There has been an overwhelming amount of negativism on this forum, which is to be expected with the bugs, dodgy updates and crippled IFR functionality, but I am pretty sure the vast majority of users are nonetheless in awe of what the sim generally offers compared to what we had before, in particular in terms of VFR, but these sporadic posts tend to get lost in the storm fairly quickly.

Although knowing that this topic will probably have the lifespan/interest of less than a day, I thought it would be good to voice what we really love about the sim and that draws us back to it...

1. For me, the first thing is, without a doubt, performance. I expected a slideshow on my decade old i7 2600k, with 16GB DDR3 and GTX960, but given that I run the sim smoothly at global high settings, FPS locked at 30, rendering scale 90 and 1080p resolution, it shows how well optimized the underlying code is, compared to older sims. I do avoid any airplanes with glass cockpits though, as my FPS suffer a huge hit in those, but changing weather settings, cloud settings, etc, seem to have little influence on performance. Note that I do not have an FPS indicator, I simply go by how smooth it overall feels. 

2. The core tech. The fact that any place on the earth can be downloaded and AI-generated in real-time (or pre-cashed) rather seamlessly, without any pre-work necessary (like in xplane), is a huge step forwards und arguably the best feature overall, easily taken for granted (given how seamless it is). The AI needs significant work but is vastly more complex and sophisticated as I anticipated it to be, based on previous autogen in sims. At times, it is spot-on. In addition, add-ons adding scenery landmarks can greatly help to make an environment look a lot more real, without the need for a complete overhaul. 

3. Feel of flight and atmosphere. Especially in the smaller aircraft, I love how the aircraft reacts to the dynamic movements of the air and how exciting it feels to fly close to or through clouds and see icing develop. While some say that MSFS is a scenery simulator, I find that the sim nails this core aspect of flight simulation. 

4. Forests. I love that we now have dense forests to fly over. 

5. Fields. I find it incredibly fun to land my Cub into any open space or field and enjoy how beautiful the ground is up-close, explore the remote villages in rural hilly areas and let the airplane play with gravity on the hills, all the while enjoying the ambient sound effects. 

5. Snow. I find the snow rendering very well done, especially how it responds to type of scenery and scenery height. Would love for snow to accumulate though and especially see blowing snow and whiteouts. I also love how night lighting illuminates snow. 

7. (Night)lighting. Although I find the sim generally too dark when it is cloudy, the lighting in general is rather striking, especially at low sun settings. Even in mid-day, I find the tone of light just right, albeit, as mentioned, lacking in brightness when cloudy. Night lighting I find spectacular in general, despite a few weird artefacts.

8. Draw-distance (release version). Scenery and sky detail extending to the horizon (even with my low spec PC) set this sim well apart from anything else and makes the world look ultra-real. I hope they can restore this with the next update. 

9. Water (release version). Among the best scenery aspects was the very realistic looking water. Unfortunately, with the last 2 updates, they have broken it and now it looks so dull and flat at lower wind speeds (<10 knots), I tend to avoid areas with water, as to avoid a complete immersion kill. I also hope to see better water masking, more surface texture differentiation between rivers, small and big waters, and river rapids in mountainous areas. 

10. Free world updates and continuous progress. Loved the Japan update and the fact that they do this for free is very generous indeed. I hope many more areas will get this treatment and we will see more photogrammetry world-wide as well. Better elevation data is of course a huge welcome. 

11. Community updates. I cannot state enough how much I appreciate the Teams commitment to keep us updated since the beginning. Thank you MS and Asobo for doing that. 

Obviously, this close to perfection (in my view), the imperfections stand out more, but overall, I am deeply pleased with the new sim and I am greatly looking forward to its promising future. I do hope of course, especially for the disappointed IFR flyers out there, that this will be improved as well! 

Being able to fly the way most people fly, looking out the window rather than focusing on the instrument panel.  

Those who LIKE FS2020 prefer to FLY and not to write! 😃

 

15 minutes ago, OSM said:

Those who LIKE FS2020 prefer to FLY and not to write! 😃

 

Exactly, im pretty the thread is gonna be a flop, or hijacked by an angry mob 😄

Just now, leprechaunlive said:

Exactly, im pretty the thread is gonna be a flop, or hijacked by an angry mob 😄

Sure it will be, it was a flop before I even started it.....thanks for reading though 😉 

I love the idea! 

