Microsoft Flight Simulator • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#191

Post by ngold » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #48

I started on Flight Simulator 4 way back in the day; I think on my 286. I remember when I first moved to Chicago I wanted to check out Meigs Field, the airfield you started on. It's gone now, and has a really crazy story of how it got turned into a park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigs_Field Looking at the previews for the new FS, I wonder if it will require an Internet connection. It seems like way too much cont…

Wow, just one look at the airfield was a massive hit of nostalgia. I crash landed a thousand times as a kid there. At 5 frames per second on my 286. Thank's for the link. Mayor Daley did not mess around with closing it down. From your link.

>In a controversial and illegal move on the night of Sunday, March 30, 2003, Mayor Daley ordered city crews to destroy the runway immediately by bulldozing large X-shaped gouges into the runway surface in the middle of the night.[14] The required demolition notice was not given to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or the owners of airplanes tied down at the field, and as a result sixteen planes were left stranded at the airport with no operating runway, and an inbound flight had to be diverted by Air Traffic Control, because of equipment scattered on the runway.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#192

Post by beezle » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #106

The trailer is gorgeous. I imagine this will take a pretty hefty machine to play at high quality. I miss the old MS joystick that had a throttle, extra buttons, and especially the yaw twist capability of the stick. Once you got comfortable with it, there was no need for rudder pedals. Flying the helicopter (in full manual) was quite a challenge, but it was doable.

Just watched the trailer and another video. Its good, don't get me wrong, but I was left wanting/expecting a bit better. Perhaps it is just my unrealistic expectations and MS are limited by Xbox hardware vs a high end desktop with good dedicated graphics card?

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#193

Post by codezero » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #2

Microsoft Flight Simulator brings back very fond memories of my childhood. I can remember learning to fly with a joystick that pushed in and out up and down just like real pilots! I could never master the helicopter and I’m pretty sure I crashed into the Sears tower a LOT.

I assume that joystick was a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro. I owned one for years that had this functionality, it also had a throttle wheel on the side and a bunch of macro buttons. It was seriously awesome as a peripheral.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#194

Post by int0x80 » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #129

pixelbath wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Flight Simulator team at Microsoft takes their work pretty seriously. I very much doubt this is prerendered; they know the cost of BSing their (very hardcore) fanbase.

It's not MS doing the game, those guys are: http://www.asobostudio.com

Do you know why is that?

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#195

Post by jdsully » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

int0x80 wrote: post #194

Thaxll wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not MS doing the game, those guys are: http://www.asobostudio.com

Do you know why is that?

The original flight sim team was disbanded in 2009 during the recession. They’ve since moved on to different companies.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#196

Post by maccha » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

satysin wrote: post #15

My reply is a little off-topic but I wanted to share as it is Flight Simulator related. Last year an old boss and friend passed suddenly. He had only just turned fifty but the years of poor eating and sitting caught up with him in his late forties. He was a Flight Simulator addict. He held a private pilots license as well and would fly small aircraft. Took us up a few times which was amazing. Very different to a regu…

Made an account simply to share that your post had an immediate impact on me. I was originally planning on canceling a physical therapy consultation I had scheduled to address the problems I inevitably have due to my software engineering job, figuring "It's not urgent, I should do more work instead, it can wait," but after reading your post, I decided to prioritize health and keep the consultation.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#197

Post by glen1dizzy » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

JoeDaDude wrote: post #128

My Flight Simulator story: I lived in Philadelphia well into adulthood and played extensively with MS Flight Simulator. At the time, the game would start in Oakland and you would fly across the bay to San Francisco International airport. One day, I had to fly for business to San Francisco, my first time being there. As the jet approached for landing, I got an overwhelming sense of deja vu looking out the window. I al…

I’ve only been to San Francisco a few times, but every time I fly over, I have the background music from Sim City 4’s region view stuck in my head. Because I always played the game with the Bay Area map.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#198

Post by antod » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #48

I started on Flight Simulator 4 way back in the day; I think on my 286. I remember when I first moved to Chicago I wanted to check out Meigs Field, the airfield you started on. It's gone now, and has a really crazy story of how it got turned into a park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigs_Field Looking at the previews for the new FS, I wonder if it will require an Internet connection. It seems like way too much cont…

I never used the MS versions, but spent a lot of time on the Amiga version of FSII by Sublogic. According to Wikipedia that version was closer to the featureset of MS FlightSim 3.0 than 2.0

I think I can still hear the droning noise of that Cessna engine.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#199

Post by dividuum » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

ngold wrote: post #191

djsumdog wrote: post #48

I started on Flight Simulator 4 way back in the day; I think on my 286. I remember when I first moved to Chicago I wanted to check out Meigs Field, the airfield you started on. It's gone now, and has a really crazy story of how it got turned into a park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigs_Field Looking at the previews for the new FS, I wonder if it will require an Internet connection. It seems like way too much cont…

Wow, just one look at the airfield was a massive hit of nostalgia. I crash landed a thousand times as a kid there. At 5 frames per second on my 286. Thank's for the link. Mayor Daley did not mess around with closing it down. From your link. >In a controversial and illegal move on the night of Sunday, March 30, 2003, Mayor Daley ordered city crews to destroy the runway immediately by bulldozing large X-shaped gouges i…

You can now easily do that in a browser[1], if you need a quick fix. It's the version with aircraft and scenery designer and the audio upgrade. I had to tune the DOSBox clock speed a bit with Ctrl-F12, but it works pretty well (manually go through the start menus!) and I just flew the good old Cessna around Sears Tower :-)

[1] https://archive.org/details/msdos_Microsoft_Flight_Simulator...

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator

#200

Post by jillesvangurp » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

ecmascript wrote: post #92

I just watched the trailer and holy goat shit that looks amazing. Great job!

I agree. It looks like they make full use of assets they would have access to for Bing maps. A lot of the progress in e.g. x-plane in recent year has been the use of map data, satellite images, and other geospatial data to generate highly detailed scenery. I have close to half a terabyte worth of auto generated scenery with high resolution satellite imagery, 3d meshes, and open streetmaps based positioning of roads, buildings, trees, etc. For a small company like x-plane it never was feasible to curate detailed scenery world wide and even MS back in 2006 only had auto gen scenery in most parts of the world. X-plane v10 was the first version to include open street maps based scenery and they vastly improved this with v11.

Nowadays, Microsoft of course has access to lots of data; their scientists have developed lots of cool algorithms to synthesize detailed 3d models from photos and other sources, they have access to essentially unlimited hardware infrastructure to process this, they have lots of experience building 3d graphics libraries such as directx and have lots of experience working with hardware vendors to deliver VR. Speaking of which, flight simulation and AR could be an awesome use case for e.g. Hololens.

Putting this all together, they should be able to produce some really detailed scenery and a modern rendering engine to go with that. The only question is why they ever walked away from this. It's such a great show case for a lot of stuff they have.