All
← Back to Squawk list
Flight Sim Fans: Microsoft Flight Simulator To Be Released August 18th With Three Pricing Options
Over the past few months, the game has gone through a number of alpha builds and is now transitioning to beta, and fans following the developments can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the game is coming out much earlier than anticipated. (www.gatechecked.com) More...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
My three concerns with this game is what's the time frame for support?
1) How long will Microsoft be willing to pay to support a navblue contract for charts and nav data?
2) How long will Microsoft be willing to put up chugging out bandwidth to support the landscaping system?
3) How long will Microsoft be willing to pay FlightAware to use and pull their data?
That's a lot of streaming content, and bandwidth isn't exactly cheap when you scale it up by a few thousand players online every day. Just look at VATSIM, there are around a guaranteed 500-1500 simmers online every day.
1) How long will Microsoft be willing to pay to support a navblue contract for charts and nav data?
2) How long will Microsoft be willing to put up chugging out bandwidth to support the landscaping system?
3) How long will Microsoft be willing to pay FlightAware to use and pull their data?
That's a lot of streaming content, and bandwidth isn't exactly cheap when you scale it up by a few thousand players online every day. Just look at VATSIM, there are around a guaranteed 500-1500 simmers online every day.
They are counting on 5G to do the heavy lifting for the bandwidth. I would be wondering about the other issues also. I have been a fan of Flight Sim for a long time but they stopped supporting it. I still have my Combat Flight Simulator 3 but it would not load into the Windows 10. I tried to load it into Windows 7 but I lost a lot of data transitioning to 10.
I have an old Dell 6000 laptop running XP for older games like Combat FS and Silent Hunter III among others. I have a desktop running Win7 for FS 2004: A Century of Flight and FS X and lots of other games. Have a laptop with Win10 for anything modern. I think the key for length of service of games is to keep the old computers running. :)
I can no longer get my FS to load and run on my WIN 7 Dell XPS. Can't remember which FS I have, and I'm currently 2000 miles from home, so I can't even check.
Given their past history with FSX I would say probably 3-4 years. They did have weather data through Jeppsen but that expired and so it stayed cached for many years with the last days weather. More than likely if I had to guess as far as charts and navdata we will probably see the same that it will go fine for a few years and then just no more updates.
Landscape system the developers did talk about this as I recall to put at ease those who have poor internet connections or maybe none at all. It does have a base mode that you can fly in where all of the basics are still there but you don't get the graphic fidelity of course of having real time map data from Bing overlayed into it. So again once Microsoft no longer deems it worth it to keep the doors open this will go back to a basic mode (I'm guessing it will be closer to what FSX had as far as tiles but of course I haven't had a chance to fly it so it's just an educated guess)
Flightaware I would hope would go a lot longer given I am a feeder in my area. Also given the fact that a large majority of Flightaware's data is voluntarily given to them I would think that they might be able to get by with a lower cost point. But again when Microsoft pulls the plug on it I'm guessing we will have a cached copy of say the last 24 hours or so that it will fall back on.
Landscape system the developers did talk about this as I recall to put at ease those who have poor internet connections or maybe none at all. It does have a base mode that you can fly in where all of the basics are still there but you don't get the graphic fidelity of course of having real time map data from Bing overlayed into it. So again once Microsoft no longer deems it worth it to keep the doors open this will go back to a basic mode (I'm guessing it will be closer to what FSX had as far as tiles but of course I haven't had a chance to fly it so it's just an educated guess)
Flightaware I would hope would go a lot longer given I am a feeder in my area. Also given the fact that a large majority of Flightaware's data is voluntarily given to them I would think that they might be able to get by with a lower cost point. But again when Microsoft pulls the plug on it I'm guessing we will have a cached copy of say the last 24 hours or so that it will fall back on.
They will keep supporting it and expand in future versions even. Since this basically kills all other flight sims I am guessing it will do just fine for a long time. And for that price I think you can't beat it.
That is pretty much with every game on the market today.... From Fantasy to First Person shooters.... They have a lifespan and then dies... If they game does not keep up with Technology, its life span will be shorter.... Flight Simulator has had an Unusually Long Lifespan, primarily because MS has continued to enhance it and upgrade it.
https://stormbirds.blog/2020/07/03/flightaware-to-fill-flight-simulators-virtual-skies-with-airplanes/