Flight Simulator 2020 vs. Elite Dangerous

[Old Duck]

If the new Microsoft Flight simulator had missions, I think it could easily scratch many of the itches that ED currently scratches. The two obvious missions that come to mind are passenger missions and cargo missions, but one could also do rescue missions (flying a chopper to pick up someone wounded in an accident and fly them to a hospital), firefighting missions (drop PKP on forest fires), etc.

MSFS gives me the ability to fly a variety of planes of my choice over the most amazing ELW in a game thus far (assumption based on the trailer), and with things like weather and proper ATC, I think MSFS flying will actually be more compelling that ED flying, at least ED's supercruise. Granted there won't be pirates and air combat in MSFS, nor will be we able to upgrade our planes AFAIK, but still, I'm very excited about the possibilities in MSFS. And hey, if it lets us build and import our own planes, I might just make a Cobra III to fly around in!

So my question is, are there any precedents in flight simulators for missions like these? I haven't done serious flight simulation since way back to FS2004. It would be also cool if there was a progression system, where I have to fly a small charter plane for so many hours before graduating to one of the "big" jets.

 

[Vasea Azure]

I do not recall any of the Microsoft flight sims having build in mission system. They tried introduce short missions in Microsoft Flight I think but it was more of a tutorial. I know that there is popular mod/payware addon for bush plane flyers for FSX that adds some sort off economy/business running missions.
Now that you mentioned it I think it would be pretty good for new FS sim to have proper missions/hauling ED style. It would certainly make me more interested in it!

 

[encrypted]

In the name of democracy haul full plane of imperial slaves to the airport of Heathrow.

 

[Kitfox]

Cue complaints of 'Baww, I took a transport mission to Skykomish Washington State and crashed my freighter A380 because it's a small airfield. Why didn't game hold my hand to stop me doing this?'

I mentioned it before in an earlier thread about FS20, but Deadstick looks like it's going to be a task based flight simulator. Nowhere near release yet though.

 

[Jenner]

MS Flight has missions you can do, yes. MS Flight Simulator X Steam Edition has over 80 missions (so they say). I have not played that one.

So yes - there is precedent for this.

 

[askavir]

X-Plane 11 still beats them all in the sim department. The graphics in MFS 2020 are absolutely drop dead gorgeous though, will be a buy from me for sure, even if as a sim is not as good as X-Plane.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Not that I know of. I recommend looking for sims that have mission creator. But full-fledged mission generator? Never heard of that in civil sims.

 

[Cmdr Mander]

I haven't done serious flight simulation since way back to FS2004.

Bl@@dy whipper-snappers.
I started on FS4. You know, the one that sounded like a lolliepop stick stuck in a bike wheel, but not as cool.

 

[Cmdr Mander]

FS2020 does look amazingly good visually.
Be interesting to see how well it performs with an always online connection, loading gigabytes of scenery from their cloud based 1000TB servers. I'm assuming having a top of the line PC won't be nearly as important as having a stonkingly good connection speed?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

FS2020 does look amazingly good visually.
Be interesting to see how well it performs with an always online connection, loading gigabytes of scenery from their cloud based 1000TB servers. I'm assuming having a top of the line PC won't be nearly as important as having a stonkingly good connection speed?

Depends on the detail. I could kiss DCS good-bye on my old machine when they upgraded engine and graphics with my old computer.

 

[starman]

does it also take an hour to fly to hutton airport?

 

[Chris Simon]

FS2020 does look amazingly good visually.
Be interesting to see how well it performs with an always online connection, loading gigabytes of scenery from their cloud based 1000TB servers. I'm assuming having a top of the line PC won't be nearly as important as having a stonkingly good connection speed?

Not really. Yes the Earth is big and they've got 2 petabytes of satellite quality textures. But you're not everywhere at once.
I imagine it will be something like 50 square mile tiles with only the active and the neighbouring one being loaded on your PC, each one of them being maybe couple hundred MB, with each of them having at least minutes to load (as long as it takes you to fly across your current tile.

