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Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

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Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:29 am

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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby Johan G » Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:21 pm

The first flight simulator I enjoyed was MS FS 5.1 (the first version that was sold on CD). It had a really good manual. :)

The one I had previously was Blue Angels: Formation Flight Simulation. It pretty much did not have an FDM. Point the nose for direction, apply throttle for velocity. I was deeply disappointed when reducing throttle to zero resulted in just hanging mid-air. :( Apparently it have been declared the third worst game ever released. :lol:

Flight Simulator taught me the basics. Primary and secondary effects of pitch and throttle, not hunting the indicator needles,[1] the various radio navigation aids etc.
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby CaptB » Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:48 pm

A few thoughts...

How's the performance on modern a CPU/GPU compared to old releases?
Any better memory handling or are OOM CTD's still an issue?
Is the FDM the same as it was?
It seems part of the appeal is the scenery. What happens to the eye candy if you happen to live where the bandwidth is slow or connection is unreliable?

According to what I know, the SDK is for 3DSMax only, previously you could use Gmax which was free. This, and I know this for certain, is a serious issue for most people who made freeware for FS9/FSX.

An unconfirmed rumor is that it might be a walled garden where you have to sell/buy the addons within the simulator, if so, who really owns the purchase? what happens to it if MS decides to fold the project again? What would this mean for the addon devs both commercial and hobbyist.

Next, this is for Windows 10 only so nothing a Linux, MacOS or earlier Windows version user would be able to use.

Last, but for me personally not least, it's not FLOSS and it will probably never be so for people like me it's irrelevant how good it might be.
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby montagdude » Sun Aug 09, 2020 8:13 pm

I owned most of the MS Flight sims between the 98 and 04 releases, as well as the combat flight sims. The new one looks amazing graphically. It would be really tempting except that 1) I would need to buy a new computer to make it worthwhile (ew) and 2) I would have to run Windows (double ew).
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby wlbragg » Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:01 pm

Already pre-ordered the whole shebang and am waiting impatiently for the release. I still have most of the original versions and tones of the addon stuff from back in the day.
I think I am mainly interested in the scenery aspect of it even though it requires a connection. The amount of detail pretty much requires a constant feed of data. It's going to be interesting. No helicopters yet but that is supposed to come. Other than the birds, the animal stuff seems a little gimmicky. From what i saw not enough variation. That actually is one of the only parts I felt was below the standards of a big studio production.
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:45 am

Johan G wrote in Sun Aug 09, 2020 2:21 pm:The first flight simulator I enjoyed was MS FS 5.1 (the first version that was sold on CD). It had a really good manual. :)

mine was Microsoft Flight Simulator for the IBM PC Jr. somehow, i remember the graphics being better but that may be due to youthful imagination of visuals... like when reading a novel and you disappear into it visually in your mind imagining how everything looks and feels... the PCjr i was using was definitely beefed up with expansions... more memory, serial port with external hayes 1200 modem, and a parallel port with a printer but i don't recall which printer... not sure how much memory was added as there were three or four expansion packs attached to the side of the main unit... had to have been CGA graphics as seen in the link as that was the only real color stuff at the time...
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby wlbragg » Tue Aug 11, 2020 2:13 am

Isn't that funny, I remember the visuals being better than that as well, but it is the original one I had as well.
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby Octal450 » Tue Aug 11, 2020 10:01 pm

CaptB wrote:Any better memory handling or are OOM CTD's still an issue?

This is not an issue since P3D v4 went 64 bit. MSFS is no doubt 64 bit too. OOM was simply due to the 3.4ish available RAM not being enough for the heavy addons. As someone who uses the still 32 bit P3D v3 and PMDG MD-11 with ORBX global and thats it, I never had an OOM. But those who load up scenery addons and loads of things did, and the 64 bit move solved that.

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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby www2 » Wed Aug 12, 2020 10:43 am

One of the intresting thing i have is the indigration of arinc 424 data (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDnuzo7s2wU)
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby erik » Sun Aug 16, 2020 8:32 am

What stands out the most to me is the ability to render a gazillion trees at a decent frame rate, which hide a massive amount of texture detail (or lack of detail). I think when FlightGear is able to do something similar the scenery appeal will go up tremendously too.

The birds look to be inspired by FligthGear, which is a nice thought (or at least we already had them for a while).

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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby V12 » Sun Aug 16, 2020 10:25 am

erik :
Birds are in FSX from 2006. But I did not suffered birdstrike and engine fail.

I'm very curious on quality of the boxed aircraft - functionality, FDM etc. No doubt, PMDG, FSLabs and other developers will release their more advanced addon aircraft for MSFS soon with better quality.
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby legoboyvdlp » Sun Aug 16, 2020 1:20 pm

This is perhaps more aimed towards gamers than simmers. The graphics are certainly stunning, but it remains to be seen if its just a pretty face or if there is actual substance. Unfortunately Microsoft is doing its typical shady practices :|
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby wlbragg » Sun Aug 16, 2020 4:06 pm

The birds look to be inspired by FligthGear

Watching many of the previews available from beta testers I felt like there were a lot of similarities to FG. I got the impression that many of the new highlighted features were features FG has already in some form introduced, even if only at the proof of concept level. Scenery being the exception, but only because they can leverage Bing and have billions of $ to invest. I felt like the reviews were focusing on features we take for granted in FG but are always highlighting when we compare FG to any other sim.
Even with all the features MSFS added, it falls short of the overall capabilities of FG. The list of FG capability is truly mind numbing when you try to list everything that can and has been done with it. With the biggest difference that FG is usually only one person or a small group tackling any individual feature or capability. Just think if in all this time we had the budget of MSFS. I've yet to see if they can land on water, can they? Do they have a float plane yet, no helicopters yet. Their list of 40ish aircraft pale in comparison to the list in FG. When will you see a Shuttle and Earth View, fire breathing dragons, HPA's Dirigibles, parachutists, gliders, UAV's, quad copters, cargo towing, forest fires and the ability to tanker or water drop them to extinction, carrier operations, weapon systems, ground vehicles you can drive, the networking schemes FG has available, volcanoes, etc., etc., I could go on. They do have rainbows, that is one of those features that feels like they were trying to take a page out of the FG playbook.
But with all that said, I am still really interested in it. The scenery is stunning when customized, nice enough when not and accurate to the real world. The clouds and weather look to be realistic and very well done from what I have seen and the FDM is supposed to be of a caliber worthy of the price tag. We'll see once many people really start looking under the hood.
Last edited by wlbragg on Mon Aug 17, 2020 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby erik » Mon Aug 17, 2020 8:19 am

Now that you mention it, I hadn't considered all those features. It is in fact an impressive list which most FlightGear users take for granted by now.

I was looking at the scenery because FligthGear is indeed a bit behind in that area. But there too are promising ideas which hopefully at some point will be available.

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Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

Postby stuart » Mon Aug 17, 2020 3:46 pm

@erik - we can also render gazillions of trees. You just need the graphics card for it.

While it's tempting to see MSFS graphical features as having been "inspired" by FlightGear, i think it's more likely that they were "inspired" by simply looking around the world. Just because we implemented them first doesn't mean the MSFS developers were going through FlightGear as part of their product definition.

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