Am I the only one?

[flyforever 269]

I have had all the sims ever produced in the last 30 years. I remember when just the idea of having a few text boxes indicating altitude and heading was exciting-- this , I believe, was on my Commodore 64 and a simple flight sim( yes, they called sims even then). Today it would not be called a sim.

At that time, I was training to become a commercial pilot, working several jobs between family and school. Going to the airport for my lessons was exciting. At home, my Commodore kept me dreaming about flight and my next flight lesson.

When I finally started up Flight Simulator 2020, I was amazed. Great scenery and performance was finally here. I could dream about a DC3 and do some real Bush flying, or fly an airliner. With Microsoft back in the flight sim business, I knew that flight sims will be good for another 10 years or so. MS simply has the cache to get millions of people paying attention, and with it more and more developers to create great addons. Even if MS were to abandon this sim, there's no going back.

Flight sims have always been a product of tremendous dedication, usually from small developers or freeware authors. It's great to see what newest files have been uploaded, or what's in the pipeline. This is half of the fun.

I am starting to see this with the various mods coming out, and I find it thrilling.

In those days, it was about dealing with the bread crumbs and its limitations( cpu, memory, graphics, small black and white monitors, crappy sound, etc) and looking forward to the small, yet exciting improvements that the community was slowly developing. And it happened. No one can say that sims have not developed, usually for the better. Develop is the keyword. Nothing ever came out perfect.

In fact, aviation is the same. Improvements have been made over many,many years, considering the many lives that have been lost . You would think that when big money and lives were at stake, that airplanes and the system that keeps them flying would be perfect right out of the box. Yet, it was a slow process.

This morning, after an easy latest patch experience, I flew from LIMC to LIMJ with the A320 Neo and live weather. I used the sim's flight planner, loaded the plane and, to my amazement, I was flying in fantastic clouds, the autopilot worked flawlessly, maintaining heading, altitude and speed.  My ILS approach was precise both in altitude and direction. At 400 feet, I disconnected the autopilot and the Auto Thrust, and at 145kts, I had sufficient elevator authority to keep the nose up and make a good landing. If there's some work to be done, it's in the ground effect. I feel the Neo does not float enough to make a gentle landing as I raise the nose.

Yes, I am aware of the issues with the flight controls, and I find that having my trim wheel axis sensitivity set at 100 while my elevator at zero sensitivity provide adequate control response, especially when flaring.

Since I know that the aircrafts are not perfect( I've yet to find a default aircraft in all the other sims that fly great), I don't get all hot and bothered. I am just amazed to see how far we've come.

I am sipping this sim very slowly with gusto, knowing it's the only one we have and we better enjoy it while it lasts--for now.

What is funny is that after I put this sim in my pc, I am having difficulty going to the other sims. I don't know why,but they already feel dated.

 

tc

 

 

 

 

Edited October 13, 2020 by flyforever

[rtodepart 761]

3 minutes ago, flyforever said:

What is funny is that after I put this sim in my pc, I am having difficulty going to the other sims. I don't know why,but they already feel dated.

 

Nice write up Im also enjoying what we have now. In my situation I removed everything else (fsx p3d xplane) from my current PC’s

so FS2020 is the only one I have now . 

[leprechaunlive 1,861]

You'r not the only one, in fact, i think we are the massive majority, but the rest of the pack is much louder than us (we'r too busy flying anyways)

[Todd2 2,159]

1 minute ago, leprechaunlive said:

but the rest of the pack is much louder than us (we're too busy flying anyways)

yep true dat

[LarryD 132]

Clearly you are not the only one that feels this way.  On the other hand, there are many folks that feel quite the opposite of you as is evidenced by many of the threads on AVSIM.

I am in the middle, leaning in your direction.

I have XPlane 11 also, and when I do occasionally go back to it, it does seem lacking in the VFR flight department.  But if I do get in the mood for an IFR flight, then XPlane is where I find myself.  The G1000 works pretty reliably on Xplane so it is pretty easy to actually do a complete IFR flight with "confidence".  Every airport doesn't have an ILS, and RNAV approaches are not a strong point of the MSFS G1000.

So for now, I find myself in MSFS 90% of the time, and once or twice a week I fly XPlane IFR.  I believe Asobo stated we are a few patches away from a fix for the G1000 (December?) so hopefully I'll end up being a single sim user.  Not quite there yet.

[RichieFly 737]

Not just you.

I just did a windsock test at LOWI (it works just fine) and had a pleasant time. I have all the toys, in terms of P3D and X-Plane (to a lesser extent) and, I have to agree, I'm just not interested in going back. The PMDG and Rotate Sim and Leonardo and so on are all excellent and, yes, there's nothing comparable for MSFS at this time. It doesn't matter to me. I'm good with all that I do have with MSFS.

This is me and I guess you. I'm not evangelizing as to who should fly what; nor should I.

I have all three installed (yea storage space) and I can alway fly the other sims. So far, in the weeks that have elapsed since MSFS has come out, I've flown P3D and X-Plane 2 times each. This may change if A2A comes out with their Aerostar or PMDG comes out with their secret project (wooden P) 😉

 

[bean_sprout 1,201]

43 minutes ago, Todd2 said:

yep true dat

yep dat true.

bs

[Little Jenny 317]

I started out back in the Commodore 64 days as well.  I've been away from simming until recently.  I remember when you bought a game, you got what you got.  Updates?  Maybe if you were lucky.  Sure, there are some frustrations with the current version.  However, my FSX has been removed because I can't even go back to looking at the scenery (even with Megascenery installed).  Now that RealSimGear has their devices working (I have the 430/530), I have zero reason to go back to FSX.  I'm just taking each update day by day.  I don't fly airliners.  However I know that's where the majority of the frustrations are.  I'm here for the long haul and to see what MS/Asobo come up with.  Third party developers will eventually provide some amazing aircraft I'm sure.  The scenery is only going to get better.  

 

[Republic3D 1,232]

I've also had a lot of sims, from Flight Simulator 4.0, FS98, FS2004, FSX, X-Plane 10, Xplane 11. 

This one is really amazing. I think part of what makes this sim so amazing is that we got 14 years of advancement in one go. Especially if you've upgraded from FSX. 

I'm really enjoying it. There's certainly room for improvement, but I think we'll see some amazing things coming. 

My favorite thing so far is bush flying, general aviation.. just taking in the scenery, noticing new things.. the feeling of mastering an airplane to a certain degree. I fly a plane until I know it well enough to not need the checklists for anything and feeling like I can handle it in most situations. Then I practice techniques, perfecting things. I don't know how many times I've landed the XCub on a sandbank in the Pacific Northwest, but its dozens of times. So enjoyable. 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Republic3D

[diajohn 169]

Agree with all.  Even with the bugs in MSFS, I have tried going back to P3D v5 and my PMDG aircraft and feeling as if my Monitor has become a low res rib.
 

The future is here and steadily getting better

[109Sqn 1,586]

Before MSFS was released, I bought FSX:SE on Steam, rather than go through the convoluted process of trying to resurrect my original install from a previous (and largely kaput at the time) PC, because it would be fun to potter around both before and after MSFS came out, and to practice routines, go through all the challenges. How often have I been back to FSX since August 18th? Not once. I've just seen no need to do that, even though my HOTAS setup doesn't let MSFS even start up. I'd rather use the newer and better sim with a gamepad than have my HOTAS with FSX.

We've come such a long way that even the temporary steps back we take with the updates are worth it for the steps forward we take. In my opinion of course.