For those wondering why I hadn't purchased yet, wonder no more.  About 10 hours ago I deleted the Beta (which no longer worked anyway), loaded up the Store app, and got the Super Duper Deluxe version.  (For those wondering why the heck I'm posting this, several people have asked me why I hadn't purchased yet, especially after being in the Beta.  It's because I like to see community feedback before buying.)

Now, about 9.5 hours later, I've got everything downloaded, installed and set up.

The process was surprisingly painless after reading about some of the problems people have had.  It may have been helped along by the fact that I'd gone through it with the Alpha and Beta versions.  Download speed was as expected with my 35 MBps Internet, no slow downloads, no problems, and thank the weather gods I didn't lose Internet or power. I had to set up my controls, which I had expected, and the only bad moment was when I couldn't find a throttle axis in the settings;  turns out I had "essentials" selected instead of "all".  Seems sub-optimal but serviceable.

When it all goes right it's pretty slick.  I kept worrying that it could go wrong. 🙂 

Purchase, download and setup experience.  "Very good.  Would buy again."

I already know what the sim looks like, and I see they fixed a minor TrackIR bug.  I do not anticipate any problems I don't already know about, and those problems weren't enough to keep me from purchasing. Now... where's that darn manual!? 😄 

Hook

Got caught up on Avsim, decided to go for my first retail version flight.  As background, I would have done this flight last night if the Beta still worked.  It was a continuation of my last Cannibal Queen flight made in P3Dv4.5 shortly before I got burned out on flight simming.

I did all the flight planning in skyvector.com, and transferred the plan to Little Navmap.  Booted up the task manager so I could keep track of RAM.  Started MSFS, found KIAG and a likely parking spot, set weather to real time, selected the Savage Cub and filled it with fuel.  Merciful heavens MSFS took a long time to load first time after a boot, and first time ever, really.  The Beta sure seemed faster.

Things looked good but constant stutters.  Good thing I'd heard Little Navmap might be a problem.  Alt-tab out, kill Little Navmap, everything good.  TrackIR works, still has an oddity that after you look at something and pause TrackIR, after about 6 seconds it snaps back to front view.  Well, it's longer than in the Beta and should give you time to set whatever control you were looking at.

Took off, flew.  My CH Products control sensitivity was exactly how I liked it, same as Beta, without changing anything.  Your mileage may vary, even if you have CH controls.

Skyvector showed windmills in a couple of places and they weren't in the scenery.  Now I gotta go somewhere I've seen windmills in MSFS to make sure they're still there.

Scenery was as remembered, all good.  Getting used to it, I think. 🙂 Niagara Falls didn't look anything like the recent video. 😄 But it looked worlds better than FSX/P3D;  at least it was obvious it was Niagara in MSFS, not so much in stock P3D.

I selected Ultra settings even though the sim recommended one notch down. I was surprised at how smooth it was, with good frame rates, seems to be better than Beta so far.  I did get stutters as I approached Erie, task manager showed disk usage.  I suspect with 32 gig RAM rather than my 16, and possibly having MSFS installed on SSD would eliminate most of that.

No regrets.

Hook

Just now, LHookins said:

t was a continuation of my last Cannibal Queen flight

That was a great book

1 minute ago, ErichB said:

That was a great book

Yeah, loved it... several times.  It's a great flight, too! 😄 

Hook

3 hours ago, LHookins said:

For those wondering why I hadn't purchased yet, wonder no more.  About 10 hours ago I deleted the Beta (which no longer worked anyway), loaded up the Store app, and got the Super Duper Deluxe version.  (For those wondering why the heck I'm posting this, several people have asked me why I hadn't purchased yet, especially after being in the Beta.  It's because I like to see community feedback before buying.)

Now, about 9.5 hours later, I've got everything downloaded, installed and set up.

The process was surprisingly painless after reading about some of the problems people have had.  It may have been helped along by the fact that I'd gone through it with the Alpha and Beta versions.  Download speed was as expected with my 35 MBps Internet, no slow downloads, no problems, and thank the weather gods I didn't lose Internet or power. I had to set up my controls, which I had expected, and the only bad moment was when I couldn't find a throttle axis in the settings;  turns out I had "essentials" selected instead of "all".  Seems sub-optimal but serviceable.

