Project FS2006 Brainstorming Session #1, General High-level categories

[Brad]

Welcome to the first Project FS2006 brainstorming session. To see what this is all about check the pinned thread at the top of this forum.

In this session we'll be discussing the general high-level categories of items that we'd like to see included/added/modified in FS2006. From the earlier discussion we had on this topic I gleaned some of the most popular suggestions and listed them below to start off the discussion. Feel free to suggest alternatives or even suggest removal of one of the items. I'll update the list as the discussion directs.

I expect this first discussion will be brief since there aren't that many general categories to choose from. Here's what I have so far (red indicates it was added as a result of a suggestion in this thread):

Scenery
Aircraft
Weather
AI
Gameplay
ATC
Multiplayer
Misc
What else? List your ideas below.

So just to clarify, the end result of this discussion should produce a list of items to be included in a poll. The item that receives the most votes in that poll will then be our next item of discussion later this month. For instance, if Scenery wins out in the poll, we'll discuss what scenery items you want to change (mesh data, moving traffic on roads, more vegetation, etc). Then those items will end up in another poll.

If you have any project-specific questions, post them in this thread.

[Fox]

Pay more attention to airport scenery, just don't make every airport so "plain" also how about NON REPEATING GROUND MESHES! its so annoying to be flying at 35000 and see the ground look EXACTLY THE SAME!


I submitted this idea to microsoft before. But I guess i'll put it again.

Have some sort of club, where when you register FS2004 online, you get a username and a password where you can log onto their site and download a few planes per month. It doesn't even have to be limited to just planes. It can be repaints, scenery, sound, AI... anything.

Also we NEED UPDATED PLANES! I swear the sound on the Learjet is almost the same as it was on FS98. And I know for a fact the 747 is the same as it was in FS2002. If a company, like lets say Meljet can produce such airplanes for free, theres no reason why microsoft can't spend more time on them.

Weather IMO is pretty good, I like the real time weather. The only thing I have against it is better looking clouds.

AI.... oh boy. Here we go. AI needs mass improvement, more flights, more AI planes, and better ATC for sure.

---------------

and something not mentioned above (sorta goes with the club idea) is that in the year between (lets say) FS2004 and FS2006 they need to release a CD, that only sells for about $20 that has about 50 new planes, fixed/new scenery, new sound, and other things to the program.


We also need better airports, like ground crew, emergency vehicles, moving gates, and just a more real airport (like flights can be delayed, or pasengers can board your plane and you can serve meals to them etc...)


I'll probily be editing this post like crazy as I tihnk of things

Thats my two cents.

FS2004 is great, but not the best

[TechnicolorYawn]

A. Career. Mode.

[Braveheart]

Sounds cool !!!!!!!

[Chief Wiggum]

ATC bugfixes and ATC in multiplayer would be great. Declaring emergencies is something I look forward to do.

More detailed scenery and airports would be great too, but I don't think they're going to do that; it would require a VERY NICE computer, and a game that is large (4CD's) will became larger (more expensive too).

They should improve aircrafts, make nice repaints and remove some of them too.

Like TechnicolorYawn said, a carreer mode would be wonderful.

Finally, they should add "Adventures" to be completed, like FS2000.

This post has been edited by Chief Wiggum: Apr 21 2004, 06:33 PM

[Captain]

First I want to say the scenery looks great but I agree with Fox666 the repeating ground meshes they are annoying, maybe they can use more satellite images next time.
But as overall scenery looks ok for me.
I think they should now focus on ATC and other things to make FS-2006 really great.

Ok here are some improvements I like to see.

For the scenery: mostly what Fox666 said, moving objects on airports, all the traffic going around on airports.

The career mode suggestion from TechnicolorYawn sounds great.

For the flight planner: Possibility to plan a flight into legs or hops, like start at one airport,
fly to the second, the third and so on. And complete with planed departure and arrival time table,
like you give the date and time for the first departure time and the computer calculates all other times.

Preflight events like passenger boarding, catering and fuel servicing, luggage and cargo loading.
Now these events can be used to make the flight more interesting by using random errors,
like a passenger is late or there is a problem with the fuel.
This will cause you to have to wait with your departure.
So finally you’re delayed and you have to try to make up for the lost time in the flight so you arrive on time.

In flight sounds and events form the cabin, like the stewards preflight safety announcements, fasten seatbelt announcements, not just the boring ping hehehe.
But it would be nice to have a random in fight events like a passenger getting ill and you need to
divert to an airport to get him to the hospital.
Or a bunch of football hooligans trying to tear apart your beloved plane forcing you to land and have them removed.

ATC now here I like to see emergency procedures, so when your plane fails you can announce it to the ATC and they give you priority and vector other planes away.
Waiting stacks near big airports in stead of just trying to land everyone on one big pile.
More runways in use on airports depending on wind direction, but also so you don’t end up
so much in a traffic jam on the ground.
Airports closed due to bad weather so you need to divert to another airport.

