
Microsoft Flight Simulator – E3 2019 – Announce Trailer - doener
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReDDgFfWlS4
======
crazygringo
That looks _incredible_ , and makes me upset I'm not a pilot and don't have
the time to learn!

Genuine question: is there any way to explore the world with visualizations as
beautiful as those, but without the plane mechanics?

I have so much fun with Google Earth, but it doesn't have anything like the
level of "realism" shown here -- the water, the clouds, the sunset, the
shadows. While a game like GTA V can be gorgeous visually and you can fly a
helicopter in it intuitively... but it's not a real place.

Is there any way to enjoy that realism without learning to fly a plane
realistically?

~~~
teraflop
Historically, MS Flight Simulator has always had the option of a "slew" mode
that basically turns off physics and lets you directly manipulate your plane's
position with the controller.

------
jdsully
When they disbanded the team in 2009 I thought we'd never see a proper
replacement for Flight Sim X. The visuals look gorgeous but the real test is
whether the airplane models have realistic physics - otherwise this is just a
toy like Microsoft Flight.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
Has there been anything to indicate that Microsoft reconstituted the ACES
Studio team? If not, there isn't much reason for hope.

~~~
mastazi
Some of the ACES team members now work for Lockheed Martin, in the team that
develops Prepar3d (another flight simulator), but not all of them.

------
lwansbrough
Absolutely stunning scenery. I’ll speculate that they’ll offer some sort of
subscription service which allows you to stream high quality textures beyond
what the standard install provides. It would also be incredible to see AI
powered ATC. Something that is a little more adaptive and real would be
amazing. For instance I’d love to be able to declare an emergency and have the
ATC actually understand that. ATC seems very plausible for AI as there’s a
somewhat limited set of instructions that need to be understood, and basically
anything beyond that would be icing on the cake compared to what’s available
in FSX/X-Plane (aside from the real ATC plugins.)

~~~
froindt
Implementing AI in a large flight simulator would make an interesting platform
to do trials. Of course you can setup large scale simulations of known inputs
and expected outputs, but you'd also get a variety of skill levels and you'd
see how the AI responds to some idiot taking off from the taxiway (e.g. Would
it successfully redirect landing aircraft).

If someone could implement an AI that worked in flight simulator, it could
help serve as evidence supporting a real world implementation.

~~~
lwansbrough
It will be a long time before I trust AI to do anything of the sort. For me, I
just want a simulation ATC that I can talk to with my mic that will more or
less understand what I'm saying. Something to practice on.

------
skunkworker
I wonder how they will do the photorealistic terrain, if you can have an
offline copy of the entire world or just NA I wouldn't be surprised if its
300gb+, unless they are continually streaming the terrain/textures and models.

Currently I've been flying in X-plane 11 with Ortho4xp and downloaded data can
easily run into the hundreds of GBs and even multi terabytes.

~~~
pedalpete
The satellite imagery around the world is getting pretty good these days. Look
at what's available in Bing Maps. City models can be bought fairly cheaply, or
it is possible they just used city data and had artists do corrections.

We took some open city point-cloud data last week and created 3d tiles from
that using Cesium, and I was amazed at the result. Nothing like what you're
seeing here, but I imagine an artist or possibly AI could do enough correction
to make the cities look amazing and realistic enough.

Because you aren't looking at the city like a map, they don't need Google
Earth level of accuracy.

Though another possibility is that Google Earth is licensing their data for
games, so possibly Microsoft has licensed that?

~~~
WorldMaker
Microsoft probably doesn't need to license Google Earth data because Bing data
has been competing pretty well in that space, reports to the contrary aside.

One of Bing's particular focuses contrasting them to Google Earth/Maps
photography has been a particular interest in "Birds Eye" isometric-feeling
photography taken from helicopters at particular altitudes and compass angles,
I would imagine is particularly applicable to trying to generate rich models
for Flight Simulator use at similar altitudes, more so than a lot of
traditional "flat" overhead aerial photography used by map providers.

