It's not a game or a simulator...it's a PITA is what it is! A glorious one at that though 😉

The question "is it a game or a simulator?" tends to imply that it's either one or the other, when to most people it's both in varying degrees. To me it's both a game and a simulator - mostly a game, as I just use it purely for entertainment and the enjoyment of experiencing very true to life scenery in VR while flying around with a beleivable degree of realism. To a lesser extent I use MSFS for a bit of interesting learning about how aircrafts and their systems work, but not something I ever plan to use in real life. So you could also call that "learning just for the sake of entertainment"

If you want to be strict about when to apply the label "simulator", you could argue that it can only be called a simulator in situations when it's only used for learning, training and testing for real-world aviation purposes. I expect that label would apply to hardly anyone using MSFS.

If you want to broaden the label "simulator" so it just applies as long as it's a software product where aviation is simulated to a beleivable degree, then it doesn't mean much in itself. Yeah, it simulates aviation. But for what purpose? Most people would probably say "just for my enjoyment, really". Okay, well - isn't it also a game then...?

10 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

That M.S., when starting the sim...at the bottom right of the opening still screen, calls MSFS a 'game', and not 'starting--> simulator<--'.   Sort of suggests the overall mindset of MSFS?

Always makes me smile...for the outright wars some have here, as to whether MSFS is after all, a flight game...or uh...a serious simulator of the physics of flight.   M.S. feels it's a game, it seems lol!

Ses

Asobo have said a dozen times by now that their aspiration for MSFS is to make it the best possible high fidelity sim for simmers.  I consider that pretty much the beginning and end of the conversation on what their "mindset" is.

That doesn't mean it isn't also predominantly entertainment software, which most consumer-grade "simulators" are intended to be regardless of fidelity.

In my experience with sims it's generally only with flight simmers that the whole vapid "game vs. sim" debate is a thing - I assume because the audience skews older, and old guys recoil at the idea they are playing a "game"... in their computer chair with their plastic yoke and pedals.

Geez, seriously, who ****ing cares!!! Why do I even bother to react to this ****. If there is ONE thing that annoys me it is this never ending debate about sim versus game. Again, who cares!!! I don't give a **** what others call it, I simply enjoy it. You should do the same. Seriously... 🤬 If it was up to me AVSIM should delete topics like this. What a waste of time, bandwidth, space, whatever.

(Takes a deep breath...)

11 minutes ago, tup61 said:

(Takes a deep breath...)

Relax, it is just a game 🙂

Hmmm

Gaming Market is a multi-billion dollar industry, MS has an entire gaming division they want to show as a major player in the market, they just made another massive investment in their gaming division with the $69B all cash Activision buyout and released MSFS Game of the Year Edition to show good revenue out of that same business unit to the market...   See what they did there, invest in a business unit and try to show revenue out of it.  What a crazy mindset.  

Claiming the word "game" is an insight to their mindset is a stretch to say the least.  So many other factors to be considered.  Not sure what the OP was trying to imply by the fact that it says "loading game". 

It's a title released by their gaming division for their XBox gaming platform and PC's, seems calling it a game fits their business model, go figure.  

 

 

 

Edited July 20, 20223 yr by psolk

15 hours ago, airlinejets said:

Liabilities.

Yeah, reading your reply...that makes sense....  Could very well, simply be that....

11 hours ago, David Mills said:

So let's see if I understand this: Microsoft doesn't call Microsoft Flight Simulator a simulator?

Uh uh...the next time you fire up MSFS,   look at that small square start up screen. At the bottom right corner is the message,  'starting Game'....but as some good comments put forth....and now I agree...could be simply 'end field' running of potential lawsuits, FOR...calling it a (Flight)  Simulator.   I'm onboard with that thought now...

When I err.... play MSFS it is definitely a SIMULATOR. When I watch my kids playing it... most defintely a GAME. 🙂

It's how you use it that makes the difference.

 

Edited July 20, 20223 yr by RaptyrOne

5 hours ago, rocketlaunch said:

Relax, it is just a game 🙂

LOL!

It should say  "Study Simulator starting, when using outside view over 50 ft altitude or use pause when wife has chores, game will be locked for 6 month"

Christ, a people still going on with this idiocy. Home entertainment simulators are a subset of games, stop trying to make them two separate things, like you're too good to play games or to be associated with gaming. 

20 minutes ago, Sethos said:

like you're too good to play games or to be associated with gaming

This is really at the bottom of this "controversy':  EGO

1 hour ago, Sesquashtoo said:

Uh uh...the next time you fire up MSFS,   look at that small square start up screen. At the bottom right corner is the message,  'starting Game'

Why the sulking, embittered attitude? Why do you come over here to the MSFS forum just to stir hostility? You seem to have deluded yourself into the irrational fantasy that you can definitionally wipe away MSFS's obvious superiority and domination over XP. But word selection (game, simulator, software, etc.) does not affect empirical reality. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." You're embittered because MSFS is stealing the show, and justifiably so. This forum gets more posts in one hour than the XP forum gets in a month. MSFS is a masterpiece of software engineering. It is vastly superior to XP visually. And it is vastly superior to XP in terms of performance. The retort that XP has a better "flight model" has become a Tourette-like, obsessive-compulsive, fetishistic tic from those watching an antiquated piece of software attempt a dead-cat bounce with the XP12 beta.

Edited July 20, 20223 yr by David Mills

4 minutes ago, David Mills said:

Why the sulking, embittered attitude? Why do you come over here to the MSFS forum just to stir hostility? You seem to have deluded yourself into the irrational fantasy that you can definitionally wipe away MSFS's obvious superiority and domination over XP. But word selection does not affect empirical reality. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." You're embittered because MSFS is stealing the show, and justifiably so. This forum gets more posts in one hour than the XP forum gets in a month. MSFS is a masterpiece of software engineering. It is vastly superior to XP visually. And it is vastly superior to XP in terms of performance. The retort that XP has a better "flight model" has become a Tourette-like, obsessive-compulsive, fetishistic tic from those watching an antiquated piece of software attempt a dead-cat bounce.

Woah haha take it easy on him. He did concede that the designation had something to do with avoiding liability but at the same time it is mind boggling that he would make such a thread despite the abundance of evidence proving MSFS is definitely a consumer level sim.