@Ray Proudfoot inspired me by asking whether MSFS would look any different from P3D at altitude. Here's a collection of FL350 shots from a flight I just did, THY584 from Nouakchott, Mauretania, to Istanbul, Turkey. It's normally flown with an A330, but the A320NEO actually has the legs to do it fully loaded. So I did.

I chose this route for two reasons: 1) little cloud cover with real weather, so you can see the landscape, and 2) about half of the route is the Sahara Desert. This is a landscape that in P3D shows up as pancake-flat, identical, repeating desert landclass textures as far as the eye can see in all directions. I wanted to show just what a difference MSFS makes in situations like that. So, here we go.

Leveling off after takeoff from Nouakchott.

More Mauretanian desert.

Some "trackless" desert dunes over Algeria that look almost like Orbx textures in P3D.

Some spectacular topography near Gardhaia, Algeria.

Rivers and lakes near Ouargla, Algeria.

As we cross into Tunisia, the landscape gets a little greener and a lot less red.

And we leave North Africa behind for the Mediterranean at Sfax.

That's Mt. Etna and Sicily on the left, Malta on the right.

Nearing the Greek coast just south of Corfu.

Another view of the Greek coastline.

And the sun has just started to set as we prepare for our descent near Thessaloniki.

Edited February 3, 20215 yr by honanhal
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@honanhal, thank you for taking the time to produce those shots. The scenery does indeed look better than P3D over Africa. Over Europe it's a closer call.

My primary reasons for not switching to MSFS for IFR are:-

• No GoFlight drivers for my expensive modules. Pollypot has produced some but with a lot of MSFS updates things get broken and need fixing.
• No Radar Contact. The default ATC is pretty awful I gather.
• PFPX cannot generate flight plans for that sim
• No FS Labs Concorde for it so I would always need to keep P3D v4/5.

So it would always be a VFR sim for me.

45 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

The scenery does indeed look better than P3D over Africa. Over Europe it's a closer call.

Not sure about that. Here's the AH B-17G in MSFS up at 26,000 feet over France. Looks pretty much like the real appearance to me:

@Chock, I’ll post a couple of shots over France tomorrow. It has a very pretty face but lacks the features that are important to me.

And I’m still waiting for anyone to answer my point about the weather injected into the sim when you fly in a time zone many hours different to where you live.

It's a bit hit and miss on weather in different time zones by some accounts, although most of the time I've found it does okay when I do flights over Africa and the Indian Ocean, where I tend to fly in MSFS a lot. In Europe it does okay a lot of the time too, although there are occasions where it is a bit off the mark, and requires you to do a bit of a sim restart to get it to do things right, but this does normally sort it out and MSFs does restart quickly so this is not a problem.

I can easily monitor the accuracy of all when doing flights from EGCC, because being in Stockport, there is a national weather centre monitoring station right in the middle of the town and there is of course also EGCC, so the data reference for what is going on is very good and easy to check for veracity.

I usually check things against windy.com because I want the best altitude for prevailing winds and that's the easiest way to get them. I am hoping that MA Realturb's excellent VOLMET add-on for P3D will make it into MSFS though, as that would be a great addition to the sim as it is in P3D.

However, MSFS does like throwing lightning effects in there when there is little chance of electrical activity in the weather it is depicting at the time, so there are clearly some issues with it. But having said that, it does a good job of letting you fly into and out of one weather system into another one, i.e. taking off in rain and cloud, but finding it sunny at your destination and changing smoothly en-route between these different weather systems.

The upshot of this is that, in spite of some issues, it's streets ahead of other flight sims in terms of being convincing, and this is before it even has its update (due fairly soon) which will make it better at depicting cirrus clouds that it currently seems to lack, and make vertical component of air mass movement and the ensuing turbulence very similar to the real world. Ultimately, it's that forthcoming air mass movement simulation which will sell it for me, because this is what really has an impact on flying in terms of safety and it was what was promised in all the pre-release hype but has taken six months to actually arrive. 

Then there is the visual stuff too. In spite of the present lack of convincing cirrus, what is undeniable about MSFS, is that the CBs in it do actually look dangerous, and even P3D with the latest Active Sky (and cloud art supplementary add on) doesn't manage that, whereas as this default CB in MSFS looks like you definitely don't wanna mess with it:

 

Great shot that last one. 

cheers 😉

I admit that MSFS leaves a lot to be desired in regard to functional airliners. But the scenery and weather can't compare. I have some nice airliners in P3D, but I get those random device hung when flying in heavy weather. I have made adjustments and have a decent system with a 1080 TI. Still, P3D 5+ will hang if you look at a button wrong in the weather. Very frustrating after doing a leg and it hangs once the vectors for approach start. MSFS is growing and getting there, and it looks darn good while doing it. Ray, I literally have the same system as you. Makes me wonder if I should can P3D 5 and roll back to 4.5. Never had issues with it, I should have stayed with it.

Rick

Edited February 3, 20215 yr by G550flyer
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