• Aerial imagery across most of the World
• Photogrammetry cities
• Water, specifically waves (when seen from above, not interacting with)
• Lighting, both during day and at night
• Weather, specifically rainshafts, rainbows, sunlight on ground between breaks in the clouds
• Snow cover
• Resurgent freeware modding scene
• Asobo and MS' scope of the entire project - it goes way beyond the incremental advances in flight simming we've come to expect for over a decade and a half.

- the performance is very good on my i9 with 2070Super and 16gb ram

- the little prop plebes are a joy to fly

- discovering new places to fly simply by randomly choosing a location is great

- OnAir works very well in conjunction with the Sim, helps with the above point of discovering places you might never of visited before

- Sunrise and Sunsets are fantastic

- i just love looking at the geology of the planet from the comfort of a plane

- although i don't have many the abundance of community mods both paid & free is already quite staggering, a good sign of things to come

- Patch Updates are regular so far and very much welcomed

- the weather system is just brilliant, ok aside a few bugs (lightning everywhere!) it has all the hallmarks of potentially being much better on top of his brilliant it is already

- finally and simply the joy this Sim brings me, I'm just happy every time i go for a flight and I'm left smiling after a session

I love a lot of things about this sim, but the n. 1 is being able to fly pretty much all around the world with great default scenery. One day I am in Australia, the other in South America, next week in Germany, then in the US. Love it! Dream come true for FSPassengers enthusiasts!

Edited October 19, 20205 yr by GCBraun

 

The fact i can have something that looks like that, on Low to Medium settings, with an amazing community mod (WT Citation CJ4). I mean, what else could i possibly want.

MSFS is so far ahead of P3D and XPlane.  The main thing missing from MSFS are "study level" airliners.  But once "study level" airliners are in, it will be the "go to" flight sim for the next decade.  It may take another year or 1.5 years for airliners from the top developers to get into MSFS (ie. FSLabs, PDMG, etc), but when those airliners get in, I think that will really signify the beginning of the end of P3D and XPlane.  Can you imagine where the FlyByWire A320 mod will be after 8 months, let alone the 2 months they have had?

The problem with P3D and XPlane are that the graphics are so dated, it's not something they can fix in 1 to 1.5 years time.  If P3D and XPlane get to MSFS level of graphics, and can provide terrain on the ground that conform to satellite data (ie. not auto-gen terrain), then P3D and XPlane will have narrowed the gap with MSFS.  But I don't see that in 1 to 1.5 years time for either P3D or XPlane.

The release of MSFS is like the initial release of IPhone.  The writing was on the wall for other mobile phone makers like Blackberry.  Yeah, Blackberry didn't disappear overnight.  But the writing was on the wall for Blackberry, if Blackberry couldn't match the IPhone.  Well, we know how the Blackberry ended.

And I say this as somebody who hopes that P3D and XPlane can up their game to match MSFS.  If P3D and XPlane can generate the same graphics as MSFS, at the same FPS, and can use satellite data to generate actual terrain (not autogenerated terrain), at the same price as MSFS, then MSFS will have a competitor in 1 to 1.5 years.  If not, then it's just a matter of time until MSFS becomes the IPhone, and P3D/XPlane become the Blackberry.

Edited October 19, 20205 yr by abrams_tank

What I love about MSFS 2020 is that it offers so much for so little:

Remember, guys; we used to pay money for houses, raindrops and trees. 

1 hour ago, Ricardo41 said:

What I love about MSFS 2020 is that it offers so much for so little:

Remember, guys; we used to pay money for houses, raindrops and trees. 

MSFS broke the consumer business model of P3D and XPlane (by consumer business model, I mean for us typical consumers and not commercial purchasers of P3D).  The amount of money we have to pay for basic ortho add ons has been cut down drastically.  Mind you, there is still room for add ons such as airports, and landmarks, but overall, we can fly around the world and it looks pretty good in many places, especially places with Bing photogrammetry.

Edited October 19, 20205 yr by abrams_tank

43 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

I love a lot of things about this sim, but the n. 1 is being able to fly pretty much all around the world. One day I am in Australia, the other in South America, next week in Germany, then in the US. Love it! Dream come true for FSPassengers enthusiasts!

This! The first time any civilian flight simulator achieves this! Well done, Asobo! 😁

6 minutes ago, Janov said:

This! The first time any civilian flight simulator achieves this! Well done, Asobo! 😁

Good luck doing that with the crappy default scenery from XP/P3D.