Does Microsoft think MSFS should be a multiplayer game? Here’s some thoughts of what an actual multiplayer system in MSFS 2024 would look like. The basic point is the MSFS 2020 ‘multiplayer support’ is close to non-existent, and a rewrite/replacement would be the only viable way forward.
(1) Treat the PLAYER as a first class data object in the SDK API’s. i.e. the player has a name, location, camera position, is flying a particular plane. This information would be communicated to other players given some kind of bounding selection. Do NOT limit the player name to only the XBox user account, e.g. ATC ID / tail number is a reasonable proxy for a more flexible label the player can edit. Given the API, code in addons/mods can inspect this name and spot the group tags or anything else if Asobo don’t implement those.
(2) Make the ‘player bounding selection’ appropriate for actual multiplayer use cases, i.e. the default can be players ahead to a large distance, and players all around the ‘sim user’ to a lesser distance. But player groups should be definable by a simple tag so perhaps the ‘sim user’ would see all those.
(3) Make sure the API is adequate for anyone to host a community site that can see where relevant players are, what they’re flying, and display those on a map.
(4) Make it easy for players to find/join other players.
(5) In game, provide a CHAT function that allows players to message other players plus some way to opt into a group so messages can be sent to all members of that group. Group names can be unique and the creator of the group can set basic admin rules (like adding or removing players, or allowing the group to be opt-in.).
(6) Create a PERSON avatar (aka simobject) and allow a player to easily move around in the virtual world as this avatar. It will be possible to think of obvious interations with existing SimObjects, particularly aircraft e.g. a person could approach an aircraft and either with new UI or simply by proximity to a ‘interaction point’ could swtich to the Cockpit view of that aircraft.
The key takeaway of the points above is the classic for a flight simulator would be to think the only “first class” object is an aeroplane, and everything else is ad-hoc special programming and hacks. This would be a common but absolutely a noob mistake in any system which clearly has the concept of ‘user’ behind the main activity which obviously includes MSFS. By far the most important primary object in those systems is the user, but you only find that out once you’ve built a proper system to support that.
For the flight simulator / earth digital twin itself, multiplayer enhancements could include:
(1) beng able to walk up to and fly a plane as mentioned above.
(2) Seeing other people walking around, and having some base level of interaction with them (e.g. the chat message based on proximity).
(3) Dual players sharing a two-seater plane each sitting in their own seat. This and the next point has the major challenge of decising what aspect of the state of the plane to share between players, something Jorg has already mentioned. Perhaps SDK support for what can be generated locally for the joining player vs what needs to be synced between the planes would ease the issue if aircraft devs have that available.
(4) An indefinite number of players shadowing a single player, i.e. sharing a camera view with that player. Maybe this is just video streaming which is currently done out-of-band with twitch or discord, but maybe some MSoft/Azure solution is viable from within MSFS. Maybe.
(5) The weather system needs a rejig so the entire weather state is parameterised into a compact data message, so that multiplayers can instantly snap to the EXACT same weather as someone else. Currently it seems the weather (e.g. cloud position) rolls on an independent timer based on when a player joins the sim and that is unrepeatable with multiple players unless somehow they’e synchronised their entry into the sim.
(6) if these fundamentals are sorted out, API’s could be added that allow players to interact with each other in the sim in some meaningful way related to the planes (this is the ultimate measure of whether MSFS can really be considered ‘multiplayer’). E.g. the UI for ‘dual cockpit’ could be implemented as one player lands/parks their aircraft at a given location, and the other player walks up to the aircraft and gets in it. That would be cool, wouldn’t it?
I’m sure others will be able to think of features that would make multiplayer GREAT in the MSFS context, bringing experience from other truly multiplayer games, and I think that feedback should be valuable to Microsoft/Asobo, even just as something to think about.
(I can only assume Minecraft has it?)