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I've been using Flight Simulator since the 80s and it was one of the driving factors that caused me to later become a commercial pilot. I used to be into the s

I've been using Flight Simulator since the 80s and it was one of the driving factors that caused me to later become a commercial pilot. I used to be into the simulation side quite intensely, and I own FSX, P3D, X-Plane and hardware peripherals. However, the underlying engines on these platforms are suffering due to age. If Microsoft re-enters this market correctly (modern engine, focus on SIMULATION, 3rd-party support, global scenery, etc) this is HUGE for this "niche" market.

dclowd9901 7y ago
I like the idea of it scaling up to full simulation. I'd love for the game to teach you to fly and go through the steps of proper radio protocol, vocabulary and so on. It loooks like they might be leveraging their cloud computing to do things like map simulation and perhaps even air traffic control(!) so I'm actually pretty excited about this.
- dlgeek 7y ago
  They'll probably let "proper radio protocol" be handled by 3p extensions, that's the general trend of the market. Take a look at services like https://www.pilotedge.net/ https://www.pilotedge.net/ for the current gen of simulators.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
> However, the underlying engines on these platforms are suffering due to age. Is X-Plane suffering? As far as I know, it's the only consumer flight sim that does rigorous physics calculations -- https://www.x-plane.com/desktop/how-x-plane-works/ https://www.x-plane.com/desktop/how-x-plane-works/ Or did you mean rigorous simulation of plane systems, ATC, ILS/vectoring, etc.?
- Macha 7y ago
  Theres basically nothing that can run X-Plane well at higher settings, especially in bigger aircraft. Your best bet is a overclocked high end Intel consumer CPU.
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    I think that says more about Austin Meyer's insane hacker mentality than X-Plane's deficiencies. Of course he'd allow setting maximum detail/frame levels that are far above what modern desktop machines can deliver -- maybe someone with a 64-core Xeon and paired top-end NVIDIA cards wants to max out such a system :)
    - Macha 7y ago
      More than 4 cores doesn't help with the current engine - that 64 core Xeon is going to be clocked lower than a 9700k and perform worse. You could run 16 instances but none are going to run faster.

dclowd9901 7y ago

I like the idea of it scaling up to full simulation. I'd love for the game to teach you to fly and go through the steps of proper radio protocol, vocabulary and so on. It loooks like they might be leveraging their cloud computing to do things like map simulation and perhaps even air traffic control(!) so I'm actually pretty excited about this.

dlgeek 7y ago
They'll probably let "proper radio protocol" be handled by 3p extensions, that's the general trend of the market. Take a look at services like https://www.pilotedge.net/ https://www.pilotedge.net/ for the current gen of simulators.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

> However, the underlying engines on these platforms are suffering due to age. Is X-Plane suffering? As far as I know, it's the only consumer flight sim that does rigorous physics calculations -- https://www.x-plane.com/desktop/how-x-plane-works/ https://www.x-plane.com/desktop/how-x-plane-works/ Or did you mean rigorous simulation of plane systems, ATC, ILS/vectoring, etc.?

Macha 7y ago
Theres basically nothing that can run X-Plane well at higher settings, especially in bigger aircraft. Your best bet is a overclocked high end Intel consumer CPU.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  I think that says more about Austin Meyer's insane hacker mentality than X-Plane's deficiencies. Of course he'd allow setting maximum detail/frame levels that are far above what modern desktop machines can deliver -- maybe someone with a 64-core Xeon and paired top-end NVIDIA cards wants to max out such a system :)
  - Macha 7y ago
    More than 4 cores doesn't help with the current engine - that 64 core Xeon is going to be clocked lower than a 9700k and perform worse. You could run 16 instances but none are going to run faster.