Realistically, I think they can't expect an average of more than 20Mbits/s, otherwise they are going to exclude a large number of potential customers.

 

[Old Duck]

I didn't even realize that FS2020 will stream the world from online. Do we know this for sure? I understand having to download a zone (say Africa vs North America) before flying there, but streaming terrain during the entire game session is a very different ball of wax. Being on limited bandwidth, that would put the game off the table for me

 

[Chris Simon]

I didn't even realize that FS2020 will stream the world from online. Do we know this for sure? I understand having to download a zone (say Africa vs North America) before flying there, but streaming terrain during the entire game session is a very different ball of wax. Being on limited bandwidth, that would put the game off the table for me

Well, they didn't put it blatantly like that but the phrase "Entire planet rendered with the cloud-based Azure AI" kind of suggests that strongly.
But again, I don't think they can afford making it much more bandwidth-demanding than other online games.

That being said, it WOULD be nice of them if they allowed us to simply download a certain region or flight corridor and play offline for the time being.

 

[Cmdr Mander]

From the recent Guardian article:
Microsoft servers will do a lot of the visual processing remotely and beam the results to a player’s screen, doing away with the need for a super-powerful PC at home (though you will need a fast internet connection).

Head in the cloud(s): the return of Microsoft Flight Simulator

An unexpected revamp of Microsoft’s classic flying simulator could usher in a new era of cloud function for games

www.theguardian.com

 

[Old Duck]

From the recent Guardian article:
Microsoft servers will do a lot of the visual processing remotely and beam the results to a player’s screen, doing away with the need for a super-powerful PC at home (though you will need a fast internet connection).

Looks like I'll be sticking with Playstation then...

 

[hunvagy]

It still baffles me that while every major company is trying to push streaming games like it's the second coming of jesus on toast, they blatantly ignore the current situation of actual internet coverage. I'm sitting around here in Europe with my 1000/300 connection and read the horror stories of the USA network map. Mind blowing.

 

[Nihila Vex]

X-Plane 11 still beats them all in the sim department. The graphics in MFS 2020 are absolutely drop dead gorgeous though, will be a buy from me for sure, even if as a sim is not as good as X-Plane.

X-Plane 11 looks really good. Unfortunately on my machine it's a really good slideshow.

It still baffles me that while every major company is trying to push streaming games like it's the second coming of jesus on toast, they blatantly ignore the current situation of actual internet coverage. I'm sitting around here in Europe with my 1000/300 connection and read the horror stories of the USA network map. Mind blowing.

While I'd accept some argument that streaming terrain mesh and graphics will allow FS2020 to present Google Earth-quality landscapes, etc, much of the push for this kind of thing is still about keeping control. Streaming game 'services' in general, like current 'live service' and 'always-on' games like ED*, are a way to keep as much of the game as possible under the publisher's control even after the customer has spent money to 'buy' it. You get the player to give you money for the product AND you retain control of the product as well. It's a corporation's dream: a cake-and-eat-it kind of chiz**, made possible, I guess, by our long history of apathy towards EULAs saying things like "You're not buying the software, you're only buying the licence to use it which we can revoke at any time for any reason". Which is ludicrously anti-customer, when you think about it. But until fairly recently, when they had to distribute a whole product on physical media, all they could do was say it. Now they can actually make it reality.

(* I'm a big fan of ED and still feel pretty charitable toward FDev, comparatively speaking. They're far from the worst games company out there in terms of shadiness. But I still don't believe single-player offline was 'too hard to implement'. Or that the galaxy engine was too big to install on home machines, which is one reason I've seen given. They fit Frontier on a single 3.5" floppy disk. I think ED is an always-on title for precisely the above reason: single-player offline just meant people would be playing without reporting constantly to the server for permission to do so.)

(** A chiz is a swiz or swindle, as any fule kno.)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Forced online? No thanks. Damn bandwith freeloaders.

 

[Vasea Azure]

Aye, there is no way I`m going to buy a full game, then invest large amount of my gaming budget for eventual addons just to have the entire thing not working every time my connection goes offline. My loss I guess, but no thanks.