Even if they are planning to release Microsoft Flight 2024 in late 2024, we are talking at most 15 months away (since a lot of holiday/christmas releases are out by November for the christmas shopping season), that must mean a lot of features and game play is already in done or will be close to done with in the next year. All these missions, clouds, weather, seasons, AI, better ATC, etc…
Does that cause anyone else some pause?
Don’t get me wrong, MSFS 2020 is GREAT, and even with its bugs and annoying white dot, lol, it’s still a great game to play. No game is bug free or perfect, and we are dealing with A TON of stuff related to flight: weather, planes, handling, ATC other planes, Electronics, etc. So many different aspects to include into a flight sim.
So did MS/Asobo really have the time to develop and upgrade 2020 into a “newer” game that’s going to be bigger than an just an update?
After SU5, it took a while to get us to S12, and still seasons is not really in, ATC is the same as when 2020 was released close to 3 years ago (August 2020)
I just don’t know if they could have upgraded the software so much in the past year when in the last two years, it’s been improving by 1 step, and back 1/2 step.
I am excited to see what 2024 brings. I bet better graphics- now we have 3 generations of new GPU…instead of 2080 supers, be have 4090 and next year, a new more power GPU. But I will see… BRING IT ON.
Heck, even with my pause, i hope they have early access… I will buy early.
They’ve been working on Seasons, and many of the other features they’ll be putting into 2024 for literally years now.
Seasons has been on the “planned” path for quite some time now, I forget when. When a feature is planned, it means they have figured out how to do it, and they just need to do the actual work to do it. So quite a lot of work has already gone into developing the feature. “Started” means they’ve started the actual coding for the sim.
And, yes, they are making some pretty major changes to some of the aspects of the graphics and game engines to implement some of these features.
And to that point, I think we’ll have to take with a grain of salt their comments on how much of our libraries will translate directly to 2024. We’ll see. I hope they’re able to hold up to that part of their marketing departments statements.
Oh, that’s interesting. I always thought it was something they would plan to do but they haven’t started on it at all, and it would be a while before they started.
@FlyingsCool5650, I’m curious where you got that information from? It’s not necessarily how I’d interpret “planned”. It really could mean many things, for example simply an intend to do it with a rough idea how it could be implemented which doesn’t mean that there’s been a lot of work done already.
If it truly is coming out holidays 2024, then there is a lot of stuff still being worked on.
I’m sure they are still working out the loose ends of the machine learning part.
AI and machine learning is improving by the day, so Microsoft will surely want the latest and most up to date code when it ships.
Also, they are building all new models for the AI, plus adding real life airlines.
If the sim just needed BETA testing they would have called it 2023 and released it in August like 2020.
So clearly there are big parts of the sim that are still in ALPHA.
They wouldn’t tell us they’ve decided to do the work unless they already know they can do the work. You can’t figure that out without having done the work to know how to do the work.
I’m a mechanical engineer working for a company that’s mostly a software company, and pretty familiar with Jira development methods.
I didn’t say that definitely a lot of work had been done. And certainly a lot of THE work has not been done, that’s what happens after “Started”. But enough work has been done to know that it can be done and how to do it. So, IOW, a plan for how to do the work has been created. That, of course, can mean many things when it comes to engineering. But, in the case of something like MSFS, typically, if they’ve decided to take on a project, it means they have a path in which to get it done, which definitely means some work has been done, and, typically enough work to have prototyped the feature has happened.
As is obvious from the trailer we all saw. What we saw is at least a prototype of the features we’ll see in 2024, likely running in 2020.
It will be hard to answer this until we play 2024.
Xbox Studios produces MSFS, so they put up the money for development and have some say as to what goes into a the sim.
If they want a sequel, they pay Asobo to make a sequel. Asobo transfers staff to work on the new project and hires new folks as needed, within budget. The producer decides the budget. Asobo does their best to work within budget.
There’s 180 folks working on MSFS at Asobo. Split between two sims. Many, many others working on servers, AI, the Marketplace, on new planes, landmarks, and on and on…
So, you know? Asobo is not HUGE, and their MSFS division is but a part of their whole shebang. If it sometimes feels like updates take a long time, we have likely only had 1/3-1/2 of those 180 folks at Asobo working on 2020 for the last couple of years. You could get to know them all by name. And over the year, many of them will be moved over to 2024 to help finish it.
