Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft made a flight combat simulator using the MSFS engine. A flight combat simulator is not new to Microsoft, they had one before. For a modern flight combat simulator, all they really need to do is to figure out how to make the photogrammetry buildings destructible, and for the parts of the building to hit the ground when the building is hit by a missile or bomb. The rest (ie. menu, missions, etc) has been done before so there is no breakthrough technology for doing the rest.
Actually here what Asobo are hiring for MSFS ( some are plague tails), include UNITY programmer (Unreal) for MSFS. This might be the relationship Unreal\Microsoft Bing association.
Microsoft is sitting on a golden egg, they just need to refine the satellite & photogrammetry technology more, so that it looks good at the ground level. Right now, the satellite & photogrammetry does not look that good at ground level. If they can get that right, this global satellite & photogrammetry engine has so many uses, including truck simulator, train simulator, etc.
Here is Google street view photos being used to render a 3D world at ground level: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cizgVZ8rjKA Google also announced Immersive View for Google Maps recently: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3qfp8TAg9tg I think the combination of street view data, AI, and what Google is doing with Immersive View, will get so advanced one day, that we will have a plausible 1 to 1 world in 3D, in very good detail, that can be used not only for video games, but for a wide variety of other non-gaming applications.
I think both Microsoft and Google realize this, so they are continuing research into this technology. Look at the list of video games set in New York: List of video games set in New York City - Wikipedia. I’m sure some of these games set in New York, could use a 3D model of New York at very high detail, if that technology had existed. The technology isn’t there yet for high detail at the ground level, but it may get there within the next 10 years.
sir this is a wendy’s
Great news indeed! They were looking for people for a while now, and to score a big dog in the flying community is quite exquisite. Oh, where the Flightsim will go these coming years… but first, let him settle in and learn how the team operates… after which we’ll probably be able to see his magic fingers at work… how, i dont know.. lets see this take flightsim to a whole new level.
We have floatplanes that leave a wake. Boats are really only floatplanes with no wings.
Not sure what you’re thinking of there. Unity and Unreal are competing products.
Some people might suggest they’ve already done the destroyed buildings and need to figure out how to make the intact versions.
This guy is considered as one of the best coders in the world of flight simming.
I’ll bet his task is to make the overal performance better…
Performance? You don’t need a flight sim specialist for that, you need a good game engine coder.
Andrey’s expertise is about improving flight models, he worked on this more than 20 years ago already. He’ll probably improve the flight dynamics, the whole feel of controlling simulated aircraft, and improve the aspects where the flight model is still lacking. Would be a waste to assign him to performance issues…
I don’t see how anyone out here could know of the best use of this engineer - we don’t know the scope of his ability any more than we know what exactly goes on within MSFS core flight modeling code.
All I can imagine is that he will speak up about the areas of his expertise and ability and MS/Asobo will hear him out. Well - I hope that’s how it goes down anyway. Point is all we have is conjecture - and that can be either positive or negative depending on one’s point of view.
I’d read his post again please. The last thing he wants is to work on a combat simulator. He said the exact opposite of what you read. He essentially rationalized for himself working at Il-2, and is now happy he doesn’t have to do that anymore.
I understood the part about not wanting the war part. But the first part he talks about thinking about dog fights as who is chasing who. Microsoft Combat Simulator, it was a modernization back then of the original dog fights in the original CGA Flight Simulator. It was more about the dog fighting, the trying to get behind other in your crosshairs, and not so much about the war aspect. So yeah, I did get he doesn’t want to do the total war part, but the beginning of his sentence just reminded me very much of the 1998 version of Microsoft Combat Simulator, which was more an orientation of competition than it was war. Here is what the Wikipedia described as the gameplay:
Combat Flight Simulator features 6 modes, Free Flight, Quick Combat, Single Missions, Campaigns, Multiplayer, and Training Missions. Free Flight allows players to fly around the entirety of Europe. Quick Combat puts the player into the air against waves of AI opponents. Single Missions are missions where you have to take-off to complete tasks, before landing. Campaigns are more elaborate mission sequences. Multiplayer was a mode that allowed you to fly online with other players, fly in formations, and engage in dog-fights. Training Missions are missions that teach you dogfighting techniques and the basics of flight.
Like I said, it felt more like competition than actual warfare. And given that it was the 19th best selling game in 1999 and a commercial success for Microsoft, I really would not be surprised to see a rise of that francise, again focusing more on competition and flying than on hardcore warfare.
I could be wrong. But MSFS has already put in Reno races. They wanted some sort of competition in with flight. Unfortunately going around in a circle got repetitive. So dogfighting where the losing pilots parachute always opens and no one is hurt, yeah, I could see Microsoft trying to go for that.
What he said, was, he made himself feel better about working on a war simulator by telling himself combat is a competitive sport. And he allowed himself to forget it was war. He went on to say he’s much happier now getting back to the roots of his love of aviation, the freedom of flight, and away from war.
I’ll simply be happy if his skills can improve taildragger ground handling to be as good as IL-2. Ground handling - especially with taildraggers - is the Achilles’ Heel of MSFS. IMHO… 
I just hope they’ll allow him to step up to do what needs to be done, even if that means re-writing the entire aerodynamic base.
His was hired as Senior programmer for MSFS, it’s not only talking roles, much more.
Well, when Jorg approached Asobo with the whole idea for MSFS 2020, he talked about being able to pull together global imagery and present that to the user in flight. Asobo’s reaction at the time was “But we know nothing about flight” and that was when Jorg presented them with the FSX core. So the backend weather and data streaming was all written by Asobo, as well as the user interface, but the core was still the FSX code. They rewrote all that with SU5, but if you look at the one Digital Foundry interview they had with Asobo, the engineer admitted “Well, there were constants in this code that didn’t make sense but it made things work”. So all the FSX code was rewritten into modern multi-threaded code that could be more easily managed. That should mean that refactoring specific pieces if needed shouldn’t be an issue.
MSFS even uses some code from the Forza Horizon engine…