Well I think that’s about it for now, if they put all this into the next version,
I think it would be a great simulation.

This post has been edited by Captain: Apr 21 2004, 06:34 PM

[Ruahrc]

What a great idea- here is what I think that could be added/improved in FS2006:

Scenery-

As far as scenery goes- naturally an improvement in overall scenery quality which would merely scale with the avaliable technology in 2006. A more detailed worldwide mesh and improved landclass would be a big factor. I suggest that the development team go research the types of available addons which most likely have come into being as a result of a shortcoming of the original program (things like water textures, mesh scenery, cloud textures, autogen textures, etc). Look at what people have tried to fix themselves and fix it in FS2006. Also a big thing that bothers a lot of scenery fanatics is the fact that airports cannot exist on slopes or slants. This causes a real problem when using high resolution meshes because then one end of your airport is either on a plateau or in a hole, because in real life it is slanted slightly. I've also heard a lot about needing more accurate coastline and water features, and I think that some time and resources should be spent in improving these aspects of the scenery for FS2006.

In addtion, given the nature of the FS community, rather than trying to re-create the entire world perfectly- provide some really great and easy to use scenery editing tools that users can use to develop and distribute scenery of their own. I don't think there is a built-in or included scenery editor like they have with airplanes and GMAX, so something in this department may be needed?

Also, a bit about sound. To me, the sound in FS is the most unrealistic part of the sim. Listening to my 747 take off in FS' tower or spot view is NOTHING like listening to a real 747 take off. Crusing in the cabin does not sound much like cruising in a real airplane cabin either.

Aircraft-

I think that the default models look so bad compared to freeware ones from groups like POSKY or Meljet is because MS is trying to model a plane that will run well on the minimum suggested hardware for FS. Imagine trying to fly your Meljet 777 with the bare minimum requirements and also having it run smoothly. To this end I think they should either
1) increase the minimum requirements for the product and include better models
2) maybe do something like give the user an option to install low or high detail models, so that users with higher end systems can choose to have higher detail models if they so wish.

Another thing I would like to see added on default airplanes is explorable cabins or at least wingviews. These are very popular and I think that if they included wingviews in default aircraft, the standard would be set for the community to meet as far as features on freeware/payware airplanes they release, and we would see wingviews available to everyone, ActiveCamera or not.

I would also like to see an expanded fleet of aircraft (like maybe the whole fleet of boeings from 717-777, etc), but I acknowledge that this is a tough choice to make for the MS team. The amount of aircraft out there is so wide and varied that to try to represent all types of aircraft would be very difficult (on the same level as my AI comments below) and any concessions they made would only be met with criticism from the FS community. I think MS has done a great job in this regard by providing the tools with which people can make and distribute their own airplanes. Therefore I think that if they improved the available tools for plane creation that would help the FS community a lot. I don't know much about making/repainting my own planes- but if there is no avaliable repaint editor for the planes- please include one!

I mean how many of us actually use the default airplanes anymore? Perhaps some of the time it is due to the fact that the default planes suck- but it is also due to the fact that simmer J wants to fly his 735 (and not the default 734) and simmer K wants to fly his Citation X and simmer L wants to fly his Sopwith camel, and trying to make all of these aircraft high quality and include it in the default package is just plain unrealistic.

Weather-

Weather got a lot better in FS2004 with the new clouds and dynamic weather. To be honest, the improved weather was what really sold me as far as buying FS9. I think that in FS2006 the main changes would really be to fix the problems with the existing weather system, not try to add major new features. Things like having the real world weather transition more smoothly (sometimes we fly in clear skies then suddenly are put in split pea soup then clear skies again, etc) and and try and enhance the visual realism of the weather (most notably the visibility effects).

AI-

I don't think it is feasable nor reasonable to expect MSFS to include a world's worth of real-world AI flightplans. The cost would be far too high for liscensing issues and modelling/painting and ensuring the accuracy of all the flightplans they include would be an enourmous undertaking. If they try to get real-word traffic out there but have to make compromises, we will all just sit around and complain about what they had to cut back on (Where is airline X or why is real-life flight Y that I flew on not in the sim?). I do, however, think that they should follow on their fantastic support of 3rd party addons by programming in the ability to manipulate the sim's engine such that a project like this could be completed by a 3rd party and integrated tightly and completely into the sim.
ATC should be fixed such that the spacing of aircraft on approach is realistic, and also I think the options for ATC should be expanded as was mentioned earlier. Things like declaring emergencies, requesting this or that, etc. More than once I have arrived at my destination airport with not much fuel left and forced to go around two or more times, and eventually I have to ignore ATC and land because going around again will run me out of fuel. An option to request that I have priority landing due to fuel would be nice.

