I couldn’t ask for better! Besides, there is no competition at this level. Fantastic I really couldn’t ask for more. Just a little more optimisation and a few bug fixes and then, it flies by. Thank you Asobo and Microsoft! Thank you very much.
No attack intended. A discussion.
FYI, my first paragraph was directly responding to your statement, Subsequent statements make no reference to you and reference “many users”. Simply general points and observations.
Need to clear a couple things however.
Although A/M has denied access to core components there are plenty of 3rd party options to improve your MSFS experience. Weather add like Rex Weather, ATC alternatives, both live and simulated abound. You can even replace the pushback communication and talk to the ramp rat directly if you choose. I just had someone point out a Live Traffic alternative. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Whether or not these are hacked and poorly done is for each to decide on their own but they do in fact exist.
PMDG themselves have expressed concern about the elimination of modules. I have no idea what your background in programming is so I won’t get into what is easy and what isn’t, but I do know from experience that having to rewrite code into WASM that was previously handled by both system and custom libraries is a huge undertaking. Many of the premiere study level aircraft have depended on modules and external libraries to provide their unprecedented functionality.
For the most part, I think we are in agreement on many aspects of this sim and its development. Asobo is not jealously guarding the flight model because they don’t want outside interference. They are guarding it because, if I am understanding the underlying coding correctly, this flight model is not aircraft specific. This is an attempt to emulate what Seamus Blackley created for Flight Unlimited. Although there are individual parameters that are adjusted in the aircraft model, the goal is to have that model flying through an environment model instead. Those individual aircraft parameters are wide open in the SDK. The environment model is inaccessible, as it should be. Eventually I am sure that Asobo will get the base model tuned and then you can adjust your aircraft to respond in that environment any way you would like.
Some things will likely stay forever out of the 3rd party developers realm. Anything that carries licensing agreements for example. Garmin is but one example. Anyone can create an approximation but Garmin will likely never release full functionality as long as they are selling the official trainer software. Don’t blame them.
So you see, we are making progress. For some, like yourself, it may seem slow. Way back, I assisted in the development of a Trimble GPS for FS? (I forget which version) It was a combination of a bitmap, some simple coding, and a .DLL that took months to perfect. If we had to create that gauge today using WASM I wouldn’t even look at the old library code. It would take months, again. I would start from scratch. Debugging ported code, or any code you wrote 25 years ago, is a nightmare. I am sure that the new programmers have no interest in building a complex airliner from old code. It will take time but we will get the premiere sim along with the premiere adds. Patience.
4 Likes
Fair enough.
While that is true, it’s a step back from previous simulators. Those tools exist for them too, but they are more advanced because the simulator permits them.
That is true, and in my opinion it is one of the shortcomings of WASM. While the intention was for it to facilitate porting over code from FSX and P3D, I have seen little evidence that any developer is actually doing that. And you seem to agree:
I don’t know exactly why they’re doing it (although i do have my opinions…). The best indication as to what’s going on has been from Mat of WorkingTitle. According to him, the intention is to centralize the flight model, rather than having many developers each with proprietary code. To that i say what i have said before: Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen in the long run. But i do know where i would personally place my bet.
Garmin are not selling the trainer software. The GNS530 and GTN750 trainers are available for free. Anyone can go on Garmin’s website and download them. And they have been used to great effect in FSX, P3D, and X-Plane in order to deliver high quality study level simulations of the real units, with the X-Plane versions being FAA certified in some instances, as far as i understand.
This isn’t necessarily about the rate of progress. I’ve been a long standing customer of PMDG, i know what it means to wait a long time for a release. This is about restricting developer access to the platform, something which i believe to be detrimental to the community as a whole.
Well… here’s my question. Which of these two scenarios do you consider to be more favourable for the community, and why:
- In x years’ time Asobo develop the perfect flight model and developers can easily create study level aircraft.
- In x years’ time Asobo develop the perfect flight model and developers can easily create study level aircraft. And until Asobo develop that flight model, those developers that have the know-how are free to create their own flight models.
2 Likes
Would have to be my first choice. I would much prefer a module approach. That said, I had Flight Unlimited on a 286 computer. I have never flown a more accurate simulation. If we allow developers to create a flight model that does not fly within the MSFS environment model or is not bound by it, then we lose the chance to experience what the MSFS team is trying so hard to create.
Remember the videos about the flow of air around buildings and mountains and trees? That isn’t just there to give us “realistic” turbulence. A real airplane flies in that dynamic flow of molecules. I want my sim airplane to do the same. We had it in 1995 and had beautiful scenery and smooth framerates on computers that had less computing power than my current phone. Imagine what we can have today if we can just sit back and let them go.