When it all goes right it's pretty slick.  I kept worrying that it could go wrong. 🙂 

Purchase, download and setup experience.  "Very good.  Would buy again."

I already know what the sim looks like, and I see they fixed a minor TrackIR bug.  I do not anticipate any problems I don't already know about, and those problems weren't enough to keep me from purchasing. Now... where's that darn manual!? 😄 

Hook

You kept none working beta all this time!? Wow, you hardcore tester! 🙂

38 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

You kept none working beta all this time!? Wow, you hardcore tester! 🙂

I figured it might keep working for a while if I started offline. 😄 Besides, I wanted to compare some files from Bets to release.  Yes, I found changes.

Hook

Hi Hook,

Turn off the AI planes in LittleNavMap and that should fix the stutters.

chris

Glad the retail version didn't disappoint.

Not surprised you didn't have issues since you've done this many times before...too bad there was no advance warning of the prerequisites / gotchas for us first timers so it wouldn't have turned into a gong show.

Edited August 21, 20205 yr by DylanM

Still seeing the magic.

Continuing my Cannibal Queen journey, I flew from Niagara Falls to Erie, then south, then west towards Colorado.  Around Pittsburg there were a lot of mesh anomalies.  Nothing to do for it but ignore them for now.

One thing I noticed was that not only is there traffic on highways, the service roads beside the highways have traffic too and it moves slower.  I've even seen plenty of traffic in residential areas!  I wasn't expecting that at all.  My traffic is default, probably 50%.

I was hoping to see the nuclear plant on the river west of Pittsburg but it was just some buildings on top of an aerial photo of the plant.  Oh well, maybe some day.  Surprisingly, following the river that circles Pittsburg is actually scenic.  "Visit scenic Pittsburg!"  If you saw that on a travel brochure you probably wouldn't believe it. 😄 It was scenic in P3D as well.

In FSX and P3D I didn't much enjoy the legs of the flight that were pure dead reckoning over terrain with no good landmarks.  But for some reason, I'm really liking these kinds of flights in MSFS.  Somehow it is easier to boresight a feature in the distance in the new sim.  It helps that the scenery is gorgeous.

P3D landclass might hint at what Coonts described in his book, but now I'm seeing exactly what he saw.  The magic is well and truly there.

I'm enjoying the Cessna 172 with analog gauges more than the Cessna 152.  I'm not sure why.  The flight model seems more sophisticated.  I've flown all the steam gauge aircraft and the Cessna 152 and 172 and the Savage Cub are my favorites.

I'm glad I bought MSFS and glad I decided to continue the Cannibal Queen flight.  Now all I need is a Stearman.

Hook

On 8/21/2020 at 12:26 PM, LHookins said:

Now I gotta go somewhere I've seen windmills in MSFS to make sure they're still there.

I found some on my way back to Rota, Spain from Gibraltar...they looked really good.

There should be a bunch at Palm Springs as well (I haven't gone there...yet)

I forgot to mention about that.  Near Buffalo I saw a single windmill that was on the chart as a hazard.  Later I saw a whole row of windmills on top of a hill as shown on the chart.

Thanks for reminding me.

Hook

I like to fly VFR without using the GPS or other map cheats, keeping my position on real world charts courtesy of skyvector.com which has been very useful.  Since I have to look out the window constantly and match what I see with the charts, navigation is a sort of enforced sightseeing for me.

This is why I really like the scenery in MSFS.  Who says the graphics don't matter? 🙂

Hook

13 minutes ago, LHookins said:

I like to fly VFR without using the GPS or other map cheats, keeping my position on real world charts courtesy of skyvector.com which has been very useful.  Since I have to look out the window constantly and match what I see with the charts, navigation is a sort of enforced sightseeing for me.

This is why I really like the scenery in MSFS.  Who says the graphics don't matter? 🙂

Hook

ofcourse graphics do matter, i use the good old plang in the background as a 'paper' map.

its really good to follow roads, rivers.

btw fantastic busflying in papua new guinea..all the lil grasstrips are there, awesome with the cubs.