Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Development Update - Live

[Lucky38i 1,215]

41 minutes ago, Amon1973 said:

If RSR has been angered, if I were him and you've already made a massive profit from your released MSFS aircraft, I'd release the PMDG 737 Max as a gift to the community sort of thing.

It would make PMDG look great and overnight screw MS/AS over having paid the development costs on producing their 737 Max.

I don't think anyone curries any favours by generating bad blood between the two. Competition is good and if Asobo's product is a better rendition than PMDG's own then that's fine it then forces PMDG to bring something to the table that would let the people decide if that's a premium they're willing to pay for. On the other hand if Asobo's rendition is at a med level while PMDG's is higher fidelity, then this simply grants more options to simmers to buy a product at a level they feel comfortable with. This monopolistic idea of devs and the aircraft they produce only harms us, simmers in the long term.

[737_800 464]

51 minutes ago, Amon1973 said:

What ever the real reason is, I think

If RSR has been angered, if I were him and you've already made a massive profit from your released MSFS aircraft, I'd release the PMDG 737 Max as a gift to the community sort of thing.

It would make PMDG look great and overnight screw MS/AS over having paid the development costs on producing their 737 Max.

That made me laught, they don‘t even offer sales! I am not an economist, but I think their pricing strategy is suboptimal.

Edited June 24 by 737_800

[F737MAX 5,939]

1 hour ago, Amon1973 said:

It would make PMDG look great and overnight screw MS/AS over having paid the development costs on producing their 737 Max.

It would make PMDG look petty and barely bother MS/Asobo, who are offering a plethora of other aircraft and a whole world to fly them in.

One thing to bear in mind, it would behoove any third party developer not to upset MS. Third party products are only any good if they work and are allowed to work on the MSFS sim platform.

[HiFlyer 9,478]

17 hours ago, micstatic said:

Can anybody help me understand what I'm missing?  I'm one of those people who is pretty content with navigraph/simbrief etc.  What's the advantage with the in sim flight planning thing other than the navigraph cost?

I think some of us don't love the need to bring in additional apps and added complexity if an integrated native solution is available. For many I think, one of the attractive features of MSFS was/is that many things that once required competing third party solutions became base parts of the sim, removing a lot of "clutter" that many of us are likely not missing at all.

This is probably to the advantage of stability and efficiency in the sim itself I think; as the various parts of the MSFS can work as a coordinated whole, rather than face possible bottlenecks, interference, inefficacies' and incompatibilities between various outside processes that don't take each other into account as they run; competing for system resources.....

Edited June 24 by HiFlyer

[micstatic 4,474]

11 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I think some of us don't love the need to bring in additional apps and added complexity if an integrated native solution solution is available. For some of us, one of the attractive features of MSFS was/is that many things that once required competing third party solutions became base parts of the sim, removing a lot of "clutter" that some of us are not missing at all.

This is probably to the advantage of stability and efficiency in the sim itself I think, as the various parts of the MSFS can work as a coordinated whole, rather than face possible bottlenecks, interference, inefficacies' and incompatibilities between various outside processes that don't take each other into account as they run, competing for system resources.....

I wonder then if they will fix the problem when you pop out a window on to another screen.  I seem to recall doing that would tank FPS.  Which would be an issue with something like a popped out map.  

[abrams_tank 7,668]

53 minutes ago, 737_800 said:

That made me laught, they don‘t even offer sales! I am not an economist, but I think their pricing strategy is suboptimal.

Actually, I do remember the PMDG 737-700 went on sale sometime in 2022. I remember this because I was waiting for the 737-800, but then the 737-700 went on sale, and the sale price was pretty reasonable. This Reddit thread states the sale price was around $52.50 USD:

My own memory was that the sale price was around $50 USD for the 737-700, so that Reddit thread is pretty consistent with what I remember.  In the end, I didn't buy the PMDG 737-700 when it was on sale, as enticing as that sale was. I waited for the 737-800 to be released and I bought that instead.

