, or price them at cost. Plus work done to expand or improve Bing Maps feeds into better data for MSFS, and work done to process that information for MSFS can flow the other way back to Bing Maps. LR would be Google's customer, and Google would demand a pretty penny for that kind of access PLUS the server infrastructure to disseminate it to end-users.

I have seen the odd person venture in there to cape for MSFS occasionally, and to the extent that happens that is also insufferable. But it's truly next-level in this subforum. I don't think we all need to be segmented off like rival prison gangs or something, but the moment a regular XP or P3D subforum poster comes in here and starts using descriptions like "scenery generator and gimmicks" for MSFS, there isn't really a question any more for what their intentions are. This has been going on since before the sim even came out, when mSparks was all over every thread here peddling uninformed, disingenuous nonsense for so long that he ended up getting banned from the entire subforum (or at least that was my understanding).

Gotta love when people from other subforums swoop in here to "just have a conversation" while simultaneously tossing incendiary garbage like calling the subject of this forum "a scenery generator and gimmicks", or replying to that person saying "I agree and jeez you're brave!". Then having the gall to accuse other people of condescension or "chest thumping" as the passive aggression radiates off your every word. Weirdly this only seems to happen when a thread surfaces here that compels them to spring into action to cape for their platform of choice, or they feel the urge to put the scenery generator for babies in it's place.

Pretty much, Could've set my watch to the annual "filet mignon vs. McDonalds", insert-sim-here is for real simmers versus console kiddies who just want nice looking scenery (albeit usually a bit more passive with the condescension), it wasn't a scientific survey, etc. 'um ackshually' responses across the various threads about the survey results. It's a voluntary census of the community, that almost certainly skews towards a more "hardcore" simming audience by virtue of being conducted by Navigraph. From that, I would hazard a guess that MSFS is actually a bit UNDER-represented in these results relative to the entire base of people who use flight sims, buy add-ons, etc. simbol mentioned that their console sales are actually more like 20-30%, yet console was low single digits in the survey - that might provide an anecdotal insight into some of the people who aren't represented in the results. Apart from that, it's just an interesting snapshot of where the more "core" community is at, and isn't really worth arguing over. The one eyebrow raiser for me was P3D being under 5%, despite v6 releasing.

You don't buy it based on what? Technical knowledge of this kind of software? Conflicting statements you can point to? General cynicism? Some features or ideas dig so deeply into the codebase that they fundamentally transform the whole. Some features are large and transformative enough to the original product that the work involved justifies a new version. They appear to be making some pretty fundamental improvements to the bedrock of their codebase and their digital representation of the world, based on their FS Expo talk. Putting out a new version of the sim after four years is perfectly reasonable, even before you take into account the amount of 'free' additions to the sim they've shoveled at you during that time. And much like any other sim, you can choose to jump to the latest release or you can hang back. If you seriously think all it's adding is firefighting and elephants, then it seems like an easy choice for you. I will happily shell out $70 for this, provided it delivers on the improvements they've talked about.

Yeah, you're not getting a 5X performance uplift on visuals unless your previous version was literally broken, lol. That kind of streamlining of the computational side of things is still a big deal though.

10 million people having at least tried MSFS is huge. Of course that's not MAUs - 10 million MAUs would make it one of the more popular 'games' in the world. But 10 million people trying a flight sim in two years is a huge amount of reach for a hobby that usually goes pretty unnoticed by the mainstream. .

I always just get the impression the Asobo guys are very tired - Seb in particular always looks like he could sleep for 8 years.

I honestly don't care what sim people use or like - it's a hobby we engage in to while away the hours of our fleeting lives, not a holy war. What gets annoying are the XP (and it's almost always XP) evangelists who seem to lurk this subforum like a loitering UAV, waiting to find some mention of their software of choice that pays it undue reverence so they can swan dive in and gleefully garbage up the thread in question.

Nothing says "this is a serious guy with serious opinions" more than spelling MS and MSFS with a dollar sign like it's the Slashdot comment section circa 1998.

The Wright Flyer. I want to see how detailed the model is, what the new sound package sounds like, and how radically different it flies.

As with a lot of things in the sim, I'm sure a gusts/turbulence will require some dialing in. What we have now is a good baseline for future improvement.

