37 minutes ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

I was reading some comments on the PC gamer FB page on the latest FS article.  It was amazing to see first person shooters, and a bunch of other users that said they were never in to sims, but 'are now' commenting on how cool the sim is.  They went off to buy a bunch of hardware for the release.

Couldn't agree more, and this point in particular might be the biggest one about MSFS.

There will be a ton of users buying this thing not primarily as a flight sim, but as a kind of "World Travel Simulator". It's hard to explain this point to people who haven't played or tested it so far, but this is a flight simulator that allows you to pick totally arbitrary locations all around the world that you might be interested in visiting for real one day, and 80-90% of the time, from 2000 feet, they will look almost indistinguishable from actual aerial photography. When you visit spots where you have been vacationing in in recent years, it's very likely you'll pick out your exact hotel including its swimming pool from the air, and all of that in countries that were scenery-wise a complete wasteland in previous flight sims, and for which no Orbx or any other payware scenery ever existed.

So yes, as me and many other Alpha testers have pointed out in recent days, keep your expectations about this MSFS on a realistic level, especially regarding flight dynamics and systems depth, but also recognize that this title has another quality alll on its own, never achieved before.

With this damned pandemic keeping us mostly at home, this will probably be our "Vacation Simulator 2020", and it will serve this function very well.

 

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by Der Zeitgeist

4 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

Couldn't agree more, and this point in particular might be the biggest one about MSFS.

There will be a ton of users buying this thing not primarily as a flight sim, but as a kind of "World Travel Simulator".

Quote

It's hard to explain this point to people who haven't played or tested it so far, but this is a flight simulator that allows you to pick totally arbitrary locations all around

the world that you might be interested in of visiting for real one day, and 80-90% of the time, from 2000 feet, they will look almost indistinguishable from actual aerial photography. When you visit spots where you have been vacationing in in recent years, it's very likely you'll pick out your exact hotel including its swimming pool from the air, and all of that in countries that were scenery-wise a complete wasteland in previous flight sims, and for which no Orbx or any other payware scenery ever existed.

So yes, as me and many other Alpha testers have pointed out in recent days, keep your expectations about this MSFS on a realistic level, especially regarding flight dynamics and systems depth, but also recognize that this title has another quality alll on its own, never achieved before.

With that damned pandemic keeping us mostly at home, this will probably be our "Vacation Simulator 2020", and it will serve this function very well.

 

I'm finding myself flying in areas I wouldn't have dreamed of in P3D.  I'm loving GA again!  I'll have some more screenies up in the forums in a bit.  

Great post @bonchie

Right now there are things to be concerned about, but the sim is still fantastic in many areas. Curb your enthusiasm for now and hopefully we’ll all have what we want in this sim in a short time. 

5 minutes ago, SKEWR said:

 hopefully we’ll all have what we want in this sim in a short time. 

Certainly !  Specially if we ask for them. Politely. But loudly enough. 😇

Of course it has flaws, every games has flaws on release. That has been the narrative for many years now.

FSX, P3D and Xplane all have flaws as well. Nothing is perfect.

I was pretty critical of the upcoming messiah sim: Fs2020 in my P3D V5 review video, mainly due to the rabid fans who had not played the alpha and talked it up to be the ******* of sims (probably still will be) but everything was a waste of money and trash to them unless it was fs2020. 

From the preview videos released in the past couple days, some of my fears have been born out. It’s clear the other content creators do not get the same “fluid” experience Asobo does in their videos...could be a mixture of their hardware, and the preview build not being optimized.

Still I am excited for the release, ponied up the $120 for it, excited to see A2A on board, track ir support finally and incoming VR support. Seeing the lackluster frame rates I will probably not move over until performance is as good as I am currently getting in TE areas. 
 

clouds look very pretty though!

No sim has pleased everyone and i don`t see that changing, lets see how long after the 18th you see post like "what this sim needs is "

10 hours ago, Mengy said:

I've seen some flaws in the armor today with all the vids.  I'm still super excited and eager to move onto the new MFS going forward.  I think the positives vastly outweigh the negatives I know about, and it will continue to improve over time.

I'm not even installing FSX nor P3D onto the new PC I just built.  I'm ready for somet.ing new, flaws and all.

