Gaming New Microsoft Flight Simulator?

[martins]

2 petabytes is 2000 terabytes, which is 2,000,000 gigabytes, which is the equivalent of 500,000 four-terabyte hard drives. :blink:

It surely is a lot of hard drives, even when taking into account the overenthusiastic application of zeros

Incidently, I did fill a couple of 3TB drives during constructing the Earth, Moon and Mars textures, so I can attest to the fact that data do definitely pile up rather rapidly in those applications.

 

[Mojave]

From reading about it, my impression is that the new Microsoft Flight Simulator will stream the scenery and textures down from their AI-integrated Azure cloud and cache it locally as you need it rather than try to install all the scenery in the world locally, as previous-generation flight simulators do. In any case, however they do it, the results look stunning! :blink:

What happens when, in 5 years, they decide not to continue that service and you have a dead product that relied on a streaming service from a server to run?

 

[dbeachy1]

What happens when, in 5 years, they decide not to continue that service and you have a dead product that relied on a streaming service from a server to run?

Then the game won't work. It's the same as any other online game being discontinued (like MMOs). It is what it is: it's the price we pay for having access to 2 petabytes of scenery data on our local systems.

 

[Fabri91]

It surely is a lot of hard drives, even when taking into account the overenthusiastic application of zeros

Incidently, I did fill a couple of 3TB drives during constructing the Earth, Moon and Mars textures, so I can attest to the fact that data do definitely pile up rather rapidly in those applications.

There's also Ortho4XP for X-Plane: basically a way to download satellite imagery to use as scenery. It's extremely easy to amass a couple hundred gigs for a relatively small region.

 

[francisdrake]

:yes:
Well it's a long way from MS Flight Simulator 4 on my Atari, where I learned simulated IFR flying. Still I remember those night flights from Boston Logan airport to New York La Guardia. Bad weather, using VOR and NDB navigation only, while trying to keep the plane level and on course.

 

[Mojave]

Then the game won't work. It's the same as any other online game being discontinued (like MMOs). It is what it is: it's the price we pay for having access to 2 petabytes of scenery data on our local systems.

While I understand the data limitations, I cannot, as a principle, place money into a game that depends on a central server as it negates the ownership of product unless there is a significantly outlined end-of-life plan. Doing FS 2020 this way is no better than EA creating server-dependent games that they kill off every five years.

If you pay for a product, it should be yours forever. Games as a service kills games, and beautiful scenery data is not worth the money if you will eventually lose the ability to run the game. It is worse when you consider the money lost with the purchase of professional, commercially developed addons that many will buy. Made worse, again, when you factor in the fact these professional, commercially developed addons will be rendered unusable.

Games are like any other product. Once bought, they should be yours forever. Accepting the proliferation of the games as a service model is just consumers being complacent in big companies taking the money and running: because that is what it is. Payment is exchange of money for a good. When the good is taken back, you have been robbed of your money.

It is the price we pay... and we're funding a terrible future and establishing an even deeper precedent for games as a service to screw over, not just gamers, but simmers. This is an issue, not some flukey, cast to the wayside business model we should live with and be fine with. This is actively supporting a vicious business practice, and one of the worst parts of overly-greedy Capitalism.

 

[4throck]

Completely agree that the game should work offline and be complete.
They can still charge photoscenery streaming as a DLC for those who want it.

Anyway, they seem to be too focused on photographic scenery and that's not new.
Here's FSX with it:

For a flight simulation other things are more important, like weather, IFR and traffic.
So this seem to be an "arcade" sim much like "Microsoft Flight". I'll pass.

 

[Mojave]

IMO, as long as they make it so you can use your own scenery in place of the dedicated server, that would solve the problem entirely -- unless, of course, the weather system, traffic system, and other parts of the simulation similarly require the central server to operate. Hell, if they just offered a basic, low quality global scenery for those who want to play offline, that would be enough. It would just be standard flight simulator with the option of added scenery fidelity. At that point I imagine you could then just buy OrbX scenery if you really want beautiful scenery. Scenery in a flight simulation is nice to have, but it is no way the focus of a simulation. Performance of the aircraft and procedure is.

