Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020/2024)

So what are the chances that the Saitek hardware (yoke, rudder pedals, thottles, switch panels, fips etc) will be compatible with the new MSFT 2020?

1) is there a limit to the size of the cache or is it that we can download as much as we can physically download? 2) can the cache be made permanent? If there is no size limit and I download 1 terabyte of data and I have to reinstall my OS or the game or whatever, it would be a shame to have to redownload all that data. 3) can the cache be on an external drive?

Hey guys, I'm very interested in the alpha recruitment program for MSFS 2020. I've filled out the survey. We get more information tomorrow (October 10th). I'm very excited. Do any of you have any idea of when we get the confirmation on whether we made it? What's going to happen in the alpha testing process? Anything you'd like to share? Boris

... lots of trees, 1,5 trillion of them ! But which trees ? How many varieties ? This is something that is not clear to me. We saw acacias with the giraffe herd but the information is scarce about the vegetation differentiation. This is a question that some future previews would be welcome to address.

This is definitely not a criticism of the default regions. Everything looks amazing. I had no doubt OrbX could make better cities or airports than , but in the discovery series video, isn't it safe to say there's plenty of room for guys like OrbX in MSFS2020 for regions? For example, autogen for the Northern Rockies? The right kind of trees and objects for different regions, etc.

Does anyone know if there's been a preview, either screenshot or video, of flying over a non-photogrammetry city center? We all know photogrammetry covered cities are going to look great. Non-photogrammetry residential areas look good as machine learning is picking up roof colour, roof style, house style and footprint and creating some highly plausible autogen. I don't recall seeing any previews of a a non-photogrammetry city center though. I'm interested to know how they look. There's surely a limit to what ML autogen can do for the highly bespoke buildings you see in a city center. There's also a limit to how many hand modelled POIs they can add.

And they won't be allowed to tell us, would they ?

X-Box Game Pass is the equivalent of Netflix. If you watch a lot of movies, Netflix can be great. It doesn't stop you from buying individual movies online. For X-Box games or for PC games, you don't need it to buy individual games. Even if something similar comes out for PC, it's going to be optional. You can still get it, but I imagine most AVSIM people won't be interested. And game pass is not the same thing as a gamer tag or a Microsoft gaming account. It's not relevant to a hypothetical MSFS2020 subscription one way or the other. So just get it out of your mind.

Have they said anything about moving trains yet? Do you think they’ll implement that? It’s not my first priority but would be nice to have nonetheless.

Although I'm excited about the arrival of MSFS, I'd hate to see things turn into a near monopoly when it comes to consumer, civilian flight sims. I don't think that would benefit the community long term. I started thinking about what would be necessary to bring other sims up to MSFS level, and how long all that might take. Posted here for cordial debate 😀 Streaming FlyInside Flight Sim implemented streaming from Bing Maps, but I think they're skating on thin legal ice. I can imagine a law suit if Laminar tried it. Nothing to stop other sims implementing the ability to stream generic satellite image tiles but leaving it up to the user to point it at …

What are the odds the autogen or any of the photo based buildings will have harden rooftops so that you could land on them vs falling through? I cant remember how FS9, FSX, P3D and Xplane handle them but I do remember every roof top could be a helipad because they were harden in one of them. Some of the screenshots/videos we have seen around seattle you can see the helipad on two of the news stations that are next to the space needle, if buildings were harden we would already be a few steps ahead in helipads. Side benefit....trying to land airplanes on rooftops was always a challenge.

I have not heard if four distinct seasons will be depicted yet. Has anyone heard this mentioned?

I was thinking about this yesterday after watching the previews again. There is going to be a fully modelled world with varying levels of visual fidelity. Regardless of where you are (Outer Mongolia or downtown New York) each road, field and hill will be accurately mapped with trees, objects and buildings intelligently overlaid. As such, would it be too much of a stretch to add a mod where you can drive a car around the world? Now I know what you're thinking..., that would look terrible close-up. Yes, some of it would look pretty ropey as even with the minimum resolution of 3cm it wouldn't be a 1-1, but with the auto-gen trees and houses being added, it would give yo…

I shouldn't need to point out what I am talking about. Anyone who is a pilot and also "flies" any MSFS can see the clear difference. The aircraft is alive and the pilot is not simply sitting there watching the instruments. They are working hard at it hand flying. Yes, some of the best add-ons and weather add-ons can go some way to recreating this feeling but it has always been something that MS quite simply hasn't been good at. X-Plane on the other hand has been reasonably good at this.

