Microsoft Flight Sim 2020/2024

[Tektolnes]

Some may have seen it already but there's a handy route planning and map following program available that's completely free called LittleNavMap:

 

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/587475-little-navmap-262beta-released/

 

Once you install it and then load the MSFS 2020 scenery into it it has all the airports & navaids from the MSFS database. You can then plan your own routes, STARS, SIDS, etc., save the plan as PLN and then load in MSFS rather than you having to use the one in the game (which I think works well too actually but you can do your plans offline with this). It can't read the MSFS DB yet for the departure/approach routes so has it's own set which mostly match up. Also has flight following once you connect to the sim. Keeps an accurate log book for you. You can track aircraft performance, fuel, etc. while in flight.  

 

All in all a really nice free program. I've used it to map out my whole round the world trip.

 

 

 

 

[SAS_Storebror]

Thanks @Tektolnes, looks like a very useful tool.

Let's hope that Microsoft will crank up the SDK + Documentation to their own standards soon.

I took a look at the SDK to see whether I can spot a gap for a nice handcrafted mod in it, but that thing - as powerful as it is already - really needs some more love put into it.

 

Mike

[Lusekofte]

Well I am no longer worthy being called a simmer. 
Two out of three evenings this week I have prioritized beer before flying

[messsucher]

2 minutes ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

Well I am no longer worthy being called a simmer. 
Two out of three evenings this week I have prioritized beer before flying

 

Beer doesn't count.

[CanadaOne]

3 minutes ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

Well I am no longer worthy being called a simmer. 
Two out of three evenings this week I have prioritized beer before flying

 

As long as it's good beer, it's fine.

[Lusekofte]

I been walking mountains too. I am sure my life as I know it is over ?

[messsucher]

Those views and places!

[DD_Arthur]

? 

 

[Ace_Pilto]

5 hours ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

Well I am no longer worthy being called a simmer. 
Two out of three evenings this week I have prioritized beer before flying

Take it from me, it's quite possible to indulge in both at the same time. ?

[Gambit21]

I need to stop looking in this damn thread.

[Guest deleted@83466]

?

Edited October 22, 2020 by SeaSerpent

[messsucher]

Damn, maybe I buy that game someday, but first it need to have BAE Systems Hawk, some old Russian jet, Eurofighter, WW2 or WW1 fighter. Not interested to fly civilian aircraft.

 

Wish they make WW1/2 combat sim, would like to see if it would obsolete other combat sims.

[Lusekofte]

Personally I am good with one jet trainer. But I need a variety of vintage airplanes. 
And a lot of them. 

[Tektolnes]

7 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

I need to stop looking in this damn thread.

 

Just for the sheer technical achievement you owe it to yourself to try it out. For general aviation VFR + IFR it's incredible just being able to go anywhere and have the world well represented. It's definitely not perfect and some locations obviously look better than others but I'm regularly amazed at how good it looks just flying through random places that you'd never think to fly to normally but happen to pass through on a round the world trip. You can try it out on game pass for $1 for a month.

[Trooper117]

6 hours ago, messsucher said:

Wish they make WW1/2 combat sim,

 

Will not happen... they will need mapping data for those periods, and Bing/Google etc can't exactly provide that.

What makes MSFS 2020 so awesome is that real look from the map data you are flying over.

[ZachariasX]

I wouldn't be surprised if P3Dv6 will feature terrain straming. They licensed the whole stuff from MS anyway for a different market. Why not licensing terrain streaming?.

[unlikely_spider]

4 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

 

Will not happen... they will need mapping data for those periods, and Bing/Google etc can't exactly provide that.

What makes MSFS 2020 so awesome is that real look from the map data you are flying over.

They can provide that mapping data. They just need to send the satellites away from the Earth at faster-than-light speeds and take high resolution imagery of the surface.

No doubt we will be seeing historical scenarios from Microsoft soon, assuming they find the cost/benefit to be favorable to developing FTL technology vs estimated flight sim sales.

[AndyJWest]

1 minute ago, ZachariasX said:

I wouldn't be surprised if P3Dv6 will feature terrain straming. They licensed the whole stuff from MS anyway for a different market. Why not licensing terrain streaming?.

 

Can't see that happening. Or at least, not unless Lockheed Martin agree to actively enforce their 'not for entertainment use' policies. Microsoft aren't going to license tech for a direct competitor to their current consumer product.

