Watched some of the preview vids. Annoyingly, the London overflight cuts off about 300m from my flat. Still, bloody impressive. For some reason I found the Berlin shots the most striking. Well, that and the fact that they’ve put giraffes in.
I used to excitedly run home and fire up FSX when there was a thunderstorm because the game would take the ____ data (i’ve forgotten the name of the service) which had winds aloft, aerial extend, and altitude of the actual storms, just to fly through them.
After FSX basically no simulator has really cared about clouds (or at least so it seems).
https://www.reddit.com/r/flightsim/comments/dfbzjm/msfs_2020_devs_response_to_vr_pleading_it/
Promising!
I’d be more than happy for it to come after launch as long as they’re actually working on it and it’s not a half-hearted implementation. The previous comments suggested it was on a “maybe we’ll get round to it in a year or two, if this sells well” footing.
Kinda bananas that they apparently just never considered that users of a simulation where you sit stationary in a cockpit, might really want VR support, lol.
Great that they are actively reacting to the community though.
I bounced off my recent experience with VR (Rift S) for various reasons, but it does seem mind-boggling they wouldn’t have planned for it in a flight sim. Driving and flight sims seem like a no brainer for VR. I was blown away by my experiments in iRacing using the Rift, the sense of being IN the car was hard to get over and everything looked so weird when I went back to triple screens. I just couldn’t get past the blurriness of the headset, and yes, I tried every setting I could find with hours online searching for answers.
My only problem with VR in a program like this, is the fact that you can’t see your equipment. At least in a car, you’re holding the wheel - but various buttons and toggles on a flight stick? Or if you let go of the yoke itself?
I never need to look at my flight stick or throttle when flying. If I had a full simpit with physical MFDs and panels then it would be another matter, but I don’t need to look to find a button on my HOTAS.
Even moving back and forth between mouse and stick isn’t a problem because my spatial awareness just does its thing and my hand moves between my control devices instinctively.
Yeah, this isn’t really a problem. You don’t typically look at your control schemes while playing any game. And the advantage of being able to do a visual clear or lean forward to look at your instruments or line up for VFR landings without having to rotate your view manually more than make up for it.
The reason for leaving it out as I see it is that it would make a significant difference in functionality between the PC and Xbox versions, and I don’t think any MS game has done that yet. The reason he’s walking it back a bit now, well, there’s rumors out the last couple of days that MS does have a VR rig in development for the next Xbox.
I don’t know that functionality differences would really be a concern, as you’re inherently going to get a “compromised” experience, playing a realistic flight sim on a console with a controller.
Regarding VR on Xbox, I don’t know why Microsoft don’t just make a deal to support a standard API for current PC VR headsets. It’s all the benefit, with none of the risks, and DirectX already has a VR API.
Gives Oculus, Vive etc. a boost, builds those relationships, gives Xbox multiple VR options, AND if VR just flops or isn’t profitable, you’re not on the hook for a bunch of unsold plastic.
Oh, I agree. In fact, that’s where it looked like they were heading when they announced the X, and later that year their ‘Windows Mixed Reality’ initiative and partners. Then they just didn’t go any further- they either canceled plans or never had them. I’m guessing it came down to the ‘console experience’ of just plug-and-play to have it work, and there’s no way they could guarantee that with such variance in hardware, so now they’re looking at doing it themselves with the next Gen.
But the difference in functionality is seemingly pretty big- most devs talk about how they have to rebuild things completely to make VR work.
Spencer mentioned at E3 this year (or maybe last year?) that they didn’t see the value of console, livingroom VR, until the tech is at a point where there’s no dangling wires for your to trip over. I think the real reason is just that PSVR sales were below Sony’s expectations, and he didn’t see a reason to jump into that fray.
But that, to me, is even more reason to just provide other headset support as an official option, and see what happens. If it catches on, great. If it doesn’t, you’re out nothing. And you give all of those existing Oculus and Vive owners a compelling reason to buy your console over a PS5.
2 PETABYTES
Froogle’s a pretty big name in the flight sim community, and he was extremely unenthusiastic and unhappy when the initial E3 trailer for Flight Sim came out. He actually put up a video so negative that he later took it down, and replaced it with a slightly less vitriolic one, haha.
This is his previous video, after he went to that event in September. Long story short, he’s completely turned around on it, and explains why in detail. It’s a good video.
Just those first 3 minutes of footage going through all the other games in the series were great. Looks like the one I played back in the day was Microsoft Flight Simulator 3. And looks like this latest one MFS 2020, will be the 12th game in the series, so Microsoft Flight Simulator X was actually the 11th game in the series. Though I guess maybe they don’t count that History of Flight game as a main game in the series, which is how they count it as Flight Simulator 10.
Edit: In the 9th minute he drops the bomb that even though he has a British accent, this guy is from Florida.
Wow. Incredible video preview.
Check your emails, kiddos. I just got my alpha acceptance this morning.
I didn’t :(
We need to figure out a code so you can tell us what you think of the game, without violating your NDA.