Some, fortunately less and less, are discarding the new sim as a sightseeing sim as if it was something bad. 

It is a sightseeing sim but also  evidently more than that, no need to elaborate here. But I would claim that being a sightseeing sim is certainly not bad and not about eye candy only.

I am flying right now the MV Porter in Northern Thailand and I am amazed yet again to see how this sim allows me to understand  how rivers model the relief and the human interaction with the relief, villages and fields vs hills and forests,... It beats 30 mn on any Discovery channel ! 

Flying has always a purpose, of one sort or another.  This is not one of the worst.   MSFS is the first to allow this everywhere in the world.

Love it.

Edited November 28, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

46 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Some, fortunately less and less, are discarding the new sim as a sightseeing sim as if it was something bad. 

It is a sightseeing sim but also  evidently more than that, no need to elaborate here. But I would claim that being a sightseeing sim is certainly not bad and not about eye candy only.

I am flying right now the MV Porter in Northern Thailand and I am amazed yet again to see how this sim allows me to understand  how rivers model the relief and the human interaction with the relief, villages and fields vs hills and forests,... It beats 30 mn on any Discovery channel ! 

Flying has always a purpose, of one sort or another.  This is not one of the worst.   MSFS is the first to allow this everywhere in the world.

Love it.

Not nerdy at all, actually! Looking out of the window at our world is one of the greatest pleasures of real flying and something that I never tire of. The same is true in MSFS.

Those who claim that MSFS is just a "scenery" simulator actually reveal how little they know about real aviation. The environment, in terms of light, meteorology and terrain, is possibly the most important factor in aviation. Flying into sunlight can reduce visibility from 10 nautical miles to 2. Weather is a vital consideration in so many ways it's not possible to list them. VFR pilots will sometimes carry a set of mini-binoculars in the cockpit with them, the better to see road signs below for navigation, if required. That's not even taking into account the way that weather interacts with the terrain, producing atmospheric turbulence over natural topography. No other simulator comes within a light year of MSFS in this respect. It's both a joy and a true reflection of real flying 🙂

Well, as you know Dominique, the scenery aspect of MSFS is the main, almost the entire, thing for me.

In fact, I've always felt that wanting to just sit in the cockpit of a big tubeliner and replicate every last little detail from power up through to switching off after landing from a muliti-hour flight, and spending all that time so high that the only thing you can see out of the window is cloud or sea or just the vaguest of landscape, is a far more nerdy thing than just wanting to gawp at the world a few hundred feet below.

Not that I'm knocking that, I just don't see the point. Even when I'm primarily enjoying the aircraft, rather than the scenery, I'm really not interested in all those buttons and dials and all the other paraphenalia. Pretty much the first thing I did was turn off the ATC stuff - can't bear somebody telling me what to do all the time. I don't bother to fly anything that is too "realistic" unless it's got some sort of "turn off engine damage" switch (a la FlyingIron Spitfire). Whenever I see a complex new aircraft model released my first thought is always "does it have an assisted mode?"

I'm way past wanting to go anywhere in the real world (unless they get the old transporter beams working before I peg out), but I just love to explore and discover places via the sim. I watched a docu-drama on TV the other week about a Heli-news guy in LA, and what struck me afterwards was the realisation that I actually recognised most of the locations as shown in the aerial footage. And that's true of a lot of places now - drop me at the central railway station on foot and I'd probably be lost within minutes, but get me in the air and I can likely find my way around.

In spite of all its little annoyances, MSFS is totally magic as far as I'm concerned. XP gets close but only in those few areas with really good addon scenery, like Orbx's TrueEarth, but MSFS gives me the whole world to play in.

Just now, andy1252 said:

Well, as you know Dominique, the scenery aspect of MSFS is the main, almost the entire, thing for me.

I 

 I often say we are a motley crew down here and I like it 😉. I think that there is a beautiful synergy in this product between the science of flying (is it a science or an art ?) and the lessons in physical and human geography  that MSFS teaches us if we can see them. 

