With something that is MSFS. The level of detail, the sheer experience, the thrill of flying in a sim so real to life is a testimony to Microsoft and their developers.
We see boats, ships, shadows of our planes on the water. Planes flying next to us. We see mountains, terrain and cities so real to life. We see clouds, rain, thunder, snow, animals and even cars heading along a highway. it’s an absolute masterpiece.
Well done Microsoft and all involved
Wow just wow
I do not accept your postulation that we are “blessed”. That’s a quasi-religious view that I find absurd.
What really happened is a major firm and a bunch of people entered code into a computer and came up with something that resembles a flying object.
And it is still flawed and remains under intense development.
And I accept it as a blessing. Thanks for your post Remote Saturn!
It does blow my mind. Its a breath taking bit of software. I know a few people who work as games developers and they’re in awe of Asobo have achieved with the sim. No one seriously thought this was achievable at the moment, which is partly why I think it is clearly on the cutting edge of whats possible, and has issues accordingly.
I think it was meant as a general term and observation and perhaps not meant to be taken in its literal religious sense?
Tidied for the pedantic amongst us
Merriam-Webster Essential meaning of blessed
2 very welcome, pleasant, or appreciated. “The rain brought blessed relief from the heat.”
Thank you Microsoft, I’m blessed!
Ohh, does anyone feel uncomfortable when i talk about the forefathers of the technology used in the FS, or why was my post marked?
What’s the problem, the patent has expired.
It’s interesting to compare MSFS to the latest spiderman game which recreates New York City to an amazing level of accuracy. Walking around at street level everything is almost exactly matching. Even street murals are recreated on walls.
Now MSFS could not possibly gather the resources to do this on a global scale. They use AI to approximate buildings, trees and terrain based in aerial photography. Now this works pretty well when you are looking at it from over 500 feet but once you get down to ground level things start looking a bit sketchy.
Now for a flying simulator I’m pretty blown away by the view from 500+ feet and I shouldn’t expect perfection at ground level…
I see street level perfection improving over time and who knows what’s possible in 10 or 20 years.
For now maybe there is a way for the folks who developed the spiderman game to share their 3d models with Asobo so we can have a truly immersive experience.
Imagine arriving in your Spiderman Jet at Lagardia and catching a cab into NYC through perfectly realistic streets. Having dinner at the Waldorf hotel… sorry Mary Jane got to run ! My spidey sense tells me a crime is being commited…
Yes. I kind of like it. A worldscale flight sim that uses a satellite data texture (and is getting better with the elevation data)
It’s a great idea and it’s been done quite well.
But are we lucky? Are we blessed?
As gamers in general I fear not. We are in fact cursed to live in an age where games software developers have managed to convince consumers to pay full price for unfinished software…and say thank you.
MSFS2020 isn’t the only title that has done this, hell it’s probably not even the worst offender.
(No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk, pretty much everything that Bethesda makes all spring to mind and will Star Citizen ever be finished?)
I even read a post on this very forum where somebody defended the Reno DLC pricing because Asobo needed continued revenue to fix the bugs and add functionality to the base game.
That’s where we are as gamers right now.
Accepting developers that release unfinished products and now we are evolving to a point where we will say “thank you” when they charge us for a bugfix patch.
So are we blessed? Lucky?
On one hand I agree with you.
On the other, there are entitled brats who slammed Asobo because the AI ferries didn’t match the real world timetables. Or who will call not having real airline liveries on AI models or AI cars passing through each other on the roads ‘game breaking’.
To release a game of this magnitude and complexity, and ensure it was 100% bug-free before launch would take years, even decades. By which time it would be out of date and need more years of development and further bug fixes to update. Repeat ad infinium. You can’t have your cake and eat it.
No-one is forced to buy the game, and as you say yourself, it is just the way of the industry now for games to be released at 80% and tidied up afterwards - so no-one should be surprised that this was the case here.
What really happened is the Microsoft saw they could leverage new advances in Technology, to resurrect their MSFS Franchise, and make a boat load of money for their shareholders, as well as showcasing of some their new technological advances.
Good for Gamers
OK for Flight Simmers
Great for Microsoft Shareholders
FANTASTIC for Microsoft.
I’m happy it happened, but not so happy the direction it is going at the moment, but accept I am insignificant in the big picture !!
It is, however, a very FUN roller coaster ride.
If Microsoft played it safe and waited till software was 100% ready we would all be using green screens connected to IBM mainframes.
Hats off to MICROSOFT and Asobo for taking a risk on an epic project… replicating the planet ! Oh and there is some flying too I
I look forward to seeing how this platform improves over the next 10 years…
Plenty of titles which pushed the envelope in terms of what was possible with the technology available at the time managed to do so and also to release as fully developed games.
Pushing the envelope/doing something that has never been done before/developing ways of doing things that have never been done before from scratch is not uncommon in the history of games development.
Sadly we are now passing through a period where actually finishing a product and then releasing it has been replaced by releasing an unfinished product.
(Unfortunately true in some other industries also)
I sincerely hope we aren’t moving into an era where bugfixes and missing functionality are added later as paid for DLC but it sometimes feels like we may already be there.
“What really happened is a major firm and a bunch of people entered code into a computer and came up with something that resembles a flying object.”
Don’t want to be polemic, but you think that putting together a bunch of people, doing some coding, will produce so easily such a result? It’s like saying we have this product with just a click!
Excuse me but I don’t agree with you and I find your comment not respectful for the very hard work those people are doing for more than a year now.
What we have in our hands, even if it’s not polished and finished, is a mix of talented people who put together high-end technology to achieve a unique result. Is not only coding here, you have 3D modelling, lighting, environment simulation, natural forces, technical knowledge of everything is simulated in this game and you have to put all this together in a real time engine and make it work!
Probably you can’t understand how much effort is needed to produce such results. Think about it…
[warning: this post contains humour and sarcasm] 
Yes, my friends and fellow simmers, we are indeed blessed. So please join me in a moment of reverence and respect as I lay this NES at the foot of the international memorial for forgotten programmers and semiconductor designers: Please accept our gratitude and thanks - Now join me at the post-memorial ‘ok boomer’ subreddit as we continue our tribute by fighting over which generation of MSFS is the most: ‘hardcore’.
I think you have unrealistic expectations, I’m afraid. Just because something was cutting edge in 1990 doesn’t mean it is of comparable complexity as something that was cutting edge in 2020. Pong blew everyone socks off in 1972 and was developed by one guy. Do you think one person could have whipped up MSFS with the same effort?
Perhaps you could share which bug fixes and missing functionality have been released or announced as paid for DLC? It may feel that way to you, but that is certainly not the case in reality.
Yeah, we’re lucky and we’re blessed. I don’t feel I have to back that up with a long spiel because it speaks for itself.
Get rid of that old pc you have mate.
Continuous Updates are what keeps the sim alive.
Do you rather FSX? Buggy, buggy release followed by only 2 minor updates, then Nothing.
Give me updates. Give me new content. Give me scenery gateway so community can improve.
And I, for one at least, am happy to be getting immense enjoyment out of the time I spend in the sim, bugs and all. Actually the improvement journey since launch is pretty incredible and has been a joy to be part of.
