[HN Gopher] The ambition of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The ambition of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
        
       Author : tosh
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2024-09-24 10:39 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (venturebeat.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (venturebeat.com)
        
       | ddoolin wrote:
       | This is the first I'm even hearing of MSFS 2024, I figured 2020
       | would just be a continuous WIP for a long time to come. I used it
       | for practice but haven't dusted the equipment off in awhile, but
       | this sounds like some nice improvements. 2020 was already pretty
       | astounding in its quality and the leap from the existing flight
       | sims.
        
         | lttlrck wrote:
         | 2020 is astonishing in VR. I get the same melancholy I do on a
         | real plane and can fly for hours sightseeing out the window.
         | There is also a real sense of peril.
         | 
         | It's quite the experience. I can't wait for 2024.
        
           | grujicd wrote:
           | Do you get any motion sickness?
        
           | polishdude20 wrote:
           | What sort of headset do you use? What's your graphics card
           | and CPU setup?
           | 
           | I've used a rift S with my 1070 TI and it struggles a bit!
        
       | polishdude20 wrote:
       | It would be so cool to use Microsoft's "earth copy" for stuff
       | other than just flight sim. They say it's the most accurate
       | representation of the earth ever. Wonder if you can do some
       | interesting science with that.
        
         | a2128 wrote:
         | Mostly military simulations and training, probably
        
         | pedalpete wrote:
         | We used to be in this space, and with Ayvri/Doarama - which was
         | a 3D virtual world but not a flight simulator, it was used by
         | paragliders to replay flights, commercial drone operators, some
         | defense, transportation planning (trains, maybe others as
         | well), etc etc.
         | 
         | We approached Microsoft when we were selling the company, and
         | the response we got was "you're too close to work we're doing
         | for us to even look at you or talk to you". I assumed that
         | meant they are building out a digital twin, with capabilities
         | to run in a browser at high speed with high resolution (which
         | we did). That was 3 years ago. I'm surprised we haven't seen
         | something from them yet.
        
         | gadtfly wrote:
         | MSFS 2020's Earth is unbelievably good from the air, but it
         | does not look good and is not physically coherent on a human
         | scale at the surface (outside of airports).
         | 
         | I always assumed the primary thing in a sequel would be to
         | train an even bigger and better satellite maps -> 3D scenery
         | model, especially one that understood a wider variety of
         | building configurations, so we'll see.
        
       | w_for_wumbo wrote:
       | Maybe I'm being simplistic of overly optimistic - but I would
       | think that there would be a massive opportunity for collaboration
       | with fluid dynamics to simulate and 'fast-forward' the weather to
       | see likely impacts.
       | 
       | It might not be correct the first time, but as we map the changes
       | from prediction against the reality, we could adjust for factors
       | that we hadn't considered.
       | 
       | It seems to me that we shouldn't be too far from accurate weather
       | prediction and perhaps with huge amount of data capture having a
       | digital twin of the planet in which we have enough confidence in
       | to model potential climate impacts of policies, products could
       | allow us to have robust discussions around where we're headed and
       | what paths we could take to adapt or overcome the impacts we're
       | already facing.
        
         | epgui wrote:
         | That simply doesn't work, for the same reason we can't even
         | model three massive bodies interacting with each other via
         | gravity, which is a much much simpler problem.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-09-26 23:00 UTC)