Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Who the hell is going to buy it on DVD?

Please insert disc: Microsoft Flight Simulator will spread across ten DVDs

90GB package is a drop in the bucket compared to the game's cloud-streamed data.

arstechnica.com

Soon you'll need separate hard drives for each game you install.

It might not be a bad idea in fact to buy a drive just for FS. See the thing about MSFS is that it has always been mod-able. Talking new planes, new gauges, new scenery, new sounds, airline paint schemes and radio calls, the whole nine. So you COULD just get a 90GB drive; but if you want to store some of worldspace locally for performance, and especially if you want to add mods, you'll probably want more than that. ^^

 

[Ghost Pepper]

I would like for them to do a new Microsoft Space Simulator.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The official list of airplanes and the ultra-quality handmade airports in each edition of MSFS, in video form:

 

[Ghost Pepper]

The first paid DLC (Expansion) will be Helicopters. Experimental gliders being worked on as another paid DLC. These will be introduced every "two to three months."

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Roadmap: DLC, Updates, and More

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Here's some un-"curated by Microsoft" video, albeit from a tester with a high end system. So have a look at what this sim really looks like to a player:


(best watched full-screen HD, natch)

 

[Beebo Brink]

I'm really enjoying this thread, even though this isn't something I would every buy for myself.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Haha I'm enjoying it too - I'm getting seriously hyped for this game. Only a couple weeks left! And I'm still learning about new cool stuff that's going to be in this.

Like, two minutes ago I found out about this feature for the very first time:

 

[Ghost Pepper]

Looks like while flying you can put out a drone and it can fly closer to things. To find the animals there are landmarks.


Looks like it's a flight sim from the ground up.

 

[Ghost Pepper]

Haha I'm enjoying it too - I'm getting seriously hyped for this game. Only a couple weeks left! And I'm still learning about new cool stuff that's going to be in this.

Like, two minutes ago I found out about this feature for the very first time:

Can you make your own design like in the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon series of games since there is a livery button or it just so many different designs for each aircraft?

This looks to be much deeper than the past MS Flight Simulators.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

In this aspect it's not. I'm not sure that the game will come out of the box with more than one livery for each plane (in past games they usually did); but you will definitely be able to make or download and add new liveries for the existing planes.

FSX came with a couple of paint schemes for each plane, plus a "blank" white one that people could use as a template for making their own. The liveries for the GA planes were just alternate paint schemes of course, and for the airliners there were several fake "airlines" to pick from. But inevitably one of the first addons the public made for FSX were liveries representing real-world airlines, and I think MS released an SDK that unlocked real-world airline names for the air traffic control voices too. It's probably the same case that Flight Simulator will ship without any real-world airline paints included, for obvious branding and trademark reasons. But it wouldn't surprise me if the air traffic control voicepacks are there as before.

 

[Ghost Pepper]

We've came a long way since the first one in 1982:

 

[Ghost Pepper]

VATSIM is the Virtual Air Traffic Simulation network, connecting people from around the world flying online or acting as virtual Air Traffic Controllers. This completely free network allows aviation enthusiasts the ultimate as-real-as-it-gets experience. Air Traffic Control (ATC) is available in our communities throughout the world, operating as close as possible to the real-life procedures and utilising real-life weather, airport and route data. On VATSIM you can join people on the other side of the planet to fly and control, with nothing more than a home computer.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Midnight tonight, guys!

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Okay this is just awesome.

I'm too tired to play around and make decent screenshots. For now I just made sure the thing works - which it does! On startup it tells me my CPU is technically below minimum spec (it's kind of old), but the game still works fine with no issues that I saw for the little time I played it, and I was using High graphics settings which the game recommended for my system during setup. Tomorrow when I have more time I'll play around with those graphics settings some more and see what I can really do.

So the first thing I did, naturally, was get up in a little Cub and look for my apartment building. And I found it! It doesn't look exactly perfect, being as I live way out in a little city and area where the AI has to procedurally generate buildings from the satellite imagery, but it's the right footprint and it's definitely in the right spot on the right street, I recognized it right away. I recognized the gas station just up the street and the store next to it. I am impressed. The only real "mistake" I saw was that the game puts more car traffic on my street than is really there, but you know, who cares?

It may sound weird but I like that there's an actual addon marketplace in the main menu. You can upgrade the game itself from there of course but you can also buy some third party content like handmade scenery packs and new airplanes. And it's not some little microtransaction lootbox store either; I mean you'll shell out like $30 for a new plane. Right now since it just launched there's only a few things in the store but I really like the feature.

 

[Cristiano]

I played it for a little while before I passed out. I've never been a big flight simulator fan, but I am incredibly impressed. I didn't do the tutorial and just picked Miami International Airport to take off from and did a flight over Miami and Miami Beach. The level of detail is stunning. The technology behind it is unbelievably impressive. I was shocked that there were even cars moving on the roads below, and that I knew exactly where I was down to the street based on the buildings. It blows my mind what they've achieved with this.

 

[Beebo Brink]

How difficult is it to learn how to fly a plane? I always assumed that it would take many hours to achieve a functional level where you don't crash your plane. Can you crash your plane? Are the fireball graphics as good as all the others?

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Okay - well the game does have a set of tutorials that teach you how to fly. You start out learning some basic camera and plane controls, then you learn how to fly straight, then climb and descend, then how to turn, and then you get into learning takeoffs and landings and navigation. The tutorials aren't super in-depth like Flight Simulator X's were, but they seem to be plenty enough to teach any newbie how to not crash.

You can crash. But, when you do, there's no damage or explosions, the sim just immediately ends with a popup box and tells you you crashed. It's Microsoft Flight Simulator, not Microsoft Crash Simulator.

If you are kind of worried though and not a super hard-core simmer, the game has settings to help you out. You can turn off crash detection (in which case you'll just bounce off the ground), and you can also turn on "yoke assistance", which presumably helps you keep the plane steady as if a co-pilot was helping you. There's also some assistance for landing and taking off. So while you can turn off all the help and have a very realistic technical simulator you can also turn on lots of help and enjoy it a little more casually.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Post videos, Cody. I'll live vicariously through you.

 

[Casey Pelous]

I can tell you this release is a BIG deal at MS, based on the chatter among my MS HQ dwelling relatives.

Beebo, flying a plane is, generally speaking, easier than driving a car. There's no gas pedal and no brake (except on the ground) and rather than having obstacle clearances measured in inches, they're measured, in most cases, in hundreds if not thousands of feet. I've ridden with pilot friends who'd let me fly the plane and I caught on to most of it right away. As one of them says, "What's complicated? Pull stick back, buildings get smaller. Push stick forward, buildings get bigger. Nothing to it!" If I had ever been able to afford it, I think I would have loved to learn to fly.

To take off, give it 100% throttle and keep it pointed down the runway. It will take off -- it can't not take off. You can give it a gentle boost with a little pull back on the stick. Straight and level flight is so easy it is boring. Its why airline pilots say their job is "interminable periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror."

Landing, navigating, and flying on instruments is a good deal more complicated, of course.

The scary part of MSFS is that this program requires 150 GB (!) to install. I'm pretty sure I'd have to add a drive just for MSFS. It looks pretty fun, though. I played with the last version some.

Cody, I'm interested in how you're controlling things -- keyboard? Joystick?