Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Development Update - Live

[Rimshot 1,264]

29 minutes ago, Aglos77 said:

Many of us expect things other than pretty graphics to impress us.

If 'pretty graphics' is all you got from this presentation you should watch it again. 

[turbomax 3,421]

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Absolutely incredible stuff coming. If someone isn't impressed by this then I don't know what to say

that's exactly what I thought when we got the first MSFS 2020 beta version 4 years ago. I thought the preview screenshots were again "some artists creative idea" as with the first FSX DirectX screenshots back then.

[ConairMSFS 31]

Cannot judge it till i'll try, bur premises are looking good. Charts, flight planner, new avionics, and lots of other interesting stuff.

Did they say something about a better triple screen support too? Would have been my first question at the expo!

[MrFuzzy 2,140]

1 hour ago, Tuskin38 said:

Its running on the same generation of Xbox consoles, so I can’t see the specs changing that much 

This is what I've been thinking about all day (well, not really :D) and maybe it deserves some speculation from a technical point of view.

Putting these things together:

• Better graphics  
• More sophisticated aerodynamic models for the aircraft + inflatable and non-rigid bodies + wake turbulence... (= more calculations)
• More traffic (air traffic with real models and liveries, sea vessels, better road traffic...)
• 3D terrain and terrain elements that now are 2D
• 3D and more varied vegetation
• ...

AND at the same time: thinner client and better performance, I have the idea that much, much more than now will be streamed, that this edition of MSFS will be a hybrid between a game running on the local machine and a world simulation running on MS servers, where our PC communicates our space coordinates and only simulates the aircraft systems and takes care of the final image rendering. 

Was there any mention of the bandwidth requirements in the video? I didn't have the time to watch it all.

(MSFS is already a sort of hybrid if we think about texture streaming)

[Jeff Nielsen 1,440]

5 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

LIDO (which is owned by Lufthansa) is a competitor in the r/w charts world to NavBlue. NB has their own charts product. The current supplier of LIDO charts for flight sim use is Aerosoft, but their charts product has never been as popular as Navigraph’s (which uses Jeppesen). 

Yeah, sorry should have separated that out.  It's the 'LIDO' format though, right?

[turbomax 3,421]

I am so thrilled by the new flight planning:

ETOPS, notams, weather, routes, IFR/VFR charts, payload, procedures, performance, fuel - finally all in a single tool and even from within the virtual cockpit or separate pc. all included. enhanced by a moving map. Flight planning may become more interesting than the actual flight itself.

Edited June 23 by turbomax

[lwt1971 7,995]

Late to the party here and finally had the chance to watch the whole presentation. The scope, breadth and depth of what MS along with Jorb and Seb's leadership are bringing here to flight simulation is absolutely incredible, and I'm left amazed just as I was when that first MSFS trailer came out of nowhere in 2019, probably even more so.

Some of the many many highlights for me:

• Just the huge leaps and bounds they're taking to increase the overall fidelity/simulation of the digital twin earth, too much to mention
• All the amazing Working Title and other partners' contributions and innovations to the base sim: new full-featured flight planner, 737 MAX ("most complex plane yet" for default aircraft), Primus Epic 2 avionics, proper replay tool, ships and AI traffic, VFR vertical obstacles database and modelling, high fidelity Aeroelvira Optica glider, LX family flight computer and avionics for gliders, etc
• Reworked rendering and lighting engine to increase realism: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=1170
• Accurate aircraft surfaces/shapes definition for accurate aerodynamics: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=1206 ... This is a big one for me, and it's part of their improvements to flight dynamics and the process of aircraft development. They already have the core computational fuid dynamics (CFD) tech in their flight dynamics engine (FDE) and that truly is one the best ways to model the core physics of what flight is all about: the flow of air across the surfaces of an object. What has been holding the CFD tech back is how much precision and flexibility aircraft devs have in defining the geometry and surfaces of their aircraft over which the CFD physics calculations will be run. Obviously the ability to more accurately define the shape of fuselage/wings/engines and other surfaces of the aircraft in the FDE is going to then translate to better aerodynamics and handling (without which aircraft devs have to add more fudge factors and tweaking of various FDE parameters to get it right, as they do now with limited fixed # of surfaces and basic planform wing shape). I eagerly await a deep dive on aerodynamics and flight modelling. And making this all very easy for aircraft devs to upgrade their existing flight models to the new system is key (i.e. one hour it took for Seb to update the A330).
• Improvements to clouds system, and how the new atmospheric and lighting engines help the clouds depiction for example: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=1647 ... new cirrus cloud types, etc
• https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=1730 - How the new CFD system simulates the physics and flow of the air all around the aircraft (both nearby and far to the horizon) and how that impacts the world around it i.e. grass/foliage. And also it captures 6 minutes of history of this airflow per aircraft! (so a natural result of that is wake turbulence simulation, etc). No wonder it was one of many parts that got enthusiastic applause.
• All the attention to detail in simulating the physics of ropes, tissue surfaces, carried loads etc involved in the aviation activities being simulated, i.e. how the wind affects the carried load, etc.. i.e: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=1857
• Proper simulation of waves and water physics: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=1804
• https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=1936 - Another high/medium fidelity iniBuilds aircraft A400M, and new sim-wide rendering systems of rotors/propellers where it multi-samples hundreds of time the moving blades and its actual speed and trajectory to then model and visualize those as the real thing
• All the modelling of different biomes, tonnes of different vegetation, etc
• Additional flight data recordings done in the IRL aircraft to improve fidelity of the default aircraft across the fleet: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=2049
• Ground surface is 3D and how that matters for the landing and taxiing modelling: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=2141... i.e. grass/rocks/puddles/etc impacting the wheels and the taxiing/landing
• New atmospheric and lighting engine: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=2292 ... accounts for the sun rays going thru the atmosphere before hitting the clouds, realistic variation of sky colors, etc ... how the new atmospheric/lighting engine impacts that Rio De Janeiro dusk/night scene: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=2352
• Another example of new cirrus cloud modelling along with new lighting engine: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=2638
• Example of new atmospherics & lighting engines: https://youtu.be/a6riRXgRsCU?t=2678 ... Seb talks about example of real simulation of atmosphere and interplay with sun light/rays, and how all that results in the sky, clouds, ground, water looking as they should ... also the aurora borealis are actually simulated as part of the global atmospherics engine.