General-

Just a last couple of things that didn't really fit anywhere else... The flight planning needs to be improved a little to where it is more realistic with things like STAR transitions and the like are included. I think that the navigation and flight planning is the one thing left in FS that differs from real life quite a bit and that if they incporporated things like STAR transitions and those TCAS(?)/FMC(?) windows in their panels it would really increase the realism as far as experiencing what a professional pilot sees and does when he flies a plane in real life.

Also the I am pretty sure that this is something that I mentioned multiple times above but I think the best way for the MS team to make the users happy is to go out and browse avsim and flightsim.com, etc and see what the most popular downloadable addons are (which most likely have been created because something in the default package is not right) and fix those issues if they can.

OK wow that was a lot I hope it makes sense!

Ruahrc

This post has been edited by Ruahrc: Apr 21 2004, 08:39 PM

[BrianF]

declaring emergencys! 7700

TCAS!

This post has been edited by BrianFeinzimer: Apr 26 2004, 01:41 AM

[sarge]

I hope you folks don't mind a relative "noob" joining in .....

Scenery & Airport Files: Editable by a single SIMPLER program (choose "edit scenery" or "edit airport"). Not everyone that uses Flt Sim is a Microsoft programmer; make the editor more user friendly like AFCAD, FSSC, FSDS and others. Changes saved (as done now with 3rd party programs) into AddOn Scenery that takes priority over shipped scenery/airport files.

Aircraft: (1) Actually, aircraft recognition: If an aircraft is imported from another Microsoft product, there should be no callout of "type" as "experimental." Microsoft should recognize it's own aircraft definitions. (2) Airlines & Callsigns: if a user makes a change in the aircraft.cfg file, that is a common word in the English language, ATC should be able to articulate that word or combination of words. It can say "Navy" and "Army" but it can't say "Army Air" without manipulation by a 3rd party utility. (3) ATC -- declare emergencies and get appropriate ATC response; announce ADIZ crossings; warnings about entering restricted airspace; clean up Pacific area ATC so handoffs to Approach and Departure are not called as the same freq's (Tokyo and Naha Centers, for example).

Weather: no real complaints from this end; agree that definitions could be fine tuned so there are no square clouds or straight lines (there's no such thing as a straight line in nature, that's a man-made feature).

AI: agree that MS should stay out of this (unless we're ready to pay $99.99+ for future versions). ProjectAI is doing a good job; might recommend the guys at ProjectAI as consulting programmers for this portion of the next version.

Probably could write more, but it would all come under one of the above.

[Jon]

Whoa slow down everybody! Awesome ideas so far, but at this point we're just looking for new categories to talk about in depth later. Once we have all agreed on the different categories to discuss we'll delve into each category and start a new brainstorming session for each one. Here are the new categories I see so far:

Gameplay (career mode, flight planner, etc)
ATC (declaring emergencies, etc)
Multiplayer (my idea below)

I have some ideas on Multiplayer enhancements, so I nominate Multiplayer as a new category. This category would include topics on Massive Multiplayer (enabling MS Zone), LAN play enhancements, etc.

[sarge]

[Mango]

Like Ruahrc said...

SID/STARS and SID/STARS and even SID/STARS with full ATC support !!!

[Fox]

Whoops

Guess I got carried away

[Leginmat]

Career mode would be awesome! maybe a double multi?? two people flying on one?? one controls while the other plays around or each have turns flying

[TechnicolorYawn]

That would be cool. Being able to connect to a friend's computer, so you have a co-pilot.

[Brad]

I like that idea too - we'll categorize that under Multiplayer.

[Mul.]

An armada of vehicles surrounding the planes on ground such as people refueling the plane, loading cargo

This post has been edited by mul: Apr 22 2004, 02:14 PM

[knitrogen]

Few things I wanted to tell you guys (you may already know) is that when Microsoft comes out with a product like this, they would always want lot of businesses develop around it (like the Ultimate Traffic for Example) and so they will not focus a lot on Aircrafts / Scenaries. They always target folks with 8 MB graphics card, 128 MB of RAM etc. So you may not really expect anything nice from their side. However they should provide an option where you can choose the quality of the aircraft. If I have a low end computer, I would choose a low resolution aircraft and vice versa.

As many of you suggested, repetetive ground scenaries are annoying....especially I see crop circles when I fly over my home town which is strange ....

I am not sure how many of you guys noticed this, but during instant replay's the traffic that was originally there just dissappears.......Like for instance, I landed right behind a MD-83 in San Diego. But It dissappeard in the replay.

It will be cool to have a "Video Recording" feature that would capture your flight (when ever you turn it on/off ) and finally save it as a file which can be edited if needed.

I still have few ideas..........but got to go now....

[sammyboy]

Heres my brainstorm

[ADSimpson]