In fact, while I’m at it, I’ll lay out my vision for multiplayer.
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Ditch the lobby system from FSX, but bring back many of the old multiplayer elements.
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Add a new multiplayer option called simulation (as opposed to ‘All Players’ or ‘Live Players’) that would be for those of us who want to try our best to fly using real procedures.
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Implement a system that allows players to be the ATC, voice chat and all. A player could hop on and stand in as whatever frequency they want, all airspace without an active connection would just be uncontrolled. Those who don’t want to use voice a CPDL (controller pilot data link) that can be built right off of the current in-game text based ATC.
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Fix multiplayer model matching with on of the many proposed solutions that already exist. The option that would create the best user experience would be to allow (and encourage) third party devs to upload an external model that’s specifically meant to be seen as a multiplayer model. This model could be slightly less detailed so that it can be quickly downloaded from the cloud to the client whenever a given model/livery is encountered. This sounds complicated, but in a game with so much emphasis on data streaming already it really isn’t that much.
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Alternatively, and at the very least, Asobo can improve model matching by either removing the ICAO designator check in the current model matching logic, or at least make sure that Asobo’s own aircraft use the correct ICAO designator. For those of you who didn’t know, this is the reason that we see F/A-18s as big generic turbofan aircraft. Asobo’s own aircraft fails the ICAO check that Asobo themselves implemented, and this is the case for many other base game aircraft. By the way, this takes 30 second to fix per aircraft… come on Asobo.
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Synchronize live weather such that I experience the same updrafts/downdrafts, turbulence, clouds, tornadoes, and other weather conditions as the people I’m flying with.