Things that should be in FSX

[Payt]

Here's another of those lists of things i'd like to see in FSX. Add to your hearts'content if you like, but try to keep things a bit realistic :)

1- Directional sound
I't'd be a great improvement if you could have different sounds for different angles of a plane. Ever noticed how an airplane (especially jets) sound quite different when, say, approaching you andgoing away from you? First there's a piercing whine from the engines for example, and when it goes away from you, you get to hear a low rumble of jetblast. It'd also be nice to have a delay in sound as the airplane gets farther away from you. This would be vrucial especially for supersonic aircraft, whose sound you only hear after the plane has long since passed.

2- Grass. Nowadays any decent graphix card is capable of furr-modeling, which should be applied to generate grass, hay and other such vegetation when you're close to the ground. We've seen is in many other games before, and i don't see why FSX wouldn't be capable of it. It would make such a huge difference in the appearance of runways, roads.. well just about everything.

3- Movement. What i mean is simple things like trees and other vegetation waving in the wind. Apparently there are already birds in FSX, which is a great step in the right direction. How about some more critters roaming the earth? How cool would it be to chase a herd of giraffes in africa in your little chopper? lol. Or to just have some cows in meadows, whales swimming just below the surface here and there.. stuff like that. Also, i'd really love to see the roads being populated by those things they were made for in the first place.. cars! How about trains? I mean.. the tracks are there, so is anyone actually going to use them now? How cool would it be to actually have people walking around on airports? They're invaluable in getting a sense of scale.. and perhaps you can actually jetblast a few of them into the ocean at st. Maarten?

4- Speaking of jet-blast, we've seen some interesting effects being generated by some add-on planes which had smoke that actually left the impression that the engines are genrating power. I'm talking about the magnificient concorde and vulcan add-ons which have smoke actually being emitted by the engines, instead of popping up some distance behind it and just hanging there statically. What we need is heat-waves (just like in Lock-on) and smoke that spouts from the engine according to the amount of power is generated, and which then goes on to be blown in the wind (Think X-plane here, but make it a bit more grapically interesting).

5- A physics engine which can properly handle VTOL planes. It seems a bit strange to me that in it's legacy of 20 years of flight simulation, MS hasn't been able to properly simulate something to the likes of a harrier or on osprey. Mind you, those are incredibly fun planes to fly, and it would be a very welcome addition to finally see an engine capable of simulating them.

Well, that's my wish-list so far. Bring on the comments and the additions ;)

[n4gix]

>1- Directional sound

FSX will feature 5.1 surround sound. What more is there? ;)

>2- Grass.

Possibly...

>3- Movement. What i mean is simple things like trees and other
>vegetation waving in the wind. Apparently there are already
>birds in FSX, which is a great step in the right direction.
>How about some more critters roaming the earth? How cool would
>it be to chase a herd of giraffes in africa in your little
>chopper? lol. Or to just have some cows in meadows, whales
>swimming just below the surface here and there.. stuff like
>that. Also, i'd really love to see the roads being populated
>by those things they were made for in the first place.. cars!

Vehicles are shown on highways in the screenshots previewed. Jason W. has already confirmed that they are fully animated.

Guess who owns the "Zoo Tychoon" game title? It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that may be included in FSX. Let's hope! :)

[Payt]

What more is there than 5.1 sound? Well, it's all really nice have the sound surround you, ofcourse (which is what 5.1 does), but if it's just going to be the same old static looped engine sounds, it's going to be just adequate instead of a really convincing airplane sound.

I'm a bit of a sound geek actually. With my background in music i've noticed that nowadays it's possible to generate sounds built on physical models of things. In the music industry there are already physical models of things like guitars, flutes, brass instruments which sound indistiguable from the real thing. Now how much of a stretch would it be to apply such a model to the generation of airplane sounds? Especially jet planes shold be easy to do convincingly. Instead of endless multisamples to represent each frequency properly, now all you do is enter the dimensions of jet-angine, the materials it's made of, the frequencies at which things are spinning and the physics come up with the proper sound.

