4 ms·

> I don’t think they want FS to become the sort of “game” where you install it, and then you have to also install hundreds of mods to get the proper experience

by Nition 6y ago

> I don’t think they want FS to become the sort of “game” where you install it, and then you have to also install hundreds of mods to get the proper experience from it This has been the case for Flight Simulator scenery since at least Flight Simulator 4 (1989), so although it's nice to have good scenery out of the box, it's not really anything new. You don't really need "hundreds" though because you just get scenery for the areas you want to fly.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
I’m aware of the history of modding. But it will kill the value prop of this product if you have to install mods to get high quality scenery. The most significant innovation of this product isn’t that you get to fly the routes you want to fly. It’s that it maps literally the entire world. You can fire it up and fly from anywhere to anywhere. If you have to fire it up, and then spend a couple of hours finding and installing mods every time you get the urge to fly a new route, you may as well not bother. > You don't really need "hundreds" You’re right about this. If one mod = one model, you’ll need hundreds of thousands.
- Nition 6y ago
  Microsoft Flight Simulator has had the entire world since at least version 5 (1993). But if you mean that it's the first time it has real satellite data for the whole world then yeah, it's a huge leap in out-of-the-box quality and it's nice that for once, you don't necessarily need to download scenery mods.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Sure you wouldn’t have to. But then you’d end up with a product where the canonical experience is hidden behind hours of tedious 3rd party mod management. Plenty of games (and other software products, I’m looking at you Atlassian) end up in this purgatory, where the existence of good enough 3rd party mods remove the incentive for the devs to implement the features themselves, and the user just ends up having to navigate the maze of mod management to get the experience they want. The example I mentioned, Cities: Skylines, is a perfect example of this. There’s a number of 3rd party mods you have to install to get that game working properly. On top of that updates break the mods every so often. The reason I no longer play that game is that one day I logged in and a mod wasn’t working, I couldn’t be bothered trying to fix it, so I just never logged in again. FS2020 is a game that would obviously be very easy to continually improve over time. If a majority of those improvements end up hidden behind a tedious mod management system I’d be very disappointed.
    - Nition 6y ago
      Ah sorry, I see what you mean now. Yeah absolutely it would be an improvement on previous releases if there's a method for community content to be added to the base game, getting the improvements out to everyone automatically. I don't know of any custom specific building models in the game right now, not even ones by the dev team. It's all either the photogrammetry 3D that's in a few hundred cities, or the AI generic models (which are a mix of pre-made generic buildings, and generated meshes for custom shapes).

by Nition 6y ago

AmericanChopper 6y ago

I’m aware of the history of modding. But it will kill the value prop of this product if you have to install mods to get high quality scenery. The most significant innovation of this product isn’t that you get to fly the routes you want to fly. It’s that it maps literally the entire world. You can fire it up and fly from anywhere to anywhere. If you have to fire it up, and then spend a couple of hours finding and installing mods every time you get the urge to fly a new route, you may as well not bother. > You don't really need "hundreds" You’re right about this. If one mod = one model, you’ll need hundreds of thousands.

Nition 6y ago
Microsoft Flight Simulator has had the entire world since at least version 5 (1993). But if you mean that it's the first time it has real satellite data for the whole world then yeah, it's a huge leap in out-of-the-box quality and it's nice that for once, you don't necessarily need to download scenery mods.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Sure you wouldn’t have to. But then you’d end up with a product where the canonical experience is hidden behind hours of tedious 3rd party mod management. Plenty of games (and other software products, I’m looking at you Atlassian) end up in this purgatory, where the existence of good enough 3rd party mods remove the incentive for the devs to implement the features themselves, and the user just ends up having to navigate the maze of mod management to get the experience they want. The example I mentioned, Cities: Skylines, is a perfect example of this. There’s a number of 3rd party mods you have to install to get that game working properly. On top of that updates break the mods every so often. The reason I no longer play that game is that one day I logged in and a mod wasn’t working, I couldn’t be bothered trying to fix it, so I just never logged in again. FS2020 is a game that would obviously be very easy to continually improve over time. If a majority of those improvements end up hidden behind a tedious mod management system I’d be very disappointed.
  - Nition 6y ago
    Ah sorry, I see what you mean now. Yeah absolutely it would be an improvement on previous releases if there's a method for community content to be added to the base game, getting the improvements out to everyone automatically. I don't know of any custom specific building models in the game right now, not even ones by the dev team. It's all either the photogrammetry 3D that's in a few hundred cities, or the AI generic models (which are a mix of pre-made generic buildings, and generated meshes for custom shapes).