They laid off ~1000 people from a company that has approximately 220,000 employees worldwide. It's really unfortunate for those poor souls who lost their jobs, but it's indicative of absolutely nothing for Flight Sim lol.

Or people are just, y'know... having different experiences than you with their hardware and settings configurations.

True physical "realism" could essentially be broken down into near-infinite complexity computationally, so no. And beyond that, are you calculating the drag from every bit of grime on the fuselage or wings? No? #gamenotsim 😄 The trick with flight sims is just to have the computational fidelity to provide a dynamic and "realistic enough" experience, and then do some fudging around the margins to get the rest of the way there in terms of specific "feel" for the individual airframes etc. More surface-points being processed in that approximation of reality is certainly always better, but ultimately a good flight model is as much a work of art as it is a work of math.

They'd need a quantum leap in the quality and granularity of their geographic/photogrammetric data to use MSFS's twin of the world for ground-level simulators. It works now because you're typically flying over it hundreds if not thousands of feet in the air, and the fine details matter less than an accurate looking overall picture. The models their AI-assisted autogen populates would also have to be orders of magnitude more complex and varied. Don't mean to be a debbie downer, but yeah... we are nowhere close lol.

The fact that they delayed the update after beta testing because of reported issues is an extremely positive development. It signals a shift in how they view these updates, and that they aren't going to hit that tick-tock cadence just to keep on schedule any more. That's great. Sounds bizarre, but I think that delay was the best news out of the entire Q&A for what it represented, lol.

Asobo have said a dozen times by now that their aspiration for MSFS is to make it the best possible high fidelity sim for simmers. I consider that pretty much the beginning and end of the conversation on what their "mindset" is. That doesn't mean it isn't also predominantly entertainment software, which most consumer-grade "simulators" are intended to be regardless of fidelity. In my experience with sims it's generally only with flight simmers that the whole vapid "game vs. sim" debate is a thing - I assume because the audience skews older, and old guys recoil at the idea they are playing a "game"... in their computer chair with their plastic yoke and pedals.

I don't know what the servers could be serving up that would cause a CTD, but it's certainly not impossible. It'd be especially weird if it was related to a specific area of the world.

Are there any consistent details for when it happens? On the ground/in the air, only add-on airports, only when going to external looking at the terminal versus somewhere else, etc. If your frames recover after a few seconds my immediate reaction is that it's some kind of caching issue.

LOL - I had this exact same thought the other day, as a lapsed Gentoo Linux diehard who used to spend lots of time on Slashdot ages ago. A lot of XP diehards remind me very much of those loud and proud Linux "advocates", as you say. Your description of the minority mentality is spot-on - I'd imagine there's an element of sunk cost as well. Most people aren't like this of course, but the loud ones sucking up the most conversational oxygen are. PC storage has never been cheaper... there's no reason why people can't just use multiple sims for whatever they think each brings to the table. Those sims will live on or fade away depending on how many people feel the same, not based on who gives the snarkiest and most dismissive rant on AVS. (Side Note - I discovered a certain "sparky" XP advocate is literally one of those Linux "advocates" too lol)

I don't really see it as a high priority, but I don't find it strange that someone would like their pilot to occupy physical space in the sim so they can walk around and inspect stuff as a digital person. If it helps with immersion, then it's worth considering. Again - not at the top of my TO DO list, but no harm in putting it on there either.

I think people should spend more time using whatever sim platform they want to use, and less time spouting uninformed nonsense about the others. And that goes for MSFS users as well as P3D or XP ones. It's a waste of energy. People will gravitate toward whatever platform they gravitate toward, and the chips will fall where they may. If there's enough P3D users for add-on makers or LM to keep working on the platform, they will. If there isn't, they wont. That'll be driven by business considerations, not whoever gives the best rant here. We live in a time where PC storage is dirt cheap. If someone wants to keep all three sims installed on their computer until the heat death of the universe, then who cares. It's a hobby, not a political party.

Development-focused updates for an unreleased sim still in development? Do tell! You're just trolling for reactions at this point. Asobo do 60+ minute Dev Q&As about once a month talking about the sim's development, released an entire video series talking about their technology stack, and put dev updates in their weekly communiques if they have something new. But you know all of this already.