loki

There isn't enough information to say which one would better at the moment. The new Sim is being developed for the PC first, and will be brought to the Xbox some time after that. As the next generation of Xbox is looking fairly powerful, it could be a good option for many as it will cost much less than a mid range PC. As for using an Xbox, some joysticks are supported, but not all. I wouldn't count on older ones being supported. We also don't know how add-ons will be supported on the Xbox. Right now all add-ons for a given fame have to go through the Xbox store or through the game itself. Downloading and installing an add-ons from Flightsim.com, for example, may not be allowed.

Here's the latest update. Invites for the tech alpha are going out. https://www.flightsimulator.com/october-24th-2019-development-update/

You're still misreading and conflating two different things. While the names are similar, GDDR and DDR RAM are two separate designs for different purposes. PCs used GDDR5 memory for GPUs long before the Xbox One was launched, and already use GDDR6 today on the latest GPUs. Where Xbox Scarlett will probably be sharing its 12 GB of GDDR memory between the CPU and GPU, gaming PCs will probably have 8-16GB of DDR RAM for the CPU plus 8GB, or more, of GDDR6 RAM for the GPU. Those with home cockpits may well need to go with a PC to use multiple monitors and physical switches, especially custom built configurations, for one use case. The gaming PC market is still growing and quite healthy, and I expect will be around for some time yet.

That doesn't prove what your saying at all. There is a difference between DDR4 and GDDR6, with the GDDR6 being aimed at GPUs and specialized cases like the Xbox. It is has already come to desktop PCs with the latest generation of GPUs. On the other hand, Xbox Scarlett will apparently have a 12 core Zen 2 based processor, while AMD will release 24 and 32 core models this fall for the desktop. https://www.anandtech.com/show/14994/first-details-about-3rd-generation-ryzen-threadripper-32-cores-280-w Xbox Scarlett will be a powerful machine, but nothing about it says it will make desktop PCs obsolete at all. Consoles have never been about having the most powerful hardware, and other than maybe a short period after they launch, have always trailed desktop PCs. This generation looks to be the same.

Sorry, going to have to completely disagree with all of that. Asobo have been pretty clear about there being two versions, the first for the PC and the second at some later point for the Xbox. As for hardware, the PC is not falling behind by any means at all. You're going to have to provide some pretty extraordinary evidence to back that up. The CPUs and GPUs available on the PC side will keep developing while the Xbox will be fixed.

Doesn't matter if it was a Microsoft studio or not, there was never outrage when the PC version had more than the Xbox because PCs were far more powerful and open. At the moment we can only wait to see what the new Xbox looks like. Keep in mind too that the Xbox hardware doesn't change very often after release while the PC side will keep getting more powerful. If the PC version of the sim doesn't grow with the hardware, this is where I would expect to see so called outrage. They have said this is a sim for the next ten years, so I would expect it to keep up with new hardware over that period.

This isn't true at all. There are many games where the PC version does have content or features that are not available on the Xbox One side. A common one is higher resolution textures and more detailed 3D models for PCs because they can handle them, while the Xbox one simply can't and there is no outrage at all. See this article about GTA V, for one example. The only way there would be outrage was if the Xbox Scarlett version was artificially handicapped, and I don't see them doing this at all. However, we don't know what it will take to run the sim on a PC yet, or what the Xbox version will be like. Asobo have said they're still focusing on the PC version and haven't put much into the Xbox side yet.

The upcoming Xbox will likely be the best option for many people, especially those on a budget and those that simply don't want to mess around with all the other issues that are part of using a PC. This is a big part of why consoles took off with the original Xbox and PS3 many years ago. Other other hand, we don't know how similar or different the sim will be between the two platforms. For example, historically the Xbox has been a much more locked down platform and it usually isn't possible to install mods/add-ons/DLC from third party websites, like Flightsim.com. All add-ons have to go through the game developer and Xbox store. There may also be restrictions on the quality of scenery and more limited space for a local cache for offline flying.

An external USB3 SSD will be slower than an internal SSD, but still reasonably fast. USB2, on the other hand, would be much, much slower. If possible, an internal SSD would still be preferable though.

They're talking about how much space will be needed to cache the enhanced scenery included in the sim, not add-ons. At the moment no one really knows for sure how space the scenery will take.

That's still a far cry from being in rapid decline. Many billions of dollars in revenue and growing, even slowly, sounds plenty healthy to me. Especially after a decade or two of people predicting the imminent demise of PC gaming. [emoji4]

At the very least they have already been talking to third party developers and have indicated a preview of the SDK will be out this fall. Still have to wait for more details though.

I don't think anyone has heard anything about the so called NextGen flight sim in quite some time. It would be a little surprising if it was still going, let alone able to match the upcoming sim from Microsoft. As for the other sims, like X-Plane, we will need to wait and see how the developers respond. In X-Plane's favour is that it is really the pet project of Mr. Meyer, and has survived this long because of that.

