FS2020 Post Release Thread #2

[Langschwert]

"Flight Simulator 2020", hmmmm.... Maybe they meant flight in the sense of fleeing.

[HerrRotZweibel]

20 hours ago, me432432 said:

Thats where I think your wrong.  A commercial copy of xplane cost a one off $1000.  The market for commercial copies would be a lot smaller than the hobbyist copies. The larger commercial simulators use propriety software.  The smaller ones use a mixture of software

Austin has stated currently xplane mobile is the version making the money.

Maybe. My recollection on Mobile is that Austin has said that the code base between mobile and desktop shares a ton of overlap, and Mobile development was really used to drive multi-player or something like that. And... given that consumer versions of XP are a one-shot purchase and XP11 came out years ago, it almost goes without saying that sales of new XP11 desktop copies aren't going to be huge, yes? 

As for the commercial version, there may be some carefully chose words in there. Often at the commercial level, the licenses themselves are just a fraction of the revenue -- the big $ is in selling the consulting services associated with the development and what not.

Mobile "may currently be making the money" but if the entirety of the commercial business is a net loss, I'd have to question LR's reason for existence. 

[HerrRotZweibel]

dupe

Edited September 13, 2020 by HerrRotZweibel

[doog]

I bought a 172 on FSEconomy and am flying it back from the east coast to the west coast in real time with live weather.  I've bene alternating generally between x-plane and fs2020.  I find myself gravitating to fs2020 especially if the live weather is VFR.  FS2020 looks like reality with real scenery the whole way.  I feel like I really know the route.  The clouds, weather, real scenery, lighting... they're all superb.  Far better than x-plan 11.5..  The overall experience is so much more immersive when you see the real terrain and with beautiful lighting and clouds.  I feel much more like I'm actually ferrying the plane over the country in fs2020.  I hope x-plane 12 can close the gap because I love the flight model and aircraft selection and open platform.  

 

[jarmstro]

I do not think the flight model in MSFS is as bad as some imagine. The problem is not the flight model but the aircraft systems In the default planes such as the autopilot imo.

[GlennC]

10 hours ago, HerrRotZweibel said:

Maybe. My recollection on Mobile is that Austin has said that the code base between mobile and desktop shares a ton of overlap, and Mobile development was really used to drive multi-player or something like that. And... given that consumer versions of XP are a one-shot purchase and XP11 came out years ago, it almost goes without saying that sales of new XP11 desktop copies aren't going to be huge, yes? 

As for the commercial version, there may be some carefully chose words in there. Often at the commercial level, the licenses themselves are just a fraction of the revenue -- the big $ is in selling the consulting services associated with the development and what not.

Mobile "may currently be making the money" but if the entirety of the commercial business is a net loss, I'd have to question LR's reason for existence. 

What sources are you basing this on? Do you have in depth knowledge of how the business is run and it's finances?

Do not underestimate Austin's ability to run a business, he's done quite well the last few years. Yes he may seem a bit hair brained now and again but he is deeply passionate about his work. People who complain and don't like it can always go elsewhere for their flight sim enjoyment, there are plenty of options, check? Also Austin is tenacious and tries to do the right thing, have you watched his patent troll film? He spent a load of time and money fighting them and won, which is less could be said for other companies who just payed them, including Microsoft.

[Mr. Dare]

   What sort of up drafts and downdrafts are we talking about? X-Plane has had thermals, and wind interaction with terrain (ridge lift and downdrafts since v-9. I am not going to bother arguing with people who prefer one simulator over the other for whatever reason, but I do get annoyed when people act like microsoft has invented the wheel here in terms of flight dynamics, when Laminar has had all of this for more than 15 years. If you don't have realistic flight dynamics in X-Plane the problem is not with what you bought from Laminar Research.

[oldflyguy64]

I'm a bit suspicious of the MSFS "flight modeling".  As we all know there is no wind at all in large areas of the globe.  I normally fly in North America so it's always "winds calm".  Yet, no matter what aircraft model I use in MSFS (yes, they leave a lot to be desired) I experience a rather consistent and predictable "up and down" during my flight as well as seemingly random "turbulence".  All of this with no wind effect.  I know absolutely nothing about how this is modeled in flight sims.  But I think this is suspect.  Kind of like it's built into the flight model.  I guess we will have to find out through 3rd party developers.

[Janov]

2 hours ago, VirtualGAaviator said:

A guy, who flies nothing but airliners, just said he uninstalled X-plane because if feels like he's flying on rails compared to MSFS.