One could even go as far as having the sound being influenced by such variables as the weather, distance, whether you're inside the plane or outside of it, your position in the plane, etc.

It's just an idea, but i'm convinced that that's the way of the future. The things that's kept it back untill now was that such physical models eat up a lot of processor time. This is not the case anymore though.. i think it would eat up 5% at a reasonably equipped pc nowadays.

In any case, what i was referring to with the directional sound is something similar to what was found in flight unlimited (2 or 3, not sure). So it can be done.. question is: will the MS team go through the trouble of implementing it?

I'll have another look at the screenshots to spot the cars.. which one were you referring to?

[jcmissionary]

Here's one.

http://www.flightsim.com/notams06/fsx0104/grab_021.jpg

I've also seen one of a police helicopter hovering over a freeway, with some fairly dense road traffic on it. Hopefully, it won't be a FPS killer like AI traffic can be....

Edit: It's hard to tell by this shot if those cars are real or just part of the ground texture. Sure wish I could find that police chopper one.

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PPL-ASEL
Instrument Rated
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[DK8290]

"Vehicles are shown on highways in the screenshots previewed. Jason W. has already confirmed that they are fully animated."
----------------------

Wow....do you mean their doors open! (just kidding ... I'll wait for FS20 for that small detail)


The pic 3 from the bottom of this page has a nice bunch of highway traffic

http://www.simflight.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7502

[Payt]

http://www.simflight.com/~reviews/com-FSX-1/Sim%20Flight2_resize.jpg

This does look pretty encouraging

Icmissionary, the screenshot you posted sems to show 'traffic' that is as flat as a pancake. It's a bit hard to tell indeed, but it seems to me that it's just textures.

Also, a lot of the other screenies seem to show the good óle tumbleweed-world roads.. i.e... completely deserted. I am rather encouraged by the screenshot which does show traffic though, and hope that it represents the way things will look in FSX.. and that it's animated in a proper fashion :)

[Payt]

After a second look at the traffic, i started to notice something of a scale issue. Either the trees and houses are incredibly huge, or the traffic is incredibly tiny.. something just doesn't seem right about it.

[KylePrestwood]

Those populated roads look SWEET!

Kyle

[tdragger]

FSX will have directional sound.

[Payt]

>FSX will have directional sound.

Would you care to elaborate?

[bjpilot]

I have always thought that the autogen in FS was waaay too large. Trees far too tall and wide, and for a guy who has had fun by landing a 747 in a street between autogen buildings, it is a bit unrealistic seeing a "2 story house" that is as tall as the upper deck.

[lnuss]

How high up IS the 747 upper deck? Remember that a two story house is usually at least 20 feet high, and often more than that. I'm looking across the street at a two-story house that is at least 25 feet high at the peak of the roof. My single story is around 15 feet. So your scenario isn't as far fetched as you might think.

[Payt]

>How high up IS the 747 upper deck? Remember that a two story
>house is usually at least 20 feet high, and often more than
>that. I'm looking across the street at a two-story house that
>is at least 25 feet high at the peak of the roof. My single
>story is around 15 feet. So your scenario isn't as far fetched
>as you might think.

Just have a look at the pic. It seems that the doors of those houses are as high as a truck! And those houses totally dwarf the trucks/cars, as do the trees. It's pretty obvious that the scale is just wrong.

[huzhenyu]

>After a second look at the traffic, i started to notice
>something of a scale issue. Either the trees and houses are
>incredibly huge, or the traffic is incredibly tiny.. something
>just doesn't seem right about it.

It's an old growth Rain Forest (look at the rain!): huge trees are normal in such a forest.
:7

[Payt]

>>After a second look at the traffic, i started to notice
>>something of a scale issue. Either the trees and houses are
>>incredibly huge, or the traffic is incredibly tiny..
>something
>>just doesn't seem right about it.
>
>It's an old growth Rain Forest (look at the rain!): huge trees
>are normal in such a forest.
>:7

Microsoft Forest Simulator X.. it does have a catchy ring to it eh?