FYI:
Some functions are limited, even on this…
I won’t tell you how much I had to pay to have access to a full function G3000 trainer before my last IFR proficiency check. 
1 Like
That has never been the case. The custom flight models found in some FSX and P3D addons only dictate how the plane responds to the environment and to user input. That’s all. They don’t recreate the environment at all.
Like i said, they’re free for the 430, 530, 650, 750. For the G1000 you’d have to ask @CptLucky8 what his plans are.
And even if an addon were to wrap the G1000 trainer, i would probably be willing to pay for the trainer as well as for the addon itself, if the G1000 was what i was flying all the time. 65CAD is not that much in the flight simulation world, though it is a bit on the pricey side. Luckily for me, I prefer the 530.
1 Like
I won’t comment about whether this is what I was expecting, but since @CristiNeagu referenced me, I feel compelled to clarify some of this. There is definitely an enormous difference between what they say and what they really do, case in point:
A recent comment in another discussion is revealing some of the mind set behind the scene, let alone Microsoft/Asobo have a clear intention developing a “study level” Garmin in the simulator. So much for the aforementioned claim. I believe the community would be better having the choice, like in P3D and X-Plane. Actually the X-Plane GPS and G1000 can be used in FAA approved simulators, this tells how good they are for the task. It doesn’t preclude having the choice of using other GPS, like Reality XP’s (1), for those wanting the authentic experience if they want, whatever their reasons for wanting one, being entertainment or professional simulators.
So I’ll take this opportunity to remind Reality XP is not just a bunch of Garmin gauges, and our products doesn’t require Microsoft/Asobo to support external DLLs, it has never been about this at all, really not at all.
Let met make this clear again: it is not because Reality XP solutions are using the Garmin trainer program, that FS2020 must support loading DLLs for us to port our products. Instead, what is needed is they are discussing with us so that we can explain what we really need, instead of assuming what we need.
Up until today, Microsoft/Asobo didn’t make any effort to communicate with Reality XP (see above). We’ve had novel products to offer for the new simulator, some never seen before in any simulator, and they didn’t even took the chance to talk with us to know what this is about.
I’m quite sadden for the community about this situation, and not just because there is no other GPS choice (2).
[update]
I shall mention I don’t blame anyone either, and I might have entertained some confusion about this inadvertently. In effect I’ve been on one hand trying to reaching out for porting RXP products to FS2020, but I’ve been also trying reaching out to share RXP’s expertise with the Gauges and Systems SDK in order to help the franchise not having some of the limitations inherited from the past. The former is pragmatic but the latter is conceptual and I can understand some of my communication might mix the two and further blur the message and the intentions. This is why I value Mat’s openness to discussing all this further.
(1) and X-Plane developers have been at the forefront assisting us with any specific implementation question.
(2) before someone mentions another GNS and GTN mod, these are other choices you are right. They look like Garmin but they are not Garmin, but they are certainly good for what the users are choosing to use them for. In any case, they won’t fly like Garmin devices with the same Garmin device specificities and even its bugs (yes there are bugs and I can even say, thanks to our large customer base and the various situations they’ve been flying the Garmin GTN in X-Plane and Prepar3d, and their enduring patience, a bug has been found affecting the real GTN device and posing a security threat IRL - Garmin is planning to implementing the fix in the next software update).
3 Likes
Not to put too fine a point on it, but previous versions didn’t have an environment. This is why most previous versions have always been like flying on rails.
Although there has been a lot of conjecture and discussions about tables etc determining the motion and responses of the current aircraft, there is mounting evidence that this version is using something a lot closer to Seamus’s fluid dynamics than anything since FU.
This means that while each aircraft has its tuning “tables” and config files, If Asobo increases the turbulence factor in the environment or changes the air density, it will have a direct effect on every aircraft no matter what the individual parameters. From an aircraft design position, I would prefer this to having to determine how the aircraft moves. It would allow me to accurate recreate the aircraft with all its drag coefficients and weights and moments of inertia. I can faithfully create the engine and propeller performance or turbine efficiency. Accurately reproduce the lifting surfaces and profiles. If I do all that then all that should be needed is to tweak a few parameters to ensure the math all works. In a perfect world, simulated or otherwise, my aircraft should now fly as expected.
In previous sims there is no real environment that interacts with the aircraft. There is a formula that manipulates the aircraft position based on the inputs provided by the user and simple animates the motion of the control surfaces. They don’t do anything. Weather is strictly visual with an algorithm that jostles the plane around based on the “turbulence factor”. A custom flight model could be created to more accurately manipulate the aircraft in its sphere of motion.
