A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

[TimC340]

Really interesting Twitch-streamed Q&A session from MS. It answers quite a few questions, and goes into considerable detail.

[Tuskin38]

Military airport are well covered, at least in the States and Canada. In Europe, some are not included as they're censored on Bing Maps.
If anyone wants a screenshot of any specific airbase, I could take some.

[Firebird]

Well that would gives us a clue of ones that we will have to build from scratch.

[John Young]

I haven't purchased FS2020 yet because I don't want to get distracted from finishing the Typhoon project.

I'd be interested in seeing an RAF Marham (EGXC) screen shot or two, looking across the airfield to see how the HAS sites and the new F-35B facilities have been rendered from the ground image.

John

[rocket_26_]

Here are a couple of screens of Marham. The ground image is very high quality and the parking file is not bad.

Like most bases it needs the 3D models updating as they do not represent them well at all.

As for the American bases they will too need updating too. I looked at Luke AFB and a lot of the buildings were Bing generated which look horrific at ground level.

[Firebird]

What will be interesting is how you override the bing generated models with scenery that is produced. Hopefully it is not to complicated to do. Hopefully it is as simple as an exclude so that the engine builds nothing in that area.

[rocket_26_]

What will be interesting is how you override the bing generated models with scenery that is produced. Hopefully it is not to complicated to do. Hopefully it is as simple as an exclude so that the engine builds nothing in that area.

You just exclude them with a exclude poly. You literally draw a polygon live in the sim and then choose what you like to exclude in the properties. You tick a box to exclude the bing objects. Best bit is you see live what is being excluded. I have had to do this on a Airport I am converting.(I've also started converting Coningsby) The problem is at the moment it is not easy to export this as the SDK instructions are not that clear. I have had to edit sample files and work it out with the developer I work with. Once third party tools are out and I believe they are being developed it will be easy.

I have managed to convert a parking file for the airport as well. Problem is parking files which were not made over a satellite background image and do not even close to aligning to a sat image in the sim will be a problem as the whole world is sat imagery.

[Weescotty]

Any of our FSX or P3D aircraft work?

[rocket_26_]

Any of our FSX or P3D aircraft work?

I have no idea to be fair. My expertise is not with aircraft but I have sent both Steve and John a aircraft example to look at.

[Joseph29]

For now I will be staying with P3D. When AI MAIW and from Alpha India Group work in the new MS Sim then I will make the switch. I just can't see myself flying in the sim without my custom AI.

[rocket_26_]

For now I will be staying with P3D. When AI MAIW and from Alpha India Group work in the new MS Sim then I will make the switch. I just can't see myself flying in the sim without my custom AI.

You and me both. Not to mention no fast jets to fly yet. I just am developing for 2020 for now and will start using it when more stuff is available.

[TimC340]

At the moment, it doesn’t look like anyone’s found a reliable way of porting aircraft from FSX/P3D to FS20. The SDK’s documentation is pretty basic, and the SDK itself is far from complete. I’m watching things closely on FSDev, and I’ve got involved in advising on a project with a developer who has some access to MS/Asobo SDK and API updates, so I might get some advance notice of when significant improvements are coming. The developer reports that everything’s gone batshit crazy at FS20 HQ (not really surprising!) so it may be a little while before the dust settles, they’ve tackled all the initial bugs, and they can get on with moving things forward.

One problem I’ve noticed which will affect MAIW work is that MS have randomly reallocated disused military ICAO codes to minor airfields, and no-one’s worked out yet how to overwrite that.

[Firebird]

One problem I’ve noticed which will affect MAIW work is that MS have randomly reallocated disused military ICAO codes to minor airfields, and no-one’s worked out yet how to overwrite that.

They work so hard at making a great sim and then do something stupid. How hard is it to get a list of all ICAOs that have been allocated and then ensure that they are protected.

It just smacks of a last minute rush job.

[John Young]

The developer reports that everything’s gone batshit crazy at FS20 HQ (not really surprising!) so it may be a little while before the dust settles, they’ve tackled all the initial bugs, and they can get on with moving things forward.

I'm not surprised either. Ratings of FS2020 download version on 3 Amazon sites:

USA: 37 purchasers, 24% rated 5 star, 52% rated 1 star

UK: 30 purchasers, 23% rated 5 star, 45% rated 1 star

Germany: 27 purchasers, 25% rated 5 star, 54% rated 1 star

That's a pretty poor launch reception and off-putting to anyone thinking of purchasing having read the associated feedback.

There is some promising news at FsDeveloper however with regard to an export module for Blender, now available, to export models built with that program to FS2020. I assume that's aircraft too and AI when and if that becomes a usable proposition.

John

[TimC340]

One problem I’ve noticed which will affect MAIW work is that MS have randomly reallocated disused military ICAO codes to minor airfields, and no-one’s worked out yet how to overwrite that.

They work so hard at making a great sim and then do something stupid. How hard is it to get a list of all ICAOs that have been allocated and then ensure that they are protected.

It just smacks of a last minute rush job.

It's certainly daft, especially when FSX/P3D had perfectly adequate invented codes for non-ICAO airfleids.

I haven't looked at reviews yet, but there's quite a lot of disappointed punters on the P3D Facebook pages. I think that's probably a little unfair; we're only a few days into what will probably be a very long journey. But it does suggest that they cut the Beta testing phase way too short.

