Longranger

This data is available. This was one of the last things AlpilotX did for Laminar. But the Shaders had some weird problems with this data.

That depends. From Caranados side it is the old plane but Thrandas changed everything. They corrected multiple errors i8n the graphics model added effects changed the complete backround engine, replaced the sound effects and changed them to FMOD. For alll tzhese changes they had to started a whole new conversion process.Ahnd the result was really a new plane.

Well, it is again the question of evolution against revolution with a very bad example. In general you never get a true revolution since the software industry learned that planned revolutions generally end in new problems that you never expected and that are difficult to solve. For a commercial product you have to be able to predict the development costs. So it is much more sensible to use an evolution. But P3D is a very bad example because in its core it is no longer predetermined to be a Flight Simulator. It could internally be used for quite different workflows but most 3rd party developers try to stay in old FSX environments so it can be really difficult if someone tries to use a more modern approach. His new addon could crash if i9t has to cooperate with other add-ons.and the customers would only see the crash or something that doesn't work as expected and cause of this problem seems to be your new add-on. So it is expected that thze new engine in fact (as most new engines are) an evolution of the old engine with several replaced elements and a general more modern approach. But you will find many elements of the old FSX or even FSW behind it. Whi8le the customers are normally fooled by magic tricks, they are simply tricks and behind behind the scenes everyone simply boils with water. And if they simply get new tricks P3D or X-Plane could reply in kind. They will get the same tricks or new tricks that Microsofts new approach doesn't have. X-Plane goes through a recreation anyway and P3D could react with v5 or v6.. This is the reason why most developers simply go into a wait and see approach. If it makes sense for them is another question that will be answered at a later time P3D and X-Plane needs more modern approaches anyway. If their new simulator uses more modern methods it could work with the new approaches anyway. It would simply be another plattform. If the SDK can really be used and if it will be cost effective is a different question. But Microsoft will do play its own game anyway. They simply have an idea what Microsoft really wants and why it revived their old idea and added new materials. So they have an idea what Microsoft might do and it seems possible that they allow 3rd party developers add their own content. It is no longer expected that their new developer will work with never before seen techniques and ideas and they wont put billions in this new project. The simply added contents that Microsoft itself has but if they want additional sceneries they simply have to pay for it. Will the pay Microsoft or 3rd party developers or will the simply allow 3rd party developers to sell their own stuff? No one seems to know. But at least they have fewer problems than DTG had with its FSW.

Well you don't want it but an Xbox User with a social media account will want it.

What gives you the idea that it won't zhave a photo mode. They want a photo mode.

The reason for this world is crazy, yea. But why was it made. You see the amount of post processing. It simply shows that their photo effects are implemented and working. For this developer this is a milestone.

This discussion was on its way to die down. The real reason for this early trailer was simply: Shock the market. with a video for a program that shall be released sometime next year. One of its main purposes: Try to limit the possible competitors and produce a hype as big as possible. This is a good job BY THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT. This is their job. When the hype dies down they have to do something against it. And this image is such an action. The real developers simply have their own lists of priorities and problems but it is not their job to read and react to fans. This is the job of the marketing department that have only a limited influence and knowledge about the development while the developers are often enough limited by NDAs. In reality reactions of the community have a rather limited value. They can only gather some reactions, give the list to the developers and what happens after that this is not their job. They don't have deeper insight in the budget, timetable, internal priorities and problems. We might get some additional informations in August but don't expect that there is a tight contact between the teams.In most cases the marketing guys are responsible for different projects.. Any interactions between the teams are normally extremly regulated. A developer has nothing to do with the marketing. It's not his job or responsibility to react to fans because his administration is responsible for budget,costs and timetable and these are the biggest problems that you have in development.But these details are normally not the responsibilities of a developer. He has a list of bugs to fix or features to implement but when and why changes are made but not any responsibilities about other parts of his project.

Exactly that is the point. This is probably a Screenshot Feature that is more or less part part of their Default Shader package. Everyone can do something with such a feature. But the problem with it. If you use such a rather time consuming feature you are no longer bound by realtime restrictions and you can turn other features on that you could never use in the realtime rendering, so we can only guess which features were also manipulated for this image. So it has a rather limited value by itself. Its real value is simply. The discussions about MFS died down and they simply wanted to ignite these discussions again, without any real new details.

