Oak

I don't want to argue about anything, I'm just pointing out that is not exactly what developers confirmed, as far as I could read; they said you *could* run it without a subscription, no more (again, AFAIK). My point is, that to allow the kind of access you'll need to run it in best detail shown in promo material is technically demanding, thus pricy and thus IMHO not economically possible to offer for free (apart from some promo content or with a quota). In this world we don't really get stuff for free... One way or another, we pay for it.

Since our discussion, I've also read about that and I'm *think* the subscription WILL be in fact required. It's back to how the Sim should work. In theory, you could run it without subscription, but you wouldn't want hat, because it wouldn't look like the nice screens hots and videos they present. If you wanted ortophoto scenery in ZL18 and fly around a continent, that's high tens or rather hundreds of terabytes. No common computer can store that, so you'll want your subscription to get the data. Now even for large enterprises like Ms, such storage capacity and availability as required comes at high cost (tons of servers, backups, maintenance, etc.). So none of the remote content ex. perhaps some marketing degustation will be for free. I'd expect the prices will be similar to the online HD movie streaming services. But whatever the final business model is gonna be, it doesn't matter to me :-). I have ZL17, some ZL18 and some ZL16 of the US west coast in XP11 and it looks amazing enough. Who wants FS2020, I wish best of luck and enjoy it!

Oh, I'm not worried about the top notch payware, I had in mind those tons of airplanes that community creates and that are never interesting for the commercial sector. I do think too the flight model will improve significantly and actually, it might match the reality pretty close for the default aircrafts and payware (in default configuration and state). Even FSX provided a reasonable level of reality. But I believe it's the same technology, where you define mathematical functions and try to match the reality, but taken to much higher level of detail. I've done such modelling and I know it is very demanding both for engineering skills and coding and that's something not available to individuals. Whereas the simulated environment understands the airflow, so things like relative wind and angle of attack, flaps configuration, gear extraction, etc. have effect on the flight characteristics as a consequence. Obviously, nothing is black or white, the XP approach has it's huge catches too. I.e. when approaching speed of sound, the model has to change dramatically (and AFAIK it does not at the moment). Yep, I follow the series, it is interesting, I don't argue that :-). I think pretty much everyone trying to read the thread noticed we have to dig for the original topic related posts :-).

OK, thanks for clarifying. You might have added a link for people interested to know it for sure. When I was deciding, I didn't see any traces about such decision and confirmation.

I will not use FS2020, even though I'd been using FSX until last December. First reason is, that I wanted to get rid of need to clutter my new Linux PC with windows dual boot. The 2nd reason is, that according to some sources (and I quite expect that, but I don't know what's true and how the final product will be managed), the FS2020 sale model will change in order to bring more revenue, not that you'd by the simulator once. They also speak about cloud computing a lot. So I expect that it might be based on continuous fees, like other MS products already are these days. This was a deciding factor for me not to wait even for evaluation of FS2020. The most important reason, though, is I am very happy about my switch to X-Plane 11 for principal reasons. XP11 gives me a huge boost over FSX, allowing to use the new HW to the limits (while FSX is hugely limited by 32b technology). And as for graphics, it gets in many ways as good as it gets - with detailed world mesh, orthophoto realistic terrain, realistic weather, great support of my HOTAS, add-on airports and if you wish, payware airports and other stuff. And while someone can keep more flight sims (surprisingly), I really have no time for that and with a bit of exaggeration, I can only switch sim every 10 years. Not everything is pink of course, i.e. there's really no reasonable ATC for Linux/Mac versions of XP11. The old FSX default ATC beats all alternatives by large margin and that's on the lower end of ATC products range. So much desperate the situation is, that I'm thinking of enhancing my Python and starting a develpoment of ATC project on my own. But XP developers are working on a new ATC, so that might change a game. FS will always be easier product (and thus 1st choice for many people). But I love most differences of XP11, which is very reliable and versatile product. Also to be noted, XP11 really simulates a lot of characteristics, including airflow. So if a part of wing fells off your aircraft, in FS (probably in future too) it will fly the same way, but in XP11 it will fly as an airplane with part of wing lost. If you add an external tank, it will behave like you have external tank attached. If one flap will fail to extend, it will fly like an airplane with only other flaps extend. Same with air density, clouds, shifting center of balance, etc. If you are increasing take off roll power, it will react accordingly and try to wear off the center line as the real plane. Well, that's the theory at least, but I'm surprised how all this works well in XP11 in reality. I can imagine how it works in FS, where I'd expect they have kind of reverse-engineering approach and they model functions for each aircraft to react on some input data, such as weight, center of balance, perhaps altitude, etc. Of course, if parametric modeling is well done, user will see no difference, but it's more likely that airplane addons developed by 3rd parties will have much worse flight model than the 1st hand. I've done such characteristic modelling (in different application) many times. I'm very happy that I can sim in 4K in photo realistic scenery and weather, realistic aircraft and procedures. I don't think I'd gain something from FS2020 that would really improve my experience, apart from the ATC. So good luck to everyone what ever choice he/she makes 🙂