[rocket_26_]

One problem I’ve noticed which will affect MAIW work is that MS have randomly reallocated disused military ICAO codes to minor airfields, and no-one’s worked out yet how to overwrite that.

They work so hard at making a great sim and then do something stupid. How hard is it to get a list of all ICAOs that have been allocated and then ensure that they are protected.

It just smacks of a last minute rush job.

I think it more of a case a rush to get something launched (and providing updates later ) not actually rushing the product as they have been developing it for 5 years.

Most people including me did not think it was ready for launch and were surprised they announced the release when they did. We thought it would be nearer Xmas. It will be the future no doubt though. For those who like to fly civilian aircraft or airliners , the out of the box version is fantastic. Blows the default FS9/FSX/P3D out of the water. Take the add-ons out of any of them and compare.

[rocket_26_]

The developer reports that everything’s gone batshit crazy at FS20 HQ (not really surprising!) so it may be a little while before the dust settles, they’ve tackled all the initial bugs, and they can get on with moving things forward.

I'm not surprised either. Ratings of FS2020 download version on 3 Amazon sites:

USA: 37 purchasers, 24% rated 5 star, 52% rated 1 star

UK: 30 purchasers, 23% rated 5 star, 45% rated 1 star

Germany: 27 purchasers, 25% rated 5 star, 54% rated 1 star

That's a pretty poor launch reception and off-putting to anyone thinking of purchasing having read the associated feedback.

There is some promising news at FsDeveloper however with regard to an export module for Blender, now available, to export models built with that program to FS2020. I assume that's aircraft too and AI when and if that becomes a usable proposition.

John

Although those Amazon numbers are very small, I know most of the 17,000 Alpha testers would have bought it on day 1 as well as all those waiting for release date. 90% got it straight from Microsoft. So with the 10's of thousands of downloads they will swamped with queries.

[John Young]

It's not just Amazon, the feedback I've read over the past few days is pretty mixed wherever you go. The thing about Amazon is that it's extremely popular and often the first point of call for an on-line purchase, or a review of an intended purchase. That feedback is not really going to help stimulate purchases from whatever source it's subsequently made.

More fundamentally, I don't think users should be required to spend £110 to act as beta testers for a half finished product that is already handicapped with a huge download and a seller that is swamped with queries.

FS2020 may be perfectly fine, but there are better ways to launch a product.

John

[TimC340]

Most people including me did not think it was ready for launch and were surprised they announced the release when they did. We thought it would be nearer Xmas. It will be the future no doubt though. For those who like to fly civilian aircraft or airliners , the out of the box version is fantastic. Blows the default FS9/FSX/P3D out of the water. Take the add-ons out of any of them and compare.

I've spent this afternoon trying to get my head round it. Frankly, it flies like a pile of poo. A 747 twitchier than a paper plane in a gale? What's that about? Keybindings that make no senses whatsoever, and a control map that tells you nothing at all. It really does appear as though no-one who knows anything about flying was allowed to have a good look at it before it was released.

Graphically it's good, but not as stunning as I'd hoped. I don't think it's that far ahead of P3D with a full Orbx set-up. There are some strange distortions in the various outside views, and the camera controls are far from intuitive. ATC is not a big leap from the FSX/P3D iteration, and AI is very sparse and not (as far as I can tell so far) particularly configurable. The UI is awful, and the load times (on a very, very fast computer) are excruciating. It's a basis to move forward from, but there's a lot of work to do to bring it up to the standard it should have been at release.

I wouldn't rush to spend your money as a punter, but of course you do need to own the product to get the SDK.

[Firebird]

I have no reason to doubt your diagnosis of the flight models. What I would like to know is how the hell did this aspect get passed the Alpha and Beta testers?
Is it a case that the 747 was thrown in at the last minute, so nobody had time to check it out?

For people that are interested in such stuff, I have gleaned a few thing that are different from earlier sims. Concerning aircraft folders.
Firstly, we are all used to the mdls have compiled LODs integrated within to reduce the impact in game at a distance.
It seems that in 2020 each LOD can be compiled separately and placed in the model folder.
What is also found in that model folder is an xml file which contains all the LODs info plus all the modeldef definitions that used to be compiled into the mdl.
This is interesting as it means that you are able to modify the workings of anims of planes. Whether modellers would want this or not is another question.

Another big change is that we are all used to an fde consisting of an aircraft.cfg file and an .air file.
The air file seems to have gone and the aircraft.cfg has been split into at least 9 cfg files. These contain not only the original parms that we already know but new and expanded ones as well. The full info on them will only be in the final SDK.
Interestingly, one of the files is the ai.cfg. This tends to suggest that full release planes will be able to be used for AI but again few of the parms and their meanings are known at this time. This also tends to suggest that instead of a flight dynamics engine and an AI dynamics engine, that they use the same full engine.

Finally also new in each aircraft folder are at least 8 .flt files governing various modes of flight. Theses are text files in a similar format to the .flt files that we know from saved flts. What role exactly these play is also to be discovered.
I have one generic aircraft folder to investigate so I don't know whether all have these or whether these are specifically saved flts for a reason for this one plane.

All in all a little bit learned but more questions than answers.