I'm at my twice yearly "shall I shan't I?" over moving from FSX-SE to another platform.  Having been put off P3D by issues I'm prevented from mentioning (LOL) I now am reconsidering MSFS 2020.  Everywhere I look there are complaints about failures to install, CTDs, bugs and so on.  I have 38mb/s broadband, and i7 quadcore CPU, 20MB RAM, a GTX1050ti GPU with 4MB memory and a newly installed 250MB SSD - all of which ought to be good enough (I think).

I'm going to lose quite a lot of paid-for FSX-SE add-ons (mostly P3D compatible) but is MSFS2020 now stable enough, and reliable enough to install, to make it worthwhile?  I'd rather not use Steam again, but should I go for disk or download?

Personally I would not hesitate to move to MSFS but of course it is a personal choice. I preferred to download the software from the Microsoft site but others might prefer Steam. For every complaint you read on here, there are possibly 1000 happy customers. The choice is yours but I decided that MSFS was the way forward and jumped in at launch date and whilst not as proficient as many on here, I have enjoyed my £100 investment in it immensely. 

Well no question, MSFS is the new generation sim and it worth to invest on it. However before you make your decision, it would make sense to test if your PC together with your internet connection can handle it, for that, I advice to sign up for one month game pass trial and there you can use it for one month and see if it fits your needs.

I am not the right person to say if your system is good enough for MSFS. But for the sim, I am sure you will not look back if you change to a modern sim. There is disc version available, but you don’t want that. And you don’t have to use Steam either.

I have abandoned FSX-SE for a pig with lipstick named P3D eight years ago and haven´t looked back. MSFS is on another league completely.

4 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

I advice to sign up for one month game pass trial and there you can use it for one month and see if it fits your needs.

Exactly this^^

To the OP directly, I wouldn't expect great performance due to your 1050 ti. My younger brother has the GPU and he needs to make a number of compromises on the settings to get a stable 20+ FPS at 1080p. It is doable but you will need to be aware of the compromises required.

You do not have to move on from FSX-SE, you can have both of them installed at the same time with no issues or conflicts, they are two entirely different platforms. As suggested above, I would recommend giving it a try with the Xbox Game Pass trial first, and then decide what you're going to do.

The GTX 1050 Ti is not going to give you the best experience, but it should be quite passable. The simulator still looks great at Medium settings. I presume you mean a 256GB SSD, if you have the OS and other stuff installed on that drive then installing the simulator there would be stretching it somewhat, but if it's going to be standalone you should be fine. If it's a cheap SSD you shouldn't fill up more than 80% of it, if it's an expensive model you can push it to 90%.

8 minutes ago, suncoastflyer said:

My younger brother has the GPU and he needs to make a number of compromises on the settings to get a stable 20+ FPS at 1080p. It is doable but you will need to be aware of the compromises required.

Thanks for the insight, from what I saw in older YouTube videos 25-30 FPS was doable with the Medium preset, is that still the case? Though it's worth noting that since the UK World Update, the frame limiter is much better and locking to 20 FPS can still result in a rather smooth experience.

Edited May 28, 20215 yr by ChaoticBeauty

How much room on your SSD? Only problem I see, especially if you want to fly both sim's. I have a 256 SSD as my main drive, but MSFS will not fit on it for me. I have a 1 TB HDD, which MSFS is one and although it takes longer to load, once done I can't tell if SSD or HDD!

I have i7 8700, 16 GB RAM, 1060 with 3 GB RAM and mine runs fine on Medium/Custom settings. I do have really fast fiber internet though!

I would normally recommend Game Pass as that is what I did. But if you are thinking about getting the Standard Edition for $60.00, do that instead of the hassle people have leaving Game Pass, buying the sim from the MS Store. Now if you are concerned your system might NOT handle it, or your internet,  go with Game Pass for a buck!

Make sure you have enough room for the simulator to run on? 512 GB SSD, 1 TB HDD, whatever? My MSFS folder is about 150 GB in size and I keep a lean Community folder 🙂

48 minutes ago, threebears said:

I'm at my twice yearly "shall I shan't I?" over moving from FSX-SE to another platform.  Having been put off P3D by issues I'm prevented from mentioning (LOL) I now am reconsidering MSFS 2020.  Everywhere I look there are complaints about failures to install, CTDs, bugs and so on.  I have 38mb/s broadband, and i7 quadcore CPU, 20MB RAM, a GTX1050ti GPU with 4MB memory and a newly installed 250MB SSD - all of which ought to be good enough (I think).

I'm going to lose quite a lot of paid-for FSX-SE add-ons (mostly P3D compatible) but is MSFS2020 now stable enough, and reliable enough to install, to make it worthwhile?  I'd rather not use Steam again, but should I go for disk or download?

You're talking about two completely different animals. FSX is a thing of the past, a 32-bit program with many limitations. Even moving to P3D (or XP) would have been a better idea than staying with FSX during all that time, in my opinion.

Don't hesitate to buy and install MSFS. I also recommend the Steam version.

