Microsoft returning to Flight Simulator in 2020

VR Support, please!

At the moment, this is one of the best applications of VR. The feeling of scale in flying/driving games is something to behold in VR. No experience like it on 2D monitor (I don't care how many monitors you have).
 
Maybe this means they will also return to Microsoft Golf (aka the Links series which they bought out) at some point in the future also. I think 2003 was the last version.
 
4K footage.

Looks great, but there's some LOD popout at low altitude, very noticeable at times. But its a pre-alpha, so I'll cut some slack.

 
I get to play it from the XBox Ultimate Gamepass on my PC.
Noteworthy it'll be on Xbox as well. People will be able to fly with their feet up with a Bourbon - like a real pilot!

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My Thrustmaster TCA Sidesick Airbus Edition joystick came in today. Can't wait to play this game seriously! I've been looking all over and I cannot find if the game will support DLSS 2.0, I think they should add that in and then everyone would be WOW'd to no end!
 
My Thrustmaster TCA Sidesick Airbus Edition joystick came in today. Can't wait to play this game seriously! I've been looking all over and I cannot find if the game will support DLSS 2.0, I think they should add that in and then everyone would be WOW'd to no end!

If I were serious about it, I would love me some Thrustmaster Cougar HOTAS setup. :)
 
Isn't that a projector?


Looks like a simulator setup with either a Barco or a Christie Digital setup. Both companies have excellent blending and image warping technologies that will map on to the curved surface of a the simulator's shell. Neat stuff but be prepared for sticker shock. Depending on how bright you want the projector, 4K, and with lasers, they're several hundred thousand a piece and for that setup you'd want to use two of them at least. That's the upper limit for the simulator track (there are more expensive projectors for cinema and then genuinely custom rigs) but at the low end is still in the tens of thousands of dollars on just the projectors easy. Then there is the back end equipment that goes with the projectors. A fully gyroscopic simulator cock pit like that isn't cheap either. There is a reason why full fledged training simulators can cost well north of a million.

Worth it for an enthusiast? Hell no. Worth it for military/commercial training programs so that planes don't crash into your house? Yes.

MS Flight Simulator has a good history of scaling upward and I'm curious how high it'll go in comparison to a commercial simulator.
 
I want Flight Sim 2020 graphics with Pilotwings-grade mechanics. Or just VR bird mode. Or Ironman. Yes. That.

Going off topic but there need to be a game like that made. Put in lots of Easter eggs and things to find see in the world and have a casual, screw around basic flight game that is accessible.
 
Anyone have some input on what controls to look at? In the $500 range.
The Honeycomb yoke and soon to be released throttle quadrant look really good, at $250 a piece. That would leave you with no rudder pedals though, but they have a nice amount of switches and a proper trim wheel with the throttle quadrant, plus the levers are customizable.
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Personally I think VR makes these cut-down simulator controls obsolete. When you can have all the indicators as they should be in VR.
 
As excited as I am for this sim, I see Forza style DLC in the future. Plane/Airport bundles are in your future. I'm calling it now.
 
As excited as I am for this sim, I see Forza style DLC in the future. Plane/Airport bundles are in your future. I'm calling it now.
That's a safe bet since that's kinda how the flight sim community has operated for the past few decades.
 
Personally I think VR makes these cut-down simulator controls obsolete. When you can have all the indicators as they should be in VR.

i use both a triple monitor setup(actually quad monitor since the 4th monitor is a touch screen control/guage panel) and VR and honestly VR's just not there yet for flight sims.. until there's an affordable way to allow you to actually manipulate switches/buttons with your hands instead of using a controller it doesn't really teach you anything. it's cool for no shits given scenic crap but not if you're legitimately trying to learn to fly.
 
Bah you kids an your new fangled contraptions! When i was virtual flyin all we had was a logitech wingman force feedback joystick and our wits!

Haha seriously, thats a badass setup.


i'll see you and raise you this:
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(Texas Instruments Ti99-4a Flyer)
 
Anyone have some input on what controls to look at? In the $500 range.

:eek:

$500.....


...for a joystick?

I was thinking they;d cost $19.99 for a basic one, maybe $39.99 for a mid tier, and $59.99 for a super fancy one.

$500? That is absolutely nuts.
 
:eek:

$500.....


...for a joystick?

I was thinking they;d cost $19.99 for a basic one, maybe $39.99 for a mid tier, and $59.99 for a super fancy one.

$500? That is absolutely nuts.

And people spend $80 for a mouse and another $80 for a keyboard, which are more simple peripherals.

An okay HOTAS will run about $150. The good stuff $300-500. $20 gets you shit, but at that price point that is expected. You can get cheap HOTAS for $70-90, but they feel super cheap, but if you're on a budget I suppose those will work.
 
And people spend $80 for a mouse and another $80 for a keyboard, which are more simple peripherals.

An okay HOTAS will run about $150. The good stuff $300-500. $20 gets you shit, but at that price point that is expected. You can get cheap HOTAS for $70-90, but they feel super cheap, but if you're on a budget I suppose those will work.

Interesting.

It still seems like a crazy price for a few switches and levers, but what do I know about these things.

I guess my take is that I don't know how much sticking power something like Ms. Flight Simulator will have.

I do have an interest in flying, and have considered going for my pilot's license over the years, but never gotten to it. Having a tough time judging if I'll out enough hours in it to warrant spending more than the bare minimum on controls.

After a while even stunning fake flying around aimlessly has to get a bit boring.

