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panpanna

Is MSFS was just a front to improve Bing Maps for free?

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Yeah, and as a way to advertise the crazy cool stuff you can do with Azure Maps.

Only if developing a modern flight simulator is free.

I would imagine it’s at least a break even right? They do charge for it after all.

They charge a full $59.99 too. But I know the target audience would happily pay full price.

$60 seems pretty low for a sim as complete as it seems to be, apparently there’s multiple PB if sim data?

My only worry is if one day they decide to stop supporting it (even if it's 10 years in the future) and all of a sudden it's not possible to fly around because the service that streamed map data from the cloud isn't running.

Afaik, there's an offline mode. It seems like you're forced to complete an online update before you're allowed to start the game proper though and you might be stuck with the original data on the discs even if you could skip that, which would sort of suck.

This is correct.

The game client is about a 91 gigabyte download which will include all the aircraft and a low-resolution copy of the entire world. This offline data is fully functional.

You only need to be online for multiplayer, live air traffic data, and to stream high-quality versions of the world.

Also, the game has an option to manually add areas of the world to the high quality data cache, so if you know you're going to be without Internet for a while, but still want to be able to fly over certain areas with high-quality imagery, you can do that.

Isn't there an online check to ensure you have a license?

I would hope that if the game servers were being taken offline permanently, then the license check would be removed.

Even if Microsoft chose not to remove the license check, it would certainly get cracked. Cracks likely exist already.

Hopefully modders would reverse engineer the executables to talk to their own servers (presumably it's not as simple as modifying a DNS server to return a homebrew IP address, and there are baked-in SSL certificates) and get the maps that way...

Hah, imagine doing that and streaming a map of Mars. Or the heights and structures from a Minecraft map. Or a Sim City map, Sim Copter 2020 anyone?

It’s actually $120 for the highest deluxe edition, which includes the 787, SFO airport, and Heathrow. I imagine a decent chunk of folks on this site wouldn’t want to play without the decked out SFO experience.

Curious, whats so special about SFO? I searched for some images and it doesn't seem terribly special (certainly not 2x price special).

For me, it’s the airport I’ve flown in-out of as a passenger the highest number of times. I suspect that’s true of a lot of people on this site

My guess from the list of premium airports is that Microsoft has made a judgement based on wealthy geek density. People love to fly their local or familiar airports, and the kind of people in San Francisco who play flight simulator are wealthier than most. All the premium airports are either tech or financial hubs.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eurogamer.net/amp/2020-07-3...

Maybe because KSFO is covered by PilotEdge* ATC? [*] professional air traffic control for flight simulators

Do you know if thia edition comes with the monthy Xbox Game Pass (which is considerably cheaper if you don't mind "renting" the game)

A coworker has Game Pass and says he only has access to the standard edition.

If Xbox game pass is available for you, you can also get it for free with a $5 monthly membership.

that was my first thought too, but the article says these models are being used by users saving them to the "community" folder in their game install. the models aren't being submitted for inclusion into the official map.

(if they were, google might have something to say about all this)

How much do you think it cost to build the software?

Its Open Street Maps who benefits most. Microsoft uses OSM data from what I can tell, they get their imagery from other companies.

Microsoft doesn't get to import the data. This all ends up in user made mods.

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