Has MSFS 2020 met your initial expections?

[ryanbatc 12,833]

I'm torn.  I was using the sim since the first tech alpha.  I honestly think a lot of the visuals were far superior to what we have now.  But I'm not surprised they changed things.  Performance is smoother now (due to loss of visuals).

As a touring VFR sim, it's really amazing and it has met my expectations.  I enjoy VFR here and in real life, so that part is great.  But I also love to fly IFR in the sim (and irl with a friend - I'm not yet instrument rated).  And for that part it is a pretty big letdown.  Especially when it comes to the Garmin simulation.  I know the airliner FMS' have their own issues too....so I feel for you big haul people!  I feel like even though FSX was "interesting" on release....it was more polished for release.  However, with such a massive scope of this new sim I believe it's impossible to deliver a bug free product.  It's almost as if users want the monthly patches and things...  that's kinda how the Call of Duty-type games go...  Everytime I startup the Blizzard launcher my game updates haha.

So my final answer is:  I have mixed feelings about the new sim in its present state.  I am hopeful for the future though!

[pmb 5,137]

I was in the alpha since batch 2. Already after my maiden flight (where I had to figure out how things work in absence of any docs), I knew this would start a new era of flight simulation. Now, the way was a bit bumpy since, and I could have done without some issues as well. But overall, I must still say my expectations were more than met.  

I'm just back from a flight from Niagara Falls KIAG to Toronto City CYTZ in the C172. The native MSFS Niagara Falls could need a bit of love (and probably will get it with the America Update) but the freeware addon makes them look pretty good. Anyway, flying over Lake Ontario and seeing the Toronto skyline softly blending in in the setting sun - which I've been used to pop in "black" for ages halfway - was an absolute highlight for me.

So "yes" from my side, and I must admit I am totally happy with what we have right now. It's long ago that I devoted so much time to and had so much fun with flying.

Kind regards, Michael

[him225 51]

It somewhat hasn't. FS2020 got the main part acceptably right that was a distant dream for most, which is full world roughly based on satellite scenery with great graphics for the performance. But most other aspects seem like a step back from their last release FSX than forward. ATC and control boundaries frequencies look straight ported from fsx with their errors and missing data which is disappointing. The AI traffic is lacking and looks in motion shallow like in fs2000, could have ported it also from FSX atleast if nothing new like following airways. The stock weather in FSX before it got defunct also had the same unreliability problems which was most time inaccurate or missing, so the current one meets expectations from stock weather of being that. Lots of good things already achieved being forgotten and unnecessarily reinvented rather than improved upon what was serving good, like why did they have to revamp the keyboard layout and user interface, it feels dumbed down and crippling, also they needlessly took away things like mouse yoke probably to their own detriment of losing casual simmers. Currently hoping that they released the sim early with just the sparkly bits complete to please the casual gamer, that it will going to be a step or more ahead of FSX in every aspect after full development in coming months or year.

[fppilot 4,358]

No!

Great detail of the earth and improved utilization of OS and hardware.  But it is significantly behind other simulations in regard to live weather, sophistication of available aircraft, implementation of highly modeled avionics, available freeware and 3rd party airports, even default ATC.  Then lacking in a look toward adding those features from 3rd party developers because of an underdeveloped SDK.  My 3rd party augmented FSX SE is a light year beyond this new sim in those regards, and the core of sims from Christmas past is now 15 years aged.

Edited November 2, 2020 by fppilot

[pmb 5,137]

36 minutes ago, fppilot said:

But it is significantly behind other simulations in regard to live weather, sophistication of available aircraft, implementation of highly modeled avionics, available freeware and 3rd party airports, even default ATC.  

No doubt on Aircraft and Avionics. But Freeware and 3rd Party Airports are so quickly stacking up I've difficulty to follow all offers and to decide what is worth buying and downloading. I'm even more impressed by some freeware scenery masterpieces by developers I've never heard from before (and no, I'm not speaking about Google conversions).  

I wouldn't be surprised if the first highly-sophisticated add-on aircraft would not come from the hand full of well-known names but from a few groups of talented enthusiastic newcomers taking their chance.

