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A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Discuss anything here...nothing political or controversial please.
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petebramley
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by petebramley »

As far as I'm concerned its very much a "wait & see" attitude. I'm not going to pay huge amounts of money without knowing a great deal more than has so far been offered. Am leaning towards the Premium Deluxe edition but probably not until a couple of months after initial release. I would like to see some reports from ordinary users before taking the plunge and give the sim a while to iron out the kinks (First Service pack!!). The other thing I'm worried about is how often they update the sim and how much those updates might cost me.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by TimC340 »

Latest developer update from MS. Some interesting info about how commercial third-party developers will be able to operate - both through an in-app store and, as now, through their own portals. Also a little bit of info about the SDK.

https://www.flightsimulator.com/july-16 ... nt-update/
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Tranquil »

Looks ok not one of the Airports that have been given a loving treatment. Just uses default buildings i guess!



Much thanks

Mark
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by TimC340 »

Well worth a read:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/5791 ... e-fs-team/

Edit: to save you trawling through the thread, a transcript of the interview is here: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/5791 ... nt=4282958
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Tuskin38 »

Tranquil wrote: 01 Aug 2020, 17:25 Looks ok not one of the Airports that have been given a loving treatment. Just uses default buildings i guess!



Much thanks

Mark
Another video showing of US Military locations in the sim


MAIW got a shout out in BelGeode's MSFS Bangladore video.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by John Young »

Just over a week to go and I'm tentatively thinking about ordering, but I'm unclear about a few things.

Purchase is available in the UK at Amazon UK, but only as a download. The advantage of the boxed set, to me, is that it contains a printed manual. The disadvantage, I think, is that Disk 1, according to Aerosoft, has to be kept in the drive to run the sim - like FS9 before the no_CD crack.

From the Aerosoft Q&A:

Q) Do I need to keep the disc inserted to run Microsoft Flight Simulator?
A) Yes. Disc 1 will need to be inserted to launch Microsoft Flight Simulator to check the status of your activation.

That can't be true of the download version because there is no disk.A big plus.

I can order the boxed edition from Aerosoft, but would the manual be in English - I presume it would? I wasn't able to confirm that on their site.

Are people here taking the plunge, opting for boxed or download version please?

John
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by TimC340 »

I doubt any printed manual would cover much more than the installation and links to the online help files. I certainly don't want to have an external DVD drive permanently attached to my PC, so I've bought a download version (direct from MS).
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by TimC340 »

There's some interesting stuff over at the Aerosoft forums about how cities are given a 3D profile in areas where there's no 3D data in Bing maps (which is most of the world). Looks like a sophisticated version of the current autogen that uses building footprints combined with vernacular architecture to produce reasonably convincing results. Not hugely different from ScenProc, but without the requirement for buildings to have central courtyards.

I've also seen confirmation that AI flightplans are to the current format, so existing flightplans should work. However, there may be some added sophistication available. A few developers have confirmed that most third-party FSX/P3D aircraft will not port directly to the new sim, though Microsoft have indicated there will be some backward compatibility - but it looks like they're only talking about the aircraft they included with FSX/FS9. It seems there is to be a way of importing these, though I'm not particularly sure why you'd want to, or why only MS-developed aircraft would work!
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by John Young »

The manual looks like a bound volume about 2 cm thick. That could contain some decent information, or very little if what's in it is in umpteen different languages. There appears to a couple of pamphlets too - presumably one of which might be a "quick" installation guide.

I agree with Tim though. I don't want to run with a DVD in the drive.

John
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Firebird »

If Aerosoft were smart they would make the manual available on it's own. However, that whole CD in drive where some years later the checking mechanism is decided to a security risk and disabled thing doesn't sound great.
Been done by MS before. Especially if you are a stick in the mud like me that buys one sim every 16 years or so.

I mean jeez, some countries replace their combat aircraft more often than I change sims.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Firebird »

TimC340 wrote: 10 Aug 2020, 11:01 I've also seen confirmation that AI flightplans are to the current format, so existing flightplans should work. However, there may be some added sophistication available.

This is the best result possible, now we just need to know the enhancements.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by petebramley »

Remember the FS9 no CD patch !

Could be deja wotsits :-)
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by John Young »

So, should I download the initial 90 GB straight to a portable drive rather than to my HD?

When I then run the install exe, I think it will download further files to get to the 150 GB fully installed size in the selected FS2020 location on the HD.

If I download to the HD initially, I'm then faced with a massive file transfer from the HD to a portable drive as a backup? That will take a long time.

What's a good download/install/backup strategy please?

John
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Firebird »

OK for download and install purposes you want your fastest drive. Also because of the nature of data transfer speeds you should use internal drives.

Now this could be more than one if you partition a disk but the principle being if you have an SSD use it.
If you do not have an SSD but have a RAID0 array then use that, I am assuming that you already have a backup system in place if you use this.

Now once you have installed it then you are safe to transfer the download to an external drive or NAS storage, as the only time you should need it again would be if you needed to completely reinstall.

In the past to help with reinstalls I took a copy on the complete vanilla install and saved it somewhere safe. Easy enough to do with FS9 but very few people are going to be able to have the space to do this with 2020.

My personal preference would be an SSD used purely for 2020. This way its the simplest for backup and restore situations plus you have a built-in ability to be able to just remove the drive and put it into a new PC.

Now I will get into a more niche setup. I don't know exactly how you can manipulate it so I am making some assumptions that maybe inaccurate.
Hopefully 2020 will mirror FS9/FSX and P3d in that you can designate different parts to different drives. IF you have a lot of disks you could distribute the parts across different disks. Please note I say disks rather than drives. You can partition a disk into several drives but they still reside on the same hardware so the read/write action wil still be on the same hardware. You will not get any benefit from that.
However, if you were to split the main program and aircraft onto a drive on one disk, the installed scenery onto a drive on a second disk and finally if the dynamically downloading scenery going to a drive on a 3rd disk. This will probably as fast as you can get your system without spending mega amounts of money.

Remember that if your FS system is based on more than one drive all those drives should be backed up and therefore restorable all at once.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by SeanG »

Well.... I've taken the plunge and pre-ordered FS2020 (the basic no-frills model) through Steam. Bold step up from FS9 I know, and I've gone the Steam route because I am familiar with the process ;-)

Looking forward to figuring out what does and doesn't work in terms of scenery and AI.

Fingers crossed!!

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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by MIKE JG »

Well that's encouraging to see that a lot of the 'work' of these military installations is already done. Whereas FS9 had just a single runway with nothing else, you've already got photo real terrain and AFD's based on the real world layouts.

I'm slightly turned on by this!
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Firebird »

Very true, the next question is what afcads will they have or will they need to be made.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by TimC340 »

If you remember back to the video that showed airfield construction, parking needs to be allocated and it’s quite likely there’s little or none at most airfields, just like FS9/FSX/P3D. It does look, however, like the airfield construction tool in the SDK is pretty straightforward to use. Buildings etc are a different matter, and will need to be constructed in or converted to whatever format FS20 uses. But Orbx announced their first airfield sceneries this morning (most converted from existing products) so we know it can be done.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Firebird »

I agree with your thinking here. It will take time for tools to appear, and time for users to get to grips with them.

I think that until the SDK gets released the third party/user development work will be slow.
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Re: A brand new MS Flight Simulator is coming...

Post by Firebird »

Gents,
I am not sure if this will affect anybody or not but if you look at the official pre-order for this in the MS Store it states that the minimum OS requirement is Windows 10 1903.

I mention this purely as there were seemingly quite a few people a year or so ago that were not upgrading their systems when the next update came out.. This updates came out in May 2019.
Steve
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