1. Accurate VFR navigation. I can depart from my home airport and know precisely where I am without navigational aids. This was simply not possible prior to MSFS without very expensive scenery that covered relatively small areas.
2. Dynamic weather that changes realistically as you fly. I remain impressed despite all of the live weather issues. I've never experienced the challenge of flying along a cold front, watching it develop into a storm, and having to dodge it through a gap in any other sim in such a spontaneous way. Weather feels like a living thing, as it does in the real world.
3. A modern platform that can render some incredibly complex visuals for an amazingly small performance cost (considering what is being rendered).

It's far from perfect and has been frustratingly inconsistent, but there are times when the stars align and you experience something pretty magical. I think those moments will increase dramatically as things stabilize.

47 minutes ago, ThomseN_inc said:

It seems like there are people actually have an opinion on what i asked. So if you are not interested why do you even bother to comment?

Yea, that sentence has also been seen a million times.... 

That's just the same as asking about the difference between driving a Citroën Berlingo and a Porsche Cayenne. They both have an engine, four wheels and a steering wheel and get you from A to B so what exactly could be the difference ?....  Beats me.

1 hour ago, Ragnaroq said:

...... MS also mastered bringing out the rudest behavior in entitled sim snobs that fly mostly by advanced button pressing in 95% of their flight time............

...............People should lighten up and stop being so rude to the developers. They'll get the flight models and A/P sorted out in due time.

Wasn't this launched and promoted as a flight simulator?  What is snobbish about expecting it to have vaguely believable flight models and A/P behaviour. FSX managed it.

21 minutes ago, desbean said:

Calling an accurate depiction of the entire worlds surface beautifully rendered "eye candy" is the the reaction of an anti-MSFS-ite 🙂.

Well said.

These people need to have a look at this : 

 

28 minutes ago, desbean said:

Calling an accurate depiction of the entire worlds surface beautifully rendered "eye candy" is the the reaction of an anti-MSFS-ite 🙂.

Disagree.  It is not about the good stuff.  It is about what is poor or not there....

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by fppilot

In my mind, what MSFS has brought to the table is: Streaming scenery data 🙂

And in spite of all the bugs etc... this feature actually works very well, and on existing hardware 😉

That is the breakthough technology IMHO..

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by Bert Pieke

"Exactly what is MSFS doing better than its predecessors?"

If we compare all sims as they were when launched (default) I would say MSFS 2020 is doing everything better. I remember well how the other sims were at launch.

What a loaded question.  The scenery can and should never be exluded from the conversation.  It is the basis for VFR flight.  The "eye candy" you refer to is what gives the simmer the suspension of disbelief.  The more "real" the outside feels, the more authentic the experience.

So to exclude that rather "inconvenient" part out of the discussion is intellectually dishonest.

Need I remind everyone that we were "driven" to focus on IFR, cockpit authenticity, and detailed level airliners because at the time, it was the only thing our home PC's could handle.  

Flight simulator is not flight simulator with out the "out of the window" view.  It's cockpit simulator.

I primarily experience my world through sight.  And by excluding that from this discussion, it's like making me put on blinders or closing my eyes.

So excuse me if I take your suggestion that you are trying to have an honest discussion about this product while simultaneously excluding what makes the product so extraordinary, with a healthy grain of salt.

Other's might try to extend this thread past it's useful life, but I know exactly where this is going, and exactly where the OP is coming from.   

1 hour ago, ThomseN_inc said:

So what do you guys think is the biggest improvement over FSX/P3d EXCEPT the graphics?

Well, there are quite a few which deserve honourable mentions. Disregarding the graphics, the fact that it runs well on even a mediocre computer with those sliders up pretty far to the right is a major plus point and quite probably the biggest advance of all that it offers. Gone are the days when you needed to either whack all the sliders to the left or buy a supercomputer to get a decent experience out of a new sim, which of course means that it has plenty of headroom left for all the fancy add-ons which will eventually come.