At least that's what I remember from the last time I played Ms. Flight Simulator, one of the DOS versions back in the late 80's. But then again I was a kid with a shorter attention span back then, so who knows.
 
Interesting.

It still seems like a crazy price for a few switches and levers, but what do I know about these things.

It is a volume thing. When you are tooling up a contract manufacturer to make these you have to divide out the cost of machines and your development into it. If you anticipate lots of sales you can lowers the price but if it is a niche product then the price tag will hurt a bit.

Quality is important too. I can get buttons and switches for 2-5cents each but when only rated to 50-100k presses that can severely affect the life of something like this.And with cheap chinese ones, they wont even get close to that number anyways.

And it is always cheaper to do it yourself as many flight or sim enthusiasts will do. Plastic boxes from mcmaster-carr and/or a 3d printer and some design work and you can make any of these. They make control boards that emulate keys and just have 2 wire terminals all around it so you can connect up any of your own buttons or switches to plug in and create your own controllers.
 
Maybe this means they will also return to Microsoft Golf (aka the Links series which they bought out) at some point in the future also. I think 2003 was the last version.

Personally I'd love a new MS Train Simulator, one that includes all of the world's railroads. Most train sims today are pretty pathetic, with hundreds of dollars worth of DLCs.
 
Microsoft’s beautiful and punishing Flight Simulator 2020 reboot will spur a staggering $2.6 billion in PC hardware sales, Jon Peddie Research (JPR) estimates.

If the $2.6 billion figure seems unbelievable, it’s based on the 2.27 million copies of Flight Simulator JPR expects Microsoft to sell. If each of those users subsequently spent an average of $1,100 on additional hardware to run Flight Simulator, that would get you to the JPR estimate

https://www.pcworld.com/article/357...ware-sales.amp.html?__twitter_impression=true


Flight Simulator is essentially the “Can it play Crysis?” game of today — Kelt Reeves, owner of Falcon Northwest, told PCWorld.
( Falcon Northwest got its start in 1992 making gaming PCs, many of them aimed at flight simulator players. In fact, its office is located across from an airport in Oregon.)

“It just eats all the CPU and GPU processing you can throw at it,
It’s the most taxing game we’ve seen on its generation of hardware since Crysis.”
.... I suspect we’re going to be building PCs chasing performance in this title for years to come.”

That means more hardware will be sacrificed at the altar of Flight Sim.
 
Interesting.

It still seems like a crazy price for a few switches and levers, but what do I know about these things.

I guess my take is that I don't know how much sticking power something like Ms. Flight Simulator will have.

I do have an interest in flying, and have considered going for my pilot's license over the years, but never gotten to it. Having a tough time judging if I'll out enough hours in it to warrant spending more than the bare minimum on controls.

After a while even stunning fake flying around aimlessly has to get a bit boring.

At least that's what I remember from the last time I played Ms. Flight Simulator, one of the DOS versions back in the late 80's. But then again I was a kid with a shorter attention span back then, so who knows.

Even a good console controller costs $50-60, and those are done in high volume but have imprecise thumb sticks and only a handful of buttons. A good HOTAS has a lot of mechanical internals and if you cheap out they will get sloppy and imprecise quickly. Likewise, you won't find a good racing wheel for $20 either, those cost a good $200 or so for a decent one as well for similar reasons.

Best cheap device I found was Xbox 360 wired controllers for $28, which is what I paid 6 or so years ago for mine. Superb build quality, but the buttons, lack of buttons, lack of functions and imprecisie thumb sticks don't compare at all to a HOTAS. Seems like you're hard pressed to find a wireless Xbox One controller for $45. Getting any decent HOTAS for $100 or or less would be pretty much impossible to turn a profit on due to manufacturing cost I'd assume. I paid $120 for my X52 Pro years ago, and it is the best low cost HOTAS but even then the button quality isn't superb and Saitek quality control was up and down.
 
I wonder how many flight sim aficionados harbor secret fantasies of the pilot(s) becoming incapacitated during a real flight, taking the controls and safely landing the plane to a hero's welcome.

 
Even a good console controller costs $50-60, and those are done in high volume but have imprecise thumb sticks and only a handful of buttons. A good HOTAS has a lot of mechanical internals and if you cheap out they will get sloppy and imprecise quickly. Likewise, you won't find a good racing wheel for $20 either, those cost a good $200 or so for a decent one as well for similar reasons.

Best cheap device I found was Xbox 360 wired controllers for $28, which is what I paid 6 or so years ago for mine. Superb build quality, but the buttons, lack of buttons, lack of functions and imprecisie thumb sticks don't compare at all to a HOTAS. Seems like you're hard pressed to find a wireless Xbox One controller for $45. Getting any decent HOTAS for $100 or or less would be pretty much impossible to turn a profit on due to manufacturing cost I'd assume. I paid $120 for my X52 Pro years ago, and it is the best low cost HOTAS but even then the button quality isn't superb and Saitek quality control was up and down.

Fair Enough. Thanks for the info.

It's been a while since I bought (or even used) any controller device that was not a keyboard or mouse.

Like a really long time. We are talking "game port on the sound card" era.

In 1992 or 1993 I had some off brand version of the Thrustmaster I used in the few flight Sims I had in DOS. I recall it looking sort of like the Logitech Wingman Light, but it was navy blue with off-yellow buttons.

Anyway, I want to say it cost me less than $20.

I have no idea what HOTAS is.
 
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