How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real?

Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by ekianjo on Monday April 05, 2021 @04:13AM (#26696466)

> MSFS is a technological tour de force that has only been out now for 1/2 a year.

If you conveniently ignore the fact that fs has been around since the 80s.

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by EMM_386 on Monday April 05, 2021 @04:56AM (#26696747)

> If you conveniently ignore the fact that fs has been around since the 80s.

This is like saying that the latest Doom "has been around since 1993".

FS2020 was developed by the French company Asobo.

https://www.asobostudio.com/games/microsoft-flight-simulator

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by Daho0n on Monday April 05, 2021 @06:35AM (#26697290)

That is not a fair comparison. If MSFS has less features but better graphics it is either moving backwards as a sim or becoming more arcadeish. A sim with less sim is less not more.

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by ekianjo on Monday April 05, 2021 @09:06AM (#26698404)

> FS2020 was developed by the French company Asob

yes I know. It does not mean that they disregarded the whole history of 40 years of FS when designing the game did they ?

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by mlavin on Monday April 05, 2021 @11:29AM (#26700322)

But Doom Eternal wasn't developed from the original Doom engine, same with the new Flight Simulator.

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by mopsi on Monday April 05, 2021 @06:44PM (#26705606)

The new Flight Simulator is an upgraded version of the engine that dates back to at least 1990s, if not earlier, and traces of the fact are obvious. Legacy aerodynamics simulation from Flight Simulator X (2006) is included and fully functional. Air traffic control system introduced in Flight Simulator 2002 is also there with minor changes throughout the years. Even some artwork is 20+ years old, such as "737-400_scenery_t1.bmp" texture map[1] for a fictional 737-400 that came with Flight Simulator 2000[2]. I guess they forgot to remove it, or left it for backwards compatibility reasons.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/KnP1NKl

[2] https://microsoft-flight-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Orbit_Air...

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by rbanffy on Monday April 05, 2021 @08:35AM (#26698157)

I don’t think there is much Sublogic code left in the current release.

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by jonathanstrange on Monday April 05, 2021 @09:31AM (#26698680)

"not much" is a bit subjective. In any case, I'd wager that 99% of the ATC code was taken from them. It has the same incorrect terminology and nonsense than in any other version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The visual "game engine" is from Asobo, though.

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by golergka on Monday April 05, 2021 @04:44AM (#26696655)

Wasn't MSFS2020 developed from scratch by a new studio?

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Re:How did Microsoft make Flight Simulator seem so real? by Macha on Monday April 05, 2021 @06:36AM (#26697294)

From scratch? No, consequently there is a pretty much automated aircraft converter [1] and the directory structure is incredibly similar and early alphas had the fsx flight physics, and started with fsx airports before the ml scenery was finished.

It's certainly a more ambitious engine upgrade of the engine than p3d or fsw, even excluding the cloud scenery stuff, but "write a flight sim from scratch" is a task on par with "write a Web browser from scratch".

Yes, most of this forum could write a IE3 or Netscape 2 or Lynx clone in a long but manageable amount of time, but if you want to catch up to Chrome/Firefox/Safari, good luck.

[1]: https://www.nexusmods.com/microsoftflightsimulator/mods/117

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