The weather they showed is the one that has my mind blown the most. That one with the huge towering convective thing. I still just can’t imagine that being anything other than a render.
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Maybe we’re finally on a brink of another technology leap. Sky rendering seemed to lack the most in recent years in this genre.
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signed up for the insider news as there’s a chance of access to alpha or beta.
If I get in and they if by chance it’s allowed, I’ll stream it.
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Interesting, they use the language “create your flight plan and fly anywhere on the planet” on the home page, which is a positive sign that this will lean more towards the core sim audience.
Yes, software is different from the majority of products in that the customer never owns it. Likewise music or video.
You purchase a license to use it. It’s more akin to buying admission to a theme park or concert. You paid to get in, but you can’t just do whatever you like. You can’t stay indefinitely. You likely have restrictions on what you’re allowed to record.
These 3rd party developers are more like booth runners in one of these parks. They are selling their products to be enjoyed at the park (or perhaps taken home as a souvenir) but they can only sell what the park allows them to, they have to pay the park to have their shop there, and at any time the park can decide they need that space back and you have to close up shop. If your products were licensed from them, they also may be entitled to take your inventory or at least bar you from selling it, and if they like what you made and decide to make one themselves to sell direct you can’t prevent it.
The problem is that both sides have a legitimate reason for running things as they do. The only “solution” is for the original company to make 100% of the content and either contract 3rd parties themselves or hire them as employees. If this is financially untenable, you get the FSX/DCS situation we have now.
As customers, our sole influence is by buying or not. Yet we can’t control how that participation will be perceived, unfortunately. You can say “I refuse to buy until they make XYZ more realistic”, but they may interpret it as “they don’t want it because XYZ is too hard, dumb it down”. You can say “I’ll buy to support this in the hopes that later on they will either patch XYZ to be more realistic, or perhaps release an addon/sequel where it is” and they may decide “they bought it because they like XYZ just as it is.”
Imo it’s more about the business model behind the software than software alone.
As an individual who does not own a GA title, if MS can indeed make the entire world available for flying via a streaming service rather than having to purchase terabytes worth of storage solutions, I’d be more inclined to pick this up vs say XP11. That said, I do tend to wonder how they could support that level of world detail, weather and flight modeling via an on-line connection as surely the data requirements would be huge. I’m also leery of the cross platform delivery as your typical Xbox user who does not have some form of HOTAS would probably struggle with the title. Are there many MS compatible yoke/flight stick/throttle solutions out there?
I think I’ll have to wait to see it in action to know how I feel about the scenery streaming, if that’s the way it actually goes.
On one hand, I’ve got a decent connection now and could probably handle it - not to mention it’ll likely take some load off the client computer - I’ve also been in other situations where I’ve had little to no connection and been bummed because I couldn’t play certain titles.
That, and most of my FS flying is in North America, so I don’t necessarily need all the terrain data for a majority of the world.
The option to download a partial, or complete local copy would be a nice implementation. Not everyone is living in a high-reliability fiber optic network zone.
Does anyone know what sort of bandwidth game streaming takes? For those without unlimited connections, I gather that would be a big concern too.
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I’m mean there’s game streaming and then there’s data streaming. For an OnLive sort of whole hog, your computer is really just receiving a stream of a display, the cut-off for a decent 1080p experience is about 20 Mbps. Plus you’ll need at least a 5 Mbps upload for ‘not awful’ latency of controls.
For FSX I would think it’s more ‘executables are installed/run locally, data is pulled down’ (sort of like a MMO client, but with more textures/data coming down). For something like that then it would be whatever ‘bubble’ you needed and then what sort of ortho textures, mesh and overlay stuff it was trying to bring down. Doing it ‘live’ would probably be higher than a pure game stream I think, so it’s got to be caching it down in lumps, perhaps ‘loading’ as you go around you, with reduced LOD and all that.
2D foveated rendering!
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As a fan of flying all around the globe (the exploration aspect is one factor that drives my flying in non-combat simulators) I must say this sounds tempting.
So if the simulation depth for the planes is decent as well I am pretty interested.
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Turning to the 800 gorilla in the room, what about backwards compatibility?
I have literally thousands of dollars in FSX add ons…planes, helicopters (over 1,700 individual ones, not counting the severe hundred languishing in my virtual Davis-Monath AFB boneyard…yes I have a Davis-Monath AFB boneyard.), airport scenery, large scale scenery, and I’m sure a few other odds and ends.
A few months ago I made the jump to XP11. That forced a resumption of add-on purchases. There is no way around it. To date I have limited it to True Earth GB South and a couple high-end-ish freeware aircraft.
But FS2020? If there is no backward compatibility with FSX then (and why should there be?)…then unlike Luke’s father, I think I’ll just stick with the Dark Side…I mean XP11.
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With the new tech you might not need the backward compatibility, at least for the scenery. As for the airplanes that would be a big loss I agree but if the MS allows it I bet there will be more addons to come down the line.
I think at some point we have to accept that we are losing backwards compatibility. If we want the sim to accommodate 2004 - 2008 add-ons, we’re going to get a 2004-2008 simulator engine (people with much more 1’s and 0’s knowledge than I have said something to that effect). If we want a 2020 simulator, we have to accept that 10-15 year old addons won’t port over.
No one will be forced to switch at day one, and no one has to choose one or the other. They can both exist in parallel until it makes sense for an individual to switch or embrace the new one.
Also, see my comment above about MS providing a good out of the box experience. If FS11 requires users invest in hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of addons to get a good experience, then I think they’ve missed the mark. We shouldn’t be depended on all the 3rd party devs and products to fill holes in the base product. Make a good product from the start that doesn’t require a steep initial investment in aftermarket stuff to make it enjoyable.
I get that 3rd party aircraft will always be around and needed, as MS can’t possibly provide the variety that users will want all in one affordable package. But, honestly, if I’m going to need to shell out $$$ for a weather engine, weather textures, utilities that add missions/purpose to flying, ground textures, mesh, and airports just to get a satisfying experience, then it’s just a hard “pass” from me.
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Oh, I don’t know. For me it has always about having products from 3rd party devs–pay ware and freeware–to be able to tailor FSX to what I wanted it to be. Not just aircraft but especially airports. Being able to fly out of my local airports, KORF and KSAN (both produced by different developers) when stationed there made it special. I even produced my own airports/areas. I never expected MS to produce exactly the areas I was most interested in. That’s what I need to get a good experience so…
I’m with you on the weather part. Weather is weather no matter where you go. It should work right out of the box. That said, I’ve always just used the FSX weather. Never needed more.
Missions? I “roll my own”…and sell some of them! (Blatant plug for esci Flightsim Publications )
Again, I’ve got interests in various parts of the world that may be off the beaten path…are likely off the “profit margin” path. So I can’t really expect MS to fill that requirement.
BTW, I have raised the backwards compatible “gorilla” but I do not seriously expect to see it. Thirteen years is just too much. Plus, backwards compatibility was arguably MSFS’s Achilles Heel.
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For me it is quite simple I would say = value for my money.
FSW for cca 25bucks was good value for that money.
XP11 for cca 60bucks is good value for that money.
I never considered P3D good value for the asking price.
So it is up to MS what content they will deliver for what money.
As FSW is dead, XP11 is now my civ sim to go. So if MSFS wants to cut it for me it has to be at least more content for the same money.
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I’d actually be willing to pay a monthly fee (Not a large one obviously, me being a dirt-poor dadbeat.) for streaming high-rez scenery. If they make good on their promise of doing ORBX-like scenery for the entire world…
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