'Up above the streets and houses' Flight Simulator 2020.

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

I think eventually with it everything will be rendered properly. The devs have said that Microsoft intend for Bing maps to have 3D telemetry data for most of the world. They don't get any insight into when and where gets updated though. I read an interview with one of the devs and apparently out of the blue a whole chunk of Australia got proper 3D telemetry data on Bing maps updated. So I guess its just a waiting game until most of the world gets done.

Where did you read this I'd be interested to check that out .

[ProvanFan]

I give it a month 'til you're all bored out of your tits.

That's pretty good going for £1

[MojoJojo]

Can I just be a pedantic arse and say that most of the crude detail will be from aerial photography (snaps from a plane) rather than satellite imagery. The very best* optical satellite imagery has a resolution of 60cm a pixel, and is expensive. Much cheaper plane pics covering most inhabited places at higher resolution are available.

To be fair, topographical data probably comes from satellites and people haven't distinguished since Google maps came out, but still.


*ignoring secret spy stuff, obvs.

[Uncle TechTip]

The terrain data in Google Earth came from the space shuttle and some radar instrument it had fitted, so i read once.

[Puce Moment]

Did anyone watch Limmy playing this? I have to say that it enticed me a great deal!

[Josef K]

Don't think I'll buy this until I get a new PC but the technology behind it really is incredible.

I'm sure in less than a decade the 3d scans and algorithms will exist to render entire explorable cities.
System detects a fast food store? Game generates one that's fully interactive. Like a hyper-detailed No Man's Sky

[El Unicornio, mang]

Did anyone watch Limmy playing this? I have to say that it enticed me a great deal!

Watched a bit of it, he seemed to be having the same issue with the rattling (1:06:45) that I keep having. Not sure if it's a game bug or something I'm doing wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJlqwcgSdRY

[chveik]

Francis Higgins has been playing it too

[Thursday]

That's pretty good going for £1

This is it though, I feel like with everything Microsoft do, the main thing is getting people on gamepass, this finally got me to give it a go, so their plan is working.

[mobias]

Where did you read this I'd be interested to check that out .

I might be wrong but if I remember rightly its in this Q+A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSRnshNpwMw&t=1s

I'm sure in less than a decade the 3d scans and algorithms will exist to render entire explorable cities.
System detects a fast food store? Game generates one that's fully interactive. Like a hyper-detailed No Man's Sky

Like I mentioned earlier in this thread there is a game called Everywhere in development being made by a few ex Rockstar employees which is sort of what you're imagining.
Details on how it will work are sketchy and the last I heard it was proving to be just too ambitious. There's a lot of people working on it though and its being bankrolled by Amazon
https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/26/14398978/everywhere-interview-leslie-benzies-matthew-smith

[PlanktonSideburns]

Anyone fancy going past my house and taking a picture?

[mobias]

Anyone fancy going past my house and taking a picture?

Problem is even if you gave me your address there's currently no way of putting a way marker down to find. Even with areas you know it can be difficult navigating you're way about.

[mobias]

Some people on Twitter and other forums have been posting a few of the architectural anomalies the procedural algorithm is generating.

I love this massively tall and impossibly thin skyscraper towering over Melbourne

[El Unicornio, mang]

Problem is even if you gave me your address there's currently no way of putting a way marker down to find. Even with areas you know it can be difficult navigating you're way about.

The way I've been doing it, for the places I've lived here and the US, is bringing up a map on google or bing and finding the most prominent visible landmark nearest, seeing the shortest route (ie straight line) from there to my house, then putting the Showcase camera at more or less the same angle as the map and following it the same way. Still could do with an easier system though.

One thing I feel is really missing is an ability to quickly skip to the next part of the flight. Presumably nobody is actually going to sit through the cruise for most flights as it's just hours of sky and nothing to do, but it's a hassle to switch to the mouse, select the next step from the top menu, and wait for the loading screen. Seems like something along the lines of pressing two buttons at once to skip would be better.

[mobias]

Its kind of annoying how it really can't do historic old towns. It has a relatively small pool building models it uses for everything. Pretty much everything ends up looking like Milton Keynes. 

