What are your thoughts? 

Personally, I think this is a game targeted for casual gamers who seek to be impressed by amazing graphics and give little thought to the intricacies of simming. 

The numerous bugs despite reports in beta and alpha by hardcore simmers just shows which group Asobo is catering to. 

I do hope this changes with future updates, otherwise this will die off similar to Microsoft Flight. 

Time will tell, but I'm keeping the faith that, in the end, we'll get what we've hoped for.

I think we can play around with this public beta now or we could' ve waited 2021 for a slightly improved version. I know what I prefer.

A game... that has a flight model ten times better than P3D, has regular free updates of navdata (absolutely necessary for gamers...), offers weather depiction like never before in any other sim (not for "hardcore" simmers obviously?...), bugs like you never found in any newly released sim to-date, amazing graphics for neophytes who can't imagine how the real ORBX world look like, a game targeted to casual simmers waiting impatiently for PMDG to release their toy planes... well truly, we must not use the same sim...! Are we unable to see the glass half full and focus - and comment - only on the half emptiness of this just released product that will evidently mature rather quickly owing to the numerous quality third party developers (planes, sceneries, airports, utilities) that will soon join the club? 

For how long are we going to have this debate about our various simulators being more than games? Yes pure entertainment!!!  If we want to seriously< and actually TRAIN on a flight simulator, there is one available on the market called ELITE, approved by FAA among others that you may find, I can vouch you won't have much fun with them if you intend to do anything else than work hard on your procedures! So for the time being, lets have fun!

 

 

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by Jean-Claude

12 minutes ago, maniamcool said:

give little thought to the intricacies of simming.

What intricacies are you talking about?

After I've done my first flight, I can now share my own thougths.

Graphically it is awesome! But you need high details otherwise buildings look like Lego houses. The orthos aren't the star, it's the object placement! The pattern of trees instantly gave me the feeling to fly where I've been flying IRL. I knew instantly where I am just from looking out of the window. This is a often underestimated factor when talking about the simming!

Aerodynamic wise it's a bit more difficult. To put it short: It has huge potential but bugs make it rather unusable at the moment.

I've never felt such vivid air in a flight sim! When suddenly a gust catches your wing and puts you off. Amazing! Even XP is miles away from capturing that feeling!

But then the aircraft reacts faaaar too sensitive to inputs and ruins all the positives! It gets an arcade game trying to keep a steady flight.

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by tweekz

10 minutes ago, maniamcool said:

What are your thoughts? 

In terms of flight simulation, it's light years ahead of FSX on release by just the flight model alone. From a feature standpoint, the GA systems depth is plenty good enough to get started with and better than what FSX released with or what is default in P3D. X-Plane gets a slight nod here in default aircraft dynamics and its better default G1000, but it's no longer a night and day difference.

For folks saying that it's a game, I just don't get it. The weather is better than any sim. The air model is unique to just MSFS, you can't get dynamic individual 3D sampled airflow in any of the other sims. The flight model may not be as advanced in terms of available surface inputs, but it seems to me to be extremely rigorous, and way beyond what P3D provides. X-Plane bests it here, but only on the edges: planes with strange flight surfaces, very edge of the envelope characteristics (for some planes that have done the work).

Yes, ATC is stilted and not always on the ball. A wash compared with P3D in some ways, advanced in others. X-Plane's ATC is still pretty terrible. The systems depth in the airliners is pretty basic, but so is it in all the other sims for default aircraft. There are definitely bugs here and there.

But a game? I'm genuinely curious what about MSFS makes it a game compared to the other sims currently extant.

I'm sorry but P3D or XP default will give you the "intricacies of simming"? 

21 minutes ago, maniamcool said:

The numerous bugs despite reports in beta and alpha by hardcore simmers just shows which group Asobo is catering to. 

Ah, yes, because no games/softwares release without numerous bugs these days. The need for patches and updates was eliminated ages ago!

12 minutes ago, maniamcool said:

What are your thoughts? 

Personally, I think this is a game targeted for casual gamers who seek to be impressed by amazing graphics and give little thought to the intricacies of simming. 

It's a simulator in every sense of the word. Weather, air traffic, flight model - every aspect of the program is tailored with people that read this forum in mind. Literally - the developer has specifically referred to this forum in multiple updates during the development process. The design philosophy here was: if we make the hardcore simmers at least moderately happy - the casual market will follow, and it turned out to be a good call. It's approachable for casual users - but not dumbed down.

Is it perfect, no - but it's also a very open and extensible platform and one that will be constantly evolving.  I honestly don't know how they could have done a better job at addressing the needs of this community while maintaining mass-market appeal at the same time.

 

 

24 minutes ago, maniamcool said:

The numerous bugs despite reports in beta and alpha by hardcore simmers

Can only hardcore simmers report bugs in your world view?

24 minutes ago, maniamcool said:

What are your thoughts? 

Personally, I think this is a game targeted for casual gamers who seek to be impressed by amazing graphics and give little thought to the intricacies of simming. 

The numerous bugs despite reports in beta and alpha by hardcore simmers just shows which group Asobo is catering to. 

I do hope this changes with future updates, otherwise this will die off similar to Microsoft Flight. 

Yes, they sought to model real world weather, live AI traffic, FMCs, VNAV functionality, SIDS/STARS, ATC, etc. all to target the casual gamer who is impressed by amazing graphics. 

Come on. They are clearly trying to make a complete sim, otherwise they wouldn't have even wasted time and resources on that stuff. 

22 minutes ago, maniamcool said:

Personally, I think this is a game targeted for casual gamers who seek to be impressed by amazing graphics and give little thought to the intricacies of simming.

Personally I think you couldn't get any further from the truth.

I think Microsoft's goal is creating a true to life world that we can fly in, and that's their number one focus.  This world, including flight dynamics, will improve over time.  They've also said that they've created airplanes with systems that aren't study level (paraphrasing), but instead will rely on the developer community to create those.  Again, I think they are focusing on the world and performance versus aircraft systems.  No chance this will die off.  This is a new era of flight sim, and it'll be at least a 10year project.

It's funny seeing how all those years of third party content has warped people's sense of what the base sims actually were and what they offered.