I am posting this because I read contradictory reports from and about RW pilots and how they see MSFS 2020, so I thought why not hear from RW pilots themselves, hopefully lots of them, and see how it shakes out.  I can't vote as I'm not a RW pilot.  I'm coming from the bias that P3D offers a far more realistic airline cockpit management simulation than does MSFS currently, so I did not pose questions that get at that per se.   Mostly the idea for the poll spawned from this thread reply:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/591815-but-its-not-a-real-simulator/?do=findComment&comment=4434009

The first question I feel is valid to restrict to default aircraft, since that's all MSFS has currently.  If n when MSFS gets a PMDG NGX or whatever it's supposed to be, we can redo and update the poll.  The last question comes from the other bias that scenery is de facto superior in MSFS.  To look at that we can try to see if that matters, to real world pilots' preferences in a "flight sim".

I'm sure I've missed questions and made 'bad' questions.   But fun to see what the people who actually fly real airplanes have to say.  I don't have the perspective and assume it would be substantially different than that of folks who aren't RW pilots.

The poll ends in a month.

My bad:  after the first two votes were cast I edited the poll title to try to limit to those RW pilots who own MSFS and at least one of the other two sims, and made a minor edit to the first question.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Noel

😋

The only issue I had with the questioning was question 1 because it really doesnt specify any particular plane. While I think XP11 is best overall, I feel the default C152 in MSFS is most realistic based on many factors including my hardware.

I guess the best way to answer the questions would be, "in general", as there will be some exceptions.  I will see if I can edit it still thanks.

Real world pilots use P3D that`s what it was intended for but you will not find them on Avsim, if you watched the Orlando show they held a seminar for them with the LM P3D devs, LM purchased the code for that reason and scenery is not important in real flight simulator. Procedures and flying are.  

And MILVIS explained this in there video  study level aircraft. and at the present time more important with pilots lack of flying they can log time in P3D.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by G-RFRY

I’m currently in the middle of my 747 to 787 conversion, so I’m spending time at home with P3D and the QW 787 and then going back into the L3 full motion simulator.

Its fair to say that although full motion simulator graphics have improved significantly over the past 25 years I’ve been using them , especially the airport environments, the scenery itself is still well below that of P3D. 
 

Mainly it’s just flat low res aerial or satellite photography scenery with fairly sparse generic autogen as you get lower, which has inspired me to turn my P3D settings down to match and gain performance. I use orbx TE and although people say it’s designed for low level VFR I find it an excellent product for flying airliners in too. I’m mainly doing short local area flights and doing air work at 10-15,000ft and the scenery looks superbly realistic from up there and adds a lot to the experience. I should add that my flights are also almost exclusively in VR and P3D and QW have been superb in this respect as before I ever sat in the “real’ (sim) 787 I knew where to Physically reach for every switch and button , and had the flows memorised.

As I mentioned the airport environments have really improved in the full flight sims and this really does improve realism and immersion, it’s one time when you’re really looking out at the scenery rather than inside, taxiing and on approach. The addition of things like fire trucks racing towards you When you land with an emergency  and an engineer slowly walking away turning around and waving the pin at you really add to immersion. Much better than the instructor leaning over and saying ‘ you’ve seen the pin’ after pushback. The general airport environments with parked aircraft and ground crews working on them all add greatly to the experience in both PC simulation and full flight sims.

So certainly for airline operations currently P3D is unbeatable, and the addition of 3rd party detailed airports and photo scenery increases the immersion and overall enjoyment considerably. There are times when I’m flying the 787 in VR and I look over my shoulder in a low turn down at the fields and forests out of those big side windows and just find myself saying wow, it’s hard to believe how for desktop simming has come.

However , if I was working towards my PPL at this stage and preparing for VFR navigation exercises then I’d say MSFS would be hard to beat right now. I recreated some VFR flights I did in commercial flight training in Australia and the immersion and realism brought loads of memories flooding back of long forgotten visual reporting points and procedures.

