I still have the old ass Microsoft sidewinders, both the mini version and the pro version.
Still wonder why Microsoft gave up on making joysticks and let logitech take over the market. The Xbox controller is way better than its logitech counterpart.
Flight Sims -
- Thread starter Strelok
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Still wonder why Microsoft gave up on making joysticks and let logitech take over the market. The Xbox controller is way better than its logitech counterpart.
Microsoft Flight Simulator: everything we know about the boundless aviation sim
Take a gander at all the technical feats planned for the next Microsoft Flight Simulator.
www.pcgamer.com
Microsoft Flight Simulator took everyone by surprise at E3 2019 with its sheer visual fidelity, and since then every new morsel Microsoft feeds us about its new sim blows our minds anew. The whole planet to explore, somehow powered by Bing’s satellite data. Weather systems and seasons. Those graphics. Here’s everything we know so far about Microsoft Flight Simulator, and how you can play it before its full release.
When’s the Microsoft Flight Simulator release date?
This isn’t as straightforward to answer as it seems, and that’s not just a flowery way of saying ‘not a clue’. Currently the final version is slated for a 2020 release, which is pretty broad. Some people are playing a very early version of it right now, though—cast your eyes below.
Microsoft Flight Simulator alpha testing
Despite that vague 2020 release, alpha testing has been going on since October 2019 and new versions of that alpha, which add new planned features for the final release, are rolled out on a monthly basis.
The game’s development roadmap isn’t set in stone (when are they ever?) but currently a new episode of its Feature Discovery series makes it to alpha testers on a bimonthly basis. These are deep dives into particular features or fundamentals of aviation sims. So far they’ve had aerodynamics, cockpits, soundscape, airports and IFR.
You can find details on how to join the Insider Program and become an alpha tester, as well as regular updates from the dev team, over on their official site. The most recent alpha signup phase was January 27, 2020.
Looks alright, doesn’t it?
Trailers aren’t legally binding representations of a game’s final release, and we’ve all been hurt before. But still—the scale and fidelity of the scenes this trailer shows are enough to capture an audience much bigger than flight sim enthusiasts.
It looks like a great means for virtual tourism even if you had zero prior interest in piloting commercial aircraft and absolutely no prior knowledge of how to request a runway with your nearest ATC tower. And for those who do have some skin in the flight sim game—well, it’s Christmas come… whenever the game comes out.
You can fly anywhere in the world in Microsoft Flight Sim
This is the knockout blow for anyone on the fence about it so far—literally anywhere in the world. Our whole planet is mapped and modeled, ready to be flown across from tens of thousands of airports. Our own Andy Kelly tried his damnedest to disprove this big claim from the devs, embarking on flights over Glasgow, Mount Fuji, New York JFK and more. Turns out: Yep, it’s true. And there’s no discernible drop in detail from one location to another, either.
This being a Microsoft game, all terrain data is pulled from the tech giant’s search engine, Bing. That’s right, Bing, the butt of so many jokes over at the Google offices, is finally getting its moment in the sun.
That data only gets you so far though, of course. The topography of each area still has to be fleshed out, trees and buildings added, traffic in the streets, that sort of thing, and the dev team are using a learning AI. That’s right, it’s an all-star cast of Microsoft properties: Azure’s on the case. (If you don’t know what Azure is, just Bing it. Or read these next words: it’s a cloud computing service).
If the developers had to manually drop wireframe models over a 1:1 scale replica of planet earth until it looked satisfyingly populated, the game’s development would become a family business passed down countless generations. Instead, Azure interprets the raw map data and knows where to populate it with the appropriate scenery.
Seasonal weather is confirmed in Microsoft Flight Simulator
The weather system runs deep here. Clouds cast shadows over the landscape below, and over each other. They’re built from 32 volumetric layers, too, which makes them look far fluffier than the usual skyboxes you see when you look up in games.
Cold and warm fronts move around the globe, creating rain and storms as they go. And those storms in turn affect your plane’s handling, as one would expect. But with an aerodynamics simulation which runs up to 1000 surfaces simultaneously, it’s fair to say this will be a frighteningly accurate depiction of how hard it is to stay on course when the rain and thunder roll in.
And—AND—it uses real-world weather data to simulate its own weather systems. If you decide to fly over Hoquiam, WA next Wednesday and it’s raining there in real life (a safe bet) then it’ll be raining in Microsoft Flight Simulator. That even extends to more extreme conditions like snow, although it’s not clear yet whether rivers and lakes will freeze over accordingly.
Microsoft Flight Simulator’s developer is Asobo
Formed in 2002, Asobo has a long list of movie tie-ins and PC ports on its CV, but it’s probably fair to say it didn’t arrive on most people’s radars until 2019 when A Plague Tale: Innocence shipped. Great action-adventure-horror-stealth hybrid, that.
Not a flight sim though, is it? This is Asobo’s first simulator release, but it does have priors with Microsoft tech—some HoloLens software released in 2016—and with building enormous areas. Fuel, way back in 2009, was a post-apocalyptic open-world driving game and at the time held the world record for the largest playable area, some 5,560 square miles.
Asobo built a bespoke engine for Microsoft Flight Simulator called ACE.
Microsoft Flight Simulator’s system requirements haven’t been confirmed yet
This is a topic of white-hot debate in certain corners of the internet. On the one hand, it’s obviously a gorgeous game with a ton of fidelity in every frame, so you’d imagine a pretty substantial machine would be required to run it smoothly, particularly at 4K as is shown in the reveal trailer.
On the other, will Azure’s cloud computing heft take some of the sting out of running it locally?