Sure, people have legitimate complaints about various bits and pieces with the sim which need tarting up or tweaking, but the fact that you don't see anyone saying stuff such as 'I was coming in on finals to Heathrow and it turned into a slideshow' on the MSFS forums has to be a real plus point for the thing and shows that if it isn't quite there yet in every respect, it has definitely set off in the right direction.

Beyond this, I think the flight planner is pretty good, in that includes all the procedures which people missed in various other sims and could not get close to without either jumping through hoops and throwing a ton of add-ons at other sims, or both. All that is a default capability of the new sim. The interface for it is good too, being clean and easily understandable.

Obviously the aeroplane models are a cut above most other sims graphically and the terrain is too as we know, but what is more encouraging is the fact that it has the built-in ability to tweak all this stuff fairly easily for your self without tedious restarts etc, so making your own scenery or tarting up places is a very real and easily achievable goal for anyone willing to try it, as evidenced by the explosion of people making use of this capability for freeware tweaks. The patching process too, whilst causing a few headaches initially, seems to run pretty flawlessly in terms of updating things. Yeah I know it breaks the odd thing, but the actual patching mechanism itself is very easy indeed and pretty much foolproof.

Integration of ground procedures, whilst still not perfect, is nonetheless much better than other default efforts in other sims and does in fact get pretty close to the real thing with the addition of FS2Crew's Pushback Express.

The fact that it includes realtime weather and realtime real-world AI, by default, are two other great plus points. These too need a bit of a tweak, but generally speaking they do the job pretty well. The fact that it includes many airports by default which simply are not in other sims is another great plus point as well.

So there are very many things it does far better than other sims and it's easy to forget this when focusing on the adverse issues, which it undeniably also has, but these are being addressed, leaving us with all those plus points to make it really stand out as a sim which pushes the boundaries in very many ways, even straight out of the box.

 

Have you taken someone on a real flight in a cessna and see their reaction?  Since scenery and beauty of flight is why I fly in real life, pushing this aspect of simulator as an after thought by so many is bothersome.  Mastering complex machines and  procedures is just a bonus for me. 

But to answer your question, for me, ability to fly true VFR is the main thing that previous versions didnt allow.

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by frankla

35 minutes ago, leprechaunlive said:

Yea, that sentence has also been seen a million times.... 

So whats your point? Some people seem to be unable to ignore stuff that doesn't fit in their picture perfect and feel a force to put out some feedback just to not have to say nothing.

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by ThomseN_inc

52 minutes ago, FPStewy said:

except having actual updated AIRac that matches approach plates, other sims have had this for 10+ years.

Again how is this not a top priority for a fix on a next gen sim like this I'll never understand.

 

Good God!

 

I never realized MSFA is that incomplete !!!!

42 minutes ago, desbean said:

Calling an accurate depiction of the entire worlds surface beautifully rendered "eye candy" is the the reaction of an anti-MSFS-ite 🙂.

Sorry but thats BS. I am a day one user of MSFS with lots and lots of hours on the TBM aswell as a trip halfway round your accurate and beautifully rendered worlds surface in the Carbon Cub and as i stated above i am quite pleased with it. So call me what you wish but not an anti-MSFS-ite.

19 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

So excuse me if I take your suggestion that you are trying to have an honest discussion about this product while simultaneously excluding what makes the product so extraordinary, with a healthy grain of salt.

Other's might try to extend this thread past it's useful life, but I know exactly where this is going, and exactly where the OP is coming from. 

The fact that many people refuse (or are unable) to name something that is done really great by MSFS except the Graphics (Trying to avoid the term "eye candy" now)  and try to insult me of being an anti-MSFS-ite (which i take quite personally) leads me to the conclusion that there isn't quite much...

Thanks to the people trying to give honest feedback without any "grain of salt". Appreciate it!

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by ThomseN_inc