You can upgrade your hardware without paying too much, but for sure you'll need to upgrade it if you like to have the advantages of this wonderful new sim platform that MSFS is.

1 hour ago, threebears said:

I'm going to lose quite a lot of paid-for FSX-SE add-ons

Why?  You don't have to throw FSX SE out the door because you adopt MSFS.  You can keep both.  I still log 70 to 75% of my flight hours in FSX SE due to the type flying I do.  Primarily GA twins, real time flying, real time weather, more well-developed aircraft models, flawless avionics. 

I fly a schedule of flights based on real world sports schedules.  For instance I will fly today from Charlotte to Indianapolis for the Indianapolis 500 auto race this weekend.  Take a look at a live radar map. I will either have to wait out the weather or shoot through gaps in it.  Gotta be FSX SE and Active Sky 16.  MSFS weather just does not cut it on a real time basis.

MSFS certainly has its appeal and promise but I am compelled to fly both for different reasons.

Edited May 28, 20215 yr by fppilot

Just Yes! Get over! What's keeping you? 😁

My 1080Ti runs MSFS better than it did FSX actually. I run 4k at 70% scaling and it looks sharp enough,and I can hold 30 fps in most circumstances. 

OK everyone, thank you so much for your detailed and thoughtful replies.  Every time I've struggled with this decision it has come chained to issues around my 'rig's' capability, especially my GPU.  My PSU is 600W but to move to the next level of GPU, from a value for money point of view, I'm probably going to bite the bullet and upgrade the whole PC which will come with a bigger and better everything.  The idea of a one month Game Pass is a good one in the first instance.

1 hour ago, threebears said:

I now am reconsidering MSFS 2020.  Everywhere I look there are complaints about failures to install, CTDs, bugs and so on.  I have 38mb/s broadband, and i7 quadcore CPU, 20MB RAM, a GTX1050ti GPU with 4MB memory and a newly installed 250MB SSD - all of which ought to be good enough (I think).

Complaints come from a small albeit vocal minority. IMHO, the majority of CTDs and install problems are user-generated: folks overclocking their gpu's, having 600 mods installed, mods that conflict with one another etc.

I have a 6 year old system, am running MSFS off of an aging harddrive and get adequate performance at low/medium settings. Check out my screenshot threads in the screenshot forum.

There is not a chance in hell I'd ever move back to another sim.

Your SSD is tiny, so that might pose a problem for installing mods. As others have suggested, try it out and see how you like it.

Edited May 28, 20215 yr by Ricardo41

1 hour ago, threebears said:

I'm going to lose quite a lot of paid-for FSX-SE add-ons

Only IF it's not going to bother you to have a lack of high quality aircraft addons available to you right now (although there are tons of ported airports you can buy). It's going to take another year's time (if not more) for the 3rd party payware to be able to present a good amount of trouble-free choices to choose from beyond what comes in the box. Everyone is working on it, but it's still not ready for prime time.

Most of the complaints you've been reading about are true, so this means there are many growing pains. For some, the sim has enough things already working to keep them in the game, yet others are still annoyed at it. 

IMO, the best thing to do is to judge for yourself because asking opinions will never get you the answer which is correct for your own wants/needs. Go buy it and install it to try, without removing your FSX (might as well since it's likely the future, even if it's not up to your standards now it will be at some point). If you don't like it you can always then continue to use FSX until such a time you feel that msfs is good for you. 

Nothing wrong with having both...and the sub $100 price tag investment isn't going to change anyone's lifestyle. Just research your machines specs with other users first to be sure it'll run fast enough for you. I have a i7 8700K running at 4.3Ghz with 16GB Dram on a GTX 1080 w/8gb and an.m2 SSD drive, and the sim runs fairly well with default aircraft. There are no PMDG aircraft yet and I fully expect that type of addon to kill fps once it arrives. So move on this, if you're in the mood to experience it all...but move carefully with proper expectations and don't yet delete what you already are using for now.

Like most of us, at first you will be awed by all the new visuals that await you... but not too long after, you will likely find yourself needing to come to terms with what lies beneath in a sim that's not really a sim, just yet. Yea, it needs work...and yea, you'll probably appreciate having it regardless 🙂

Edited May 28, 20215 yr by hangar

27 minutes ago, fppilot said:

Why?  You don't have to throw FSX SE out the door because you adopt MSFS.  You can keep both.  I still log 70 to 75% of my flight hours in FSX SE due to the type flying I do.  Primarily GA twins, real time flying, real time weather, more well-developed aircraft models, flawless avionics. 

I fly a schedule of flights based on real world sports schedules.  For instance I will fly today from Charlotte to Indianapolis for the Indianapolis 500 auto race this weekend.  Take a look at a live radar map. I will either have to wait out the weather or shoot through gaps in it.  Gotta be FSX SE and Active Sky 16.  MSFS weather just does not cut it on a real time basis.

MSFS certainly has its appeal and promise but I am compelled to fly both for different reasons.

I’m in the same boat. I can’t justify using MSSS until it moves on from being nothing more then a flying bing images app. The flight simulation part is sorely lacking and badly broken with no sign of it improving any time soon.