loki

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/

Well, they aren't planning on releasing for the Xbox next year. PCs will be the more powerful platform and be more capable than the Xbox. Always have been, and probably will be for some time. A number of games with both desktop and console versions will take advantage of the desktop's additional power, often with higher resolution textures and more detailed scenery, and sometimes other differences too. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/09/the-new-ms-flight-simulator-taught-me-how-to-fly-an-actual-plane/ The play best on Xbox thing is aimed at the Xbox's primary competition, the Playstation. With the latest updates to Windows 10 and the Xbox, Microsoft is slowly bringing the console and desktop together under one roof and one platform. Xboxes will be those who don't want to mess around with hardware etc. that want to turn it on and play, and the PC will be for the ones who want more flexibility and/or the most powerful computer money can buy to have the best experience possible. So sure Microsoft wants to get some of the Xbox market flying in the sim, but so far they have given every indication that the PC version is first and foremost in their work at the moment.

I don't see how having 3 modes means the PC is not the ideal platform at all. What it does mean is that they're trying to bring the enhanced scenery engine and visuals to as many users, both PC and Xbox, as possible. With the amount of data involved, there is no way any current PC could reasonably download and store all of it, and many people still don't have high speed (say >15 Mbps) or reliable internet connections. They've also said the vast majority of the developers are focused on the PC version and that they will be working on the Xbox version later. Having an Xbox version will be a great option, though will likely have limitations compared to the desktop PC.

Photoreal scenery, like Megascenery, is flat, whereas the upcoming sim's scenery is much higher resolution as well as being drawn in 3D.

Hmm, have you read any of the articles talking about the new sim? What we do know is that Microsoft has around 200 developers working on this as well as some of the best cloud server resources in the world to throw at it. There will also be 3 modes for scenery to adjust for differing levels of interest speeds and access. One is streaming directly from the cloud, though it will cache data for areas you regularly fly in. The second is a pre-cached mode where you can download the areas you are interested in ahead of time and save them locally. And the final one is a sure offline mode with lower quality scenery for those with really poor or no connection at all. The recent event where they brought in people for some hands on time was apparently running a 25 Mbps connection, and looks to have worked quite well. If it is aimed squarely at the Xbox crowd, which includes many people in the flight sim community too, why would they have spent so much effort on enhancing the flight, weather and atmosphere modelling? Not to mention the other areas they have been and will be working on. So yes, the proof will be in the pudding, as they say, however this is shaping up to be a proper successor to FSX.

While Microsoft has had issues with their QA, I don't see how that is related at all to any EU regulations. And the latest Windows 10 feature update gives home users more control over the updates too. It also isn't clear yet how the new sim will be managed either.

I'm not familiar with the EU regulations, but I don't see that as being a big issue. The main reason for companies like Adobe and Microsoft going away from version numbering is the move to SaaS and subscription models. On the developer's side it creates a steadier revenue stream and, for the user, updates are pushed out more frequently without the need to do major version updates.

Is it really that critical that we refer to it exactly as Microsoft does? Adding 2020 to the name removes a lot of ambiguity, depending on the conversation. Not to mention the long aviation tradition of giving aircraft, among other things, nicknames different from the official title (ex. A-10s are probably called Warthogs more often than Thunderbolt IIs).

For those interested in following updates from the Asobo team, and signing up for the tech alpha testing program, here's the website. To sign up for the insider and tech alpha, you will need a Microsoft Account. See the FAQ on the site for more details. https://www.flightsimulator.com/

So basically you want the new sim. :p There is plenty of information out now that covers just about everything you've brought up. https://fselite.net/originals/an-overview-of-the-technical-details-for-the-new-microsoft-flight-simulator/ The sim has 3 modes when it comes to scenery. First is the full online live streaming mode, second is the ability to pre-download areas you are interested in, and the last is a completely offline mode with reduced scenery quality. One area of testing they appear to be interested in is download speeds and performance. Currently all screenshots and videos are coming from a pre-alpha build, which means there is probably plenty of room for performance optimizations and improvement. It will also be possible to run current FSX add-on aircraft in the sim, likely with minimal updating or tweaking. This won't get you access to the improved flight model though. https://fselite.net/originals/hands-on-with-the-new-microsoft-flight-simulator And something that people seem to forget is that having multiple sims installed on your PC works just fine too.

Don't think they've said anything more about FSX itself. I wouldn't expect much more than bug fixes, and it possibly being added to Xbox Game Pass, or something similar.