(It's gotten harder to find Bird's Eye in Bing Maps redesigns sadly. It's
"hidden" in the right-click menu now. Still, it is a useful and interesting
type of aerial photographer that should be celebrated as useful and
interesting.)

~~~
pedalpete
I didn't realize Birds Eye had moved into the right click. I was looking for
it a while ago.

However, when I now see Birds Eye, it isn't available in Sydney, and many
other locations in the world. Where I did see it (San Francisco & Paris) it is
just the photographs, no photogrametry, no rotation, very little zoom, etc.
etc.

Am I missing something? Can you let me know what you're seeing?

------
salex89
I'm interested in which way is Azure AI integrated in this. Maybe some physics
offloading? Bird flocking? :)

I wounder will there be some other kind of cloud integration like dynamically
streaming models from Azure, pay-per-flight models or such.

~~~
zeusk
I'm guessing it is used for generating 3D buildings from map data and for the
AI planes. They could also use it for voice communication with the in-game ATC
but we'll have to wait for the release to know for sure.

------
northwest65
I hope it has VR support; sims without VR are dead to me.

~~~
supermanfan
First of all, you're an outlier. Most people don't want a box on their head,
especially for any length of time.

Second of all, I don't know of any GA or airline simulators that use VR.

Source: commercial pilot.

~~~
youeeeeeediot
An FAA Qualified Level simulator can easily cost six figures, no one is
suggesting a VR simulator is going to replace it - however once you've tried a
sim in VR you'd likely never want anything else again.

~~~
heelix
An FAA certified tampon will set you back $10 each if you want to use the
tampex tampon with the appropriate tracking number for a Piper. :P I'd expect
uncertified to surpass it for far less.

(I've tried VR flight sims.. my god, having the view track with your head is
amazing. One of a handful of killer VR apps)

------
jimbob45
How is it that the commercial flight simulators never compete with MS in this
space?

~~~
zeusk
Because they're based on the same tech.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Loc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Lockheed_Martin_Prepar3D)

I know Airbus also uses ESP as the base, but not sure about Boeing sims.

------
tluyben2
I remember seeing and playing the flight sims of the 80s as a kid and being so
bored by basically staring at a line on the screen (horizon), nothing
happening for what felt like hours and then ‘crashing’ which just said ‘game
over’, young me having no clue what happened. I can reason the difference
between old and modern games, but for me gameplay has not been ‘more fun’; I
find 80s Gradius the same pleasure to play as the latest Doom (and Crash 2+3
or Monkey Island 1+2 better than anything I can find now, but taste, you
know). With simulators (cars, planes, ...) however I see how far we came;
those I simply did not find playable until far into the 2000s and this really
looks amazing.

I consider Alien Isolation a sort of simulator of the original Alien movie
(the feel is the same for me); this was attempted in the 80s as well and
failed as well. Now it works perfectly.

~~~
animal531
The technology wasn't as good in the early 80's. But by the late 80's we had
greats such as F15 Strike Eagle II, and by 1992 we had Comanche Maximum
Overkill. Both of those had great gameplay.

------
ralusek
Is it pretty well established at this point that XPlane is superior to
Microsoft? My understanding is that Microsoft has previously used hard-coded
flight characteristics to determine how a plane should handle, whereas XPlane
will actually model the physics of flight. Is that correct/generally accepted?
Is there a plan to change that with this new version?

------
filereaper
Just wanted to say, this makes me really happy!

I spent atlot of time on MS Flight Simulator, from ver 5.1 for DOS all the way
up to FSX.

It was a sad day when MS discontinued the product as it is the oldest product
offered by the company.

This really feels like a renaissance at Microsoft as the hardcore audience
(simmers) for this is small and presumably lead to the earlier cancellation.

Looking forward to the release!

------
plg
Which platform is this for? Windows/PC? or XBox? or cross platform? (MacOS,
GNU/Linux, etc)

~~~
callumjones
It will be on Game Pass which is for Windows and Xbox. Possibly xCloud too
enabling it to potentially run on mobile platforms?