I really hope we can have the former model, and if it means that designers have to completely rethink how they develop sim planes, so be it.
I understand that type of frustration. I am sure that there are a whack of developers in the same boat that are starting to wonder if A/M want ANY participation. I feel the pain. I also have a long history with corporates. If the request is not on this quarters planning flow then it is ignored. Or rather it is “forwarded to the appropriate department for review”. There are the planners, the managers, the PR people. The PR people are only given part of the plan. The part that the planners are ready to communicate.
I am sure that as the bugs get worked out and the number of “Partnership Requests” start to fall off, communication will improve, but I would be lying if I thought that A/M would go any further than simply acknowledging the existence of most developers only to allow them to peddle their wares on the marketplace. I expect that “partnerships” will remain an exclusive club entered by invitation only. That is the corporate way.
I’m certain they have so much to handle everyday, and there is so little time after all, they can’t have enough time to answer the phone or to reply to every solicitation emails in a short time.
I just can’t ignore the dozens of emails and messages I’m receiving every week wondering why Microsoft is not engaging with Reality XP’s 20 years of expertise in this industry, and I really don’t know what to say about this!
I’m sorry if I sound like being frustrated though, I could be actually, but I’m not 
2 Likes
The question was “ is MSFS what you expected “
The answer is …better than I expected especially the introduction of VR which is not very good yet but totally unexpected that it works at all.
With the addition of the third party Just Flight Arrow in VR it is as realistic as you can get to real World flying a light aircraft which I used to do.
Well, depends what you mean by “environment”. If you mean a physical simulation of atmospheric flow over terrain and other features, etc, then yes, this is the first time it’s been done out of the box, as far as i know. But what i meant was simply “external world factors”, which can be as simple as wind vector and air density, or as complex as the simulation mentioned above. In that respect, no previous custom flight models that i am aware of has completely ignored the simulation environment. At most, they have added to it.
This is absolutely true, and I really love this feature about MSFS 2020’s flight model and appreciate that you mentioned it and the fact that they, MS/Asobo cared to build and offer it right out of the box without asking for extra money.
It’s not totally impossible to recreate this feature - this “mechanical turbulence” - in previous versions if one is willing to spend quite a lot of money, and even then it would be a little bit half-baked so to speak.
Realturb for P3D, in conjunction with Active Sky, can model the mountains and thus generate turbulence caused by them. But it doesn’t take into account buildings, trees, towers, oceans, rivers etc like how MSFS 2020 does, and could cost as much as $100 extra.
Active XP for XP11 doesn’t need addons like Realturb cause it offers “terrain-based wind effects”, and it takes into account mountains only, like Realturb does. And Active XP, like Active Sky, costs extra money.
So this is one area where I’m very grateful to MS/Asobo that they cared about such a feature, that the flight model is taking everything on the ground into account. Coming in to land at my local EGGP runway 27 where in front of it there’s a bit of a forest area and the aircraft in MSFS 2020 goes through a short bout of turbulence as it flies over that area, which I have to be aware of and deal with, which is something some of my friends who train at that airport’s flight school have verified to be realistic. It makes me feel proud.
Really hoping that in sim update 4, the flight model enhancements that Sebastian mentioned in his latest Q and A make their way into MSFS, making all aircraft, both default and 3rd parties, feel more realistic and less twitchy.
2 Likes
MSFS is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. It has been upgraded through the partnership with ASOBO and BlackShark but it is essentially FSX repackaged. The upside here is that, unlike FSX , the team that brought MSFS out is still together and still working through the production of it. ACES was disbanded very soon after FSX was released - being together just long enough to enhance FSX with the Acceleration Pack (helicopters, sling loads, Carriers, and so on) the part of FSX yet to be added to MSFS.
Yes this sim looks a thousand times better than FSX ever did - and this without any 3rd party enhancements - as it should given the strides made in hardware and software over the decade+ since FSX was born. But it still has a lot of the same warts FSX had, as well as some new ones probably related to the current teams’ unfamiliarity with flight dynamics…a very deep discipline of its own vs that of software programming, AI development, Global environmental modeling - or the integration of all of that into one cohesive platform.
In time I think this will all get sorted. Especially due to the diligence and commitment of the community writ large
That is not the flight model. The flight model simulates the airplane dynamics. The atmosphere simulation is something else.