Totally agree. I've been simming for 15 years (less than half the life of Flight Sims) but this is truly the most awesome achievement I've ever seen. So to get all negative about the flaws is to miss the point completely. Many of us struggled for years and ££$$$ of addons just to get to a delicate and often frustrating equilibrium, and all that just to achieve10% of the way to where this sim already is before its launch.

We should think of this as the launch of a future proof platform supported and actively developed by not only one of the biggest tech companies in the World, but also many of the developers we already know and use.

I hope a community will also build around this platform, including the kind X-plane already has, because that will make it ttruly great. Remember FS2004 gathered a community around it, which not only no doubt resulted in many new commercial pilots, but also spawned many of our favourite developers still in business today.

Really exciting times. Looking forward to Ecuador and Bolivian airports, Falkland Islands (Port Stanley, Mount Pleasant and sheep farms), PNG strips (remember Pacific Island Sim's), N. Alaska (remember UT?), Antarctica (either default or Aerosoft add-on) all Pacific Islands and many other places I've not been to since FS2004 (free add-ons in many cases);

It's a shame LM seems to have miscalculated the need to launch an unfinished v5 P3D wich fo rmanhny is a problematic sim right no. I am sure many will simply switch off never to return. Others like me though will run it in parallel, as there are still things I like.in P3D which MSFS doesn't have yet (eg Milviz B350i, Realair Becch Turbo Duke, FSTramp etc)

So the default platform will more than do for me for.

Ray

 

Now we have an Alpha release of FS2 on Steam...

21 aircraft included:
- F-15, F-18, Learjet 45, C172, Baron 58
- ASG 29 glider, Pitts S-2B biplane
- Airbus A320
- B777-300ER
- B737-500, B747-400
- Bücker Jungmeister
- King Air C90 GTx, Aermacchi MB-339
- Corsair F4U, Extra 330
- Swift S1 glider, P-38 Lightning
- Sopwith Camel
- Robinson R22 Beta II
- Dash-8 Q400 (available as free DLC)

Support for multiple joysticks, throttle units, rudder pedals and more

TrackIR support

Full Oculus Rift VR support and full Oculus Touch controller support

HTC Vive VR support and full Vive Controller support

Support for Saitek Multi Panel, Radio Panel, Switch Panel and Saitek TPM

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by Wobbie

At this point my biggest concern is the one I feared. The PC specs. Seems a 2080ti can't even handle 60fps in 4k in dense areas... 

44 minutes ago, rayharris108 said:

Really exciting times. Looking forward to Ecuador and Bolivian airports, Falkland Islands (Port Stanley, Mount Pleasant and sheep farms), PNG strips (remember Pacific Island Sim's), N. Alaska (remember UT?), Antarctica (either default or Aerosoft add-on) all Pacific Islands and many other places I've not been to since FS2004 (free add-ons in many cases);

That’s been one of my joys from the Alpha; exploring areas of the world I’m unlikely to ever actually visit, let alone fly a GA aircraft over. Iran, Pakistan, India, Ghana, Laos, Senegal, these are just some of the places I never could have imagined visiting in XP11 or any other sim I’ve used. So many beautiful scenes to enjoy, especially at a moderately cloudy sunset!

36 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

I never could have imagined visiting in XP11 or any other sim I’ve used.

 

My XP11 install and all that went with it was eviscerated yesterday along with any lingering P3D files I was holding on to - just in case - they are now nothing but a memory, and not a good one either.

MSFS gives me everything I want, and a whole lot more. It may not suit everyone, but they have the choice to use it or not.

1 hour ago, canadiantree said:

At this point my biggest concern is the one I feared. The PC specs. Seems a 2080ti can't even handle 60fps in 4k in dense areas... 

Resolution scaling will be our friend for now.

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Certainly !  Specially if we ask for them. Politely. But loudly enough. 😇

Exactly! Microsoft have shown they are not the greedy money focused beast they once were. They hired a competent studio with ASOBO and let them be creative with their technology.

Microsoft actually developes a sim for the community. They do listen and try to fullfill our wishes! What other sim does that? No, not even XP.

The interesting part is, that the people who actually played it are far less critical than we watching those videos.

I don't have any expectations. This is so because I wont be buying on release day. I'll wait 6 months to a year to see how thngs are shaping up, the kind of Hardware I might Need, and so on.

I don't understand Folks who absolutely have to buy a new game on release day. The only game I would buy on the day it Comes out would be Half Life 3