[PlanktonSideburns]

Problem is even if you gave me your address there's currently no way of putting a way marker down to find. Even with areas you know it can be difficult navigating you're way about.

look, its easy

if youre in llandovery, and the church on broad street is on the right,
go down the backroad to llangadog
go over the llwynjack bridge, then about half a mile down, theres a sharp corner going right,
directly after that, theres a farm track
and straight after that, thats my gaff. white house calorgas bottle outside
cant miss it

[mobias]

Just had a long flight from Fresno all the way up to Yosemite Valley.

[PlanktonSideburns]

no mate, youre miles off

you must have carried on straight into llangadog

go to the common, you can swing it round there and head back

[mobias]

no mate, youre miles off

you must have carried on straight into llangadog

go to the common, you can swing it round there and head back

I was planning on a trip over Hereford and the Welsh borders tomorrow evening, I might swing by your place if the weather is nice.

[PlanktonSideburns]

I was planning on a trip over Hereford and the Welsh borders tomorrow evening, I might swing by your place if the weather is nice.

nice one

blue calor gas can

its the house on the LEFT

[Al Tha Funkee Homosapien]

What are people playing this with? Using an Xbox 360 controller, but I think it's a bit busted as the plane seems to yaw to the right when at rest. How are controls on keyboard/mouse?

It's frustrating as fighting the controls is distracting me from the beautiful sunlight bouncing off the clouds as I drift in for my final run to smash into the side of the Shard.

[the hum]

Been watching the development of this with huge interest, having been a devotee of FS9 between the years roughly of 2004-08, after which I pretty much gave up gaming/simming altogether as real world stuff got in the way. During that time I delightedly filled up my hard drive with improved scenery, custom airports, new aircraft and ai traffic; the latter was always that edition's strong point - being able to populate the skies with aircraft with real liveries, operating timetables from the real world. After years of the sim being a lonely empty world this was a literal game changer.

Anyway, as one review put it, this new version is 'a work of art in progress' and as such I'm dying to play it, but not keen to stump up the cash yet for something still far too on the incomplete side, and besides I also need to put the money aside for an all new PC. I'll give it six months or so then see where it's at. In the meantime I'm actually half tempted to download FSX and run it on my laptop, just to brush up my flying skills.

But it's visually an absolute treat, even the default stuff, and the potential it has for doing proper visual flight straight out of the box, without a slew of add-ons, is hugely exciting. I'd recommend twotonemurphy's YouTube channel for some good sit back and drink it in videos on it, especially his tour of Ireland here: https://youtu.be/nGOfI8HA-ls

[mobias]

What are people playing this with? Using an Xbox 360 controller, but I think it's a bit busted as the plane seems to yaw to the right when at rest.

I'm using a PS4 controller. The yaw thing is a known issue from what I've read. You can apparently somewhat mitigate it by remapping buttons but it didn't change a thing for me. I've got an issue where if I'm outside the plane flying in the exterior view, something which I think is far better for checking out the scenery, then the camera look left and look right axis is reversed and I can't seem to do anything to sort it. Again, button remapping doesn't seem to make any difference.

I will definitely invest in proper controls for this, possibly even one of the more expensive yoke set ups, its just crying out for it. One thing I do like about using a gamepad is that its very easy to control the plane plus use the camera for checking stuff out. If you used a yoke or joystick then presumably you'd have to use the mouse for the camera. That would take a bit of getting used to.

I definitely think in the long run the game will be more enjoyable being played as an actual sim rather than constantly playing it in 'arcade' made with AI handling most of the flying duties.

Anyway, as one review put it, this new version is 'a work of art in progress' and as such I'm dying to play it, but not keen to stump up the cash yet for something still far too on the incomplete side, and besides I also need to put the money aside for an all new PC. I'll give it six months or so then see where it's at. In the meantime I'm actually half tempted to download FSX and run it on my laptop, just to brush up my flying skills.

Yeah I have big issues with studios charging top dollar for the price of the game to take part in what is in effect an open beta test. They should at least give some nice free content away to people who bought the game early and have had to endure all sorts of problems.

[the hum]

Yeah I have big issues with studios charging top dollar for the price of the game to take part in what is in effect an open beta test. They should at least give some nice free content away to people who bought the game early and have had to endure all sorts of problems.

