Full Flight Simulators vs Game Simulators

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Advisor? Yes.
But you wouldn’t want a scientist without knowledge about politics being the leader of a country.

Experts have expertise in their own matter, but that is usually not enough to say they can do everything better.

If I’d want to develop a weather model, I’d ask meteorologists, not pilots. And Asobo is working with meteoblue.

Asobo is in direct contact to many aviation experts (not only pilots) and are taking flying lessons themselves. I’m not sure what the issue is with that approach.

Knowing things does not always translate in perfect implementation/simulation (you need certain simplifications/abstractions in simulators) and that’s a matter to criticize for sure.
Saying pilots should be first in command is simply wrong for an IT project.

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All I am saying is the a voice that has power, should be part of the team. I would feel better represented.

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disagreeing with this a little bit. both pilots and developers are needed. and the pilots should have some knowledge of flight model and systems programming.

Totally agree with this. well said.

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I would rather like to BE represented than to FEEL represented :slight_smile: I don’t care about words on how well or how bad some people on the project are.
In the end, I’d like the sim to be developed in the direction I prefer it to. But asking 10 people, you get 11 opinions on where that should be (at least in terms of priorities).

I think with the pending XBox release, there was quite some pressure on a few things leading to the release: Visuals, performance and content.
This priority might not represent the simming aspect of the sim but was/is crucial to a financial success of it.
Now with the major releases out of the way, I hope they can spend the time to fix/improve the simulational aspects of it.

In my opinion, there is no lack of knowledge, but a lack of priority so far in terms of the simulational aspects.

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If I’d want to develop a weather model, I’d ask meteorologists, not pilots. And Asobo is working with meteoblue.

u fail to understand, weather involves so much more then just pulling data from a source. Its what I do with that data that matters. For example, wind data needs to go to ATC so they can tell u the correct runway. Even now, I am told to go to downwind runway to takeoff. There is more but it’s lapse in lot of these resources communication that bothers me.

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I think you fail to understand that generalizing isn’t the way to go.
Exactly this is why “weather” isn’t “weather”. For the flight model (and it’s influence from weather) you might want to involve engineers, for ATC (ATIS, runway directions etc.) you might want to involve aviation experts or ATC personnel.
But to simulate weather itself, you need to have meteorologists that can explain how clouds, winds, temperatures etc. develop.
That might be partially knowledge that pilots do have too, but it’s not the first group I’d ask to model weather in general.

That’s not the weather’s fault but the ingame ATC/AI. Totally separate topic. It just uses the weather data, but it’s not weather itself.

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29

“Flight simulator” is probably a poor choice of words, even for the multi-million dollar “simulators”. “Procedure trainer” is more accurate. I have flown a number of real world military simulators; B-52, KC-135, T-45 and most recently the F/A-18C. The only thing that was truly realistic was that you are sitting in a full scale mockup of the cockpit. You learn where all the switches and controls are and what they do. The graphics outside where horrible. But if you really want to learn how to fly in the airspace system, MSFS allows you to do that. Basic skills like pilotage, dead reckoning, tracking a VOR radial and pattern procedures are all possible. IFR navigation, holding pattern entry and how to fly an instrument approach are all possible. Pilots in training can benefit by replicating a flight in the sim before they go out and do it in the real world.

The problem is that there are a lot of people out there who have never flown an airplane before in their life that are jumping into complex aircraft and expecting to be able to fly it right off the bat. Sorry to be a killjoy, but it doesn’t work that way. If you don’t learn the basic skills first you are bound to be disappointed.

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30

As a pilot, I just want to takeoff from the right runway. This is first and foremost. They don’t have this msfs correct from day one on this matter hence my frustrations. How can develop other stuff when u can’t fix BASIC, basic things that matter. I can careless if it’s ATC or flight model, or patty cake, just give us a working environment.

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I did 30 years in IT, and IMHO, project managers are a waste of money. Give me a room full of techies any day, and I’ll build anything you want. I started in IT when there was no such thing as project managers, so I have my biases. :sunglasses:

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32

As I wrote earlier: Priorities, not necessarily a lack of expertise.

I hope your room contains some knowledgeable people AND the users AND someone paying that as well, otherwise you basically ignore all stakeholders. You get software developped much quicker, but the result will be somewhere between roughly matching and useless.
I have my doubts about project managers as well, since there are a LOT of PMs that don’t really help. But as a developer/engineer, I also need someone else to look for the budget, for the timelines etc.

I rest my case, a pilot as a project lead (“first in command”) would be a bad choice (and this is the claim we came from into this discussion).

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33

Things have definitely changed. My experience in the last 20 - 25 years is not if there is project/product/team management, but who :wink:

@Coppersens Can i do a mass agree/like on posts?