 

The licensing to LM occurred only after MS had stopped development of FSX.

[messsucher]

39 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

 

Will not happen... they will need mapping data for those periods, and Bing/Google etc can't exactly provide that.

What makes MSFS 2020 so awesome is that real look from the map data you are flying over.

 

They could make smaller maps and use recon photos and other film footage available to reconstruct big cities. Or they could use machine learning to make maps out of normal drawn paper map scans. Not very cheap as for now, but maybe someday, after academics has made some research more easily applied to game dev.

[Lusekofte]

8 minutes ago, messsucher said:

 

They could make smaller maps and use recon photos and other film footage available to reconstruct big cities. Or they could use machine learning to make maps out of normal drawn paper map scans. Not very cheap as for now, but maybe someday, after academics has made some research more easily applied to game dev.

Point is. They will not do it. Cfs pilots are in panic paying 10 buck for a plane. 80 buck for a complete game make they go in koma 

[Feathered_IV]

1 hour ago, Trooper117 said:

 

Will not happen... they will need mapping data for those periods, and Bing/Google etc can't exactly provide that.

What makes MSFS 2020 so awesome is that real look from the map data you are flying over.

It wouldn’t be hard to backdate the Solomon Islands, New Guinea or New Britain areas for example.  

[ZachariasX]

1 hour ago, AndyJWest said:

The licensing to LM occurred only after MS had stopped development of FSX.

LM started in 2010, FSX was released in 2006, then it released MS Flight in 2012. Thus LM published well within the timeframe when MS was active in this market. Technically, Flight wa snot that different from FSX, but it had "the store". Even FS2020 retains some FSX code.

 

LM *is* in fact enforcing their licensing strictly. That licensing is probably the most misunderstood thing in the entire fligh sim business. It is only about LM marketing P3D in the professional market and not in the gaming market. You will never see Lm advertise in PCGamer. It has no influence whatsoever on who may buy that sim once they find it. Everybody is allowed to buy it (you get a discount version for students), but LM is not allowed to advertise P3D in and gaming magazine. And they absolutely don't. Conversely, MS is not supposed to advertise FSX in the professional aviation market.

 

LM also actively partitions the market by pricing. It is less notceable with the regular Flightsim, but in the one that has weapons etc., P3Dpro. That one is way closer to the entertainment industry by its very nature, being a CFS. It is hence deliberately priced outside the gamers makret at roughly 2k USD. LM is and was never shy of enforcing the licensing. If LM was in breach about their license with MS in any way, MS would have shut them down way before launching FS2020.

 

It is just sad that those whole obscure contract schemes give so many P3D uses doubts whether they will or could be thrown in jail just because they are not certified pilots but dare to use that sim.

 

Also, 3rd party licensing for part of there core tech is what they do. LM is licensing TrueSky for v5. If MS is being difficult about Bing!, the there's always Google.

[AndyJWest]

9 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

If MS is being difficult about Bing!, the there's always Google.

 

Yes, clearly LM (or anyone else with sufficient funds to develop it) could create their own alternative to the MS satellite-image-based AI-generated terrain system, using Google data (assuming again that they were prepared to pay what Google asked, which might be a lot, since Google is the only alternative option to Bing available). That wouldn't be licensing tech from Microsoft though. Which is the suggestion I was actually addressing. As for the exact terms of the MS/LM licensing agreement, you may be right, but as of now, MS are trying to sell a new flight sim, with its appeal directly related to the new tech they have. Licensing the tech to LM makes even less sense to me if LM directly competes, in a significant way, with the entertainment-sim market. About the only rationale for them to do that which would make any sense to me would be if they decided to abandon the PC-based simulator altogether, and develop it solely for consoles. Or give up on the whole project - this is Microsoft, after all, and its never been entirely clear why they are making the thing anyway. Compared to their core product base, MSFS is a mere blip in the accountants' spreadsheet data...

[Lusekofte]

45 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

MS is being difficult about Bing!, the there's always Google

As I understand it they started this endeavor for competing with google 

so it won’t happen. 
 

14 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

if they decided to abandon the PC-based simulator altogether, and develop it solely for consoles

Looking at the drama in fb group. Witch I left because of all the dramaqueens. 
I would not be surprised if they ditched pc all together. 
But as I understand it this sim came to life for competing with google in netbased data storage or something. So it would not make sense.  