[RyanbATC]

In those pics that traffic is definitely part of the texture, in the other Police heli shot - yeah it's moving. I'm guessing it either has to do with A) Autogen settings or B) more rural areas do not have the moving vehicle feature...

[RyanbATC]

Remember these are still early shots...

[Trace]

Looks nice :)

I agree the scale is pretty much a lot off.

But how do we know the trees arent redwoods and the scale of the houses is off?

:)

Trace

[bjpilot]

"How high up IS the 747 upper deck? Remember that a two story house is usually at least 20 feet high, and often more than that. I'm looking across the street at a two-story house that is at least 25 feet high at the peak of the roof. My single story is around 15 feet. So your scenario isn't as far fetched as you might think."

IIRC, the cockpit of the 747 is about 8 stories high. I've never seen an 8 story house, except for in M$land, lol. Maybe Bill had them model all the houses in FS at the same scale as his real life house. ;)

[pixelpoke_MSFT]

>"How high up IS the 747 upper deck? Remember that a two story
>house is usually at least 20 feet high, and often more than
>that. I'm looking across the street at a two-story house that
>is at least 25 feet high at the peak of the roof. My single
>story is around 15 feet. So your scenario isn't as far fetched
>as you might think."
>
>IIRC, the cockpit of the 747 is about 8 stories high. I've
>never seen an 8 story house, except for in M$land, lol. Maybe
>Bill had them model all the houses in FS at the same scale as
>his real life house. ;)

From ground to tip of it's tail, a 747 is a little over 19 meters (over 63 feet)tall. The flight deck sits about mid way between that height:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=100
http://members.aol.com/mpdairport/mpdairport/know.htm

If you peruse the heights seen in the plans here:
http://www.westhomeplanners.com/house-plans-bc/Two%20Story/0.html

You'll notice that the heights range from around 9-10 meters.


And yes, I agree that the trees in the Seattle scene shown above look a bit large, but their actually within conceivable ranges for the Pacific Northwest, as seen with the Norway Spruce, which reaches heights of over 80 feet...
http://www.ohiodnr.com/forestry/Education/ohiotrees/sprucenorway.htm

And Douglas Fir which can get up to over 75 meters(approx 250 feet) in this region
http://www.nps.gov/crla/pernot/pernot5.htm
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall00Projects/Douglas-fir.html

Of course, Bill did come by the offices and make us make everything bigger...

;P

Cheers,

Jason

PS
You'll notice that in the other shot in this thread, vegetaion looks a bit different...

J

{EDIT}

Altered some grammar

[lnuss]

Thanks, Jason -- nice references. That puts the hump just over 3 stories (at the typical 10 feet per story), as some above are using for measurement, though I've seen two-story houses nearly that tall (attic, peaked roof, garden-level basement).

And yes, I've seen some of your tall trees in that part of the country, though not usually in town. :-) We've got some cottonwood trees in Colorado (and other parts of the west) that exceed 50 feet, some (not many) near that in town.

Nice to see you here.

[huzhenyu]

Waves! If you like to fly amphibians, float planes and flying boats, the lack of wave action is very disappointing in FS9. Maybe they can make choppy waves and even storms available for FSX?

[Bell206freak]

>Waves! If you like to fly amphibians, float planes and flying
>boats, the lack of wave action is very disappointing in FS9.
>Maybe they can make choppy waves and even storms available for
>FSX?


Wholeheartedly agree! When Hurricane Ivan struck Florida some time ago, I had internet access at home and immediately fired up FS and opted to download real world weather from a Florida airport (IIRC, I think I tried flying from an airport near Miami). The only thing I got was a simulated T-storm with 99-MPH maximum winds.

If we fly in windy conditions, what would make the sim real spectacular is the appearance of what we call "whitecaps" on the water's surface.



