I’m a PC user and I’m over-the-moon stoked by what I have with this sim and I’ve got the top end hardware available right now.
What, exactly, am I missing because of the Xbox, again?
If it wasn’t for the Xbox, the massive amount of funding from Marketplace sales (and other market share reasons) wouldn’t be there to drive this sim’s development forward for all of us.
I’m thankful for the Xbox, because without it I’d bet Microsoft would have told Jörg, “No.” when he approached them about resurrecting this franchise.
I’m reading on the Blackbird thread, the opposite to what is being stated here — they are not going to release an aircraft for Xbox because they cannot do on it what is needed for it to work on Xbox. That is the total opposite to reducing fidelity for the sake of the Xbox. That’s a PC win.
I understood RSR a couple of months ago that they can NOT release different version per platform. (Well, Mathijs now explained it economically but honestly, what he said contradicts RSR completely and I almost exclusively remember him to reason with economics.) RSR wrote that they couldn‘t release two different versions due to MS regulations. It was a discussion when they revealed their plans how to sell the extra liveries to xBox users. By his argumentation they have to release different BUILDS of the SAME ADDON to make the difference between PC and XBox.
I share the OP‘s thoughts. I‘m not entirely sure if it‘s true now but I fear that we‘ll lose a lot of possible complexity and potential progress in favour of a inferior platform because of higher sales expectations.
Please note that this is NO accusation against XBox users. It‘s important to point that out in this forum. And economically it makes a lot of sense to focus on the larger revenue. This is IF what RSR wrote is true. I don‘t trust him anymore that much.
The 737 livery package thing is certainly confusing. There are livery packs for various aircraft in the sim that have far more liveries than they are supplying in each of their packs and the prices have been lower, too.
I just remembered, too, that there are Enhanced versions available of the DC-3, A310, TBM 930 and Longitude – all of which are only available on PC. Even Microsoft is supporting improved textures and fidelity on PC over Xbox with aircraft in the base and Premium Deluxe versions of the sim.
They are building a new version of MSFS for us to address many of the shortcomings of this current iteration simply so they can make the whole experience better. My understanding is the current platform has inherent issues due to how it was constructed from legacy code that has caused this iteration of the sim to be difficult to improve and add feature sets without having to compromise performance elsewhere to do so.
Stay positive, folks. There is much to be excited about here.
Well at least I’m not the only one harbouring a bit of optimism…
Some devs don’t want the hassle of separate products for separate platforms so choose a happy medium — if anyone can make a business case for NOT doing this, go right ahead…
The PC always wins this battle. But let’s clear one thing up: there are many PCs that, spec-wise, are not as powerful as the Series X — this whole argument is based on high-end machines which, I dare say, are the minority. I fail to see what’s not to like about a system that costs a fraction of the price of a top-end PC yet offers 90% of the functionality.
The sim wouldn’t have made it past its 2020 iteration without support from the Xbox community. So it’s only fair that that system is taken into account by third party devs — many of whom DO separately optimise for the console. The PMDG 737 features lower-res textures than its PC counterpart. Likewise the JF Vulcan. In fact, most aircraft and airports feature texture reductions on Xbox. I wonder when the Fenix 320 will appear on console? Oh… never, because the third-party mod that it requires will inherently never be available.
Let me ask this: what immersion are you missing when you claim that Xboxers are basically holding back PC products? Do planes on the different platforms somehow fly differently? How close do you have to get to even notice the resolution reduction?
Sounds like a placebo effect to me; a false perception.
All of us benefit. If devs overdo poly count then the game-engine on any platform is going to falter.
The game engine, in its current iteration, will falter if pushed too hard. There was little point to improving this engine to benefit from greater loads, hence the point of moving on to the 2024 iteration of the sim.
Video games are like race cars — they push the very limits of performance and are constant compromises in one area to allow for gains in another. At some stage you reach the limits of a design discipline and have to redesign and build a new iteration to foster more performance gains all around.
I am fairly convinced that MS had no idea that Flight Simulator 2020 was going to be this big of a hit (and revenue generator) and they had to utilize FSX as a basis for 2020 in order to be allowed the funding for development. In essence, it was a gamble to see what happened success-wise.
Now that the proof of concept has hit it out of the park, an improved development strategy can be implemented and provide a better foundation for the future of this sim.
I see this franchise, if it holds in popularity, being like a Forza Motorsport “forever” sim rather than one with defined versions.
The Xbox isn’t holding this sim back, the sim is holding this sim back. That’s why they are moving on from it.
That is incorrect, we just did not insert the newer builds with the UTF. There are no two versions, and we do not plan two versions.
If modeling is done to the latest standards, there are very few limitations between the two platforms. But this means you must do all the work using game standards and tools and forget anything from P3D. It’s a very different graphics engine. But you have to be extremely frugal with your polygons. Nothing new, of course; if it is done using outdated standards or without a solid understanding of modern modeling, framerates will be low on moderate PC hardware and Xbox alike.
What point do you consider ‘overdone’?
Models that won’t run well on Xbox?
Models that won’t run well on minimum spec PC’s?
Models that won’t run well on mid-range PC’s?
Models that won’t run well on the most powerful PC’s?
I know my system’s limitations. There are some models I have a hard time with that others do not. I avoid them. On occasion, I’ve spent money on ones that tank my performance before letting enough reviews happen. My mistake. One I don’t expect anyone to give up fidelity to rectify.
I really don’t think there are valid reasons for complaint, most in the original and following posts have been debunked, even by the devs themselves (I imagine they have a bit of an inkling given they develop the planes).
The twin otter was made to be low spec for better performance on Xbox for example no glass on instruments and low poly all over the place and then not even released on Xbox.
I think MS have made a lot of improvement on memory usage on console since early 2022. The majority of issues faced by xbox now plagues mostly the series S and is correlated to the amount of unoptimised 3rd party airports one has installed.