I am creating a new thread so it doesn’t get lost in the sea of “this is a cash grab” and “why isn’t this just a paid DLC” responses that drown out any constructive feedback. Some of the answer to “why do we need a new generation” and “why isn’t this just a paid DLC” can be seen in the promo.
- Better rendering of the world data
This can be seen by looking at base Los Angeles in the promo. Have you seen Los Angeles in the base 2020? It isn’t all that great. That is why there is a flightsim.to mod, a mod by Taburet, and a mod by ACScenery for Los Angeles. However, default Los Angeles in the promo looks outstanding. And LOD is much improved. But what does this tell us? Blackshark.ai has been working on their algorithms for the last 3 years, advancing them. Yes, default Los Angeles looks great now. Perhaps, some other cities that look terrible in the sim will now look fantastic. Perhaps we don’t need road mods, and some city mods, etc. If this is provided as a base in the new sim, it couldn’t be just a paid DLC. It would have to be all or nothing, because there are going to have to be new code at the world streaming level, and new code on the UI. This would all have to be at the systems level, so there is no simple this flight user has the DLC and this user doesn’t. It would require a new sim.
- Interaction with the environment
We see a water drop on the wild fire, and the fire being effected. The base sim right now, there is no effecting the environment. There are animations that some planes have. But that is it. They don’t effect the environment at all. Adding in the ability to effect the environment, that would require changes at the UI level, as well as a means to have that repond back to the core.
- The possibility of enhanced multithreading support
Look at the LOD for Los Angeles, the detail from that far off. That would be something that would normally negatively effect performance. Do I see MS and Asobo releasing a new generation where frame rates are back to 15 FPS and everyone has YouTube videos on configuration changes to get 24? No. The sim really right now is constrained to the primary thread. What if you could use all the threads your processor has available? I fully expect that they will probably be going that route, because I seriously don’t see them adding in more LOD and more detail and not having a plan to be able to handle that effectively.
- Ability to better script missions
All of the promo, we saw examples of better scripting capabilities that are default within the sim. And for those jetliner people who don’t care about doing mountain rescues. What about jetliner missions that have events to them, such as a bird strike on takeoff, or a loss of an engine, etc. Not something that you do, so you know to expect, but something as you fly the mission you are caught off guard and have to react to. That is the type of thing that I hear people complain they want to do for more realism. Better scripting allows for so many opportunities, so many special events, etc. It is simply more than just making the sim like GTA. If you don’t like rescue missions and such, this scripting still does allow for things that can appeal to all simmers, and the addition of it doesnt turn the sim into a game.
Those are just a few of the observations I can make from the trailer. What else the new sim will provide, I don’t know. But what I have listed above, that certainly is extensive enough in its own right to justify a new sim. This isn’t just a cash grab copy/paste of the same code. The user interface, the core, and the world streaming data layers will all need significant changes. I’m expecting that the UI level will be an almost complete rewrite.
All in all, I am looking forward to it. I am sure the new sim will bring other things, but I just listed those that we can observe and draw pretty educated guesses on.
