The biggest surprise of Microsoft Flight Simulator: it makes Bing cool | Polygon

Polygon: "We spent hours exploring the pre-alpha’s landscapes, streamed in from the cloud."

[MrDead]

Don't use Bing, you'll end up at the wrong airport.

[Spurg]

Bing maps are clearer than google and apple maps.

[darthv72]

I earn points using bing and those points have gotten me some cool stuff.

[FanboySpotter]

Same. I've redeemed for games and subscriptions it's cool

[DaDrunkenJester]

Same here. I make like $15 bucks a month just using bing and doing random MS rewards stuff. I use it towards games and stuff.

[ProjectVulcan]

Jump through lots of hoops and spend hours per month to earn $15 of rewards. Wow.

Or just do another half an hour per month in your crappy paid dead end job for the same amount. 10 minutes for those not in entirely crappy jobs.

My time is worth a lot more than hours of effort to get $15.

[rainslacker]

I can find the information I'm looking for more easily on google. I guess that's not as cool, but certainly more useful to me.

[Ausbo]

Yeah don’t use a search engine that gets you hundreds in free money

[Concertoine]

I actually just quit my job, why work when i can make millions a month on bing.

[ravinash]

@ Concertoine - now your just sounding like those women who keep spamming on here.

[FanboySpotter]

Flight simulator looks a little too realistic. I've seen those crazy screenshots

[IRetrouk]

It looks really good, but streaming only for now? That could end up costly for some.

[andibandit]

Well unless you want to get the 20000 discs, version, I don't imagine it would be cheaper tho

[IRetrouk]

Still don't change the fact that streaming the game is gonna cost some a good bit of money, even more for 4k 60fps, a better idea would have been to build the likes of the mesh some of the world/scenery and planes to put on a disc or digital download to cut down on streaming costs, the game does sound good, just don't like the delivery.

[timotim]

No actually. You can download sections of the world and that will require more storage depending on how much you want to download. You will lose the real world elements that are happening realtime, but its not a streaming only title.

[IRetrouk]

"Last week, we learned that The Last of Us Part 2 would ship on two Blu-ray discs. A single copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator would need 20,000 of them. So, instead of installing the game off disc, or even downloading a large portion of it as part of the initial installation, consumers will stream in assets while they play.
Developers say they’re working on a way to pre-load certain areas of the world ahead of time, to enhance the experience for those with slower connections and enable offline play. But, during the presentation last week, neither Asobo nor Microsoft pulled any punches. For most users, having a faster internet connection will make the terrain look a lot better, especially when it comes to 4K resolutions."

My comment is based on this part of the article, regardless of the download of certain sections, which are of a lower quality, it still does not discount the cost to stream or the games delivery, I don't like it, not knocking the game, it looks really cool, just don't like having to stream any game, not just this one.

[timotim]

I dont know what to tell you. The game isn't streaming only, as was your original concern. You can play it offline if you wish. We are talking about a game the size of the actual Earth, its no way to package that up onto a disc or allow gamers to download a few petabites onto their consoles...it just doesn't work that way haha. This is a next gen game in everyway, doing things that no game has done before. Its size means that to get the full experience, they have to stream in on the fly...I guess the game isn't for you, but offline play is a possibility.

[IRetrouk]

To get the most out of the game, it has to be streamed, which will cost some people a lot of money, which was my original concern, not just that I thought it was streaming only, downloaded sections are of lower quality, and not how the devs want the game played, like it or not, it's designed to be a streamed title, and that turns me off, glad that you are so hyped for it but you have added nothing to the conversation other than to defend what you think I have attacked, Next gen in every way? What? Because it streams some data from maps? Always overhyping ms stuff man, funny.

[timotim]

No, it was designed to be played either online or offline. Its just to get the fullness of it you have to have it streamed in. It doesn't change the fact that it can still be played offline if YOU wish, lower quality or not. Its a game designed to give you the whole world to explore...that can only be done if its streamed as their is not console or PC avalible that can hold the entire game...if you dont want that its cool...the game is not for you. Playing online games will eat away at your data cap...just the way it goes. So does downloading DLC, updates and patches etc.

And yes, I said next gen...not because I thought you were attacking Microsoft or Xbox, but because this is what next gen games are going to start doing. Relying on connections to give gamers the full experience...like it or not. These one and done games are becoming more and more scarce.

[IRetrouk]

From all interviews I've read it's designed to be streamed with the option to download some sections, that they haven't detailed properly yet I may add, it's designed to be streamed to get the best out of the game, so regardless of what you have said, my original concerns are valid and you have not really gave any counter argument towards it other than to deal with it lol, you have to stream the game and that's going to cost people, regardless of what else you use your cap for, streaming a game for hours will not be possible for most, and if you go 4k 60, it's going to eat peoples data alive.
Relying on an internet connection to get the best out of our games is not the future of games, not for a long while yet, maybe when the sales of those "one and done" games start dropping and the world has unlimited high speed internet for cheap you will have a point, but becoming more and more scarce? What?....
Again the game looks cool and I will be giving it a try, but I don't like the delivery, streaming just isn't for me.

[Tedakin]

There are such things as Search Engine elitists.... Really.

[rainslacker]

I remember when Bing was more a laughing stock of a search engines, especially compared to Google. Google isn't as good as it used to be though, with all its sponsored ads and removal of features that made some types of searching easier unless you know the more textually technical ways to do searches. Bing has gotten better, but I think google returns more relevant results if you do know how to use it efficiently. They both use similar searh filter functions, but for those who just type in things and scroll through hundred of results probably get the same experience.

[timotim]

The important thing is that Bing is now profitable...that's all that matters to the company running it from a business standpoint. They are able to rely on no one but themselves for these services and that's how they want it. Sure, they could be using Google maps for this data in this game...but why when they have their own that's just as good if not better...

[rainslacker]

To me, the important part of a search engine is that it returns relevant results to what I'm searching for. Google is a more robust search engine, but returns more sponsored content than I like, but what it does return is more relevant to what I'm searching for once you get past that.

[timotim]

This is maps not web searches...

[MajorLazer]

This site's users are actually embarassing. Fanboying like little kids over plastic and software

[Tedakin]

I use bing because I do MS rewards, which add up pretty quick.

[GruntboxWizard]

Bing is already cool, it's great for porn

[Einhander1971]

Looks incredible regardless:)

[AK91]

No

[totalgaminglegend]

I always wished a gaming company would tape into this kind of data. I always wanted a company like Rockstar to use such data mining to produce a nearly entire earth like exploration. Fingers crossed they do. I know if I was deciding on developing a game, I would do just that.

[frostypants]

Bing maps being used for this game isn't going to make me use actual Bing (the search engine). Did MS pay Polygon for this ad?