I recently gave a talk about past, present, future of MSFS at Nerd Nite Tokyo, titled “From Flight Sim to Digital Twin: The Evolution of MSFS”
There’s a lot of things that you could talk about when projecting the future of what MSFS could be, based on the progress made over 40+ years.
However, a lot of these things are already recognised, roadmapped, and already under development eg. Flight Modelling, AI content gen, weather (aerial only generally) , seasons, SDK, AI traffic, ATC, etc etc
I chose to focus on one aspect that currently doesn’t seem to be on the radar and/or roadmap – or discussed much at all except for occasional lonely threads in the MSFS forums.
That focus aspect was water simulation, which I think is a key element in taking MSFS to the next level out to 2030 and beyond.
Realistic water simulation is critical for lots of reasons, two in particular:
- Modelling the full behavior of natural systems
- Provide realistic environments for navigation
Here’s one good use case:
ref: Queensland floods: Burketown residents warned of crocodile-infested waters ahead of expected peak | Queensland | The Guardian
What you can currently do in MSFS:
Ditto for the tides.
I gave two other use cases as examples which are even more critical:
- Sea Level Rise
- Simulating the global underwater environment
I’ll post the video link if it gets posted, or I’ll post the slides instead.
It would be good to get more of a conversation going about the need for water simulation in MSFS to get some more focus and visibility.