 

Edited November 28, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

It’s a sim where you can fly nice aircraft over gorgeous scenery in beautifully depicted weather with even more amazing aircraft to come.  What’s not to love? 🙂

21 minutes ago, regis9 said:

What’s not to love?

Well, since you asked... the bugs that get introduced with system updates, and then not acknowledged, nor fixed in a timely manner.  😟

 

24 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

the bugs

are here and we don't/will not see the end of them. We are a few on this forum on the offensive to call them out and express the update fatigue that many feel after a sloppy  SU7. And I have no intention to  cease. 

But this sim also brings the world to me. I am just out of flying the Milviz Porter (can't stop flying the darned aircraft) to a small Thailand airport on the Andaman Sea  with a  RNAV. Lovely yes ! But as important for me, geographically accurate all along and the approach procedure was the cherry on the cake.  Or the other way round.

Actually, we could make geography lessons with this sim on You Tube. I am sure the kids at school would love it. 

47 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Well, since you asked... the bugs that get introduced with system updates, and then not acknowledged, nor fixed in a timely manner. 

First of all, I fully agree with everything that Dominique, Andy et altera have written here. Maybe Bert we should be a bit more patient with them. I'm not an IT expert, I have spent all my life in the pharmaceutical industry; but I can guess that this whole MSFS thing is a darn complicated affair even for the seasoned IT techie. Add to this the pressure of MS to deliver and that's what we have in front of us in essence. Most of us don't need an update every four to five weeks, but I'm afraid we are not that important to MS, although they would never admit this. The XBox crowd brings in the money. And I know this from Forza Horizon, which I have and like, these guys get a bit impatient, if they don't get constantly new challenges. Maybe Asobo should hire more IT guys that have only the task to fix issues that the development team has unintentionally created. I know it from my son, to find good people with sufficient experience is nowadays not so easy. Maybe that is why Asobe/MS doesn't acknowledge those bugs. Just my guess.  

40 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

But this sim also brings the world to me.

No argument on that score.. it does that for me as well.

Maybe because the sim is so good when it works correctly, I am doubly frustrated that MS/Asobo cannot find the will or the time to recognize when they have broken something, and come out and admit it!

5 minutes ago, bernd1151 said:

Maybe Bert we should be a bit more patient with them.

Well, we do not have much of a choice.. agree with you.. reluctantly..  😉

In real life flying, VFR is for fun and IFR is to get there.

In my real life flying I always love flying low and slow, especially around sunrise and sunset. I love following rivers and coast lines.

But sometimes you have to get there, so we fly IFR and it is good to be able to do that. But VFR is far more fun.

I like honing IFR skill in sims and FS2020 at this point does everything I need for that.

These days I mostly fly helis in FS2020 because this really makes exploring fun. And the cost of flying a real H145 is prohibitive. There is no other desktop sim that even comes close.

FS2020 is really what I always hoped sims would be. And I must say I have never had an update that kept me from flying, I just use what works when it works. In real life planes are sometimes grounded as well. I often ground myself as well, sometimes to my passenger friends great disappointment. But safety is everything in aviation. Too much wind, thunderstorms or icing and I stay earth bound.

Gliders  encapsulate everything about flight best.

Cheers

bs

 

Edited November 28, 20214 yr by bean_sprout

3 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Well, since you asked... the bugs that get introduced with system updates, and then not acknowledged, nor fixed in a timely manner.  😟

That’s fair, though I’ve come to accept that as the price of continuing development at a pace we’ve never seen in flight simulator.

MSFS 2020 is my great escape from the world right now , I mean the news is darn right depressing right now here in the states .

Yes it is more a VFR simulator than a flow/procedure simulator.

To be quite honest you do not need a PC to practice procedures and flows, a nice big wall chart of the cockpit you are being tested on and pointing at each switch or gauge in sequence is enough to get the flows memorised.  I doubt doing it on PC with a mouse adds much.  A full sized level IV cockpit is another matter as muscle memory starts to come into play but you are not getting that with a mouse on PC.

Edited November 29, 20214 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick