What's so special about MSFS 2020

[Noooch 1,084]

The lighting is amazing but the colors appear a little washed out for me, especially in the cockpit.

I recently began to use the Freestyle feature from NVidia to increase the contrast, shadow, and sharpness and WOW!

I encourage you to play with it 🙂

Edited October 4, 2020 by Noooch

[RaptyrOne 1,447]

Very nice pics. Yesterday, descending from FL330 in the A320, was amazed at the cloud formations (live weather). This being the default sim weather, I never saw anything that impressive in all my time using REX in P3D. Wish I had taken a screenshot or two.

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,799]

Basically you cannot do random nonsensical stuff like THIS in other sims without a million addons:

 

[Ricardo41 5,958]

3 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

I think primarily what everyone here wants is a flight simulator: 

That's exactly what MSFS is 

But what's amazing to me is that all those graphics come at very little cost to performance. As soon as I turned on realistic shadows in P3D my frame rates would go down faster than the Titanic. 

[rayharris108 259]

I disagree. With all its bugs MSFS is a very good 'Flight Simulator' indeed.

It's just that so far after the 6 weeks, shockingly we only have default planes which vary from OK meh to sometimes quite awesome - oh and did I say there were a lot of bugs? (ps I'm not going into them here as I've already said this elsewhere and mostly they do not bother me personally). The default planes are not study level sims in their own right. That is not the fault of the sim. Which sim do we remember having default study level level sims for aircraft, weather, flight planning etc. Did any of us ever even fly them?

I still like P3D in its own right - esp because of those 3rd party add ons - in my case the Milviz B350i, Majestic Dash 8, A2A T182, and the FSL Airbus, all of which I have hundreds of hours in over the years. But as amazing as they are, they generally do not give me that occassional breathtaking feeling of being there that MSFS does. Now having them all in MSFS :-)......

[Marco Manieri 194]

23 minutes ago, rayharris108 said:

I disagree. With all its bugs MSFS is a very good 'Flight Simulator' indeed.

Correct.

It is the best "Flight" simulator released to date.

For the "Aircraft" simulator ranking we'll have to wait a little bit more... 3PD have to work on it as it has always been the case.

[Andreas Stangenes 1,628]

[Car147 2,280]

The graphics in the game are just out of this World.. Once the bugs have been ironed out with the default aircraft this Sim will be unbeatable in my opinion.

[EGLD 439]

12 hours ago, bean_sprout said:

Thank you - I thought that this was going to be another negative post.

Maybe change the title to "What IS special about FS2020" or "Why FS2020 Is So Special"

 

🙂

Cheers

bs

welcome to the concept of "click bait" 😄

 

[EGLD 439]

11 hours ago, speedyTC said:

Great eye candy. Hopefully within a year MS/Asobo will have addressed most of the bugs that have been pointed out by the community. Work in progress.

Even though the MSFS graphics are stunning, as a tubeliner simmer I'm sticking with P3D for the time being.

I need all 3 sims 😪

MSFS is now the gold standard for immersion, graphics and a sense of travel and flight. You get to leave somewhere and arrive somewhere else in the world with stunning graphics and weather, for all the systems modelling available in other sims, this basic simulation of travel is what I've always wanted from a PC Sim, which beings me onto.....

Xplane. I use this for A320, 767, 757 and bizjets because the sense of being in a real world, with bumps and inclines and inertia and realism - it's the best there is. Ortho4XP has now been completed obliterated by MSFS, and the weather kinda sucks in Xplane. Also, in Vulkan, it just has a horrible beige and unrealistic hue to everything. Reshade fixed that pre-Vulkan.

So P3d. It has a completely lifeless, motionless environment. As many people have said, more like being on rails. You land on flat, featureless runways every single time. Ortho is limited to certain regions, and is not to the same standard as Xplane. It's not even comparable to MSFS, despite the great work of Orbx. But it unquestionably has the best aircraft by far. If you want to fly long haul in a modern jet like a 787 or 747-4/8, then this is your only option. For me, complete simulation of all systems is now less important than the feeling MSFS provides. I know there are others who wouldn't dream of flying anything other than a faithfully re-created tubeliner and P3D is definitely still for those people.

Hopefully MSFS provides a viable alternative for detailed tubeliners soon.

Edited October 4, 2020 by EGLD

[EGLD 439]

5 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

I think primarily what everyone here wants is a flight simulator: Sorry to say, but I think what we have on this very day is an wonderful eye-candy simulator...  So, I look forward to a time when those two aspects of MSFS2020 are finally combined to give us one heck of a sim.    

it's so much more than just eye candy, it provides a sensation of actually travelling the world via aircraft that has never been possible before

[bobcat999 8,489]

I actually laugh at the people who still feel the need to jump on such a positive thread like this, where people are really enjoying the FLIGHT SIMULATOR, to spread their rubbish about it being an 'eye candy' simulator. 🙄

These sim-snobs just can't let it rest and let people have a bit of enjoyment without peeing on them!  They must get some kind of perverse joy out of it I suppose, but it says more about them that the state of this flight sim.

I actually blame MSFS for this.  Have you noticed you can't fly under the bridges yet in MSFS?  You simply cannot get under the bridges!  So that is why they are still here - there is nowhere for them to go back to! 🤣

Well done on the screen shots lads!  👍  I can see that you actually had to FLY there in those AIRCRAFT, in this FLIGHT SIMULATOR, to take those wonderful pictures.