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34

Let me clarify, I apologize saying pilot should be the leader, that is my bias, lol. I guess I just don’t get why they can’t fix some basic things in the sim. We pilots just want to help the development. Sure would love to take them for a spin or two

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35

About 4 weeks ago I installed X-Plane to compare it with the MS sim.
With the few airplanes I tried, I did’nt feel any difference at all in
the quality of the airplane behavior !!
Since then I have never touched X-plane.

Bye, walter

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36

This is Why we invested in the product. Enjoy getting a top down fly over view of the land masses. Only that. That’s is if my Windows don’t freeze up like earlier version of MSFS 2020 and a little more things that are problematic. Regardless my family love the fly over visuals over certain areas around our great earth . Lol

As for reality nope. In real life , Even being a passenger on a airliner is a challenge at times. Especially during severe air turbulence ,storms, ear popping / pressure and more feeling the force pushing on your body as the jet takes off. That’s real just being a passenger. Imagine. So…. just virtual flight can’t come close . Oh unless I without warning and not being prepared for the crash I accidentally tip my computer chair backwards too far and hit the floor while flight SIMMING . Lol.

Otherwise , the real deal can be compared to driving a car , there is so much more to consider when learning to drive; like dealing with road rage drivers and more. Oh here is one other comparison; big difference driving to work and or driving 90 mph in a consumer grade sports car verses a Race Car in Indianapolis traveling at much greater speeds . So much difference experience.

Be realistic this simulation is more of a virtually get familiar with the earths terrain . Even that is not accurate but at least I/ and family get an idea of what Hawaii looks like before we go there . But anyway that is all it is. It’s better than looking at a still satellite image picture via B-Maps , M- quest and G-Maps .

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37

Also “vs pc tweaking simulator” :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Granted, nothing wrong with that.

It’s just that the forum seems to be full of people who could create a better sim, be a better project manager, do everything right AND have the money to do so.
With this context it’s sometimes hard to not misunderstand posts :slight_smile:

There’s a lot that Asobo is doing to catch up with the development and having key players taking flying lessons themselves is a big deal in terms of dedication, imho.
Let’s hope Microsoft gets their management together and puts the focus into the right direction for the sim to gain better core shape overall (stability, flight model etc.) and a better environment for 3rd party developers.

Oh and in terms of ingame ATC: Since you’re a pilot in real life, you should be good to go for VATSIM or PilotsEdge. It’s worth a try!

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39

Well, I am a pilot, and I fly the absolutely wonderful DC Designs Stearman for the most part. I’ve never flown the real one, but it feels pretty darn good to me. Could it get better, yes, will it get better, yes. Is MSFS2020 a flight simulator, yes. It’s also a darn good terrain simulator, with room for improvement. :sunglasses:

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So now it’s not the old x-plane versus fsx but the x-plane versus msfs story ending in a pro x-plane commercial. New jacket old story.

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41

The major thing is, simulation. These are the topics all sim’s have problems with if there is a limited set of resources, our machines.

Realistic simulations just does not exist, period, unfortunately.

Weather model, it takes a massive farm, just to simulate, and even then it takes time before it can be visualized. Not talking prediction, as that is just pumping some numbers into the simulation. Hence, it does not even matter if it’s current parameters or predicted ones.

So, to make it work in our simple misserable little puny machines (my god, a 5950X or whatever 10/11th gen proc is maybe just a 0.01% considering those farms), a lot of parameters need to be simplified and worked around with. It’s impossible to go realistic, it has to feel realistic, which is completely different, good luck with 90% less data.

Hence the above is inherrently coupled with the flight model. Go realistic? calculate every rivet’s effect, impossible. Again good luck with this limited amount of data.

All the data is so extremely limited, and there is just so much you can do, especially in our puny, but in our opinion beavy, machines.

Again, it’s all limited, which means corners needs to be cut, in all sims. Some are there already for whatever years, and still struggling…

Saying mfs is build on top of fsx just does not hold up. It was build with what was available then (compute power), advancing technology (allthough not different from then but more powerfull and faster, it’s not like we all work with qubit’s in our machines, right?) provides new possibilities. Having a starting point does not say that starting point is defining outcome, because it never is.

That one sim is better in certain parts then others is because of the learning process, we also could not walk when we were catapulted from the womb, we have also not been able to professionalise in parts without learning. It feels like Asobo with MFS are still in the younger ages where maturity still needs to kick in, but they are getting help, just like you and me when learning (not taking marketplace into account, that would i think be a different story though).

Just my 0.00001 cents.

Cheers!

P.S. Not talking about obvious bugs like the CTD’s etc, only the simulation factor.

Edit: Those %$*@$$@ typos.
Edit 2: Added the P.S.

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42

Mate! Don’t knock Goat Simulator.
Many people want to simulate goats and as the only goat sim on the market it’s about as realistic as you can get right now!

The bonus of goat simulator is that you don’t need lawnmower simulator as the goats can take care of the grass.

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