Xbox Studios is very good at building sequels upon prior game infrastructure, and Asobo has been very good at releasing on or near schedule. They are not reinventing the wheel here, they are just vastly improving upon their prior game. They know how to do this now. And they have had 3rd Party Devs do a LOT of their World Update and Airplane work for 2020 while those folks at Asobo shifted to their new project.
And let’s not forget that Asobo doesn’t just work on MSFS. They have many products in their pipeline (Like “A Plague’s Tale”, which… interestingly ;)… runs on the “same” graphics engine as 2020 (and 2024 to be)). There being staff that often is shared between these projects, tends to cross-polinate work and ideas between the projects… 2020 was developed on things they learned from the first A Plague’s Tale, and A Plague’s Tale:Requiem, released 11/22, was built off of what Asobo had developed/learned from 2020, and, now 2024, which it has been implied is going to benefit from some level of player interaction, is going to benefit from… well…
Also, those, “Plagues Tale” games are rather brilliant. Asobo punches above their weight. They have been a AA studio with AAA output.
Lol if MSFS isn’t released by end of 2023 then MS should rename it MSFS 2025!!
Good question. My take is that clearly Microsoft have been using its partners to produce content while the Asobo team focuses on updating the core sim.
I feel this has been going on in earnest now for the last couple of years or more which means while having a 2020 BAU team to bug fix and assemble the content from it’s partners, they’ve been building the new sim in-house.
The move away from an update was probably recognised because of the realization the sim couldn’t grow in the same way it has been, so the client has been optimised. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marketplace content could be streamed to some degree and had a much smaller footprint on your harddisk, not sure the same will be said for content bought in other stores though.
Very much my same take! Good post.
In this interview Jorg sais 1 to 1 1/2 years from now, so that means late 2024. He also mentions a flighting.
I think It’ll be August like 2020 was, hope they open a beta programme to more people this time.
Why would MS (or any company) wait until the end of 2024 for a product called MSFS 2024? It would be stale the moment it’s released. While I understand it might not be called MSFS 2024 at release but that’s what MS/Asobo are calling it today.
Like the old saying goes its best to under commit and over deliver.
They (Seb?) mentioned this during Friday’s initial presentation. It was just a brief passing inclusion of the idea that marketplace purchases would take less space and I’ve been trying to figure that out since I heard it.
Currently, an addon is a complete product downloaded onto the device. What parts could be left out to make them smaller? I’d love to hear more about this new approach to data they’ve come up with.
I think this is just common sense. I’m expecting aircraft to have really good support in MSFS 2024 as that’s a direct result of API calls which if they ensure is backward compatible should be fine.
The common sense part, well I’m afraid that’s going to be pretty much everything else. I’m sure the majority of major airports will be fine and developers will no doubt fix minor issues but the stuff which is purchased to enhance the environment or add content which clashes with new MSFS 2024 scenery might as well be thrown away. Those things are usually of lesser value so that’s probably not going to be too bad.
Having said all this, handling conflcts in the Marketplace isn’t particularly great at the moment, you either install products or delete them, would be nice so you could disable a product in case it needed to be restored without downloading. I have several airports which have multiple versions and they all build ontop of each other like LOWI (Innsbruck airport) unless I delete all the unwanted copies.
Asobo has been focusing on updating the sim and their business partners have been doing content, yes. But I don’t think FS2024 was planned until Sim Update 10. That update took 9 months in beta. During that time, Asobo wasn’t able to advance the sim with updates at all. September 2022 was when there were suddenly a lot of job listings for Asobo, and October was when Andrey was hired. I think Sim Update 10 they realized that they just weren’t going to be able to continue to do what they needed to do with the current legacy code, they convinced Microsoft during that time and got approval, and then started hiring for it in September. Some work for it obviously could have started for it before then, maybe being planned for an update, but with the hirings and the way things started to change in terms of updates (we always knew what the focus of each update was going to be before. SU7 was weather, SU9 was CFD but after SU11 they just became nebulous fix updates without a theme), etc it doesn’t seem like a full new sim took off until Sept.
Maybe we’ll find out some info on 27th September during the dev live stream?
Well, in the March dev stream, Jorg said: ‘…end of this year’.
Here’s the clip, play until 1:31:10.