Edited June 24 by abrams_tank

[Greazer 1,429]

Ray Traced Cockpits!

 

Edited June 24 by Greazer

[Shack95 2,701]

15 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Ray Traced Cockpits!

Really looking forward to the improved shadows. The current flickering can be quite annoying, esp. in VR. 

[Krakin 6,189]

27 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Ray Traced Cockpits!

Shout out to the guy on reddit who recognized this before everyone else did.

[Noel 4,613]

2 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

I think some of us don't love the need to bring in additional apps and added complexity if an integrated native solution is available. For many I think, one of the attractive features of MSFS was/is that many things that once required competing third party solutions became base parts of the sim, removing a lot of "clutter" that many of us are likely not missing at all.

That is me to a tee.  As much as I respect and appreciate Virtuali for GSX Pro I'd be more than happy to see MS/A take it up completely.  I see they're doing some stuff in this regard w/ loading PAX maybe but quite frankly you know the animations will be so much better than what GSX brings.  And I appreciate Virtuali's comments about what a challenge animations have been for him.  Same same w/ weather/clouds--I would much rather have that be fully in the base sim, and it certainly can be with some more development work--I fear we may be stuck w/ low density volumetric clouds until the next version of Xbox arrives touted to have a serious increase in hardware performance.  Again, with Seasons too, all in one package.  With my Marketplace purchases which have been modest I'm fine with not getting an update as quickly as when dealing thru a 3rd party vendor or the developer themselves it typically hardly will ever matter.  When it comes time to do a complete reinstall, or new install into a new PC build, you can't beat how easy it is with MSFS--it's just the other apps you have to reinstall every one of them individually.

[ca_metal 2,262]

4 hours ago, enright said:

I'm late to the party - finally watching the presentation for the first time, but I'm so dang excited. Little things like the visuals for props being modeled vs. canned animations (@ 32:30 in the presentation) are huge. It's interesting - MSFS is in the "uncanny valley" where things already look SO real that shortcomings stick out way more than they ordinarily would. So when you notice that props are just a series of static animations, it temporarily snaps you out of the "suspension of disbelief". The new prop visual is much more realistic - no part of it is canned - and that makes the experience of flying ALL prop aircraft a bit more realistic.

The CFD wake effect from helicopters - amazing. You can call it "eye candy" - but to me modeling physics - both of physical objects and the air around them is the core of what a simulation is. To be able to actually see the effect of wake turbulence on the world around you helps you understand it, learn about it, and experiment with it. They seem to be committed to simulation and emergent effects and outcomes vs. pre-scripted effects and outcomes.

Definitely a lot to look forward to here.

 

 

But I can already envision people complaining like this: "OMG! This shimulator is so bugged! I just took off with my cessna 152, just after an A380, I faced an uncontrolled roll and it fell! So unreallistic!!!111"

Just like people did with turbulence back in the days.

[Scottoest 1,613]

11 hours ago, Krakin said:

Ok so people clearly aren't learning that it makes more sense to assume that MS CAN do something, rather than limiting their possibilities. It makes ZERO sense that WT would introduce charts once then never update them again. No sense at all. In their presentation they said their goal is to take away our dependance on third party sources in that area.

Secondly, why do we think WT would not make it very easy for third party devs like Fenix to quickly integrate the new system with their products? Are we forgetting that WT has made it very easy for devs to make used of all of the work they've done on avionics? Observe the trend, folks. As I said before, I'm looking forward to not having to pay for Navigraph anymore.

You're always walking a fine line when it comes to adding things to the sim that have traditionally been supported by third-parties that are now full-on companies unto themselves.  On the one hand it's great to offer more core functionality - after all, add-ons literally exist to fill needs that aren't there in the first place.  At the same time, you don't wanna come in like Walmart and put all of the local shops out of business, only for the flight plan feature to wither on the vine or Microsoft to exist the sim market completely in a few years with a bunch of these companies now gone because their business was decimated.