So as I see it at the moment MSFS for VFR , P3D for airline ops. P3D remains an incredible simulator and the smoothness in V5.1 and VR is like a dream come true.

In the future when complex airliners make it into MSFS combined with it’s visuals it’ll make for a superb experience. If that does ever happen and if the hardware is available to make it happen at the same time , who knows , but I’d imagine it’ll be a few years away yet.

In the meantime P3D with its less extravagant visuals , and even with those visuals manually turned down, remains my main simulator of choice for the foreseeable future.

Although I do have an 'aeroplane driving licence' lol, I'm hardly never out of the skies in real life, but I guess that does still mean I qualify to take part in this one. As others have noted, I think some of the questions are a bit loaded in favour of MSFS since it misses out quite a few other significant sims, and some of it also comes down to which one you like in terms of interface. after that, it's down to what is available as an add-on aeroplane if you are uasing it as a work/real life-related option.

With this in mind, where is Aerowinx, Airsim etc on the list of choices, even FSX?; these are probably still pretty useful if you are driving or working on the real things. Similarly, if you drive a Dash 8 Q400 or an A320, whilst P3D is good in combination with the Majestic and FSL offerings, there is nothing stopping you from using these with FSX too, since you can tone down the graphics and not owrry about these running okay. Beyond this, it also comes down to specific needs too, plus also 'what you like', both in content and indeed in GUI. XPlane is very nice, but I dislike its GUI and always have, and that's a big minus point for me.

As Jon says, if someone is currently in the process of converting to a commercial type which is featured in FSX or P3D, or perhaps less so in XPlane since it is still more of a GA sim, then it doesn't necessarily mean you want a super-duper realistic experience as much as you probably want a cockpit you can use with maybe VR or Track-IR so you can get used to the head swivelling and haptic aspects of check flows and memory items. And for this, you don't even need the thing to be flying, or even have the switches actually do anything other than be there in the same place as they are on the real thing, as it is essentially not dissimilar to one of those big cockpit posters you can use for such training. The really rather obvious choice for this kind of thing, is P3D. 

But then there is the 'busman's holiday' aspect of things as well; having lost my job in aviation thanks to the zombie apocalypse, I'm currently working driving a truck, so as great as Euro Truck simulator is, I'm not particularly inclined to come home after whizzing around Congleton in a lorry for seven hours in real life, and then fire up a digital version of the same thing. I already had to do a driving test for that, I'm not gonna come home and do one as well. 🤣

For me at moment therefore, jumping on a flight sim is an escapism thing whereas it used to be quite work-related a lot of the time, so the visually pleasing exploration aspects of MSFS are quite appealing in that regard, not least because Air Hauler is now available to provide some fun impetus for it, with me having started a one man band cargo company based in Madagascar, since I thought it would be fun to zip around checking out the Indian Ocean, African mainland and such, as opposed to flying a small plane around Derbyshire as I'd do in real life; after all, I can jump in my car, drive 20 miles and do that for real if I want to.

Since nobody is going to throw me the keys to a P-47 Thunderbolt or a MiG-29 and say 'knock yourself out Al', I'm as likely to fire up DCS as I am MSFS at the moment, but of the choices in the list, then I'd pick MSFS, although I think there are quite a few caveats as to why that was the choice I went for. P3D is still going to be the choice for when I want to have a go in a B-17 or a DC-8 and again, this is a 'things you can't do for real' option, regardless of which one feels the most realistic in one regard or another. Frankly, I'd pick Condor II if I wanted to name the flight sim which gives the best feeling of flight, and that isn't going to be on many people's off the top of their head list of sims.

