jam_waters

You wrote, "... there is no way that X-Plane or Laminar can compete with Microsoft's 2 petabytes of world mapping, it is simply not going to happen". With the network being the key to transmission of textures and mapping real-time, a nearly photographic scenery database is doable. It's been done once. As we know, there is a scenery converter, FS2XPlane, for much of the scenery of FSX that performs well in rendering for X-Plane. As MSFS 2020 has a fixed scenery database available (*rather than realtime), I'm hoping that this database is convertible as well. Although I was formerly a data-center programmer on IBM mainframes, the ASCII systems and modern C++ or similar languages are not on my resume'. Programming would be extensive suggesting a new release altogether, as in a completely new X-Plane version 12 incorporating Vulkan/Metal access methods. It would be a tall task. X-Plane until Version 10 was ... lacking. Version 10 looked interesting but then version 11 became the dominant sim in the market, surpassing FSX and for many simmers, Prepar3d. Laminar has demonstrated it's ability to be a giant killer before and might surprise everyone again. I haven't yet purchased MSFS 2020. Viewing some of the Youtube videos of MSFS 2020, it appears that it's aerodynamics are still not quite up to X-Plane's performance and realism.