Well… Froogle’s video looks quite smooth. The other one (with the same footage) not so much, though.
In any case, MSFS franchise is quite famous for releasing the sims for tomorrow’s hardware 
Maybe a good excuse (for me anyway) to build a new rig in 2nd half of 2020.
Won’t make a difference. We’re not in this situation because a room full of passionate flight sim developers failed to recognize VR as the future of their little corner of the video game world. I’m betting the letters “VR” sat on plenty of white boards at their offices, early in the process. Two things likely lead to those letters being erased, at least for launch:
MS has clearly chosen willfully to divorce VR from Gaming, and instead project it as a productivity tool. Evidence: they currently build the world’s most powerful gaming console, Xbox one X, and have a launched software powering a line of VR headsets from various manufacturers (WMR), and yet, failed to merge the two together. As someone who VRs with a WRM headset (Samsung Ody), it’s clear that MS is ‘allowing’ me to use my headset with SteamVR and associated games, opposed to empowering or enabling me to do so.
The potentially low FPS performance*, combined with this being the likely tech demo/launch title for a new game streaming service, means that MS doesn’t want VR in the mix muddying the waters.
*It is early days though, so we’ll see.
All that being said, lack of VR isn’t a deal breaker for me. I find I tend to fly ‘normal’ desktop in my highly procedural sims these days, as it’s easier to read gauges and work switch panels. Now, if they fail to launch with TIR support…
They said they are looking into VR. They could do “quick and poor” implementation, but they want to do things right this time. Also performance might be problematic at this point, though they did not said that themselves. They did say they are in this for the long run, so VR might show up at some point eventually. The same goes for helicopters - they wont be in for release, but are planned in the future.
They did that with MS Flight, although rectified that pretty quickly. Let’s hope it will be there at launch.
I’d find it hard to believe that any flight sim developer that has experienced VR would discount it as a gimmick…so I think the desire to build it will be strong. I’m OK with it not having it out of the box, but without it, I won’t be buying a lot of add-ons no matter how pretty the 2D environment is.
I haven’t had a chance to watch all the videos yet - any word on third party developers and where they will be able to be part of this sim? I’d imagine Active Sky won’t be necessary…
This. Why waste development resources on VR, when the base game doesn’t yet run well enough to support it? Iron out the base to a smooth runner, then add the VR.
We know from DCS how much more horsepower VR requires, so imagine if you could only run DCS choppily at 20fps normally - would you still want VR? Likely you’d want better performance first.
…at launch 
Keep in mind, a lot of the heavy hitters in the FSX/P3D ecosphere really started to gain momentum when it was clear MS wasn’t bring the back the series for a good long while. This bread both the platform stability, and customer demand, for increasingly complex add ons, as it was apparent MS wouldn’t be delivering them.
True, one thing you can’t discount is how teams that are good at doing things will up their game. Though what we’ve seen is impressive so far, I’m sure the Active Sky guys can build on that.
I should probably just go ahead and watch the video at this point…but like I said earlier, this place is Mudspike-ipedia - so was there any mention of multiplayer?
Yes! …and that is one of my major problems with MS (on a long list). They have viewed and continue to view a flight sim as a “game”.
I have always agued that flight simming is a hobby, not a game. (Outside of professional flight simming used in training for real world pilots, of course. Then it is work.)
But to MS it is a game and, “Hey, why add VR? It’s just a game.”
No helicopters? They’ll add it later? Yeah…remember how they tried implement helicopters into a MSFS engine that wasn’t designed for them from the start…yeah, that worked real well (not).
At this point I was going to go with the applicable George Santayana quote but found this instead…
Microsoft has a decent VR/AR presence with a current focus on AR (augmented reality). I don’t feel that they see VR as a gimmic but are, instead, not adding it as scope creep. I am confident that VR will be there at a later date but we don’t have good information on what is required to run this sim at the moment and it could be challenging given what/how they are rendering at the moment (ie: VR optimization is being delayed for a feature push later).
Multiplayer was a yes.
I find that a little odd too but if you look at what/how they are going about implementing this, it seems to me that VR and Helicopters were bumped off the release list to allow them to focus on the key items that they wanted/needed to hit and are leaving the other stuff for later. If you have your whole team focused on the flight model for fixed wing assets, then the fixed wing stuff should be top notch (ie: see the spin entry comments) and there is not part of the team that is ‘distracted’ by something else. That is great for having the fixed wing stuff in top shape … as long as your design decisions do not limit you later … which was the challenge that most fall in to.
… isn’t the rotor just rotating airfoils !? 
I agree with @Fridge. I think he cogently states the crucial point of the matter:
…and also the likely the potential train wreck since you may think your design decisions won’t limit you later but without the actual code to implement helicopters…who really knows??
The dev team being a different one certainly offers opportunities in not making the same old mistakes.
Just watched the Froogle report. Pretty impressive technology behind this simulation, to put it mildly. Where I once thought X-Plane would have a long term lock on the genre, I now wonder if Austin and company will be able to stay relevant. Also, I bet that Orbx and other scenery devs will be paying attention.
The dev generation seems to be a different one.
I did notice on Froogle’s video that the scenery was actively updating. There were several instances where a building would pop into a more detailed model on the fly. Kind of like Google Earth does when loading 3D buildings and terrain. I Still think you are going to need a killer internet connection to get the most out of this system. It does look stunning though.
Could be simple LODing of cached assets though to keep the polygon numbers in check. They most likely try to do a lot of intelligent caching so you don’t have to stream assets under immediate demand.
Maybe they will let you choose areas to cache. That would work for me. I could download the PNW for example, or the UK. Still, at ZL19 that would require a lot of disk space. I’m certainly going to give FS2020 a try. Although I have invested quite a bit into the XP11 platform, if this turns out to be better, and my slow (15mbps) internet connection can handle it, then I will switch over in a heartbeat (or at least run them in tandem).
There supposedly will be a complete offline option (with the caveat of reduced visual fidelity).