Beyond this, the notion of someone being a real-life pilot is also a bit misleading for opinions on what is realistic. Even if you are a commercial pilot for a living, or a GA pilot who does a lot of hours, unless you have 'crazy billionaire' levels of cash, you probably only know one or two types of aeroplane really well. So if asking someone how realistic the new DCS P-47 Thunderbolt is, of someone who has 10,000 hours on a 737, or someone who doesn't fly for real, but has read every book there's ever been on the P-47 Thunderbolt, I'm inclined to say the guy who's lapped up every bit of info on the Jug, is going to be the one best qualified to comment on that one in particular. After all, you can probably count the people who have flown a P-47 for real on a regular basis on the fingers of Captain Hook's hands.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Chock

PA28 flyer here.

MSFS would be my choice. I'm still amazed by the visuals. Muscle memory is not a big deal since many of the planes I fly IRL do not behave the same (PA28 with slabbed/tapered wing and different engines...). I prefer accurate visuals, I use the GNS 430 IRL when needed and the default 530 is okay. for my needs. 🙂 (also: Skydemon works with MSFS and that is awesome)

I didn't bother to answer the poll questions because it referred to default aircraft. That immediately biases the poll because MSFS has virtually no 3rd party aircraft and P3d5 has tons, all of which must be ignored for purposes of the poll.

These questions regarding flight dynamics pop up here continuously and  the subsequent discussion is going to go nowhere except down into the ditch. This is because none of these desktop simulators can truly give one the the sensation of piloting an aircraft. They are designed to both exactly simulate aircraft systems and roughly simulate how the aircraft responds to various actions of the pilot. The best "study level" aircraft for P3d5 are better than roughly and closer to precisely but the impact on one's inner ear and balance are still missing. A VR headset in theory could improve matters, but even the best headsets still don't provide enough visual resolution to completely fool the human sensory system. When a VR headset does meet that standard and MSFS has some study level aircraft, post your poll again.

30 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I didn't bother to answer the poll questions because it referred to default aircraft. That immediately biases the poll because MSFS has virtually no 3rd party aircraft and P3d5 has tons, all of which must be ignored for purposes of the poll.

When a VR headset does meet that standard and MSFS has some study level aircraft, post your poll again.

This was all addressed in the initial post comments when the poll was created.  Just like P3D not having 3D photoreal currently, except via TruEarth in very limited areas worldwide, so we did not ask responders to compare scenery in P3D v MSFS.  By the same token we don't have 3rd party aircraft in MSFS, so we compare the default modeling in both.  Mentioned was when MSFS eventually gets PMDG grade airware, or P3D gets photogrammetry etc, then the poll should be reposted.  

Hard to interpret results according an Airbus pilot may not answer the same as a Cessna 172 pilot... so it widely general and barely useful, sorry.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by vbazillio

13 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

scenery is not important in real flight simulator. Procedures and flying are.  

I have "a bunch" of hours in level-D simulators - 737/747/767/Lear 45 and can attest to how true this statement is. Scenery has nothing to do with these simulators. It's all about procedures and flying the aircraft. The first time was in a 737-700 level-D at the Southwest training center in Dallas. My first question was "how come I can't see anything outside?"

Think you would get different results if compared apples to apples. MSFS is pretty much default other than some freeware mods.  So the comparison should ask the questions if P3D or XP is still your favorite at default all the way through.   Im guessing no, because P3D/XP default is horrible.  Its there as a great foundation but not much more.   Its only a much better sim after all the addon enhancements.  For that reason, the experience with those established sims gives a preferable bias.  IMHO

 

No doubt you would get different results w/ a different poll design. I opted to look at a snapshot of how people feel today and over the next month, w/ no references to the future for any of the sims.  Polls are tricky to design and I'm clearly an amateur at it but if enough RW pilots respond to the specific questions  we might have a better sense of how this set sees these things versus desktop pilots like myself.  So those non RW 'pilots' can see how they stack up against those more familiar w/ the true reality of flying and piloting where there are actually stakes.

Season Five, Episode 12: F-35 Flight Simulator with Lockheed Martin - YouTube

Simulation and training is redefined with Prepar3D Version 5: Available Now - YouTube

Pilots using simulators to train on new Air Force F-35 jets - YouTube

Edited December 20, 20205 yr by G-RFRY