Well, I would have bowed out of the discord conversation at that point - I think even the starkest MSFS fanboys will concede that the airliners in there are nothing to write home about. So if someone tells me he elects to fly the MSFS airliners over the X-Plane airliners...the level of sophistication in that conversation just dropped too low for me to stoop to follow 😉

Cheers, Jan

 

[tinmug]

2 hours ago, VirtualGAaviator said:

Just had an interesting chat on Discord. A guy, who flies nothing but airliners, just said he uninstalled X-plane because if feels like he's flying on rails compared to MSFS. 

That's quite funny when you consider the three MSFS airliners have an alarming tendency to weathercock in as little as 15 knots of crosswind. 

[jarmstro]

46 minutes ago, Janov said:

Well, I would have bowed out of the discord conversation at that point - I think even the starkest MSFS fanboys will concede that the airliners in there are nothing to write home about. So if someone tells me he elects to fly the MSFS airliners over the X-Plane airliners...the level of sophistication in that conversation just dropped too low for me to stoop to follow 😉

Cheers, Jan

 

That's absolutely true. There is no comparison between the MS2020 A320 and, say, the Toliss a319. That's why I am still using X-Plne.

[HerrRotZweibel]

11 hours ago, GlennC said:

What sources are you basing this on? Do you have in depth knowledge of how the business is run and it's finances?

Do not underestimate Austin's ability to run a business, he's done quite well the last few years. Yes he may seem a bit hair brained now and again but he is deeply passionate about his work. People who complain and don't like it can always go elsewhere for their flight sim enjoyment, there are plenty of options, check? Also Austin is tenacious and tries to do the right thing, have you watched his patent troll film? He spent a load of time and money fighting them and won, which is less could be said for other companies who just payed them, including Microsoft.

I'm certainly not questioning Austin's business decisions or making bold statements about how he's leaving money on the table. I'm responding to other people who think Austin doesn't know what he's doing and that "ignoring" what the retail customer base wants is going to cost him in the long run. 

The latest I heard directly from Austin about some of his technical and business decisions was on an Inflight podcast that's up on Youtube. 

[HerrRotZweibel]

40 minutes ago, tinmug said:

That's quite funny when you consider the three MSFS airliners have an alarming tendency to weathercock in as little as 15 knots of crosswind. 

Ouch. Boeing 737NG and the Airbus family have max demonstrated cross wind components of 36 knots, so 15 kts is falling a bit short. 

[HerrRotZweibel]

3 hours ago, VirtualGAaviator said:

Just had an interesting chat on Discord. A guy, who flies nothing but airliners, just said he uninstalled X-plane because if feels like he's flying on rails compared to MSFS.  I get that MSFS does model downdrafts and updrafts, something XP has yet to do. Didn't have the inclination to go back and forth on the flight modeling with him. MSFS, currently has better wind tunneling effects too, I think.

I still rather fly X-plane, but as I've said before. I think the community is going to support both sims.

There's "modeling" and "modeling well". I don't know the full context of your conversation with the guy on discord, but a no-wind model should be more or less a rails experience. And properly modeling winds is really tough. I'm not saying XP does it well, because I'm not sure anybody does. I work with wind data at my day job, and anybody doing anything on the surface solely with METARs is doing it wrong. There's no way MSFS has a good model, given what they've rushed out. I also don't expect MSFS to want to develop an industry-leading wind model, because their business case doesn't demand it. "Something decent" is good enough. LR? Different story. 

[HerrRotZweibel]

2 hours ago, oldflyguy64 said:

I'm a bit suspicious of the MSFS "flight modeling".  As we all know there is no wind at all in large areas of the globe.  I normally fly in North America so it's always "winds calm".  Yet, no matter what aircraft model I use in MSFS (yes, they leave a lot to be desired) I experience a rather consistent and predictable "up and down" during my flight as well as seemingly random "turbulence".  All of this with no wind effect.  I know absolutely nothing about how this is modeled in flight sims.  But I think this is suspect.  Kind of like it's built into the flight model.  I guess we will have to find out through 3rd party developers.

Yeah... no wind = no wind. If someone is adding turbulence and "up and down" effects in a "no wind" model that's an oops. The devil is most certainly in the details, but in sim world, it's appropriate to add some statistical randomness (e.g., sample out of a distribution) to simplify some modeling and associated computation. But if you're doing that, you have to know what you're compensating for and why. E.g., adding some randomness no the METAR reported winds when flying the approach is all but mandatory when dealing with winds speeds > 20 knots or so. (At those speeds, the true winds aren't constant values, so shouldn't be modeled as such.) But adding random turbulence in a "no wind" or "winds calm" scenario is wrong.

