MSFS Modern FS History... What's happened since FSX...

[=Hollywood=]

So I had been involved in several simulator development teams since FS11 was shut down, and was on the FS11 design advisory board (as a few others here were).

First there was a group with Flight1 and Aerosoft that were in discussions on building a new sim. Aerosoft went their own way from memory and those projects petered out.

After that was FSNextGen which I was on board with and whilst there were a lot of meetings, really not much got done. I flew over from the Philippines to meet the heads of vWorld and vieWTerra investigating a new earth engine to build a sim platform on, and while Vincent's platform was incredible with dynamic occlusion and super easy design tools, things with FSNextGen never took off. I believe some demo's were also experimented with in another terrain engine but that one had not yet implemented earth scale.

So around 2014-2015 I ended up being contracted with Dovetail Games working on Game Design Documents for Flight Simulator Flight School (FSFS) and Flight Simulator World (FSW). There was a lot of stuff being investigated and planned for the future of FSW, a lot of stuff for launch and then future stuff.

FS11 was going to implement a career mode. Paul spoke about being able to drive to the airport, get out and do a walk around of the plane and do a proper pre-flight. This looks like it is finally coming to MSFS 2024 based off trailers and what Asobo has divulged publicly. Very cool.

Tonight I was going through things I had designed based off knowing what a lot of us in the flight sim community wanted to see, especially the tight nit group in the FSX beta team and the even tighter team working with Paul L at ACES on FS11 [something to do].

I thought I'd start a journey and map out what has happened with the development of FS from FSX through till today. (skipping over Microsoft Flight which was a fork that didn't get rolled in to FSW or MSFS).

So Dovetail Games got the FSX code and immediately went to work on the 64 bit port. It was completed after several months. I was assigned to investigate a new weather engine in Simul TruSky and did up some demo's in the Simul SDK's and prepped all the reference hooks for it to be connected to FSW. I believe we were also investigating Triton Water as a replacement water system for the sim as well, and I believe from memory Triton is now used in Prepar3D.

Beyond that there were massive plans for AI implementation with a virtual co-pilot and instructor and Air Traffic Control. AI was nowhere near ready at the time but DTG wanted FSW to be much closer to reality in terms of interactions as a pilot. A lot of the DTG team had pilot's licenses.

So looking at all I wrote I'm amazed at how much of what I put in to game designs made it in to MSFS 2020 and there's still more being implemented in 2024.

Part 1

• AI Systems - AI traffic was to be overhauled and waypoints implemented to be able to have AI do scenic flights etc. Investigations of FSX code revealed the hooks were already in the code to be able to make AI fly via multiple waypoints and yet the flightplans for AI that were released were simple point a to point b direct gps. I don't think anyone outside of ACES/DTG knows that those hooks existed. It seems Asobo is revamping traffic systems offline but it has been a low priority. Anyway the designs I sent through included AI being able to fly waypoints for training flights (going out to training areas and doing orbits or steep turns etc), high and low altitude airways routes for AI as well as full SID/STAR procedures (I believe that some of that has been implemented for MSFS).
• Also with AI was real world AI Traffic and Multiplayer AI Traffic which have both been implemented in MSFS with rudimentary live traffic and real time massively multiplayer traffic.
• Aspects Designed
  • Traffic Routes - AI Aircraft to be able to follow High and Low Altitude Airways, VOR to VOR routes etc
  • Scenic Flight Traffic Routes - To mimic air tours
  • Touch & Go's - ability to autogenerate TNG's into auto scheduling feature <- definitely in the toolset
  • Training Areas - AI aircraft could fly to defined local training areas
  • Multiplayer AI - ability o see AI traffic in multiplayer mode <- this is in FS2020 as I believe both offline AI and live multiplayer traffic display at the same time
  • SIDs/STARs, Holding Patterns & Separation Maneuvers - AI Traffic Flow to support these, I believe I've seen that functionality is available at least for arrivals and departures in a rudimentary way
  • Real World Traffic - Timetable or Live <- live was implemented for MSFS
  • AI Airport Operations - Taxiways weight, type and traffic flow direction priorities/restrictions and high speed taxiway support <- weight is definitely in FS2020 now
  • AI Aircraft Sloping Runways Support - Designed a system to implement working sloping runways for the sim <- this is now in MSFS and I believe way better than my concept alone which used elevation sample points at thresholds and touchdown markers
  • AI Traffic International/Domestic Route Flags - to be used with TrafficDatabaseBuilder to help with airport parking at domestic or international gates for AI
  • Parking T - Extra support for visual text for aircraft types - bummer this hasn't been implemented yet, this idea went back to when I was in ProjectAI, knowing that each aircraft has a standard distance from nose to nosewheel
  • AI Wildlife/Living World/Bird Hazards - Support for animated wildlife in sandbox mode, and potential wildlife hazards like documented bird hazards at airports etc. <- Wildlife AI in Sandbox mode is in MSFS
  • AI Reporting Points/Position Reporting - like inbound reporting points for airports such as Target inbound to YBAF
  • AI Helicopter Support - self explanatory
  • AI Vehicles - Headlights and Brake Lights (MSFS)
  • Airport Vehicles and Emergency Procedures - water cannons, de-icing stations, vehicle enhancements <- flashing lights on vehicles in FS2020
  • AI Ships and Boats - Improved 3D Modes (MSFS), Improved Docking/Parking (2024), Worldwide Shipping Database (2024), Partner with Shipping Companies to represent ships (2024?), Real World Live Ship Tracking (2024)
  • AI Road Vehicles - add support for primary, secondary, tertiary and other road traffic types, speed limits beyond freewaytraffic, improve node handling for AI vehicles, fix for Left vs Right drive countries
  • AI People & Emergency Ops - emergency ops, mayday pan pan, people (MSFS)
  • Airport Ground Services & Vehicles - Baggage Loaders, Fuel Trucks, Catering etc (MSFS)

My design for the scenic flights would have looked like:

# For each scheduled flight enter the following data:

typeKey,tailNumber,trafficDensity,repeatEvery,flightRules
{
departureTime,destinationAirportID,flightLevel[,flightNumber][,circuitEndTime][,customWaypoint(s)][,scenictourEndTime]
}

Also I noted the bug where it would route a flight from NY to London via Alaska that needed to be fixed. <- has this been fixed for MSFS? I'll go check...

• The User Interface - This was not a part on my plate but DTG changed the interface for the sim and a lot of the UI in FS2020 is based off that design, especially the low quality world map upon startup.

MORE TO FOLLOW...