++++

Kilo-Sierra-Hotel-November. This is November-Six-Three-Six-Echo-Sierra, aircraft type Bravo-Zero-Six, making final approach to helipad landing area.

[bjpilot]

How about some waves like the game "Blood Wake." Would that use too much processing power? the game is for Xbox, after all. :)

[huzhenyu]

>How about some waves like the game "Blood Wake." Would that
>use too much processing power? the game is for Xbox, after
>all. :)
Don't know that game but if some wave action is possible in Pacific Fighters (IL-2 series), it should be possible in FSX, too.

[flyerBoy]

I hope we can have crossing runways. I know we can 'star' in fs2004 but i dont like hearing all those fake runways come up.

[FITZY]

Where is the master list?

How about runway remaining signs?

Opening gloveboxes in the passing cars can wait until FSXI

[huzhenyu]

How about being able to load passengers and load that would be visible in the aircraft. And a visible dynamic co-pilot in the cockpit?

[RyanbATC]

LAHSO procedures...if available ;)
Intersection departures :):):):)

[n4gix]

>How about being able to load passengers and load that would
>be visible in the aircraft. And a visible dynamic co-pilot in
>the cockpit?

That's already "possible," but the modeler must provide the content. Come on now, stick with things that aren't currently possible... ;)

[huzhenyu]

>>How about being able to load passengers and load that would
>>be visible in the aircraft. And a visible dynamic co-pilot
>in
>>the cockpit?
>
>That's already "possible," but the modeler must provide the
>content. Come on now, stick with things that aren't
>currently possible... ;)
>Of course these things are possible (that's why I mention them) but why doesn't FS apply them? It's a lot more immersive! BTW, if this thread is about what is "impossible" then there is no need to discuss moving traffic, flying birds and other wildlife, because that's also already there in my FS9, thanks to some clever add-on developers.

[bwb01]

Greetings All PEOPLE of the Flightsim World!
Would it not be a better flying world if it were not so darn lonely in the sim world? Like, where are the people? Not the cars, or birds, or trains, or boats, but the PEOPLE. How about setting a few out on the streets, around the buildings, at the airports.
Hey! Here's a CRAZY IDEA! Let's get those cars, and boats, and streets, and trains, and airplanes filled with the "subject of all these items":

PEOPLE!

Heck, maybe we could just go plain "Weird" and put some bird watchers (not just those looking at the biological kinds) out on the tarmacs, on the trains, in the boats........ :)

Sorry, I just love "flying off the handle!" :)

[FITZY]

Are the FAA and MS as efficient at deleting closed airports as they are at adding new ones? Case in point is Cibor, NH28, which as far as I know is now an enclosed skateboard park and has not been active for many years, but still appears in FS.

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/NH/Airfields_NH.htm

[pixelpoke_MSFT]

>Are the FAA and MS as efficient at deleting closed airports
>as they are at adding new ones? Case in point is Cibor, NH28,
>which as far as I know is now an enclosed skateboard park and
>has not been active for many years, but still appears in FS.
>
>http://www.airfields-freeman.com/NH/Airfields_NH.htm

All depends on the data we get. Sounds like a good bug though. Send it to Tellfs@microsoft.com

Cheers,

Jason

[pixelpoke_MSFT]

>How about some waves like the game "Blood Wake." Would that
>use too much processing power? the game is for Xbox, after
>all. :)

You wanna know something funny? ACES was the studio who oversaw the development of Blood Wake...

Cheers,

J

[FITZY]

Thanks for the link, but I think it is tell_fs@microsoft.com. My first email came back, the second, using the above address, drew an automated response.

Edit:
(There is an underscore between "tell" and "fs...." This may not be visible on your monitor.

[Windshear]

Icebergs and sea-ice!

The part of the world that I know best as seen from the air is Greenland, and in FS2004 there is no trace of sea ice or icebergs - absolut unrealistic.

Bo