[HerrRotZweibel]

13 hours ago, jarmstro said:

I do not think the flight model in MSFS is as bad as some imagine. The problem is not the flight model but the aircraft systems In the default planes such as the autopilot imo.

At cruise, this is certainly going to be true, especially for tubes. On approach and landing, however, the effects of a bad flight model are going to be more pronounced, and IMHO this where they really need to be accurate. Although, bad can be taken in two ways: Doing something wrong when it shouldn't, and not doing something when it should. I've read a few things about MSFS making planes crash on approach or winds above 15 knots. To which we can conclude, "bad flight models may not matter all that much, except when they do."

[Franz007]

5 hours ago, VirtualGAaviator said:

Just had an interesting chat on Discord. A guy, who flies nothing but airliners, just said he uninstalled X-plane because if feels like he's flying on rails compared to MSFS.  I get that MSFS does model downdrafts and updrafts, something XP has yet to do. Didn't have the inclination to go back and forth on the flight modeling with him. MSFS, currently has better wind tunneling effects too, I think.

I still rather fly X-plane, but as I've said before. I think the community is going to support both sims.

I would actually be very careful about what simple users are saying. Seriously i never ever experienced a more toxic community than MSFS (not in FSX, not in P3D and not in XP). And some overhyped kiddies are starting to make some ridiculous comments, out of nothing. Just because they hate X-Plane and wish XP would die. Best example is following the actual thread on the MSFS-forum about "X-Plane has nothing to worry about". The degree of immaturity and butthurted MSFS-lovers is quite concerning. I will only believe real experienced pilots when talking about the flightmodel.
And don't forget: some FSX/P3D-users are very offended because X-Plane called it flying on rails. So they only want to give back what they got. Again: a very immature behaviour.

[matrosov]

23 hours ago, jarmstro said:

I do not think the flight model in MSFS is as bad as some imagine. The problem is not the flight model but the aircraft systems In the default planes such as the autopilot imo.

Could be aircraft could be modeling could be combo of both, but something definitely feels off about it.  It's by no means arcade stuff definitely a sim grade package but it needs a lot of polishing at the moment. We'll see what happens when serious 3rd party devs, like pmdg  go for it.  There is already a zibo like project for A320  in the works, time will tell.  By no means it's an absolute junk like flight was, but it falls short from prior releases of MSFS in many areas. Seems they spent more time on eye candy vs the sim component. But to be fair they got quite a few things right along the way as well. 

[NoStreetsNeedet]

Look like it can take a while for study level. Aren't they in the partner program for some months now? 

 

[xplaneuser]

16 hours ago, VirtualGAaviator said:

A guy, who flies nothing but airliners, just said he uninstalled X-plane because if feels like he's flying on rails compared to MSFS. 

Don't believe everything that is written on the internet, even not this what I am writing just now 😂 ...

Cheers
Chris

Edited September 15, 2020 by xplaneuser

[Paul Schmidt]

I would love to read some facts instead of feelings. I too think that the MSFS C152 "feels great" and "realistic". But that proves nothing.

I give you an example: Do a forward slip in the MSFS/C152 and XP/C172. You will notice how different that feels. Which one is right?

[hayton3]

15 hours ago, tinmug said:

Just had an interesting chat on Discord. A guy, who flies nothing but airliners, just said he uninstalled X-plane because if feels like he's flying on rails compared to MSFS. 

Many amateur desktop pilots find a cockpit full of buttons intimidating. MSFS2020 caters to this fear by rendering most of buttons "inop". Say what you want about Microsoft, but they are nothing if not thorough with their market research.

[Langschwert]

Oh, THAT´s why there are all these inops. I just misunderstood the M$-ads.

"[...] Every aircraft includes highly detailed and accurate cockpits with realistic instrumentation. [...]"

[jrKok]

4 hours ago, xplaneuser said:

Don't believe everything that is written on the internet, even not this what I am writing just now 😂 ...

😁We know that syllogism ! Because if I don't believe what you've written, I would have to infer that your statement is false, so that I should have to believe what you have written. That means that you are telling the truth, so that I musn't believe everything on the internet, so your statement is false etc... 👍

[xplaneuser]

23 minutes ago, jrKok said:

We know that syllogism ! Because if I don't believe what you've written, I would have to infer that your statement is false, so that I should have to believe what you have written. That means that you are telling the truth, so that I musn't believe everything on the internet, so your statement is false etc...

I am convinced that you are right, but I can't believe you 🤔 ...

Chris