15 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

improved in a substantial way that wasn't done by a third-party developer like Working Title

We're a first party on the MSFS development team, so I'm not sure how one can not credit the MSFS team for our stuff, since we're quite literally on it. 😉

16 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

You seem to be rather fixated on AI and it appears to be a deal breaker for you in MSFS... perhaps best for you to stick to FSX and/or P3D +/- add-ons. You can try to keep harping here about how MS/Asobo has not focused on <insert pet issue X or feature Y> since release, but they're gonna keep speeding along based on their own prioritized backlog that also takes into account various user-voted items/requests (if not already you should go and vote there on the AI related items: https://www.flightsimulator.com/feedback-snapshot/, i.e. #9 in lifetime wishes table which at least appears to be in "Started" state).

For a great many of us, that progress since release is more than adequate even if areas like AI or ATC are lacking, and also apparently to almost all the 3rd party developers that are exclusively focusing on MSFS now or prioritizing it as the main platform they develop for. Like others have said here, MSFS's development pace and engagement with the community is orders of magnitude better than other sims where months/years would go by without *any* updates... thankfully MSFS come back to the flight sim scene two years ago to upend all that, and showed unprecedented use and mixing of modern technology stacks like AI, cloud, satellite data, CFD, live weather data, photogrammetry, etc etc, all in the core platform as default. No brainer then for a lot of us, as to why we've stuck with MSFS for the last two years even if <insert pet issue X or feature Y> is still not fixed or implemented perfectly.

Not fixated but it is quite broken without reason that it sticks out like a sore from the rest and people try to justify how it is ok for it to be like not just at release but two years later of numerous boasted updates. One thing that distinguishes this issue from the others is that this offline AI sthing isn't something new ground breaking that MSFS tried and should not have been in this state to begin with or not been fixed two years after.

36 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

We're a first party on the MSFS development team, so I'm not sure how one can not credit the MSFS team for our stuff, since we're quite literally on it. 😉

And cheers for that! Seb & co + WT as one core MSFS development team can only mean great things for the future... personally looking forward to all the continuing improvements in the flight dynamics engine and avionics most of all, which are already great as of SU10 given all the plethora of realistic aircrafts available so far and only bound to get even better as the platform evolves and developers get to know it more. The G1000 Nxi alone is worth the price of admission for MSFS.

Edited August 30, 20223 yr by lwt1971

1 hour ago, MattNischan said:

We're a first party on the MSFS development team, so I'm not sure how one can not credit the MSFS team for our stuff, since we're quite literally on it. 😉

Very much recognized! Exceptional, top tier developers (Working Title) for the core Microsoft Flight Simulator group. Correct me if I am wrong, but the G1000 Nxi will be the default Garmin unit after the next Sim Update and no longer an optional mod.

Edited August 30, 20223 yr by Doering

Since the "core" Asobo team is working on improvements to the flight model, I really hope some of these guys fall over themselves to give them the credit if SU11 drops and all goes well. I'm not holding my breath tho...

1 hour ago, lwt1971 said:

For a great many of us, that progress since release is more than adequate even if areas like AI or ATC are lacking, and also apparently to almost all the 3rd party developers that are exclusively focusing on MSFS now or prioritizing it as the main platform they develop for. Like others have said here, MSFS's development pace and engagement with the community is orders of magnitude better than other sims where months/years would go by without *any* updates... thankfully MSFS come back to the flight sim scene two years ago to upend all that, and showed unprecedented use and mixing of modern technology stacks like AI, cloud, satellite data, CFD, live weather data, photogrammetry, etc etc, all in the core platform as default. No brainer then for a lot of us, as to why we've stuck with MSFS for the last two years even if <insert pet issue X or feature Y> is still not fixed or implemented perfectly.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Does MSFS still have issues? Of course. But I've been flying darn* near every day for several weeks now in SU9 and now on the SU10 beta. Not only has the SU10 beta been rock solid stability wise, the update was painless and all addons have worked flawlessly (even better than flawlessly, really, with SU10s performance improvements). I have done 3 flights over 5 hours in the past week and have had excellent performance without any of the increasing lag that previous versions of the sim had. Never since P3D v4 first gave us 64bit have I been so pleased with the performance of a sim.