------
siilats
I learned to fly with MS Flight Sim so I hope Rod Machado is still there with
his lessons!

~~~
label300
I think Netflix Fyre festival documentary had a section about you

------
nodesocket
I first got into Flight Simulator starting with Flight Simulator for Windows
95. The game even motivated me to take a few flight lessons and log a handful
of flight hours.

Wow, this new FS trailer is mind blowing. The graphics look unreal, can't
wait.

------
jpmartin
This looks great, but I had to look up the "XBox Game Pass": it's a
subscription service for XBox games.

I have enough subscriptions already, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to add
another one for a flight sim, however pretty it may be.

~~~
Elidrake24
> I have enough subscriptions already, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to add
> another one for a flight sim, however pretty it may be.

Every other game on the service has been available for purchase otherwise, I
doubt that will change here.

------
Nicksil
Did I miss something: is this not being released for PC?

~~~
timdorr
According to their Twitter post, it will be:
[https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1137821843031592960?s=09](https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1137821843031592960?s=09)

~~~
Theodores
Thank goodness for that. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a game that needs a PC
rather than any other type of computer or an X-Box. The two go together, a
fine combination like how some beverages go with certain meals.

A PC confers that it is not a game but something more like work. It gives the
game seriousness as it becomes a simulation and not a game. Plus there is the
legacy going back to the DOS versions, which will always have some magic to
them that the new shiny graphics versions will not have. Maybe the blocky
pixel versions were better for the imagination, the controls were pretty good
you just had to imagine the scenery.

~~~
zeusk
The current and next gen consoles are PCs in disguise, especially the xbox
since it shares a large portion of codebase with Windows (OneCore).

~~~
timdorr
You can even plug in a keyboard and mouse: [https://support.xbox.com/en-
US/xbox-one/ease-of-access/mouse...](https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-
one/ease-of-access/mouse-keyboard)

------
alphagrep12345
Who is the target audience for flight simulator? Is it like a regular video
game, or used by pilots who actually undergo training?

~~~
paranoidrobot
It's a genuine flight simulator, not a video game - although there's differing
levels of realism you can usually set.

You can take it all the way to having Virtual Air Traffic Control systems,
staffed by other players - eg the VATSIM[1] community.

[1] [https://www.vatsim.net/](https://www.vatsim.net/)

~~~
WorldMaker
That said, people can also presumably play it is a videogame, too. Nothing
wrong with people having fun simulating something they'd probably never get to
do in real life. At the very least for all the kids whose parents want games
to be at least semi-educational, Flight Simulators will always have a niche in
videogaming.

~~~
mkd1964
I hope it's not too "video-gamey". That was the downfall of "MS Flight". It
was highly disappointing to hard-core simmers who had come to expect realistic
flight conditions, routes, ATC, physics and a world-wide map.

I was part of a survey from MS about what I'd like to see in the next version
of the simulator (this was after FSX went away but before "Flight). The survey
asked a lot of questions about my thoughts on making the sim more goal/mission
oriented (essentially, more of a game).

I made it really clear that I thought that was fine as an _addition_ but
should not replace the current real-world functionality. Give people the
option.

I can't imagine my answers were that different from most long-time users -
basically it needed to have all the features I mentioned above, plus an open
SDK for 3rd party developers.

MS didn't listen and "Flight" was a huge disappointment - at which point I
moved to X-Plane.

Hopefully, they've gone back to their roots with this new version because it
looks absolutely amazing.

------
lawrenceyan
Glad to see flight simulators making a resurgence again in 2019. Hopefully the
physics will be able to be just as good as X-Plane.

------
bitL
This will make my pilot license obsolete...

------
StopHammoTime
So excited for this. I've been waiting for a sim like this for 15 years.

------
Mbaqanga
Best announcement on e3. I was waiting for this type of game so much.