Kind regards, Michael

[cobalt 798]

45 minutes ago, fppilot said:

No!

Great detail of the earth and improved utilization of OS and hardware.  But it is significantly behind other simulations in regard to live weather, sophistication of available aircraft, implementation of highly modeled avionics, available freeware and 3rd party airports, even default ATC.  Then lacking in a look toward adding those features from 3rd party developers because of an underdeveloped SDK.  My 3rd party augmented FSX SE is a light year beyond this new sim in those regards, and the core of sims from Christmas past is now 15 years aged.

As a frequent user of FSX from the day it appeared in 2006, I have to disagree. With the rare exception of a few places such as Manhattan and London that are somewhat accurately modeled, cities, towns, and rural buildings in FSX are, while they may look nice, figments of the imagination that look nothing like the actual places. In MSFS my home city for the first time in any sim, actually looks real, with streets and buildings where they should be. My street, which is one block long and unknown even to many residents of my city, is there!  And most other city, town, and villages on the planet are similarly modeled. Even barns in the countryside are accurately placed, at least in areas familiar to me. VFR flying based an actual landmarks was not really possible in FSX; now it is.  That, for me, trumps everything else.

[fppilot 4,358]

1 minute ago, cobalt said:

That, for me, trumps everything else.

For me it does not trump more realistic weather, navigation, and flying.  I am dearly optimistic for the future.  But today is not yet the future.

[petabread 67]

This has surpassed expectations. When I look at a new sim, it has to at base level be better as a base than what we have. Create a base that 3rd party developers can take their products and create something even better if that’s your thing. Im usually not one to buy a lot of addons but in the past I’ve had to shell out for better weather, better ai better everything.

 

My expectations were low as far as  performance goes because I have a mid range system. However the sim runs smooth on medium-high settings and it looks great. No doubt there the best looking sim out of the box. The weather for me has been great, I always hated previous sims using strictly metal data and forcing updates that rip realism out the window. REX and activesky both had this issue in past sims. Metar only weather is a bad way to do weather, I like that they use a forecast model to depict weather in between metars. As a real world pilot, I can’t begin to stress how important it was for a weather engine to get away from strictly metar. 
 

AI right now with the FlightAware system seems adequate, minus of course liveries not matching but it hasn’t broken my realism much. And I haven’t had an issue with lack of ai either. 
 

The flight model is pretty spot on as well, once configuring my yoke and peddals, the way the aircraft behave in their environment is nicely done, not perfect but I don’t expect it. It’s close to X-plane. FSX and P3D don’t fee close to real world at all.

 

As for the aircraft themselves, the GA planes, the single engine ones feel good, fly good. Having done VFR and IFR flying in the sim with these aircrafts has been a pleasure. The big boys leave some to be desired. The mods help correct some of that but I never expected high caliber default aircraft. In time we will get them from other developers but I’ve flown point a to b in all 3 commercial airliners and they’ve flown without much hitch for me.

overal, what they promised is what I feel I’ve gotten with some bugs from time to time but this is better out of the box than any previous sim. 

[RichieFly 728]

Yes. Exceeds my expectations. 

The hype train hit me and I had to recover from that, but yeah; pretty good.

Here's the deal. 5 updates so far. How many FSX updates were there? With P3D how often do you get an update? And bugs remaining or added with the update. Is P3D blameless?

And, I think we should compare apples to apples here. P3D without any addons and MSFS 2020 without any addons. There's no comparison. I respect people buying addon airports for MSFS 2020, but, in my mind, it's not needed. The only reason I have so many addon airports for P3D is so I have a gate to start at and the airport doesn't look like a hyena's backside. The same goes for your landing. I always flew from payware airport to payware airport. You'll need addon airports otherwise you'll be jared with the most ugly scenery since Grand Theft Auto 2. 

Weather depiction. Again, you'll need addons to have anything worth mentioning. 

There's bugs; there's things not working. It's been 2 months. 2

So, again, yes.

[cobalt 798]

2 hours ago, fppilot said:

But today is not yet the future.

And never will be!  (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

[in2tech 588]

5 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

It's almost as if users want the monthly patches and things...  that's kinda how the Call of Duty-type games go...  Everytime I startup the Blizzard launcher my game updates haha.

