Thought this was an interesting article: https://www.pcinvasion.com/hidden-costs-microsoft-flight-simulator/

Who IS this guy?? 😄 

Hook

My review: Not an interesting article, 1/10, definitely not worth reading.

Clickbait title. So, what are these “hidden costs”?

Well, author comes to the amazing conclusion that 1. MSFS comes with more  content than previous sims...but you MIGHT buy DLC in the future. 
 

An outstanding insight by one of the top minds of flight sim.
 

“So, unlike sims of the past which basically needed add-ons both paid and free to really be something fierce, this next-gen sim is coming with a lot of goodness baked in. But only time will tell to see just how far its initial value goes before you eventually do crack open your wallet again.”

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by OzWhitey

I really doubt freeware is going to be decreased. Also hope not. If games like GTA which are tedious to mod get awesome things for free, in this sim with the SDK and a wider audience should be easier, like in past editions, and also awesome. 
 

I remember using an A320 family pack from rikooo on P3D and worked really well. Can’t imagine if we get the A320 family at MSFS. 

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by aleex

Still cheaper than one real flight hour

Divorce I guess

It's another of the many clickbait things on the intertron cashing in on the new sim, most of which aren't exactly chock full of thrilling revelations. It's harmless enough I guess but it's not really telling us anything we don't already know

There is a rather glaring journalistic faux pas in the piece though, when it states that flight sims 'are notorious for nickel-and-diming their customers'. Historically this is completely not the case with MS; it is in fact part of the reason why the new MS sim is the way it is in terms of how TPD will be pushed, precisely because MS were miffed in previous iterations of its flight sims, that once they'd sold a copy of it, it was everyone else except them who was making further money off the thing for years. If someone's going to write a piece where that angle is the main thrust of it, they should really be at pains to get the facts about that matter straight.

Edited August 1, 20205 yr by Chock

8 minutes ago, Chock said:

It's another of the many clickbait things on the intertron cashing in on the new sim, most of which aren't exactly chock full of thrilling revelations. It's harmless enough I guess but it's not really telling us anything we don't already know

There is a rather glaring journalistic faux pas in the piece though, when it states that flight sims 'are notorious for nickel-and-diming their customers'. Historically this is completely not the case with MS; it is in fact part of the reason why the new MS sim is the way it is in terms of how TPD will be pushed, precisely because MS were miffed in previous iterations of its flight sims, that once they'd sold a copy of it, it was everyone else except them who was making further money off the thing for years. If someone's going to write a piece where that angle is the main thrust of it, they should really be at pains to get the facts about that matter straight.

Author appears to know little about flight sims, and doesn’t really have a coherent point that he is trying to make.

9 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

doesn’t really have a coherent point that he is trying to make.

That's quite common with a lot of people who think they can write but don't have much of a talent for it. Used to get that sort of thing all the time from people who submitted stuff to me at newspapers when I was a writer/sub. They would say things such as 'you only need to tickle it up a bit, I've already written it all for you'.

You just knew nine times out of ten when people said that, it would mean you'd end up having to completely re-write the bloody thing for them. It's because most people can use a pen, or type a bit, so they think they can write well, which they can't, so it's a very undervalued skill. Same with photography; because everyone has a camera on their phone, they all think they can take a great picture, some can, but most people really can't take a truly great shot.

Clickbait garbage like this makes money. Because people get mad reading it and post the link on forums and then all the forum members go read it and generate ad traffic for the site. 😉

 

As for the ability of the author - I'm not going to read it because I don't want to help them make money, but some of these sites are now using AI to write the articles because even though they write even worse than the humans, they don't demand annoying things like wages.

 

LOL

So the hidden costs of the simulator are that... you can choose to buy add-ons?  Because those are a big thing with flight sims?  Do I have this right? lol

I expected an article about the costs of upgrading to an internet plan with no bandwidth cap, or something cranky about how Microsoft are going to use their store to shake all the gold coins out of your pockets down the road.  But this was even more trivial than I expected, haha.

Hm.  Microsoft sold me Windows 10, but they don't get a cut of all the programs I had to buy to make use of it.

Microsoft sold me FSX, but they don't get a cut of all the add-ons I had to buy to make full use of it.

How are these different?  I'm so confused... 🙂 

Hook

Main cost for me of seriously going MFS would be to upgrade my PC, and that's for sure going to be a build from scratch since while it runs very acceptably in my 2012 rig at LOW settings, I would really like to take the most out of it.

Then, at my present state of affairs rgd flight simulation, I can't really get much, if any, joy from other flight simulators, and that includes PSX, ELITE, P3D and XP, but also IL2, DCS and WT. Condorsoaring can still be valuable for rl task trainning but with the scenery provided by MFS, BY DEFAULT, I have the Best Ever simulation platform.

I am all for closed production, something that is unfortunately not going to happen again in MFS. By that I mean that access to 3pds should, IMO, be very highly controlled, with sales preferably being based only on MS Store. This ensures, in tittles like DCS was in the past, WT still is, and IL-2 somehow is, but also Condor, that whatever is released must have a minimum quality of the add-ons. At most I would accept scenery and / or weather 3pd production, or the access to production under contract by 3pds that could guarantee a certain minimum level of quality.

For a flight simulator like MFS already is, I would be ready to pay at least as much as I have spent along my simmer life in many tittles, always in search for something like what MFS appears to be, right from the base version... shouldn't there be a World crisis 😕

The cost for me so far has been a new investment of a 2Tb SSD but since I plan to share that across P3Dv5 and MSFS its not too bad.