For the record, I love scenery and it is definitely an attractive part of a simulator: ie choosing Xplane over Flightgear, but that does not negate the point that simulation is part that matters most. The graphics is just superficial, and appreciated where existent.

Keeping the simulator in a state where dependence on a server is not necessary is all I want. This would also be the perfect end-of-life plan too. Server gets killed? Cool, I can still use my state-of-the-art simulation with basic or even third-party created scenery I purchased and is located on my local drive.

---------- Post added at 13:06 ---------- Previous post was at 12:57 ----------

Additionally, and with no real intent to stir the conversation completely off-topic, Ross Scott (the creator of Freeman's Mind) created a video explaining why the games-as-a-service model is ultimately bad for consumers in the long run, and explains bits of the legal landscape for those affected based on nationality.

It is long, but worth the watch to understand why this business model is bad for all of us if not downright predatory. It's too big of an issue not to speak up about.

 

[dbeachy1]

Let's stay on-topic in this thread, please, but feel free to make a new thread in the basement to continue the online-vs-offline games topic there.

 

[Zandy12]

Holy moly those graphics! I am really curious about how the weather system will look like in the new simulator. I loved FSX and I can't wait for this one.

 

[Topper]

There are some new intersting reports:


English:

German (Not exact similar):

 

[4throck]

I wonder how are they going to handle seasons. I guess they need to have 4 global 3D maps
The same for objects captured on the satellite images (ex: cars on the road). GoogleEarth just leaves them there as part of the terrain...

 

[martins]

I wonder how are they going to handle seasons. I guess they need to have 4 global 3D maps

Not necessarily. I guess this is a problem that is well-suited to a deep-learning approach. If the AI can be taught how texture samples change seasonally in a local region, maybe a single texture map would be sufficient. Instead of just a smooth global temporal interpolation between 4 texture sets, you could then even simulate local effects and combine it with the weather simulation that will be required anyway.

 

[n122vu]

It does look lovely. didn't Microsoft giveaway FS to Lockheed for the Prepare3d or similar.

N.

I thought the Steam Edition or Lockheed Martins Prepar3D are the successors....

In both instances, the ability to publish and change certain aspects were licensed from Microsoft. MS still retains all the rights to the Flight Simulator franchise.

Lockheed-Martin is only legally allowed to distribute Prepar3D with the explicit understanding that it is NOT for entertainment purposes, i.e. not to be used by the casual home flight simmer.

Dovetail was only allowed to update certain parts of the code of FSX in order to make it compatible to be distributed by Steam, and fix any associated bugs that surfaced as a result. Initially, this resulted in code that was more efficient because it was compiled with modern compilers and ran better on modern hardware, but as time went on and fixes for bugs were put in place, for me anyway, performance and/or load times ended up being comparable to FSX Gold.

Flight Sim World was build on the ESP+ engine, which Dovetail also licensed. They failed to seize the opportunity they had, and instead tried to distribute the sim and addons in a proprietary manner, and refused to offer support for third-party addons, leading to the sim's demise.

 

[4throck]

Not necessarily. I guess this is a problem that is well-suited to a deep-learning approach. If the AI can be taught how texture samples change seasonally in a local region, maybe a single texture map would be sufficient. Instead of just a smooth global temporal interpolation between 4 texture sets, you could then even simulate local effects and combine it with the weather simulation that will be required anyway.

It's not a simple texture change. The trees are part of the 3d mesh (like in Orbiter ) Will be interesting to see their solution.
I just noticed that Google managed to remove cars from the roads on their 3D maps. So yes, AI can do some interesting stuff.

Looking forward to this Flight Sim :thumbup:

 

[Donamy]

I wonder if they will do debris in the wind.

 

[Zandy12]

The video updates on the new Flight Sim look stunning and beautiful.

But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the new Flight Sim would need a special server for players to be able to use the whopping file size of textures for the game via download. After all, cloud gaming is supposed to the next upcoming thing and it kind of is already happening already. Whether or not it's moral is up for debate, but the fact of the matter is that is where the gaming industry is headed.

 

[dbeachy1]

 

[Fabri91]

The official system requirements have been announced:

 

[tl8]

The official system requirements have been announced:

That is a fair chunk of bandwidth required. A hefty GPU as well. Maybe I should get that second RX580