Of course, making your core product worse because you intentionally leave holes for third-parties to fill FOR A COST is inherently absurd

It's why I actually like how they've handled the sim in general - contracting those well-known external devs and individuals to work on aspects of the sim with them.  I think that's a great way to go about it, because you get the benefit of their work in the core product and they get to continue running their own shops.

Flight plans are actually one area I think it makes sense to just make their own solution, however.  You can't really "work with" Navigraph, unless Microsoft decided to just take on the expense of everyone's subscriptions lol.

Smart companies will find new niches to fill, or new ways to make what they're offering better than the native one.

Edited June 24 by Scottoest

[Dermot McClusky 587]

Interview w/ Jorg and Seb from msfsaddons.com:

https://msfsaddons.com/2024/06/24/interview-with-jorg-neumann-and-sebastian-wloch-on-microsoft-flight-simulator-2024-and-beyond/

[737_800 464]

3 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Actually, I do remember the PMDG 737-700 went on sale sometime in 2022. I remember this because I was waiting for the 737-800, but then the 737-700 went on sale, and the sale price was pretty reasonable. This Reddit thread states the sale price was around $52.50 USD:

My own memory was that the sale price was around $50 USD for the 737-700, so that Reddit thread is pretty consistent with what I remember.  In the end, I didn't buy the PMDG 737-700 when it was on sale, as enticing as that sale was. I waited for the 737-800 to be released and I bought that instead.

One sale for one aircraft since release. Compare that to other devs. Why not just saying they have a sale for all aircraft since release of 5 USD. This is hilirious. But anyway I don't want to get into that discussion again.

[lwt1971 7,995]

9 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

You're always walking a fine line when it comes to adding things to the sim that have traditionally been supported by third-parties that are now full-on companies unto themselves.  On the one hand it's great to offer more core functionality - after all, add-ons literally exist to fill needs that aren't there in the first place.  At the same time, you don't wanna come in like Walmart and put all of the local shops out of business ...

Ya this is an interesting situation ever since MSFS 2020 came out and especially after it started offering higher fidelity content in the base sim in the recent years (i.e. 40th anniversary edition onwards). Regardless of what's in the base sim it's always in the users' interests to have a thriving 3rd party dev community, and also very much in the interest of the sim platform developer like MS/Asobo. And I think they've embraced that and artfully managed the situation in how they've enabled the 3rd party dev community as well as the various types of partnerships they've forged.. from collabs on certain projects (various devs), to continued and multi-faceted contracting (i.e. iniBuilds), to full inclusion and employment in their core team (i.e. Working Title).

That said, the kind of 3rd party devs that'll always have the most to develop for without fear of the base sim functionality making them obsolete are the aircraft devs, scenery devs, and devs for anything that there can be "multiple kinds of" to use in the sim (i.e. even though MS/Asobo provide higher fidelity aircraft in the sim, aircraft devs can always work on other aircraft not in the sim, or develop even higher fidelity ones for those that exist in the base sim). That said, there'll always be a portion of customers who find a particular aircraft in the base sim to be enough fidelity and therefore not consider buying a 3rd party one which they otherwise would have (the default iniBuilds A320 vs Fenix A320 comes to mind, the upcoming default 737 max vs a PMDG one would be another example).

3rd party devs that cater to some aspect of the sim that there can only be "one of" for use in sims (i.e. weather, seasons, ground services and passengers, etc) or those devs whose main aim is to improve upon or a fill missing core features in sims.. well, those devs are always in more danger of being sidelined, or losing some percentage of customers once the base sim has that capability in acceptable or higher fidelity form to those customers. I certainly don't think the sim developer should hold back on these "core" features just so they can keep certain 3rd party devs in business. Ultimately the base sim increasing in capabilities and fidelity is goodness for the end user.