Yeah I mean I have zero idea what the typical release schedule is for such things these days, but I was pretty surprised how it seemed to go from pre-alpha to beta to release in fairly quick succession - I was assuming a release date sometime next year. Still, at least there's no danger (I presume) of it becoming a crowd-sourced money pit ala Star Citizen.

From the footage I've seen so far the big pluses are the topography and the quality of the default, non-handcrafted airports. The obvious visual issues are in particular with the autogen; every default bridge appears to be basically a causeway, quite often sloping or even submerged if the ends don't match up height-wise, there's also too many random trees, which all seem to be evergreens (picky, I know).

It'll also be interesting to see how they manage to implement the real-world live flight traffic. There's been some speculation on this on the avsim forums, as the tracking is switched on/off once aircraft are on the ground, which could lead to traffic disappearing/spawning on the taxiway and never reaching the gate. Presumably there will have to be a very nifty algorithm in order to smooth this out.

[the hum]

...although I might have to seriously qualify that praise of the topography https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1296138538027814913

It definitely isn't in a release state. Save your pennies for now.

[mobias]

Pretty interesting thread here about all the performance issues the game is having including links to some game specific drivers for various graphics cards. I'll need to check them out. https://www.resetera.com/threads/microsoft-flight-simulator-2020-pc-performance-thread.269496/

It looks like some of the performance issues are being caused by a massive overload on the servers streaming all the map data. Only Microsoft could have been so stupid as to make
what has very quickly become a hugely hyped game pretty much free via their Xbox live thingy. No wonder the servers are being overloaded. It explains why Youtube streamers weren't having many issues prior to release.

My performance is all over the place. Its very odd how toggling various graphics settings seems to make very little difference. Basically anything above 30fps and the game is fine. Its not some big action game where you need a
solid 60FPS. 45FPS seems about the max I get but I do like having some of the graphics stuff cranked up because I just love all the eye candy and the game really has to played at a high resolution. Flying over Las Vegas or any highly detailed US cities and FPS dips to about 20 and there it becomes borderline unplayable. Very juddery.

From the footage I've seen so far the big pluses are the topography and the quality of the default, non-handcrafted airports. The obvious visual issues are in particular with the autogen; every default bridge appears to be basically a causeway, quite often sloping or even submerged if the ends don't match up height-wise, there's also too many random trees, which all seem to be evergreens (picky, I know).

It is annoying that it really doesn't get things right and some or in fact most landmarks just aren't there. It takes the shine off an otherwise incredible experience. I guess they will come though.
Here's Edinburgh castle, or rather Edinburgh's premier affordable housing estate. I'd live there. Great views.



Its funny that the arial photo the game is using data from was evidently taken when the grandstand for the tattoo was part way built


The game is at its best visually when its got some nice real world textures to work with. Here's a shot above the Pentlands South of Edinburgh. You can see the dry ski slope below.
All the fields and woodland areas look really good and natural. Its very close to the real thing.

It'll also be interesting to see how they manage to implement the real-world live flight traffic. There's been some speculation on this on the avsim forums, as the tracking is switched on/off once aircraft are on the ground, which could lead to traffic disappearing/spawning on the taxiway and never reaching the gate. Presumably there will have to be a very nifty algorithm in order to smooth this out.

I was mucking about tonight with real world live flight traffic data. Apparently it effects performance but I didn't really notice too much of an FPS hit.

Here's two planes taxiing at Las Vegas airport


A plane coming into land in the distance at Edinburgh

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

What's going to happen with the many landmarks missed out? Any chance of allowing the public to help design and fill in the gaps?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Good catalogue of glitches here.
https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1296528940652265472

[Zetetic]

What's going to happen with the many landmarks missed out? Any chance of allowing the public to help design and fill in the gaps?

Presumably supports mods, if it supports paid add-ons.

Not going to check in case the answer turns out to be some miserable bullshit.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I seem to be having the exact same performance as you mobias.

Did my first proper fly around New York City, during sunny weather. Absolutely incredible, genuinely felt like I was looking at the real thing at times and that's on medium graphics. Obviously one of the cities which has more detail than most. Landed in Anchorage AK and had a snoop about, bit of a desolate place as expected.

I think the game is kind of ahead of itself, it's genuine next gen stuff with exciting possibilities beyond what it already has to offer (which is itself great even with the problems).