Even more to the point, I have not been so mesmerized with the immersion and fidelity of a simulator since the first time I launched FSX over 10 years ago. I have done more sim flying in the past 3 months than I have since P3D v4 first came out, and even then I was not nearly as mesmerized by the experience as I have been in MSFS.

Are there things I miss from P3D? Sure, I miss weather radar (but that's coming soon), I miss chaseplane (but I've gotten pretty used to the camera system so this is hardly a complaint), and I miss longhaul aircraft (but when they come I know they will be incredible). But now that I have experienced 60fps with the visual fidelity of MSFS I have lost all interest in even starting up P3D.

Edited August 30, 20223 yr by StAgre

11 hours ago, cobalt said:

His original post: "Being able to fly over my home area and recognize everyday landmarks (our local supermarket and even the fastfood restaurant we go to on Thursdays) straight-out-of-the-box makes it impossible for me to go back to any other flightsim."  He clearly was not talking about flying at 30,000 feet!

Height has nothing to do with VFR.

Let me rephrase that: "... makes me not want to go back to another flightsim". Obviously it does not physically stop me from doing so, nor would I want to see anyone throw older sims in the bin 🙂

33 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Height has nothing to do with VFR.

Let me remind you that you yourself earlier referred to "low and slow" flight, quote: "I just suggested a local food outlet is not important outside of low and slow VFR". 30,000 feet is hardly low-and-slow. In any case, do you really think you can spot a fast-food restaurant at that altitude? And do you really think that the OP was describing such a flight? If so, kindly direct your next post to him. I see no point in carrying this any further.

Edited August 30, 20223 yr by cobalt

Over the last few weeks I gave MSFS another try, after shelving it for probably the third time at least nine months ago.  I acquired the PMDG 737 so I could assess flight dynamics with a flight model written by someone that knows what they're doing.  ATC was Pilot2ATC via WideFS on a remote PC.  No AI.  No add-on scenery.

Things got off to a very inauspicious start, as I was unable to complete a flight for over three days without a CTD, apparently due to some mysterious server-based streaming data problem.  During this period, trying to fly in MSFS resembled playing Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic handgun--every attempt ended with a "bang".  Without my making any changes, it spontaneously cleared itself up mid-week last week.

Once the CTD funfest ended, I ran the sim (SU9) through its paces.  These are the biggest issues I find still holding me back two years in:

1.  Ground handling and ground effect dynamics--aircraft are excessively difficult to control during takeoff and landing, both airborne in ground effect and at speed on the runway.  Something is definitely amiss with how MSFS is handling the flight dynamics in proximity to the ground, making takeoffs and especially landings a squirrely hit-and-miss affair.  Moderate crosswinds can put you in the dirt, and aircraft seem to lose stability and wander all over the place when in ground effect.  Ground friction is a mess.

2.  Whiteout/display dynamic range--look down in the cockpit and the outside view blooms into massive overexposure.  Fly over a deck of clouds in bright daylight and the cloud layer below is so completely blown out in bright white it creates a snowblindness effect.  GeForce Experience filtering helps some, but it's still unpleasant to the point of being painful.  Maybe I should try wearing my welding mask when I fly the sim.  The shaders need some real work here, especially for users without HDR monitors.

3.  Weather--two years in I still can't set the visibility, one of the most basic and important weather characteristics affecting flight.  Still no historical weather, so if I want to fly in another hemisphere, my wx will not match the local time of day there.  Weather in Madrid at 2AM is a lot different than mid-afternoon, e.g. no convective stuff, temps much lower etc.

