Scottoest

On 1/8/2024 at 1:24 AM, Jeff Nielsen said:

That's mainly why FS2024 is being done.  2020 can't handle what we and they want it to do.  Not sure if you had the chance to watch the video at FSExpo where Jorg and Seb talked at length about some of what 2024 will bring and why.

Now, whether it will help with ATC and AI traffic, who knows, but there's bigger fish to fry, IMO, than those things.

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.

On 1/8/2024 at 1:42 PM, RobJC said:

I hope that is accurate. But I am a bit skeptical. 

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.

8 hours ago, g-liner said:

We don’t all live on flightsim forums. Do you know if xplane have actually explored this avenue and didn’t go down it due to licensing costs? 

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.

8 minutes ago, pete_auau said:

just imagine  if  we happen  to venture  into  the  xp  forum  🙂

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.

17 hours ago, snglecoil said:

Ah yes…the annual “most predictable Avsim thread” of the year. Let me go grab some coffee. Anybody want to wager the number of pages until closure? I don’t know…maybe it’s the hope of the Christmas season, but I’m optimistically going to go with 7.

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.

14 hours ago, Franz007 said:

In my opinion this is quite naive. Almost no one asked them to improve the scenery that much, an area where they already excelled and provided us with tons of world-updates, during other things were missing or bugged. At the same time, they made some promises at the start that they could not fulfill. And now they will push the graphical side even further, making the same promises about weather and flightmodel again that they already made 3-4 years ago. I remember that i was blown away by the announcements about the dynamical weather. The results: they weren't even able to add turbulences in clouds and their atmosphere-model seems broken. This after 3 years. And now they are not only pushing the limits of graphics further (= not needed) but adding some stuff that i'm having the impression most of users already try to convince themselves that it will be great (fire fighting, elephants... etc.). And they sell us the whole again, with some in my opinion ridiculous "excuses" (rise of AI...., give me a break Asobo -> They already made use of it in a revolutionary way like no other sim). My guess is that they realized their development-costs where higher than expected. There is nothing wrong with them needing enough revenues but i just don't buy it the way they are selling it to us. My guess is that they will be able to gain even more "gamers" as users but the "hardcore-flightsim-folks" will be once again let behind because they will once again not focus on that group. I may be wrong, no idea. But it's a bit my impression based on my experiences with them.

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.

7 hours ago, pstrub said:

A word of caution: Most of their comments mentioning the huge performance improvements were made in the context of the simulation of the rotor blades and aerodynamics, allowing them to improve the fidelity of the aerodynamical simulation.

Unless they mention this very specifically, I would NOT expect the performance improvements to translate into 5x better framerates. 

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.

.

On 11/19/2022 at 12:09 PM, jarmstro said:

I've always got the impression from the somber and downtrodden Asobo guys that, actually, Jorg is a tyrant.

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.

4 hours ago, blingthinger said:

This is funny. In this case, it was the M$S$ fan that wanted to talk competition.

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.

2 hours ago, hobart escin said:

Not good.  All it will take is a dropoff in sales for Microsoft to break and run.   They've done it before as I pointed out earlier.   

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.

2 hours ago, FBW737 said:

My first impressions are not good. I'm running a 3090 and i9 10900k at 5.2ghz on all cores. The skyscape  and atmosphere are definitely improved but I see all the hype about performance improvements is just that. Hype! I run FS2020 with all the setting pretty much maxed out at 4K using TAA. I've tried DLSS at Quality or performance etc. and everything looks and performs better with TAA than it does with DLSS at any setting. Also the performance is still far better with DX11 than it is with DX12 and there is no difference in visuals that I can see. Except with DLSS there are definitely still artifacts! I had the presence of mind to make a performance video with SU9 for the sole purpose of comparing it to SU10. If I have time I'll do the comparison but this all has the smell of BS of it to me.

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

22 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Is it even possible to create a realistic flight model on a PC using real world physics equations without the framerate grinding to a halt? How many parts does a 3D model of a plane need to be broken down into before the end result gets anywhere near the real thing? I mean, a thousand surfaces sounds impressive, but that's still a rather blocky representation of a real world smoothly curved airframe.

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.

On 8/20/2022 at 9:47 AM, Gilandred said:

I think Microsoft has much, much bigger plans in store than “just” flight simulation.  Think about it - they have managed to simulate the entire earth.  This is an amazing technological feat and will no doubt be the foundation for many other things to come.  Boat simulator?  Train simulator? Truck simulator?  Yeah, this is just the beginning…..looking forward to what’s next for sure!

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.

10 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

That M.S., when starting the sim...at the bottom right of the opening still screen, calls MSFS a 'game', and not 'starting--> simulator<--'.   Sort of suggests the overall mindset of MSFS?

Always makes me smile...for the outright wars some have here, as to whether MSFS is after all, a flight game...or uh...a serious simulator of the physics of flight.   M.S. feels it's a game, it seems lol!

Ses

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.

1 hour ago, Ixoye said:

I don't think that server problems can cause CTD, but correct me if I am wrong.

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.

On 7/13/2022 at 3:30 PM, DeepestRed said:

That is the perfect phrase!   I'm a long-time Linux user, and many X-Plane "advocates" remind me very much of the worst kind of Linux "advocates" I've run across over the years.   Using a minority platform becomes a point of pride, and people lose touch of the practical reasons why their chosen platform may be better -- and lose all sense of reality about where theirs falls short.   That sort of mindset falls so readily into holy wars, it's a pattern I've seen over and over, and it's really to the detriment of the "holy warriors" because it makes them and their platform look to others like a bunch of tools.

I'm a flight simulation fan, not just a Flight Simulator fan.   (Although, obviously, I'm that, too, since I'm posting here).  I have all three major consumer sims currently installed on my machine, and though MSFS gets the most use by far these days I have many hours in each and will happily tell you that each has strong points and weak points, advantages and disadvantages.  Fans of other sims aren't immune to the holy war mindset, but it comes so much more from minority platforms, and it's immediately obvious any time you engage with some of the more... fervent... members of the XP forum.

(And, increasingly, members of the P3D forum, as their chosen sim starts sliding more and more into commercial irrelevance.)

Competition drives improvement, and most things are rarely as good or as bad as those with the strongest feelings about them would have you believe.

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.

20 hours ago, Moana Lisa said:

Please do share. Would be interesting to read more in-depth about the upcoming changes being worked on.

Well before XP12 their updates were mostly, if not all, still focused on actual development and technology. Stuff flight simmers would actually be interested in knowing. Or is that too dumb?

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.