Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#91

Post by zakhaev17 » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #78

golergka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've experienced most of the issues you described, and yet, I have to conclude that the game is absolutely fantastic despite them. The visual clarity is mind-blowing, and the UI and all the helpers make all the difference between this game and all other sims that I've, as a completely casual player, have tried before. But more importantly, it's not a game that's defined by it's release; developers are clearly followi…

> But more importantly, it's not a game that's defined by it's release; developers are clearly following the service model Are you sure? Got a source for that? The french developer company Asobo has typically been launching one great-looking, abysmally performing game per year so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asobo_Studio#Games_developed Why would they spend more than a year on MSFS?

They’ve been posting weekly development updates. Here’s one from last week that has a roadmap based on feedback from the beta - https://www.flightsimulator.com/august-13th-2020-development.... It definitely seems this will be more of a service model.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#92

Post by 0pranav » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

I wish this game launched with xCloud. I understand that simulation enthusiast won't be interested in that but for many people like me who don't want to worry about streaming and storing all that world data, as well as people not having enough resources to run the game it would be the perfect opportunity to try game streaming.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#93

Post by mrcarrot » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #72

mrcarrot wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve have said they will (somehow) not count the time taken to download the game content against the 2 hour refund clock [1]. [1]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-08-20-valve-assu...

I will still take more than two hours to figure out if this game is playable or not, especially since everything is so random/buggy. And the framerate when loading scenery (looking in a new direction) currrently seems to depend on the the time of the day, because the geometry servers are overloaded or somthing. After 6 hours of game play (sort of - half of that been spent looking at loading screens and trying out dif…

You could just sign up for a month of Game Pass and get the game for 1 £/€/$.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#94

Post by alkonaut » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 7:32 AM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #84

alkonaut wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never, ever, buy a large game until it gets at least a few months of updates. You don’t want to pay to be a beta tester. Just wait 6 months and if it’s not smooth by then it probably never will be.

So true. But it's also so, so tempting.

Luckily for me and many others it’s easier to resist the temptation when there are zero joysticks to be found. I guess by the time you can get a joystick they’ll also have patched the game.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#95

Post by g_p » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 8:51 AM UTC

btgeekboy wrote: post #37

ornitorrincos wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I have the same loading times on an hdd with a 2700 and 64gb of ram, so the slowdown seem something relatively indenpendent.

I’ve been running the task manager on a separate monitor to see where the bottlenecks are. Those long load times appear to be, for me, GPU bound. It’s probably pre-rendering something. I'm running a 3700X, 32GB RAM, M2 SSD, GTX 1070, gigabit internet.

I've been doing similar, although reached a slightly different conclusion. It seems to me that the menus (even idling in them) use full GPU. I'm not convinced it's necessarily rendering stuff (and if it was, it really ought to cache it after the first time!) - I think this is just the result of a really bad performance UI they got away with launching.

I don't seem to max anything out when flying - even GPU has a little headroom according to task manager.

Hopefully Asobo will spend time on performance, rather than just bare functionality, as there's definitely lots of scope to fix things like frame pacing and overall performance.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#96

Post by golergka » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 9:08 AM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #78

golergka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've experienced most of the issues you described, and yet, I have to conclude that the game is absolutely fantastic despite them. The visual clarity is mind-blowing, and the UI and all the helpers make all the difference between this game and all other sims that I've, as a completely casual player, have tried before. But more importantly, it's not a game that's defined by it's release; developers are clearly followi…

> But more importantly, it's not a game that's defined by it's release; developers are clearly following the service model Are you sure? Got a source for that? The french developer company Asobo has typically been launching one great-looking, abysmally performing game per year so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asobo_Studio#Games_developed Why would they spend more than a year on MSFS?

Because it's a different kind of game with a different kind of audience. Simmers are accustomed to paying for additional content, and this is a much more stable and lucrative strategy than abandoning the title. Just look at Paradox.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#97

Post by nickflood » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC

0pranav wrote: post #92

I wish this game launched with xCloud. I understand that simulation enthusiast won't be interested in that but for many people like me who don't want to worry about streaming and storing all that world data, as well as people not having enough resources to run the game it would be the perfect opportunity to try game streaming.

I think, it's down to the Xbox version not being available yet. I'm sure once it's out, it'll be available through xCloud.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#98

Post by g_p » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 11:40 AM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #81

joezydeco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh of course, your observations are totally spot on. But even when you get through the grind of loading this game, the performance goes completely to hell once Windows starts swapping out RAM pages. I also agree with that note on how the credits were stacked up. And that’s literally how this game got built. Asobo came to MS with this awesome visualization tool and MS pretty much said “ok, why don’t we hand you FS14’s…

> The product was literally built backwards. Yes, exactly. I't infuriating. I hope there is a strong enough enough backlash to get Microsoft to spend 50% more than they intended to, to fix the product so that it matches what they sold it for.

It also seems the menus were designed by designers that had no "performance budget" cap - looking at performance, the menus only hit a sensible FPS when on the loading screen. The sheer amount of animation and transparency in the main menu seems to be the cause of poor performance and GPU fans resembling jet engines, and totally needlessly at that!

I can't see anything else bottlenecking the system elsewhere on performance - it really does seem like the overall game missed out on any real performance optimisation.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#99

Post by bufferoverflow » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 12:39 PM UTC

bitxbit wrote: post #2

How long would it take to model out the entire world in reasonable detail? Something similar to open world games such as GTA V?

Depends on how much money you throw at the problem. It's a problem that's easy to parallelize.

Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI

#100

Post by ukyrgf » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 12:49 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #3

bitxbit wrote: post #2

How long would it take to model out the entire world in reasonable detail? Something similar to open world games such as GTA V?

It’d be kind of amazing if GTA 6 was using this kind of tech to create its open world environment when it releases. Sadly though, I expect it will need to have a free to play mode with micro transactions to support the ongoing investment into keeping the infrastructure up for delivering the open world imaging.

GTA is supposed to be satire on the real world. That's why you have your Cluckin Bells and Ammunations. If it was just a 3D environment based on the current world it would be pretty boring.