Not necessarily. If you have time (1 or 2 seconds instead of 0.5 tenth of a second you can turn on a better rendering path. Since we are clearly in a different rendering path it is really hard to tell which options are used in the real game.Compared to the Image in flight, time does not matter and in many cases you simply dial up several of the rendering settings.Which ones, how much.

Not quite. This is simply a good example of Postprocessing in the image. Otherwise the DOF can't work correctly since the computer can't know which part of the cockpit is interesting for the viewer. At the same time they will activate a whole array of post processing since you don't have the strict time limits as in the sim itself. It's a different rendering workflow. A difference to X-Plane where the screen shots are at the same time a feature for debugging and bug reports. It is simply a different purpose. This is a feature for social media to simply show a nice image while for X-Plane the rendering workflow must be the same otherwise a different post processing might hide a bug.

Well. I don't think that they will offer any additional support. They will probably offer services to report bugs and answer question but I doubt that they will offer any additional services for this programm.. They would probably hope for such licences but if you only offer an A320 or a C172 they can only dream about such licenses.

Not quite as strong. They will try to put multiple projects on the same team, so that they can switch workers faster from one project to another to grow and shrink according to their need. And there is a very good reason to give this work to another company. Microsoft has a problem. Their employees are normally part of a project and when the project ends they have to find a new project or a new company. In most European companies you are a part of a company and the company shifts you internally to another project. This means you can pause development for some time And when you continue with this project you have a reasonable chance that it is the same guy who stopped his work several months ago. So you can always stop the project till you have some budget for it. The server costs are for a company like Microsoft extremely low. They own these servers and they are always running for them and it is totally unimportant if they play game 1 , game 3 or game 4678.A game that isn't played only takes some space on harddrives.Everything else are basic costs that are covered by the game pass.. This is one of multiple reasons why these concepts are so exciting for companies like Microsoft or Google. Even if only a few people play a game they can still earn some money and build a budget. So the games in a game pass are only competing for the time of the user. But the problem is several game passes compete with each other. I think this is one of the reasons why they reactivated this game. It is a part of their history. It doesn't matter if MSFS or Halo earn money at a certain time. People remember: "Oh I played this game in my youth" so I try this game pass for a month. This is really what they need from it. They buy this game pass play this title for half an hour and then they look around for other interesting titles. You need such titles for the fuzzy feeling people get from nearly forgotten titles. It gives the game pass some reputation. So for Microsoft the pure numbers of MSFS do not matter. They don't think about how it is positioned compared to P3D or X-Plane. They don't care for these small numbers. But people remember that they went through game stores and there were rows and rows of this Microsoft Flight Simulator. So people are tempted to use this game pass for a month to simply take a look at this title even if they never bought anything for the MSFS. They need such titles to get people into their game pass because at this moment Google seems to be far superior. So I think they would only terminate this title if the complete game pass project fails. But on the other hand I don't think that they are ready to put a hughe amount of money in this project. They simply used their rights to take back the failed FSW. Looked around what they have in their company for this title and then they hired a company to make the FSW presentable add the internal resources that they have and make it ready to be part of the game pass and make a pretty preview video. For themselves it doesn't matter if this game won't look half as good in reality. People have bought the game pass and then they start to look around what other titles are part of the game pass. If one of these other titles catches their interest everything is perfect. For Bill Gates the Microsoft Flight Simulator and the Railway Simulator were good examples that there are titles without violence. Today games cover more or less the complete society So you have many gamers that look around for none violent titles. Look at "The Sims" or even all the city builders. But they have none of these highlights in their game pass. So this is another reason to pick this tile as one of the attractions of the game pass. Many reasons to include this title in their line up but at the same time those are not the reasons why we care about flight simulators So I am sure that the new flight simulator team is interested to make this title as interesting as possible but I don't expect a real continuation of the legacy. Todays environment is simply to different. There are already well established alternatives for the hard core fans. So they are certainly interested to include hard core interests in their title there is no reason to take care of this crowd if this gets outside of their own budget. This is not the budget of Microsoft we are talking about but of the current MSFS. I don't know if this is higher or lower as the budget of X-Plane or P3D. But all these projects have different interests.