4.  Airport surfaces--sloped runways are nice to have, but so many uneven paved surfaces, even on so-called "handcrafted" premium airports is pretty underwhelming.  KDEN looks nice, but taxiing on the "handcrafted" airport taxiways is like going four-wheeling in the Colorado western slope backcountry, with the airplane bobbing and weaving on the rifts in the surfaces as if adrift on the open ocean.

There are still some other annoyances, like clouds that resemble volcanic ash plumes, occasional abrupt wind shifts, buildings popping up in the distance as spikes/pyramids and then morphing into shape as you approach them, snow on Colorado mountains in August, etc but the issues listed above are what I saw that detracted the most.  The first two I consider to be show-stoppers when it comes to hoping for a good experience.

 

2 hours ago, MattNischan said:

We're a first party on the MSFS development team, so I'm not sure how one can not credit the MSFS team for our stuff, since we're quite literally on it. 😉

I see. I gather you’re from Working Title? Nice. I guess you’re not third party but you’re not part of the original Asobo Studios team either. They need more teams like yours. 

@Bob Scott Regarding your show stopper point #1 "1.  Ground handling and ground effect dynamics--aircraft are excessively difficult to control during takeoff and landing, both airborne in ground effect and at speed on the runway.  Something is definitely amiss with how MSFS is handling the flight dynamics in proximity to the ground, making takeoffs and especially landings a squirrely hit-and-miss affair.  Moderate crosswinds can put you in the dirt, and aircraft seem to lose stability and wander all over the place when in ground effect.  Ground friction is a mess."

Are you referring to all aircraft or specific default aircraft?

12 minutes ago, Doering said:

@Bob Scott Regarding your show stopper point #1 "1.  Ground handling and ground effect dynamics--aircraft are excessively difficult to control during takeoff and landing, both airborne in ground effect and at speed on the runway.  Something is definitely amiss with how MSFS is handling the flight dynamics in proximity to the ground, making takeoffs and especially landings a squirrely hit-and-miss affair.  Moderate crosswinds can put you in the dirt, and aircraft seem to lose stability and wander all over the place when in ground effect.  Ground friction is a mess."

Are you referring to all aircraft or specific default aircraft?

Pretty much everything I've tried, including the PMDG 737.  I've seen a few videos with other 3rd-party birds like the Fenix Scarebus that exhibited the same issues.

There's a recognised problem with the Fenix Airbus that between MLG touchdown and NLG touchdown there is very little rudder authority. Maybe that will be addressed in the next update. Other than that I've not seen any comments about issues with ground effect.

Edited August 30, 20223 yr by ConstVoid

11 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

Once the CTD funfest ended, I ran the sim (SU9) through its paces.  These are the biggest issues I find still holding me back two years in.

I'm really curious about how people are having so many CTDs. In fairness, I was having a CTD problem a few months ago but it turns out it was an issue with CaptureOne, a photography app I use to edit raw photos. Somehow, C1 dlls were getting loaded into MSFS and causing documented crashes. Since uninstalling the sim has been extremely stable, even more so than P3D for me. The only CTD I have had since was when I ran out of memory and pagefile space when I tried to do some photoshop work while the sim was running. I can't blame MSFS for that one.

13 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

1.  Ground handling and ground effect dynamics--aircraft are excessively difficult to control during takeoff and landing, both airborne in ground effect and at speed on the runway.  Something is definitely amiss with how MSFS is handling the flight dynamics in proximity to the ground, making takeoffs and especially landings a squirrely hit-and-miss affair.  Moderate crosswinds can put you in the dirt, and aircraft seem to lose stability and wander all over the place when in ground effect.  Ground friction is a mess.