He’s me favourite developer from the team, he’s so lively and crazy 😂

MSFS 2020 will have whole Earth, right? Now, which cities will be extremely accurate, medium accurate and totally untouched in terms of details? Serbia for example, will MSFS 2020 have it? And how accurate capital city (Belgrade) for example will be accurate? And for the end, is there a screenshot showing an untouched area, how does it look like? Similar to most detailed Flight 2012 areas or worst MSFS 2020 areas will be better then most accurate Flight 2012 areas? I would like to understand further this game and new technology, how good will low populated areas look like etc.

The Microsoft Simulator forums section has about 10 specialized subforums dedicated to various topics of interest like shared cockpits, aircraft panel design etc.. We see that there are some passionate people about VR here. Isn't the time to create another subforum for VR within the MS forums where people interested would discuss their favorite topic so the FS20 forum stays focused on the new sim ? Just a suggestion ...

According to the just-released XBOX promo, there is a provision in the new sim for color blind players (whatever that means).

120 people team with an average of $100,000 salary will be $12,000,000 a year for salary alone. I have the vague knowlege that salary occupies 50% of the development cost, so it's roughly $24,000,000 total? Xbox game pass 12 month subscription is $60. So you need 400,000 subscriptions to match the development cost? Now that does not sound too much like a difficult task, if it has both PC and Xbox version on a subscription basis. Well, as long as it's also sold outside flight simmers. Edit: Sorry I correct the math error. Thanks for pointing out!

I've been so impressed with how good the sim looks, I forgotten about a few key things. Has there been any word of AI aircraft or any default built in ATC for MSFS? All the videos I've seen I don't think I've heard anyone speak about those topics - although it could be just me not paying attention!

I apologize if this has been posted before, but I wanted to share this video from FlightChops on YouTube. I know it's been a topic of contention whether this will be an entertainment title like Flight or an actual simulator and one of the Microsoft people specifically addresses this, I was pleasantly surprised by his answer.

The devs tend to do sceneries where their customers live with the idea that we only fly where we live. Not true, at least for me. There are huge swaths of the globe utterly neglected. I still fly in these forgotten lands with Global+Vector+Pilot's mesh and some old LC maps but the quality could be better. The exception is Japan where there is also an excellent freeware LC Map. A lot of airports are misplaced with roads and rivers crossing the perimeter. One of the things I look forward to in the new sim is at last a balanced cover of the planet, with a special eye to the Philippines and Indonesian archipelagoes (EDIT with Malaysian Borneo and PNG !). Have you …

The new tech promises to bring some more diversified autogen buildngs and vegetation. So... ... I want to see churches in Europe (villages and city neighborhoods), flower trees in Asia and more generally a vegetation adapted to geography (please kill these cypresses we see all the world in FSX), low cost housing blocks which disfigure the suburbs in France and elsewhere, shanty towns, these awful commercial malls we have now at the outskirts of our cities, 3D highway interchanges, large neon outdoor advertising in cities and malls,... What else ? PS don't bring back the size issue 😃 !

Hi guys, even tho this is not new by now, i only managed to listen to a little bit of the whole interview now since it's 43 minutes long. I wish there was a transcript of it all to capture all the finest details. If you want to listen to it too: https://www.dropbox.com/s/npflp15dzg40o2b/AVSim_Interview_AUDIO.mp3 - HELICOPTERS: It needs a rework compared to what FSX offered, it will take time and it will also depends on what the community feedback. From Bing Map they can extract helipads from the real world. - WEATHER: Microsoft Flight Simulator features realistic volumetric 3D rain and scattered fog, rain effects on windshields and even physically accurate …

The AI which scans satellite imagery can only do so much. A dark spot may probably be a tree, but maybe not. And which type of tree is it exactly?? So the AI may do a good job but it won't be anywhere near 100% accurate. This is where the developers should let the community override the default autogen guesses with more accuracy. Let them define, yes there's a tree here and it's a large pine. Or this is a house but it's a different kind of house. In time, the world will be filled out with more accurate autogen, by the community. Greazer.