I want the monthly updates, patches, hotfixes. Although I must admit some things that are updated, patched, and fixed I would never know about the way I fly the sim. Most people don't read the notes for updates, just like they don't read most Terms Of Service documents!

Bring on the next update please. Really looking forward to the North America, Bing update! Or whatever it is called. And one day in maybe 2022 or 2023, water runways. But fix the other stuff for people first. I can wait.

[GSalden 4,656]

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?21572-KerrSpectives-State-Of-The-Sim

[omarsmak30 4,068]

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?21572-KerrSpectives-State-Of-The-Sim

I think this article is too dramatic. We already know is a beta product and we know, it may take a year or so for MSFS to stabilize. We shouldn't forget, is almost brand new sim (even if its core is FSX) and we have to be patient with it. 

[Scottoest 1,561]

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?21572-KerrSpectives-State-Of-The-Sim

This is a kinda bad op-ed, that doesn't have much to say beyond pointing out the sim clearly wasn't finished, and that Asobo's patches have broke stuff.  And his list of suggestions are absurd, as well as completely disconnected from the reality of game development.  Asobo should "stop and take a fearless moral inventory" of themselves and their mistakes? lol!

Asobo themselves have copped to the fact that they tried to do too much too quickly with the first couple of patches, which led to the widespread issues, and is why their last few updates have been a lot smaller and more manageable for two week sprints.  But even then, patches are always gonna run the risk of botching stuff.  The bigger the patch, the more the risk of botching something.  Ask P3D users how flawless v5.1 is for them right now - and that's a product that has been "mature" software for years.

Quote

This is why it is a watershed moment for Asobo. It's like myself as an author. If I keep on re-writing a chapter over and over again, it's all too easy to end up with something that no longer resembles the first version, and worse, it's possible to lose the plot. If Asobo keeps on acting like a dog chasing its tail, going round in circles fixing fixes, then at some point they are going to end up with such a mess that they cannot go back and correct it without doing a major re-write or a total re-set. Again, a watershed. To Asobo I say, stop this nonsense now, before you break it any further and lose the plot.

What does this even mean?  He thinks a modern development studio is going to patch their game to the point where they have to do a "total reset"? Ken's entire thesis seems to hinge on the idea that Asobo are just breaking things left and right, and that in their attempts to fix whatever bugs were introduced as a result of other fixes, they are somehow going to get hopelessly lost in their own code?

He then goes on to offer a bunch of questions he doesn't have answers to, suggesting users and 3PD devs are going to run back to other platforms in droves... something for which there is no real evidence.

There's a 0% chance of Microsoft taking MSFS - with a Metacritic score of 91% and the 6th highest rated game of the year - off sale, lol.  Nor do I understand what that would even do for 3PDs and the hundreds of thousands of people who already bought it, who would almost certainly be the "hardcore" sim audience that are sensitive to issues with things like avionics in the first place. So what are we left with, in response to Ken's criticisms?

- Asobo have slowed their roll with updates, to ensure they can do more testing.  There's been bugs here and there, but nothing like the first couple of mega-patches.
- The sim is a de facto beta, which Ken himself acknowledges.  So what can they realistically do, except continue to update at regular intervals, to bring the sim up to a genuinely mature state?  Does he want them to stop making big changes?  Does he want them to not update it for like a year, and then just fix everything all at once?
- The beta testing program he wants has already been announced and is coming.  So I guess check that one off the "Kerrspective" bucket list?

His closing paragraph basically undercuts the idea that this is a "watershed moment" for MSFS.  Despite all of the growing pains and frustrations with MSFS, he finds it difficult to go backwards in time to old platforms, having been given a taste of the future.  This feeling is exactly why MSFS will ultimately succeed, as long as Asobo put in the work over the coming months to fully realize the potential of what is here now.

The sim shouldn't have released when it did; It clearly needed at least a few more months to bake in the oven.  But that toothpaste is now long since out of the tube, and you move forward.

Edited November 2, 2020 by Scottoest

[scotchegg 4,186]

18 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

But that toothpaste is now long since out of the tube,

What a wonderful idiom.