Despite your personal experience, the overall PC gaming market appears to be quite healthy and growing. https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-reaches-137-9-billion-in-2018-mobile-games-take-half/ As I was saying before, the overall video game market has grown to offer more options, especially with mobile gaming. To give a little more detail, while the overall desktop market is shrinking, the gaming portion is still growing. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/as-pc-sales-shrink-the-gaming-pc-market-grows-faster-than-expected/ They haven't said much about the Xbox version as it isn't their focus right now (which they have stated), however, one can look at other Xbox games to get an idea of how some things will work. At the moment all current Xbox games that I'm aware of, require add-ons/DLC be purchased and downloaded through the games built in marketplace or the general Xbox Games Store. I would not expect to be allowed to download add-ons from websites like here at Flightsim.com and install them to the new sim running on the upcoming Xbox. PC users, however, will be able to acquire and install from any source as we currently can. In general, games written for the Xbox do require changes to support different features, like the Xbox Games Store, as well optimizations unique to the Xbox hardware. Some reports indicate that the CPU in the new Xbox could be running slower than those on the desktop, which could well affect the flight modelling on the console. On the other hand, console will integrate the CPU, GPU and RAM far more tightly than a desktop, which may alleviate differences in clock speed. All of which the Asobo team has said they are still looking into.

Gaming cafes and lunges have been around for many years now. Here's a couple examples (haven't been to them myself): https://www.gam1ngcafe.com http://ramcross.ca I'm sure if there was enough demand, they would happily support the new sim too. And for your next birthday, you can book movie theatres to play games with your friends. Maybe with the new sim and next gen Xbox, you could book one locally and take your family for a flight? https://www.cineplex.com/Theatres/Birthdays/XBOXParties

I have seen that video, and others, and it still doesn't change anything I have said. The new Xbox will be a great upgrade over the current generation, but it will still be behind the best PCs one can put together. For many simmers it will probably be a very cost effective way to run the new sim. As for PC gaming dying, people have been trying to claim this for 20 years and have been wrong each time. What is changing is there are now more options for playing video games, from PCs, to consoles, to mobile phones and tablets. There are people playing consoles and mobile phones that never played PC games, and many others that play on 2 or more platforms. When it comes to the upcoming sim, I think one big difference will be the availability of add-ons. Unless MS change something, all add-ons for Xbox users will need to go through their online store. Meanwhile, on the PC side, developers will be allowed to sell through their own sites, in addition to the built in marketplace. We could well find that some add-ons never make it to the Xbox because of this. And we haven't really heard anything about freeware add-ons either in regards to whether they can be made available through the marketplace.

No, they are not the same. The only streaming involved will be the scenery and weather data, with the sim itself running directly on the local PC or Xbox. And while it is easier these days to port games between the two platforms, there are still enough differences that they won't be using exactly the same code. And there will likely be compromises on the Xbox side, which Microsoft has hinted at multiple times.

An Xbox is essentially a very specialized PC that developers can optimize their games for. However, even a mid-range PC these days is more powerful than the current top end Xbox, and high end PCs are even more powerful. Some games do allow for more detail and high resolution textures on the PC due do the better hardware. Although, there are some games where the PC port is somewhat of an afterthought too. Depending on what, if any, compromises are needed to get the new sim running on the next generation Xbox, it could well be a great option for those on a more limited budget.

2 petabytes is the volume of data they are starting with before processing it with Azure AI. The actual amount of data used in the sim directly will be lower. Though we don't really know how much lower. I can also see areas with mountains, cities and the like taking up more space than farmland in the middle of Saskatchewan.

That wasn't me... :)

I have a feeling server load won't be an issue, at least for most of the world. Speed and quality of each user's ISP and internet connection is much more likely to be an issue here, as well as distance from the nearest Azure server, in my opinion.

There certainly is going to be a cost involved and I'm sure they will be working it into the final price. On the other hand, the Flight Simulator series has a history of being a showcase for new technologies, and I could see some of the cost being shared with other areas or groups within Microsoft, like Bing Maps, Azure, AI and ML R&D etc. Not to mention potentually being subsidized by add-on sales through their store as well as Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. Lots of options for them to cover it.

When it comes to scenery textures, FSX is pretty aggressive with caching and keeping them in memory. Much of this is because the roots of the design go back to the turn of the century, and maybe a little further, when hard drives were far slower than today and photo real scenery didn't exist. In this world it made perfect sense to keep scenery textures that would be used multiple times in memory as far as possible rather than re-load them again. The sim would release things it didn't need again, but could be pretty conservative doing it. Photo real scenery, however, has a different image for each patch of ground. When the sim tries to apply the same logic, it can run into trouble when it doesn't clear out the images that won't be needed again. There are other parts of the sim that use and release VAS too, and, as the other post mentions, corrupted scenery and add-on files can also cause problems.

Which is what they have with their Azure servers. There are plenty of CDNs these days for exactly these sorts of uses. Netflix, iTunes, Google and Bing maps, and many others are already doing this, so this is not a new or unique problem.

FSelite has a good article covering this and other technical questions. https://fselite.net/originals/an-overview-of-the-technical-details-for-the-new-microsoft-flight-simulator/