What Does MSFS Do Best?

[Mace 1,951]

2 hours ago, The Flight Level said:

Oh, oh ... a new arrival of aviation fuel! 😉

You put out honey (the now-vanished original poster), it attracts bees. 

[Sky_Pilot071 581]

50 minutes ago, Mace said:

You put out honey (the now-vanished original poster), it attracts bees. 

The OP is too busy flying the best sim out there.  

sp

[Floaty Potato 22]

52 minutes ago, Mace said:

You put out honey (the now-vanished original poster), it attracts bees. 

I tried fanning the flames (to go back to the aviation fuel analogy), but the mods didn't like that 😄 

Flying is more fun, but I have to keep myself entertained at work somehow. 

[Mace 1,951]

27 minutes ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

The OP is too busy flying the best sim out there.  

sp

You're back!!  It's like magic.

[flying_carpet 657]

13 hours ago, The Flight Level said:

Can we have a reference link to this magazine article?

It's not on online but a printed magazine (called FS-Magazin), so I can't link to the article.

 

13 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Does it actually matter?  There are tons of real world pilots attesting to the quality of MSFS, as well as XPlane..

One article is not going to change that 🙂

It's not about "MSFS vs X-Plane", but about the iniBuilds A310. iniBuilds claimed that it is identical on both platforms, but it isn't, as the author wrote.

[abrams_tank 7,465]

27 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

It's not on online but a printed magazine (called FS-Magazin), so I can't link to the article.

You can take a photo of the article, and paste the photo of the article in this thread.

Edited May 18, 2023 by abrams_tank

[flying_carpet 657]

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

You can take a photo of the article, and paste the photo of the article in this thread.

I don't know whether such "replication" is allowed here. But I can write down, what the author (BTW, simming since FS 4 and was/is RW pilot with B737 and King Air) noted. Any German member of this forum, who also owns the magazine can verify and contradict, if my writing isn't true. Here it goes: "The systems depth is reduced compared to the X-Plane 11 variant, this might disappoint connoisseurs of this version. Still, this jet is a real gain for MSFS."

[lwt1971 7,456]

2 hours ago, flying_carpet said:

It's not about "MSFS vs X-Plane", but about the iniBuilds A310. iniBuilds claimed that it is identical on both platforms, but it isn't, as the author wrote.

What iniBuilds exactly stated, when asked by users on their discord was about the flight model being at par between both their versions (screencap below), which is the topic at hand here (read again slowly, we're not talking about systems depth parity)... it was not some intentional marketing material as you ridiculously claim, and also they really have no reason/need to market the A310 since they are already paid for by MS and don't depend on # of sales of the A310. Ever since that time, they have reiterated this point and further lauded the flight dynamics capabilities of MSFS (especially the CFD features they're using in both the A310 and other aircraft)... so ya, guess who I'm taking more seriously...



 

Edited May 18, 2023 by lwt1971

[Krakin 5,838]

24 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

I don't know whether such "replication" is allowed here. But I can write down, what the author (BTW, simming since FS 4 and was/is RW pilot with B737 and King Air) noted. Any German member of this forum, who also owns the magazine can verify and contradict, if my writing isn't true. Here it goes: "The systems depth is reduced compared to the X-Plane 11 variant, this might disappoint connoisseurs of this version. Still, this jet is a real gain for MSFS."

Once again you have hopped into the MSFS forums to make a fool of yourself. @lwt1971 Specifically referred to the flight model but you were so blinded by your bias that you ended up accusing inibuilds of lying. I'd suggest stepping back to spend more time enjoying that sim you love so much.

 

But maybe I'm wrong and you misread what was said. If that is the case, it would be nice to see you at least acknowledge that you did make a mistake.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Krakin

[OzWhitey 3,353]

21 hours ago, Noel said:

That's right of the 1-2 million MSFS users about 4 are hoping for FAA Certification 🤣

Uh, are we really buying MS’s dodgy statistic and then doubling it??

Steam charts show around 5,000 average players. https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410

Importantly, despite the claims here of overwhelming success, player numbers are substantially DOWN since the start of the year, even with the goodies that Asobo has continued to deliver.

As a comparison. Farming Simulator - a sim I’ve never actually met a user of - has more than three times the average Steam players:  https://steamcharts.com/app/1248130

I personally love MSFS. It seems to be doing OK. But I don’t think it’s quite as popular as many here like to imagine.

[2reds2whites 827]

Background - widebody pilot, flown Airbus and Boeing (Boeing now), don't do any light aircraft flying any more.

For default sims, apart from perhaps DCS (which is sufficiently focussed in scope that it's not really comparable) no other sim comes close to how MSFS replicates the feel of flying an aircraft. When third party add-ons are included, the gulf widens. 

And for what it's worth, in my personal opinion an 'FAA certification' is absolutely meaningless. 

 

Edited May 18, 2023 by 2reds2whites

[Noel 4,563]

11 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Uh, are we really buying MS’s dodgy statistic and then doubling it??

Uh, no we're making a rhetorical comment about how virtually no one cares about "FAA Certification" for MSFS.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

2 minutes ago, Noel said:

Uh, no we're making a rhetorical comment about how virtually no one cares about "FAA Certification" for MSFS.

Comment aside, this whole thread does push the argument that MSFS is very successful and going from strength to strength. 

Whenever I read this on Avsim, I pop over to the Steam stats to see if it’s actually true. Usually it’s “no, numbers are down again this month.”

MSFS works for me, I’m very happy with it, but if it really was wildly successful in the broader market I’d be expecting to see a lot more high-quality airliners being developed or released. We had a bit of a rush about a year ago (Maddog/PMDG/Fenix/BAe146), but it’s actually been pretty quiet since then in terms of quality payware.

[abrams_tank 7,465]

23 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Uh, are we really buying MS’s dodgy statistic and then doubling it??

Steam charts show around 5,000 average players. https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410

Importantly, despite the claims here of overwhelming success, player numbers are substantially DOWN since the start of the year, even with the goodies that Asobo has continued to deliver.

As a comparison. Farming Simulator - a sim I’ve never actually met a user of - has more than three times the average Steam players:  https://steamcharts.com/app/1248130

I personally love MSFS. It seems to be doing OK. But I don’t think it’s quite as popular as many here like to imagine.

You should widen the Steam DB chart to "All": https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410#All

MSFS averages 9K players over the last few months which is roughly comparable from Feb to Apr of 2021, and Feb to Apr of 2022. What is impressive is that MSFS has maintained this many players on Steam in 2023.  I think some of the more casual players have stopped using MSFS, but in return, because of MSFS's improvement, MSFS has captured some of the "hard core" player market. This would be consistent with the Navigraph surveys, where more Navigraph users are using MSFS by the end of 2022, versus the end of 2020 & 2021.

There will always be a surge of players for a special release of MSFS, such as GOTY release, and 40th anniversary release.  Having said that, flight simulation is ultimately a niche market, so it's just not as popular as other genres. I wouldn't even be surprised if there were other simulation genres that are more popular than flight simulation.

One last thing is the XBox users of MSFS. I would guess that the XBox users for MSFS hit an all time high in 2021 when MSFS was released for XBox.  Since then, the number of XBox users for MSFS probably declined a lot, since a lot of casual XBox players stopped using MSFS.  However, as Gamepass gets more popular with XBox, there could be a slight growth in the future for MSFS.  Gamepass is a way for MSFS to grow. The more Gamepass users, the more users of MSFS.

Edited May 18, 2023 by abrams_tank

[Ricardo41 5,959]

23 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

MSFS. It seems to be doing OK

This comment wins the internet today.