To be more precise the subscription model simply helps in one process. You have less a do or die situation. After you have financed the first stage of a game they simply have to fight for themselves. If they win more playtime they simply have a bigger budget for the next step andf if they don't earn so much they simply have a smaller budget. But I expect that the company by itself is not ready to really subsidize anything. They might subsidize the whole operations in the beginning til there is a base level of subscribers, but I am pretty sure otherwise the teams know the rules and they have to decide for themselves how they will react to bigger and smaller budgets. A big advantage of the subscription model is that they don't have to pay for the complete development, they only finance the first stage and then everything depends on the team and its success. The biggest problem for the complete subscription model is that they meet a base level of subscribers. The buyer by himself can not really decide if he wants to be a part of the subscription model. The big difference is that they don't prefinance triple A titles anymore, They simply work how prereleases worked on steam. Every title has the chance to become a triple A title It simply depends on the success of the prerelease. If they sell a single license for their game on steam or in the Microsoft store this is simply a part of their earnings. What the teams do with this money its their decision. In reality Microsoft has cancelled at the moment every known triple A games project. But I expect all the teams will try to get on XBox as fast as possible since Google will have its own subscription service and it is not sure if gamers will become a part of both subscription models. But on X-box they have already a subscription service. So I expect that after their first release they will put a huge portion of their earnings in the development of the X-Box version. But I get the feeling that many people here have not really recognized what the situation is and Microsoft Flight Simulator will be a triple A title. But you must not expect a finished triple A title.They get a much smaller budget and everything after that they have to earn for themselves.. The huge advantage for the company are steady earnings and they have less risky triple A titles. They only finance the first release but not the complete game. So I expect tha6t the teaser mainly sold most of its money shots. Yes we have the complete planet, but not in the quality that some people expected. I think huge parts of the world will be simply on an FSW+ model. But with the current expectations this would be a problem for many people who base their expectations on this trailer. And the explanation that there will be a chance for third party companies. In reality it was less a question if there will be an SDK, but how big will the SDK be and what are the conditions for third party developers.

To be more precise, Laminar has no Marketing Department and so he has the tendency to play/be the Marketing Department. We are only in the stage that the marketing departments spoke, but one competitor simply has a product in the market and they have published how he wants to go on, while the other side only showed some scenes, we have no product to compare and some rather hazy comments that are not really clear at the moment.

Sure, this is the case. While many normal games needs higher level of expertise in arts, sounds and so on many jobs for a flight simulator still depend on programmers, BUT...there is a border. The reason behind it planes and a slightly simplified buildings and so on this is in fact computable, this means you can compute it in real time where they are,, how they behave and how they look if you have some sophisticated algorithms. Especially if other people can bring their own planes building and so on into the simulator. You don't need artists, but the other groups do. So in a way you only implement a special rendering engine. But we have one element we can't compute in real time: clouds. Clouds are a dark secret because we canb't simulate them in real time. While we know what is happening in clouds the number of ineractions is to vast to even attempt something like it in real time. And in fact we have no foundations to do this. And we have very few of the needed data contrary to some beliefs. In fact we have very rough data about the weather conditions in a circle of 10000 feet around the Airport (the famed METAR data) and we have some wind predictions for three height levels, that was it . Not enough data to really say anything special about the weather. The weather engines like Active Sky go further. They gather additional weather data and try their own weather predictions to generate the base data that they need to guess the real data in area s of the sky. And then they to place their clouds accordingly. But you have to be careful, the weather data have NOTHING to do with the visuals. They are only an artwork that is placed according to their internal values. In FSWS we have the pretty likely based on Flight Sim World and they bought an weather renderer (True Sky and they are now licensed by the Microsoft Game Sudio) that was only responsible for the Artwork . They are not based on datra but on themes and they were pushed by some customers especially Flight Sim World to offer some techniques to add some kind of real weather. And suddenly people dream together that Microsoft would somehow add a real weather model. Sorry , but we are talking about a simple game and they should suddenly start a big project .Unlikely.