MSFS 2020 Review

 

About myself and my system:

 

I am an experienced flight simmer since the early days of MSFS and X-plane, but not a real-world pilot.  Here are my system details:

 

Operating System - Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit

CPU - Intel 8 Core i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz

RAM - 32.0GB

Motherboard - ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. PRIME Z490-V (LGA1200)

Graphics - 8GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER

Storage

1863GB Seagate ST2000DM008-2FR102 7200 RPM (SATA III)

476GB ADATA SX8100NP (SSD)

2794GB Seagate Backup+ Desk SCSI Disk Device (USB (SATA III) )

Audio - Realtek High Definition Audio

Internet connection:  Verizon Fios 1Gb averaging 300Mbps down and 250Mbps up on this system

 

First, the good:

 

1. I didn’t have any of the issues that some people are reporting related to download and installation.
2. Some users have reported sim crashes.  The sim has not crashed, on my system, after two days of use.
3. The eye-candy is pretty could, if you ignore AI ground traffic errors.
4. I didn’t have any studders on “ultra” graphics settings, and averaged a solid 60fps.
5. The option to change the tail number on the aircraft and the call-sign is pretty cool.

 

Now, the bad and ugly:

 

1. The ATC voices, both the pilot and controller, are intermittent.  Sometimes I hear the audio, sometimes not.
2. I didn’t check every airplane, but the ones that I did check only had one livery each.
3. The taxi ribbon, used for progressive taxi instructions, is also intermittent.  I have it enabled, but it doesn’t always display when taxiing under ATC direction.
4. I landed at one airport in Arizona where the trees were off of the ground as seen while taxiing.  Magic trees!
5. Cars often run into each other, drive off of the road, disappear, etc.  I see the same things in X-plane 10 and 11, MSFS is not unique on this one.
6. The VFR map is severely lacking in details compared to its FSX predecessor or to the one in X-plane 11.
7. When you use the active pause feature, the timer on the nav log continues to count down.
8. Documentation?  The checklists are great, but detailed information on the sim and each plane would be a big help.  The sim itself is pretty intuitive, but I expect documentation.  This has been a pet peeve of mine with Carenado aircraft.  Their “manuals” amount to checklists and nothing more.  But I digress...
9. I finished the first segment of one of the bush events.  When I when back into the system for the second segment, none of my controls worked - no keyboard, rudder pedals, or yoke and yoke buttons.  After reloading the sim, the controls worked, but the sim showed that I had completed the second segment, which I had not even started, and had not completed the first segment.  After I completed the second segment, they both indicated that they are completed.
10. The G1000 implementation is lacking a lot of functionality, and I couldn’t get the menu to close, once open, on the C172.  I didn’t count features, but my perception is that the X-plane default G1000 is much closer to fully modeled vs. the real thing.

Thanks for your report!  I too am hoping for increased fidelity with their Garmin Gxxx avionics.

24 minutes ago, hamlinsw said:

MSFS 2020 Review

1. The ATC voices, both the pilot and controller, are intermittent.  Sometimes I hear the audio, sometimes not.

I fixed this problem in the sound options.   In the text to speech unselect Azure and select Windows offline.   You have to have the English Language Pack installed.

OP - just curious, are you overclocking that CPU?  if so, what speed?  Good report on your findings after 2 days of flights, thanks for the post!

9 minutes ago, Tierborn said:

I fixed this problem in the sound options.   In the text to speech unselect Azure and select Windows offline.   You have to have the English Language Pack installed.

Thanks!

2 minutes ago, javelina said:

OP - just curious, are you overclocking that CPU?  if so, what speed?  Good report on your findings after 2 days of flights, thanks for the post!

No overclocking.  My MB and GPU are running about 30-40C, so not working too hard.  I don’t have CPU temp monitoring software installed, so I need to check that one.  I’ll try to post CPU %use and temp, tomorrow.  I think physical memory use was at about 35%.  I’ll confirm that as well.

I forgot to add that this system is liquid-cooled.  Also, I'm running Full HD resolution (1080P), not UHD.  My system will support UHD, but my monitor won't.  While running with "ultra" settings, I'm getting up to 80% CPU utilization with a temp of around 45C.  Memory usage is about 35%.

Switching the audio to "offline" did solve the ATC problem.  Thanks @Tierborn.