IMHO…Looking at the trailer closely. You can some similarities to the rendering in “A PLAGUE TALE: REQUIEM”. Quite clearly the Visual engine has had an upgrade with benefits of in house development of other titles.
Or, as I noted, the benefit of the Marketing team’s video artists, just as they did for the initial trailers for 2020…
My point is… We don’t know anything about what we’re seeing, not until they tell us what to expect, which we’ll take with a grain of salt. It’s possible the product is almost finished, so that’s actual live footage… If so, why are they waiting a year to release it? More likely, unless they say otherwise, it’s an “artist’s rendering”.
So, take it for what it is, a teaser trailer. Speculate all we want… 
I prefer to look at the glass as half full… Does it not say in game footage?
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So… questions, I’m not up on the latest in Game Graphics development:
Is “Plague Tale” an Asobo product? (Why did you say that if not? question, not a judgement, I don’t know anything about that product)
Is there a new engine out there Asobo has been working on, or that Asobo would use? My assumption is the graphics engine in MSFS is Asobo’s work, not a general graphics engine they are applying…?
I think what you’re saying is, that you think Asobo has developed a new graphics engine that’s capable of more detail than the one in 2020?
I could then understand why they are releasing a new product if that’s the case, though I think there are other reasons to call this product “new”, even if it’s the same engine with new features. Personally, it didn’t look any different to me than watching 2020, but I’m not that up on graphics or noticing details, so what I saw doesn’t mean anything. And, I could see being able to run the same graphics model definitions in a new engine, so I could see compatibility.
The biggest problem I have with it being a new graphics engine is, there just hasn’t been enough time, and it’s expected to run on existing systems.
Raytracing is like films in 3D and VR. It will not become mainstream unless it’s something really groundbreaking or it’s cheap to implement performance-wise.
I’m sure as GPU performance advances, RT will become a no-brainer but right now SSR achieve almost the same results with orders of magnitude better performance.
I had an RTX GPU for years and I only played one game with RT (and DLSS to recoup the lost performance) but I quickly disabled RT and went with standard SSR which looked 99% the same and allowed me to play in crisp 4k. I switched to an AMD GPU as the RT “tax” from Nvidia is not worth it.
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The Asobo graphics engine is used on more than just MSFS. Its an in house engine under continual development. A plagues Tale:Requiem is an Asobo developed game released Oct 2022.
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When I looked it up, it looks like it’s published by Focus Entertainment, so I didn’t know if Asobo was involved. I’ll check it out…
Have you played it? Do you think 2024 will still be “whole world” based? It seems to have to be since you can be an airline pilot which I assume is long distances.
I wonder what the limitations of this engine are compared to 2020? Are there any?
What’s different?
Edit:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Engine:Zouna
It’s the same engine as in 2020
Seems to me what’s new in 2024 will be the gameplay AI, as you noted, likely lifted from Requiem.
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Yes it will be whole world. Why wouldn’t it?
Of course the its same engine. Its an evolved engine, Not new.
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One could say that this is the case today with MSFS 2020. We see the sim running probably every week but if you were to go back to the 1st release of MSFS 2020 and compare it to what it is today there would be a huge difference. We just don’t see it - sorta like can’t see the forest for the trees. 
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Ah… I get it; as you note, a misinterpretation of the statement you quote (an assumption that 2020 isn’t powered by the same engine (which it is)).
What I do think will be “new” to 2024 that’s not in 2020 is the Gameplay AI, which I bet, as somebody else noted, was developed for “A Plague’s Tale:Requiem” and other games. We can’t say now, but it seems logical and natural to combine Flight Sim and Third Person Action/Adventure genre’s.
Blockbuster in the making… The new Halo.
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I won’t 100% disagree with you here, but I bet the number of people working on the MSFS project since 2016 is now bigger than the group working on a Plague Tale.
Because of that I believe they are actually doing the things the other way around. Things made for MSFS will be used on other games. I mean, they are improving the engine for MSFS and those improvements are brought to the other games. Why? For a simple reason: developing a simulator is harder than an action games, hence why it needs specific solutions for specific problems. And when they find something really good, they can port that to other games.
But still, the engine is pretty much tweaked for a flight simulator (based on what I heard them saying on those 3 years and of course my gut feeling). It’s not something can go back forth without customizing for the specific game they will use.
I’m sorry, which engine are we speaking about here?
I have said many times that MSFS and A Plague’s Tale use the same graphics engine, Asobo Studio Engine, or Zouna.
What I saw in the trailer is there’s going to be a lot of humans in 2024. 2020 has a few human models, but not many. What I’m projecting is that 2024 is going to add the ability to interact with aircraft in the same way that players interact in the game in A Plague’s Tale:Requiem (released last October, 2022), which I assume is AI based, and that there will be other AI humans that interact with the player as well, like,… an Action/Adventure game (Like A Plague’s Tale). It’s that Action/Adventure engine that is what I see as being a new tool shall we say in FS2024. If you review the link I keep posting of all the games Asobo has developed around the graphics engine used in 2020, you’ll understand what I mean.
IOW, yes, I agree with you, the graphics engine in 2020 built off of previous games, and subsequent games have built off of Asobo’s experience developing 2020 and other games…
If you check, Asobo has been working on this engine since 2004…
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Engine:Zouna
And I want to make sure it’s known I only discovered this because @BAW303 mentioned it to me and I researched what he said. He’s the one who pointed out the similarities, and I wholeheartedly agree.
This was the scene that really caught my eye with regard to reflections/Ray Tracing.
Ok, now it makes more sense. The Fuel game was made with Zouna, and they’ve confirmed on one of their interviews (I think it was Seb) MSFS’ engine was based in the same engine they used on Fuel. But, even so, They’ve tweaked a lot the engine to make it possible to run MSFS as intendend. No other of their games is so complex (I’m saying all of that based on one of their first interviews). That said, this is the reason I think MSFS’ development contributed more to the features they are using on other games than the other way around.
Plague’s Tale is newer, They’ve started working on MSFS in 2016, they’ve probably worked on both at the same time, so I was confused with the timming here.
Well, Plague’s Tale bookended MSFS… It’s highly likely, as someone else mentioned, Plague’s Tale:Innocence caught MS’s attention, and then Plague’s Tale:Requiem gained a lot from MSFS, and now, there’s a good chance the Action/Adventure advances are coming to MSFS in FS2024. 'Tis an interelated ecosystem.
Count me out … I’m not upgading my rig just for more accurate reflections
And the horizon line bug is still present in the 2024 trailer, so it seems unlikely it’s using a whole new rendering methodology (of course Ray Tracing can be applied separately to reflections vs shadows vs global illumination, etc so it doesn’t mean something wouldn’t be using RT in some more limited manner).
- Asobo said they are always looking at how Ray Tracing might be implemented to improve performance and at the same time make the sim look better.
- Since it’s not likely Ray Tracing is going to improve performance at this time, the chances of it being a mainline thing are pretty small. They might eventually give us a beta implementation like DX12 though.
Will it be a reason for 2024, I highly doubt it.
RT is heavy not only for GPU but also for CPU, given how poorly this sim manages CPU power, RT will probably never appear in this simulator.