Somewhat disappointed - Still a Beta game

[Davearky 1]

16 minutes ago, Anthracite said:

I didn’t get “ultimate sim that does everything better” from the marketing material. All I got was “better than fsx”, “true vfr with satellite images”, “accurate live weather”, “physically based material texturing”, “advanced lighting and shadows”, “blades of grass”.

the sims had a lot of really stupid installation issues that could have easily been avoided and there’s no doubt if it was released later it would have been a better launch product but I’m not feeling like I have been misled by the marketing material at all lol

If you’re getting accurate live weather then you’re doing better than me. That and live traffic (I can see other players but real time traffic is sparse) don’t appear to be fully functional from what I can see unless I’m doing something wrong.

[swiesma 625]

I was in the Alpha and I am still happy.

Yes, I know - there are a trillion things to work on.

But given the fact that it was just released and no Addons are available - I compare the base FSX/P3D to the base MSFS. And yeah... Then it' s a HUGE leap forward.

I'll wait for some PMDG candy and the first few bugfixes and then I'll buy it.

[Anthracite 131]

26 minutes ago, Davearky said:

If you’re getting accurate live weather then you’re doing better than me. That and live traffic (I can see other players but real time traffic is sparse) don’t appear to be fully functional from what I can see unless I’m doing something wrong.

Getting accurate live weather yeah. Sadly not as high quality as what I’m seeing outside, because medium graphics and - it’s a sim - but for all intents and purposes it’s better than any game or sim I’ve seen before with its accuracy.

live traffic isn’t fully functioning from what I can tell. I’m getting live traffic, but certainly not all live traffic. I wouldn’t expect to get live traffic of non planned flights, but some of the planned flights are missing, including the flights one my mate was flying that he wanted me to follow.

i think their live traffic Data source is incomplete. 

[threexgreen 3,139]

On 8/23/2020 at 8:06 AM, Avioneto said:

However I don't think mine were too high compared to the marketing campaign and hype created.

The marketing campaign wasn't setting any unreasonable expectations though. It was certainly special, if not unique, in the frequency of the development updates, transparency and how closely they listened to the community and developers. But it never pictured anything you don't get with the simulator right now. The hype of the revolutionary simulator that blows everything else into oblivion on day one was entirely created by the community and mostly because of the pretty scenery. Just something to keep in mind.

Also, the simulator was most probably released early. They always talked about fall 2020 and most were anticipating a November release. The beta also only lasted about three weeks. I'm sure we are seeing a lot of things right now that would normally have been fixed in a longer beta program.

On 8/24/2020 at 1:08 PM, Anthracite said:

i think their live traffic Data source is incomplete. 

The data source is complete. They are using FlightAware for the traffic. But you're right about traffic being sparse. It was like this in the Alpha program already. I guess it's among the things still needing to be worked on.

[FPStewy 538]

Like I said, my short metaphor review is this, FS20 is like going to a very expensive restaurant overlooking the grand canyon but they only serve hotdogs and mustard is not on the menu.

[Anthracite 131]

12 minutes ago, FPStewy said:

Like I said, my short metaphor review is this, FS20 is like going to a very expensive restaurant overlooking the grand canyon but they only serve hotdogs and mustard is not on the menu.

Nah mustard is definitely on the menu, it’s just the bottle is nearly empty and when you squeeze it you only get a few sparse droplets and a blown raspberry. 
 

but that view is so word not allowed good. 

[White Hawk 1]

On 8/18/2020 at 7:53 PM, sanh said:

You need to install the US English voice pack in Windows like it mentioned on the installation screen.

I had/have the same issue and I already installed that when the FS2020 installer said to.  I think it’s an Azure problem.

[tweekz 2,165]

Who would have thought.

The default A320s takeoff performance is almost perfectly accurate compared to real world performance data:

 

[Agrajag 286]

4 hours ago, threegreen said:

it never pictured anything you don't get with the simulator right now.

Just for the sake of correctness, as I generally agree with your sentiment, that isn't quite factual. Their marketing clearly showed coral reefs beneat the topical waters and those are now gone. I read somewhere that it was due to satellite data that was updated which somehow requires a new layer to be created for these reefs. Not sure why as I doubt the reefs changed all that much in three years. 

[n4gix 4,947]

One of the neat things is that you can program the hat switch to work in the VC just like FSX/P3D, but you can also the hat switch set up for outside camera AND the drone camera.

I've also set up my yoke so I can "fly" the drone around as if it were a real drone. 

[Jetman67 517]

2 minutes ago, n4gix said:

One of the neat things is that you can program the hat switch to work in the VC just like FSX/P3D, but you can also the hat switch set up for outside camera AND the drone camera.

