Expectations

[NeilG]

I have been a flight sim anorak since the days of Flight Sim 2002, in fact I even remember wire graphics. The odd thing about these now ancient offerings was that such was the novelty of them that primitive as they were nevertheless, in a sense, they provided more satisfaction than is sometimes the case now. I know this will sound strange, even ungrateful, but I think that this was because no one back then could reasonably expect that flight sim should attain any really significant resemblance to reality. Satisfaction is all about expectation and these primitive graphics (by comparison with what is available now ), satisfied by virtue of exceeding our (then) meagre expectations. Today, however, I flew out if ORBX Snohomish and it was so beautiful. It's resemblance to reality was a thousand times greater than those graphics I'd experienced when I began this hobby. But it was presicely this, in its raising of my expectations, that was the problem. I managed sliders full to the right, A2A aircraft with a slight stutter. It was not quite perfect, which of course did not matter in the days when perfection could never reasonably be expected. Now my expectations have been raised by your work to such a level that nothing short of perfection could satisfy. I wonder at what might be possible in another ten years. This might be a strange way of putting it but I'm actually saying 'well done and keep going', more detail, less taxing on the hardware, greater immersion. Keep pushing the envelope. Thanks for the disatisfaction .

Neil.

[antonvs]

I can see where you are coming from Neil. What we have now is amazing and it certainly is fascinating to ponder on what lays ahead in the FSIM world. Perhaps an implant that will give us total immersion of flight down to inertial movement sensation, vibration, g-force and even smell. We can only dream. But for now its a fantastic experience and in some ways better than reality, take for instance the costs. We can by a $50m dollar plane for $100 or less and I love the cost of virtual fuel, which is what, the cost of my 850W PC power supply. Its a great world.

[jabble]

What we have now is pretty good, and devs like Orbx are creatively making excellent use of it, but we can still think of things that could bring major improvements.  I reckon lot of the next big ideas will have to wait until we have a 64-bit engine and a lot more VAS to play with, though there's doubtless quite a bit of mileage left in the current tech before then.  But that's just how we steadily progress, punctuated by occasional but significant leaps forward.  We're not at the next leap yet.