At present, the best indication we have is from alpha testing. It’s important to stress that this isn’t representative of final game performance, but having 32GB of RAM seemed to be a common factor in inclusion to the latest alpha program. You can extrapolate the level of other componentry from there but again, this is alpha testing!
Previous incarnations of the series were famously demanding. I’m not even 100% sure you could get a solid 60fps out of Flight Sim X with an RTX 2080 Ti. Azure may be the ace up Microsoft’s sleeve this time.
Will Microsoft Flight Simulator have VR support?
It’s certainly—and I quote head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jörg Neumann—a "high priority" for the team, following fan feedback and the common assumption that there’d be full VR support based on the reveal trailer.
VR at launch can’t be guaranteed though, says Neumann. The team is currently working on its implementation though, so it seems like a when, rather than an if.
What about Microsoft Flight Simulator mods?
Almost immediately after its announcement, Microsoft confirmed that Flight Simulator will support community content.
This was a massive aspect of the previous Flight Sims, and it supported third-party devs who created nothing but maps and planes for virtual pilots willing to pay for them.
While it doesn’t look like there’ll be the same imperative to pay for third-party map data this time, planes are always an area of expansion.
We think it may well work in a fashion similar to Minecraft Marketplace, whereby both free and paid community content is curated and presented in moderated fashion.
Will it be better than the Excel ‘97 flight sim easter egg though?
No. That remains, as it will always remain, the pinnacle of rigorously simulated aviation.
I am too lazy to get into this game, this is like flight simulator or War Thunder on steroids.
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Pewdiepie be committing war crimes now and creates a B-52 bomber its looks like rather than the AC-130 he was gunning for.
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Pewdiepie be committing war crimes now and creates a B-52 bomber its looks like rather than the AC-130 he was gunning for.
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I've finally got the hang of the Frogfoot, haven't decided yet if I'm willing to shell out for any other planes just yet.
Merried Senior Comic
Half-Man, Half-Jerk
As of writing this I have all of the DCS modules save for the WWII birds, Normandy, Combined Arms, the MiG-15 and the Gazelle. I don't play online but I can answer questions about individual modules.
- Highlight
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sasazuka
Standing in the school hallway.
It would be nice if there were a few licensed airline liveries. I know for older versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator, you can get pretty much any livery you like, either through licensed add-ons or unofficial fan-made skins but I don't know if the XBox Series X version of Flight Simulator will be mod-able.
The flight sim I was addicted to as a child was Jane's Fighter's Anthology, which was a semi-hardcore airforce flight sim. As a kid, it was practically the closest thing I had to playing a video game adaptation of Top Gun.
Rather than battles taking place with epic and sweeping barrel rolls, the game is more content with simulating the actual experience of air-to-air combat, that is you lock onto a target from miles away and blast them out of the sky with missiles. Rather than having a simplistic health bar where your plane gets destroyed when it reaches zero, your plane takes increasing amounts of hardware failures, such as fuel, oil, and hydraulic leaks, jammed gear and flaps, and engine failures, that will eventually result in your demise. The only thing that really dings the simulation is that the flight model is somewhat generic, the most egregious of which is the helicopters, which in this game happen to fly exactly like a fighter jet.
Relatively recently I attempted to replay it as an adult, and I can state with confidence that I'm nowhere near qualified to be an airforce pilot.
Though that might be down to the face that it's probably one of those games that requires owning the manual, which I no-longer have.
Rather than battles taking place with epic and sweeping barrel rolls, the game is more content with simulating the actual experience of air-to-air combat, that is you lock onto a target from miles away and blast them out of the sky with missiles. Rather than having a simplistic health bar where your plane gets destroyed when it reaches zero, your plane takes increasing amounts of hardware failures, such as fuel, oil, and hydraulic leaks, jammed gear and flaps, and engine failures, that will eventually result in your demise. The only thing that really dings the simulation is that the flight model is somewhat generic, the most egregious of which is the helicopters, which in this game happen to fly exactly like a fighter jet.
Relatively recently I attempted to replay it as an adult, and I can state with confidence that I'm nowhere near qualified to be an airforce pilot.
Though that might be down to the face that it's probably one of those games that requires owning the manual, which I no-longer have.
I played Jane's Combat Simulations, I believe it was called, a lot when I was young.
Problem is that I have lost the CD to that game and nobody sells a legal copy of it.
Watch the pre-order trailer again, the A320 has a Iberia livery.
I think that this might be game of the year for me. It’s so detailed and realistic.
Despite my early skepticism of it, I've gotta say Microsoft have really shown they've learned from MS Flight and its faults. Everything I've seen and heard of it's either met, or passed what I was hoping for. It's not perfect by any means, a place like North Korea isn't on par with say New York, and I don't expect the planes to be perfect 1 to 1 representations or anything like that. But on the whole I'm pretty damn impressed with what's been accomplished here.
The Hornet, Warthog and Tomcat are really good.
The harrier is a well done as you can reasonably hope.
The vig, yak and c-101 are a ton of fun to learn
The F16 sucked shit but gets better with each patch and is now okay
The UH-1 is probably the best chopper sim under 5 million
The rest are decent
Except the Goshawk, which was so bad the primary dev pulled it off steam
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Official Countdown Timer for Flight Simulator.
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Bass
Grandmaster of the Autistic Illuminati
I have a stupid but serious question. Is there a game that has real world, up to date maps, and like ww2 bombers? Because I'd like a game where I can go on a bombing run against my place of employment, and the local tax collector's office. Some days it would be nice to have such a game.
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