Edited October 4, 2020 by bobcat999
Danger! Extra sarcasm added...

[himmelhorse 1,276]

30 minutes ago, EGLD said:

I need all 3 sims 😪

MSFS is now the gold standard for immersion, graphics and a sense of travel and flight. You get to leave somewhere and arrive somewhere else in the world with stunning graphics and weather, for all the systems modelling available in other sims, this basic simulation of travel is what I've always wanted from a PC Sim, which beings me onto.....

Xplane. I use this for A320, 767, 757 and bizjets because the sense of being in a real world, with bumps and inclines and inertia and realism - it's the best there is. Ortho4XP has now been completed obliterated by MSFS, and the weather kinda sucks in Xplane. Also, in Vulkan, it just has a horrible beige and unrealistic hue to everything. Reshade fixed that pre-Vulkan.

So P3d. It has a completely lifeless, motionless environment. As many people have said, more like being on rails. You land on flat, featureless runways every single time. Ortho is limited to certain regions, and is not to the same standard as Xplane. It's not even comparable to MSFS, despite the great work of Orbx. But it unquestionably has the best aircraft by far. If you want to fly long haul in a modern jet like a 787 or 747-4/8, then this is your only option. For me, complete simulation of all systems is now less important than the feeling MSFS provides. I know there are others who wouldn't dream of flying anything other than a faithfully re-created tubeliner and P3D is definitely still for those people.

Hopefully MSFS provides a viable alternative for detailed tubeliners soon.

EGLD,

my only differing comments are 

1. Vulkan, on standard scenery, I don't get that as a stand-out feature.  Whilst the basic (WED) scenery is far better than default (and free) it is the fences everywhere that fences do not exist, that bother me somewhat. I think (although I have not indulged due to disk space limitations) Ortho4XP looks stunning although as you say it is slightly outclassed (not completely obliterated) by MSFS 

2. P3D completely lifeless ... I do not agree but I will say that this is IMO an entirely personal and individual evaluation. I enjoy it in its current state, but again, a personal preference, and I might add, different to XPlane and to MSFS

Otherwise mate I think your summations is spot on.

Tony

[airlinejets 709]

4 hours ago, Noooch said:

The lighting is amazing but the colors appear a little washed out for me, especially in the cockpit.

I recently began to use the Freestyle feature from NVidia to increase the contrast, shadow, and sharpness and WOW!

I encourage you to play with it 🙂

I was using Freestyle a few weeks ago but was getting this horrible green cast at the horizon, so I removed the application. It turns out, using anything else than TAA causes this for me. I'll try Freestyle again later today.

[Chock 17,769]

What's so special about MSFS 2020, is the fact that it exists.

For those who have been into flight sims for a while, we may recall what a depressing place Avsim and all the other flight sim forums were when the closure of Aces was announced. It was so bleak that at the time, Aerosoft actually announced they were seriously considering making a flight sim. Which they in fact did, although by the time it came out the situation had improved somewhat with Lockheed Martin creating P3D, Laminar Research getting their act together a bit more with XPlane, Aerofly FS2 looking promising, and Dovetail were mooting FSW, which despite its aborted state, was clearly instrumental in MS coming back into the fold, so the Aerosoft sim which ended up being released became the very basic (but still kind of fun) Holiday Flight Simulator, with its A320 and Beech Baron. 

Prior to all this, we'd got pretty comfortable with a world where there would essentially be a new version of MSFS every two years or so, and so at that time we knew things would progress and the add-on market for its basic platform would thrive. Then in 2009 the rug got pulled from under us all. And whilst many of us were aware that the CPU-bound architecture of FS2004 and FSX was starting to become problematic and really needed Aces to start from the ground up rather than rehashing the base code, we also knew that the willingness of MS to spend the money to do that was not there at that time, and so whilst it was a shock to find them ditching MSFS, it was not absolutely unexpected. Nevertheless, that didn't make it any less depressing when it occurred.

MSFS is the simulator which democratises flying for people. It always has been. It is the one even Joe Blow in the streets has heard of. It is so ubiquitous that it even makes it into many film references, typically where some person has to take over the controls of an airliner and mentions having used it. Ask someone in the street if they've heard of XPlane or P3D, and the chances are they will not have, but ask them if they've heard of MSFS and I'd put money on them saying yes.

Up until the time where FSX was showing that the ESP platform was getting too long in the tooth to push things graphically, MSFS had always been the application which pushed 3D technology. Now it is back and doing that again, in spades, with it running on even a mediocre computer with graphics which put all other flight sims to shame. It is back on the throne where it was all those years ago.

Now sure, it's not without its problems at the moment, but for the most part these are teething troubles which will be fixed. There's been some hiccups, but progress is being made and we are once again in that comfortable and reassuring place where if we like flight simulators, then the granddaddy of them all is back. Anyone who went through the dismay of that miserable day where MS announced Aces was closing and MSFS would not continue, can surely only rejoice at the fact that we're back in the sunlit uplands of a world where a flight simulator with a legacy which is so well-known and well-loved, is back on track.

That's what makes MSFS so special.

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Chock