I Interviewed Jorg Neumann on Microsoft Flight Simulator for Xbox, future plans, AI traffic, shared cockpit, replays, & much more šŸ¤—

Good stuff, thanks for sharing :+1:

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Iā€™m very new. Iā€™ve only seen Jorg in videos recently (including the noclip documentary) and he struck me as a decent person.

There are always people wanting to throw stones at software developers. From what I can see, this is a decent product with a much more responsive development roadmap than most software publishers offer.

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The Xbox Series X and Series S are basically PCs. They share architecture, basic operating system and a lot more. The era in which consoles ran on exotic hardware and were anything more than pre-packaged and hyperoptimized PCs has been over for a full generation (and weā€™re in the second now).

They literally worked on the PC version, because itā€™s pretty much the same build. The gains on PC come from the fact that they had to optimize the sim to run smoothly on lower-tier hardware, which is exactly the same thing theyā€™d have had to do if they were working exclusively on PC.

Itā€™s not spin. Itā€™s simply a fact.

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I believe it is moot speculating about this until the 27th. By then, it will be easier to check what is gained and what is lost, if any for both.

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The fact that making the sim run smoothly on weaker hardware benefits the whole hardware stack isnā€™t really speculation.

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We must prepare an Oscar for him. He must have fooled everyone :joy:.

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weā€™ll see, but until then think about this (hypothetically):

  • console with a max of 1GB RAM (not the Xbox figure, just to set an hypothetical limit - see below)
  • PC with as much RAM as you want
  • the same code for both.

Fine tuning the game for 1GB RAM means it is fine tuned to never exceed 1GB RAM and stream as much from storage during gameplay, eventually further fine tuned for streaming from storage to GPU because the hardware is accelerating the direct STORAGE->GPU streaming.

Now the same code fine tuned for streaming might be running equally fine or even better on PC, but on the other hand, for PC hardware without any STORAGE->GPU streaming tech, you rather have a engine designed to pre-load much more in RAM instead.

It is not a problem and the same code could accommodate for both cases of either streaming a lot, or pre-loading a lot, depending on the hardware. However, if such choice has other ramifications to the rest of the engine and the game, in terms of texture size limitations overall, number of polygons, number of simultaneous MP aircraft visible etcā€¦ then it wonā€™t take long to realizing the full PC potential for example wouldnā€™t be reached.

If the above is concretely a factor, not just hypothetical, Iā€™d tend to think one possible way to measure this will be in looking at the amount of VRAM used on the PC on average and whether the game maximizes filling the VRAM (with some buffer for dynamic changes), or whether the game constantly shuffles textures as you go or look around (meaning it is designed with a maximum amount of simultaneous GPU buffers regardless of the a actual PC GPU capacity).

Having said this, I might just be making complete non-sense here.

[edit: typo]

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I only judge according to performance.

And what Jorg and the entire team have demonstrated thus far, is commitment to the product and everything attached to said product. And very importantly, itā€™s customers.

How has this been demonstrated?

Letā€™s evaluate all the updates implemented thus far. Letā€™s look at all the community engagement thus far.

The product is gaining overall positive momentum with every phase.

Iā€™ve been at this hobby (flight simming) hard core for decades. I havenā€™t experienced such levels of commitment by any devs in any previous iteration ever. Nor have any of the previous devs delivered such a rich product vanilla/out of the box or pumped out so many updates in such a short time frame. And there are still plenty more updates to come.

Whether Jorg smiles or not, is not the point. Itā€™s what the devs are delivering that counts.

This is just my take on the issue.

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It was Jorg Neumann who saw the capability of bringing Microsoft Flight Simulator
with the Bing Scenery from the Microsoft Azure Cloud to the PC.

He presented the idea to Microsoft.

ASOBO was chosen by Microsoft to develop FS2020.

Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft

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I enjoyed this, thankyou @Abriael . The Sim is a big part of my life. The future for the Sim is so exciting. Cheers.

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Personal Comments:

My day job for the last several years includes supporting teams whose job is to make executives more approachable and genuine through customized training and feedback. I know what it takes to turn a CEO whose background as a CPA may wow the Board with his numbers, but itā€™s a Herculean effort to turn him into ā€œEveryday Bobā€ whom you would be very comfortable sitting down with in the company cafeteria.

Jorg is the real deal - no thirty day boot camp there. itā€™s wonderful to see an exec in a high pressure leadership position who a) genuinely loves the subject of what his team is creating (as well as knows a LOT about it), and b) engages at all levels to gain Voice of the Customer and Partner feedback. Seb and Martial are also rare breeds; folks in leadership positions leading from the front - no hiding or obfuscating behind layers of deputies and exec assistants. They know the technology, all the way down to the nitty-gritty.

Like MSFS or not, the Troika as I endearingly refer to them, are the most transparent and approachable execs Iā€™ve seen in my three decades of dealing with leaders in various industries.

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Canā€™t agree more.

Part of my job is to listen in and report from every single investor conference call in the gaming industry (and this quarterā€™s string of conferences starts on Monday, please kill me :cold_sweat:)

Hearing a lot of these people talk to investors and analysts often makes me want to just bash my head against a wall.

Hearing the same people try to ā€œtalk gamerā€ when they do a customer-facing or even enthusiast press-facing event is even more unbearable.

In no way, shape, or form Jorg gives a similar vibe. Not even in the same galaxy. His passion and dedication to making this the best sim he can are absolutely genuine, and come from personal dedication as much as they do from professional reasons.

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Including the bean counters at MSā€¦he is absolutely fantastically enthusiasticā€¦but MS is after the dollars, here in lies his challengeā€¦left solely down to him with unlimited funds, his dream would come alive, albeit taking time and technology into consideration. So keep on driving Jorgā€¦and Bon Chanceā€¦

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Thanks for this - really good article and some good information about what is coming and what the challenges are in such a massive development. I have used flight simulator on and off for years, and I am blown away by how much community involvement there is and very glad that Jorg and his team have figured out how to encourage that to everyoneā€™s benefit. Jorg is very positive in his presentation, but he has not avoided saying that some things are hard, or that they have to choose to work on one feature over another.
Iā€™m looking forward to the performance improvements next week.

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Only, itā€™s a PC-centric architecture. Thatā€™s what current-gen consoles are today, quite literally. :man_shrugging:

Other than that, history isnā€™t made with woulda, coulda, shoulda. Results speak.

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Oh man. Lot to unpack in your comment but it seems like you donā€™t understand that at Jorgā€™s level, he is a facilitator for multiple teams across the world and itā€™s part of his job to be friendly and cordial when communicating across multiple cultures.

You canā€™t be a social shut in and be in his position. One would fail. This role requires good mediation skills along with the ability to motivate. That might seem ā€œfakeā€ to you but its necessary.

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Just my opinion, but he seems to say a lot without really saying anything.

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He literally delivered a revolution in flight simming. He doesnā€™t even need to say anything anymore but Iā€™m glad heā€™s so engaged with the community and media.

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Iā€™m sorry but thatā€™s a very simplistic way of looking at video game dev. That may have been true years ago, but itā€™s far more complex and dynamic these days.

I donā€™t think Jƶrg is the fakest of the CEOā€™s around, on the contrary, he is the most sincere and candid.

His smile is just because of the success of MSFS 2020 already, in particular, after a disastrous Microsoft Flight.

Despite all the glitches, bugs, problems etc no one can claim MSFS 2020 is not a success.

Heā€™s the guy behind the idea of such an amazing flight simulator and he well deserves to be happy and smiley.

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