[AndyJWest]

I'd be very surprised if MS took Facebook drama into consideration at all when considering future plans for MSFS. 

[ZachariasX]

19 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

Licensing the tech to LM makes even less sense to me if LM directly competes, in a significant way, with the entertainment-sim market.

What makes you think they do? It took a lot of hammering and a great deal of desperation for people to migrate from LM from FSX, something that was only raelly an option as addons were compatible. You could just copy them over. As of now, addons of P3D and FS2020 are not compatible in a meaningful way anymore.

 

i seriously doubt that a significant number of multitudes that bought FS2020 had used P3D before. Especially when you are reading LM's or A2A's forum, people are rather reluctant to change, as they put a lot of time and money in getting things working. Just buying FS2020 is no alternative, as there are none of the 3rd party modules they use or like. I'd say the ones that ditch P3D for FS2020 now are the ones that never really bought into P3D.

 

Out of curiosity, are there any numbers? I mean P3D is not on Steam... for an - or THE - obvious reason. So there's no number from there.

[RedKestrel]

30 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

 

Yes, clearly LM (or anyone else with sufficient funds to develop it) could create their own alternative to the MS satellite-image-based AI-generated terrain system, using Google data (assuming again that they were prepared to pay what Google asked, which might be a lot, since Google is the only alternative option to Bing available). That wouldn't be licensing tech from Microsoft though. Which is the suggestion I was actually addressing. As for the exact terms of the MS/LM licensing agreement, you may be right, but as of now, MS are trying to sell a new flight sim, with its appeal directly related to the new tech they have. Licensing the tech to LM makes even less sense to me if LM directly competes, in a significant way, with the entertainment-sim market. About the only rationale for them to do that which would make any sense to me would be if they decided to abandon the PC-based simulator altogether, and develop it solely for consoles. Or give up on the whole project - this is Microsoft, after all, and its never been entirely clear why they are making the thing anyway. Compared to their core product base, MSFS is a mere blip in the accountants' spreadsheet data...

I think the rationale would be that, as I suspect, the licensing of the data and the system was always the end goal. Licensing it for visualization in commercial and enterprise applications. In that scenario the game is just a tech demonstrator. MSFS doesn't have to sell any units at all, it just has to hype the tech used to build it. If someone else hypes Microsoft's tech for them, they still win. Their bread and butter is enterprise and commercial stuff.

I could easily be wrong, but that has been my assumption since the beginning. That, and getting PC gamers to buy into the Xbox ecosystem more. I'm just spitballing though.

[AndyJWest]

We seem to be going around in circles here, speculating about what company X might do if it licensed tech A from company Y, or instead used data from company Z instead to develop tech B for themselves. How about we go back to discussing actual products for now, and leave the speculation for when there's something at least vaguely resembling evidence that there's anything to speculate about?

 

Don't try this for real:?

 

Cumulogranitus Maximus. AKA Mongo ma Ndemi ("Mountain of Greatness"). AKA Mount Cameroon. Almost entirely shrouded in cloud. All 13,250 ft of it. Given that it's the highest peak in sub-Saharan Africa, and given that it's an active volcano, I had to have a look. Which in the MSFS version of African rainy season weather (even cloudier than the real thing, from what I can figure out) involved finding a gap between layers, and relying on synthetic vision not to got closer than I needed. 

 

If the weather clears (or I cheat and magic the clouds away), I might get a chance to look at it properly, before I head eastwards over the rainforest (Yay! more Clouds...), and onwards to Kilimanjaro. Which I'll hopefully be able to see without resorting to blind faith in technology.

 

Correction: Mongo ma Ndemi is the highest peak in western sub-Saharan Africa. Or something like that. Anyway, since it's base is only a few feet above sea level, it sticks up a lot, and would be an unwelcome surprise to anyone bimbling about in the clouds expecting the usual flat terrain...

Edited October 23, 2020 by AndyJWest
geographic brainfart

[Lusekofte]

I am not innocent in this but I really find game politics and economics depressing. 
I find these corona times to be a good time for simulators. 
This game is god sent 

Edited October 22, 2020 by 216th_LuseKofte

[Blooddawn1942]

28 minutes ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

I am not innocent in this but I really find game politics and economics depressing. 
I find these corona times to be a good time for simulators. 
This game is god sent 

Waiting for this one to be available in the ingame marketplace.

