I recently gave a talk about past, present, future of MSFS at Nerd Nite Tokyo, titled “From Flight Sim to Digital Twin: The Evolution of MSFS”
Water Simulation was the key point of the Future aspect when I project out to what would be really cool to have by 2030, given how far we’ve come over 40+ years.
Oceans cover ~70% of the Earth’s surface, and have plateaus, valleys, plains, mountains, and trenches that dwarf many land equivalents.
The technology to create all the above ground environment can also be used (pretty much) to do underwater and vehicle wise it’s all fluid mechanics. Who said flight only has to be above the surface?
I should clean the slides up and release them, or maybe make a short video.
Here’s a few slides from the end bit.
Who recognizes this little machine?
Can you hear that theme song playing yet?
At this time, I would hope to have see object on the water, (ie amphibian aircraft) bob up and down, interacting with the water surface, as opposed to being fixed at mean sea level. Most other “sims” and games have manage to achieve this without a lot of fuss and fanfare.,
There’s some research finally being done on hi-fidelity water simulation for large scale open worlds, as opposed to the simple immovable planes they have now. From 2023 GDC:
Advanced Graphics Summit: Open-World Water Rendering and Real-Time Simulation
Takeaway
Attendees will be presented with a unified solution for the creation of large water bodies in open-world games, a set of beneficial tools for artists to produce high-fidelity water scenes, and a demonstration of their application.
Water has such an impact on the landscape, along with fire.
That would be true VFR if floods etc were modelled properly.
I perhaps have an 1 hour of flight time in the Pelican, if that, and havent touched it ever again in a loooong time. Nor do I plan to do so.
I bet a cross promotion like that helps upkeeping the sim, but as far as I’m concerned I can’t help but feel that the development time would have been spent better on a real life aircraft.
If its free I will give it a try, but I doubt it will get more than an hour of use either.
I’m someone who could be called a “serious simmer”, lots of add ons, lots of hours spent on high end aircraft for over a decade or three across many sims. However ever since I saw Dune I’ve really wanted to see a 'thopter in MSFS especially if the locations where it was shot has some updated high resolution content.
It’s also good for us all if the appeal is broad and pays for development and operations, I can’t wait for this!!
what do you mean? people have been requesting a career mode since day one of the PC sim release. Xbox version wasn’t even a thing.
There’s also tons of career addons already, and they’ve been prevalent in simming forever. Pretty much the same thing as flying in a VA that a lot of ‘serious simmers’ engage in. FSEconomy has been a thing for over a decade as well.
Folks - there’s some really fascinating branches in this conversation, but the thread is specifically about the Dune Expansion coming in November. Let’s kindly please get back on track. Thank you.
We don’t expect every aircraft we release to be enjoyed by every simmer. I know of at least one player (@Edorin5981) who loves the Pelican and flies it literally every week during our Community Fly-In Friday events. Likewise, I personally have zero flying hours in the Airbus A310 we released with the 40th Anniversary Edition, and it holds absolutely no interest to me. That certainly doesn’t mean other simmers shouldn’t be able to enjoy it just because it’s not my personal cup of tea, though.
I think there’s close to fifty first-party aircraft available to all players in the base sim (including the free GotY and 40th Anniversary updates), plus around 15 Local Legends, Famous Flyers, and Expert Series planes. Of those, two are speculative aircraft from popular science fiction franchises (Halo Pelican and Dune Ornithopter). I think there’s certainly room in Microsoft Flight Simulator for a small number of novel aircraft like this, especially since simulating real planes clearly represents the vast majority of our released aircraft.
That’s fair enough. I mean, I did a screenshot with a freeware Tie Fighter as well, while flying over the dam (that’s “dam” without an N ) location that was used on the show Andor. That’s not exactly a real life aircraft either, or so I’ve heard.
I guess it’s just me being greedy for more aircraft that I really want. And by the way: Dune is awesome, so there is that. Can’t wait for Part II.
I personally have no issue with such optional updates, they arrive, but never get to land on my pc and stays on a holding pattern in the content manager for the eternity. But i would love to NOT having their shadow plaguing the welcome screen front and centre for months. Like the Maveric expansion pack screenshot does. Please have an option so that if I don’t download it, I don’t get reminded of it every time I launch the sim. I know you probably can’t do that yourself, but please forward this to the concerned person. Okthxbye.
I know off topic, but this I have to agree with. Even I am a bit concerned about the new sim and its potential side effects on my simming hobby, because we don’t have enough information yet, but I was very surprised to see the reaction toward career mode focus in the trailer. I though people wanted career mode since the start and were a bit disappointed when the 40th anniversary missions turned out to be not so great. But this much negative reaction towards the career mode is making me wonder if we simmers as a group really know what we want!! This thing will be very good addition to our xbox brethren if done properly. Even we PC snobs may end up liking it. But atleast Xbox simmers will have some option of career mode, since they cannot use the tools like FSEconomy, NeoFly, airhauler etc.
Who said you can’t have both?
I find Dune expansion as potentially nice distraction from all the airliners I fly over and over again. Is there anything wrong with that? You don’t want it, you don’t fly it.
As a serious real pro sim simulator flightsim simmer I welcome Dune insect planes, Tom Cruise, Hot Wheels Lego Barbie DLCs and Minecraft Fornite goodies. They attract normal people into the genre which ultimately pays the bills so we can get A310s, helicopters and a 767 by PMDG in the default sim (by dec 2024 most probably). Disney wins and we win too.
Cool! Another thing to be outraged over lol.
I won’t download this mod but whoever likes to fly it I wish them a lot of fun and good times.
Hopefully we’ll get Santa’s sleigh by the end of the year. That one I will fly.
It’s exiting that we’re getting movie aircraft I hope they do an Independence Day movies dlc next because those aircraft from the second movie and small ufos would be fun to fly around
) location that was used on the show Andor. That’s not exactly a real life aircraft either, or so I’ve heard. 