I've also set up my yoke so I can "fly" the drone around as if it were a real drone. 

It's just awesome and track IR performs much better, I do prefer Xbox controller to use the drone, wish they give it a HUD though you could then use it to pre fly a route for familirisation

[n4gix 4,947]

On 8/18/2020 at 10:51 PM, JRBarrett said:

I suspect the reason why the mag and light switches on the Honeycomb might be causing problems  with other systems is that they are continually sending a “button press” event to the sim at all times, whether they are up or down.

I said pretty much the same thing just a few days ago. It strikes me as the same problem in both FSX and P3D whenever an XML "on" command is being constantly sent instead of being trapped by a conditional clause*. We've named this phenomenon as a "race condition" or "flooding". The sim cannot interpret commands because of the constant "noise" and one of the most common side-effects is the 10º HDG/CRS knob changes instead of the expected 1º step.

* A pseudo-code example might be:

if nav light is not on, set nav light on, else quit;

[n4gix 4,947]

7 minutes ago, Jetman67 said:

It's just awesome and track IR performs much better, I do prefer Xbox controller to use the drone, wish they give it a HUD though you could then use it to pre fly a route for familirisation

If I had an XBox controller, I'd probably prefer it myself... 😂

[Nate1 163]

17 minutes ago, n4gix said:

If I had an XBox controller, I'd probably prefer it myself... 😂

I bought a generic one for a tenner and have no regrets. It sits next to my throttle & is also dead handy for changing cockpit views.

[pjs37 319]

On 8/24/2020 at 6:39 AM, swiesma said:

I was in the Alpha and I am still happy.

Yes, I know - there are a trillion things to work on.

But given the fact that it was just released and no Addons are available - I compare the base FSX/P3D to the base MSFS. And yeah... Then it' s a HUGE leap forward.

I'll wait for some PMDG candy and the first few bugfixes and then I'll buy it.

For yucks I re-installed FSX base.  I did the same fly out from PAJN airport in all three sims I have FSX, X-Plane 11, and MSFS is the Cessna 172 with G1000.

You know I get it.  There is a lot of weird bugs and issues.  The install issues?  Yeah that is a problem and while I may not have experienced it there is enough people having issues that I have to admit there is some problems there.  Additionally there are some weird bugs people run into (Live Weather etc) though some of those have slowly been fixed (Live Weather works for me now)

Anyways FSX the mesh was completely wrong and the textures did not age well at all.  External plane models looked good and the controls handeled well enough.  Obviousily add some metric tons of add-ons and it improves things greatly.  Panel is definitely showing its age though.  Performance I got was about 70fps maxed out.

X-Plane 11 I still think I prefer the flight controls slightly more but I am not a real pilot so I have no idea who the most accurate one is.  X-Plane 11 is really good for what it is.  The airports look nice and the mesh is fairly accurate and the roads are good.  I still think it has the best lighting effects of any sim I used natively.  Panel is quite good and the G1000 I feel is likely better modeled overall in terms of depth (but maybe not graphically) At maxed settings I was at about 40-50fps

MSFS scenery wise is leaps and bounds ahead of either.  Hands down.  Out of the box best experience and even if I account for the add-ons I have gotten which are quite good I much prefer the overall look of MSFS (Yes I know I can by satellite or aerial textures for the other sims but between the costs and the limitation in regards to autogen I never really justified it and again I am talking out of the box); plane models I think externally on par with X-Plane 11?  Panel I think is better looking but there is a lack of depth especially on the G1000.  Flight control I found a bit twitchy to my tastes but again not a pilot so take it for what you will.  Average Framerate is about 40-50 fps.

Overall I think this is a solid build out of the gates.  If you listen to the interviews and read what they were saying I think this is in line with the launch they kinda anticipated.  They knew the issues they had but they have discussed this is a platform for them to build off of and sounds like they want to do monthly updates that address some of those issues.  Is it disappointing to have a sim come out and not do every single thing everyone wants out of it?  Absolutely but things like this is always a give and take.  This is why the market has a rather robust add-on market because there are gaps.  The only thing I have an issue with from them is they claimed they had every airport and maybe they do have more then what FSX had in total but when people point out ones that were in FSX which are not in this one (and are still actually active) then I think that is a bit wrong. Would I say this is more of a beta then a finished product?  Maybe?  I don't know game development has gotten weird lately and the new normal almost feels like the release is just a benchmark and a lot of developers keep rolling out updates (I mean X-Plane 11 is up to what 11.41?  and P3D is on version 5).  As someone who was part of the NMS launch that was a bigger disaster IMO.  Not that it should be the benchmark for game releases for sure but this is hardly the train wreck people want to make it to be.