[unlikely_spider]

56 minutes ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

I am not innocent in this but I really find game politics and economics depressing. 
I find these corona times to be a good time for simulators. 
This game is god sent 

 

I have only flown very slow planes in MSFS, compared to that one. How does the autogen/photogrammetry keep up with something that fast?

[Lusekofte]

32 minutes ago, unlikely_spider said:

I have only flown very slow planes in MSFS, compared to that one. How does the autogen/photogrammetry keep up with something that fast?

I did not notice really any difference, At the same time I upped the graphics, so I would say same thing

1 hour ago, Blooddawn1942 said:

Waiting for this one to be available in the ingame marketplace.

If you buy it from orbx it will install with their install tool. I had absolutely no problem

[CanadaOne]

3 hours ago, unlikely_spider said:

I have only flown very slow planes in MSFS, compared to that one. How does the autogen/photogrammetry keep up with something that fast?

 

I've been flying the MB-339 a lot and I haven't noticed any lag over cities really. I did notice a lad in texture loading in the Himalayas, bout I also saw that before with other planes.

 

I've taken the plane down in a dive and cruised at 400MPH+ at rooftop level and it was fine. And fun! That said, it was possible most of that cruising was taking place over cities I had saved in my manual cache. I think my Seattle manual cache file, for example, is about 8GB.

[Lusekofte]

Well I flew this sequence over Las Vegas and Grand canyon for the first time. I had no problem except chatting here while flying and lawn dart while doing so

[CanadaOne]

Interesting. 

 

This guy kinda thinks someone is re-selling a plane that's already in the game. 

 

 

[Lusekofte]

What the hell is he on about. What a pompous self glorified ass. “I came to the conclusion I had to buy the plane so you have not”

Ha ha ha

[Stoopy]

38 minutes ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

What the hell is he on about. What a pompous self glorified ass. “I came to the conclusion I had to buy the plane so you have not”

Ha ha ha

 

The way I see it, he thought it was probably a rip off, so he did buy it in order to check out the contents, and as suspected it was outright theft of content from the game, with some freeware stuff sprinkled on top, so he reported it to the community via video afterwards.   I don't think it was pompous to try to warn others away after verifying his suspicions.  

 

I thought it was also interesting how he went ahead at that point and bought it from two other sources to see what they would do when confronted with the situation.  That says a lot about the vendors who haven't responded to him.  And it's good for the community to know who those shady vendors are, no?

 

 

 

 

Edited October 23, 2020 by Stoopy

[Lusekofte]

Ok I misunderstood. I believed he had standard and bought it on markedplace. 
But honestly. There is such s plane in game. Even I would not be that foolish. 

[CanadaOne]

Now this is perhaps neither here nor there, but it was fun. And it shows how FS20 can be an interesting toy for nerds.

 

I saw a clip on Youtube with a title like "Joe Rogan learns something about Canada". I click and watch. About five-minutes long, and the guy Joe was talking to was really interesting. So I find the podcast and listen to all three-hours of it and it was outrageously! interesting. The guest is talking about a flood that took place about 12,000 years ago and left huge scars in the landscape in the Pacific Northwest, and he's a great storyteller. And there were some pictures shown in the podcast. (Joe Rogan #606 with Randall Carlson.) 

 

Well, I load up FS20 and fly around the area where one of the coolest pictures in the podcast was taken, and there it was in the sim, just like in the picture on the podcast. I got to see it from a distance, from a few miles up, and then I flew threw the 600' deep, miles long scars to really get the feel of it. Then back up a few miles to take in the whole area and it's like you can see the reasoning behind why it is the way it is. This is what I was thinking about when I thought of FS20 as a great interactive geography/history tool for flight nerds. Really good stuff.

 

This is from the sim and shows where some of the flood waters drained off into the Columbia river. It's pretty close to the Google Earth pic, 35km SE of KEAT airport.

[Stoopy]

1 hour ago, CanadaOne said:

 

This is from the sim and shows where some of the flood waters drained off into the Columbia river. It's pretty close to the Google Earth pic, 35km SE of KEAT airport.

 

 

That's pretty cool.  I was just flying around the Columbia River Gorge not long ago.  Also fascinating that someone was able to stay interested in Canada for 3 hours (j/k!!!) ?