1 Like
@CristiNeagu, I actually have to question how true that is. I mean, just look at what Aerosoft, Working Title, Fly By Wire, and our very own @ScorpionFilm422 have managed to accomplish in terms of addons and improvements, and that says something about just how rigid that dev environment really is. And so does PMDG’s response when Aerosoft released their CRJ.
Looking at all of those, and the biggest flaw I see is the weather radar, which I understand is in fact a WIP. It seems like perhaps you know more about this stuff than I do, but that’s my view, subject to revision, from the cheap seats.
What it is and what it aims to be can be quite different things. Most (if not all) of the projects you mentioned are written in the native SDK and are pretty limited compared to the equipment they are trying to emulate. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re bad. I use several of those addons and they’re pretty good. But when you compare them to what could have been available since release day had the API been a bit more permissive… It’s a pretty sizeable difference.
@SkeletonOz, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got over 90GB of mods that have to be read from disk (which by itself happens faster than it takes to blink an eye as they live on an NVMe), but then processed by the CPU, at the same time as it’s doing a lot of other things. I really should be more conscientous about only loading those that I need (or might need) for any given flight, and my addons manager makes that easy, but I just haven’t done it yet.
But if it was only taking “nearly a minute” to do all that, I’d be quite happy. Faster is always better, no doubt about that, but I do bear some responsibility on this one.
As for updates, as has been explained on this forum ad nauseum, it has to be that way because of the sim’s status as effectively an MMORPG.
I’m not seeing a problem here. Heck, I’ve already given it an entire 1TB SATA SSD which it’s hardly touched, plus whatever it’s taking on my C drive (which appears to be about 177 GB, plus my 90GB of addons). I keep going back and forth over whether or not to give it a full 100GB in cache, for now I’ve got that turned off, but that could change before the sun goes down.
And even if it did get to the point that it legit needed say, another dedicated 1TB SSD, so what? It’s not like those are expensive, nor does anybody (sane) have the expectation that flight simming is a cheap hobby. Except maybe XBox users who use it there solely for financial reasons. Or will be once it’s released, which I wish would hurry up so the dev team can turn it’s attention back to us PC users.
@willisxdc, and yet, by purchasing Working Title (which was one of those partnerships), they’ve gotten (or will get in a few months, give or take) pretty close to the real thing. I don’t know if anybody is ready, willing, or able to compete with that to go from WT’s 90% (admittedly a guesstimate) to 100%? I guess we’ll see.
Though, either way, those are at least somewhat unusual circumstances.
That is what it takes for that kind of advanced realism. Flight simming is not a cheap hobby, never has been.
We’re all guilty of letting the illusion of being nickle and dimed to get to us. Yes, over the course of time many of us will have invested that much in our application, but by spreading it out over time, it doesn’t feel like we’re spending $999 on the sim. Even though, eventually, we are. But at the same time, it is optional, and is done only by those of us who choose to. I’m not there, yet, but I will be, especially when the PMDGs of the world start pumping out their wares. But I’m not one of those guys who buys every single aircraft available, first, the cost does add up, second, there’s only so many I can retain the knowledge to fly properly in my noggin at any given time.
1 Like
pilot2ATC
Agreed, none that I know of.
REX Weather. I own it, but don’t use it because I don’t like what it did to my performance (though it’s been a few months, so that may have changed), but despite my past performance issues, it does work, and lots of people do use it on the regular.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Every single time that I set up my C172 cockpit on my desk there’s already a sense of joy about where the sim will take me this time. And it never fails to surprise. Having flown the Cessna in reality a few times I am surprised every time about how realistic it simulates the sense of flying. The bobbing, the feeling of being carried by the air, the rain slamming on the windows, I can feel the cold and need to turn up the heat in my room. The landscape sliding past below me, I’m trying to recognize familiar structures (always more tricky than expected). The fun and excitement of the bush trips trying to spot the grass strips and the challenge to land correctly.
And then: the skies, the colors, every hour of the day it’s different. The beautiful clouds standing on the floor of a flat area and reaching high up.
The activity below on the roads. The approach of an airport at night. It just feels so realistic, every single bit of it.
I could go on for hours. This sim has been a real and literal (I’m so sorry, mr. X) game changer for me.
And the stutters sometimes? I really don’t care. I am just glad that the sim is loading new beautiful stuff for me all the time so that I can thoroughly enjoy our amazingly beautiful world from above.
This sim, and the cockpit, and the PC that runs it have been the best investment of the last ten years for me. I am very glad that I hopped on this flight right from the start.
The sim exceeds my expectations every single time.
Stay safe and enjoy your flight today 
2 Likes