I personally don't find the planes to behave that differently than P3D in this area, but I haven't flown a real plane in 5 years so I'm not sure what I would be able to notice anyway. That said, the sim running smoothly at 60fps compared to maybe 30 at a detailed scenery in P3D has made hand flying much easier in my opinion, and the PMDG feels pretty good to me in most places in flight. I'm sure it's not 1:1 accurate to the real plane, but it handles well enough that I can get it to do what I want. Again, 60fps does wonders for hand flying when you're used to a stuttery 30fps.

15 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

2.  Whiteout/display dynamic range--look down in the cockpit and the outside view blooms into massive overexposure.  Fly over a deck of clouds in bright daylight and the cloud layer below is so completely blown out in bright white it creates a snowblindness effect.  GeForce Experience filtering helps some, but it's still unpleasant to the point of being painful.  Maybe I should try wearing my welding mask when I fly the sim.  The shaders need some real work here, especially for users without HDR monitors.

I like this, I think it's realistic and P3D always felt unbelievably dark when flying above the clouds on a bright sunny day. I especially love that the sunshades don't just make the scene darker but reveal the detail in the highlights when you use them, just as they should.

18 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

3.  Weather--two years in I still can't set the visibility, one of the most basic and important weather characteristics affecting flight.  Still no historical weather, so if I want to fly in another hemisphere, my wx will not match the local time of day there.  Weather in Madrid at 2AM is a lot different than mid-afternoon, e.g. no convective stuff, temps much lower etc.

I only ever flew with live Activesky weather in P3D, and in that way MSFS has been a far superior experience. Yes, there are occasional times when there is a jarring weather transition, but this was an issue in P3D as well. People forget that P3D does not have default live weather at all. Overall, MSFS does a much better job in my opinion of depicting a changing weather environment, both over time and over distance than p3D ever did.

It really is something special when you are flying over the atlantic in MSFS with a clear sky, and approaching the coast of Ireland you first get some whispy high level clouds that slowly thicken as you approach the coast, and seeing a layer of fog that does not suddenly appear as you approach the airport. Also seeing very low level clouds in the valleys with peaks of hills and mountains poking through is something that P3D even today has never managed to render even remotely realistically.

22 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

4.  Airport surfaces--sloped runways are nice to have, but so many uneven paved surfaces, even on so-called "handcrafted" premium airports is pretty underwhelming.  KDEN looks nice, but taxiing on the "handcrafted" airport taxiways is like going four-wheeling in the Colorado western slope backcountry, with the airplane bobbing and weaving on the rifts in the surfaces as if adrift on the open ocean.

I'm with ya that the 'handcrafted' default airports are not great (aka, the Asobo airports that the game launched with.) That said, since then the default world update airports have been excellent such as Atlanta and Zurich, to name a couple. Overall, I have found the sloped runways to be something I quite enjoy and a new bit of immersion that I didn't realize I had been missing out on all these years.

24 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

There are still some other annoyances, like clouds that resemble volcanic ash plumes, occasional abrupt wind shifts, buildings popping up in the distance as spikes/pyramids and then morphing into shape as you approach them, snow on Colorado mountains in August, etc but the issues listed above are what I saw that detracted the most.  The first two I consider to be show-stoppers when it comes to hoping for a good experience.

MSFS is certainly not perfect. The melted photogrammetry can be annoying, but you can also turn that off and still have significantly better autogen than you could even imagine in p3D. Same issue with the clouds; sometimes they look funny but they are still worlds better than the 2d sprites of P3d and Activesky cloud art. Sometimes the autogenerated snow is a bit overzealous, but in general I still far prefer it to anything I have seen in P3D.

Overall, I think the main complaints about MSFS vs. P3D are ones that go beyond what home simmers really care about. For myself and most of the people I talk to regularly about simming, MSFS provides a vastly improved experience in many ways with a significantly lower barrier to entry than P3D ever had. I have mentioned this before in other places, but for only the cost of the game itself + 1 airplane addon, you can have an immersive experience that is 95% there when it comes to systems and flight dynamics compared to P3D while offering performance and visual immersion that P3D will never come close to.