I see the expected "they didn't talk about X at this presentation at all or just very little, so therefore X will not happen or be improved" concerns here, and perhaps that's an automatic reaction for some. But as many have already said above, just because something wasn't mentioned does not mean anything at all (especially since they chose to do this presentation by using trailer #2 and doing their own breakdown to then hone in on various aspects shown in it).

They have already said deep dives will be coming for various topics. Hopefully the interviews that'll happen soon will also get more info out of them. They do seem to be intentionally holding back from talking more about specific topics, like weather, and they obviously have whatever reasons for that and will reveal more when they feel it's ready to be talked about. We do know from last year's expo they said that weather is one of the primary focus areas given of course it's a key part of the digital twin earth fidelity and flight simulation.. last year they mentioned improvement/simulation of proper storms, super cells, etc so I'm sure we'll learn more in coming weeks/months. At least they spoke about the improved clouds system, and that revamped atmospherics engine and lighting model all sounded/looked incredible.
 

Edited June 23 by lwt1971

[EGLD 488]

1 hour ago, turbomax said:

that's exactly what I thought when we got the first MSFS 2020 beta version 4 years ago. I thought the preview screenshots were again "some artists creative idea" as with the first FSX DirectX screenshots back then.

haha, it barely looks as good as that promo shot even now, and MSFS looks incredible

but - 2024 raises the bar even further, having 3d detail on the ground worldwide, seasons, biomes for vegetation etc - just amazing stuff to look forward to

 

[turbomax 3,421]

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

could there be a reason why Aivlasoft EFB was recently discontinued?

"For economic reasons, it is unfortunately no longer possible to continue with project "AivlaSoft".

"For legal reasons, it is unfortunately not possible to offer the products listed above as freeware."

http://www.aivlasoft.com/index.html#1643tab2

[lwt1971 7,995]

2 hours ago, Aglos77 said:

Many of us expect things other than pretty graphics to impress us.

Many of us expect both "things other than pretty graphics", and things to look visually as close to the real thing as possible. Actually listening to and watching the presentation left us impressed on both counts.
 

Edited June 23 by lwt1971

[MarcG 3,176]

Now that we'll get individual aircraft control profiles it occurred to me that I hope we can transfer our current ones to the new Sim easily enough, don't really want to go through the hell of setting everything up from scratch 🧐

[UAL4life 278]

1 hour ago, EGLD said:

haha, it barely looks as good as that promo shot even now, and MSFS looks incredible

but - 2024 raises the bar even further, having 3d detail on the ground worldwide, seasons, biomes for vegetation etc - just amazing stuff to look forward to

 

Haha as someone who lived through the promise of that FSX promo shot, I love this comparison and how we are finally there after all these years!!!

Edited June 23 by UAL4life

[sd_flyer 6,177]

2 hours ago, EGLD said:

haha, it barely looks as good as that promo shot even now, and MSFS looks incredible

but - 2024 raises the bar even further, having 3d detail on the ground worldwide, seasons, biomes for vegetation etc - just amazing stuff to look forward to

 

Oh I remember this promo shot from FSX! It was mind blowing at the time!

[YVR_23 101]

I believe the FSX screenshot was also used to hype up DX12.

[turbomax 3,421]

DirectX 12 was announced by Microsoft at GDC on March 20, 2014, and was officially launched alongside Windows 10 on July 29, 2015.