Best 

- WT for the transformation of the 787 and their community engagement 

then

- Doing a complex RNPar approach in the improved  787 whilst sitting on my sofa with the Xbox controller, and it all working perfectly.

- Navigraph,  for making the navigraph plug in for console and FlightFX and FSReborn for being the only ones to include it (so far) in their aircraft. 
- MS/asobo for being so enthusiastic about flightsim and keeping developing and providing loads of awesome free content. 
- Group flights with fun and interesting people and getting flying tours of their countries. 

- Seedy’s enthusiasm in the community fly ins 

- Watching the dev livestream and seeing the next World update announced. 
 

Worst

- PMDG for their treatment of console users, charging for liveries with no bundles, no 737 updates, making out they’re trying to save us money. 
- No freeware section in marketplace.

- Model matching in group flights eg seeing asobo pointy a330 instead of a dc3 just because you haven’t got the exact livery. Or the same instead of a P38 etc. 

- MS security policy on console making navigraph and simlink, littlenavmap etc all harder to use or impossible. 
- MS/asobo for STILL not letting we love vfr and marina mods into marketplace. 

 

Best :  The fun I had with the Asobo Cabri roaming the world

Freeware sceneries too numerous to be named

Worst : the degradation of the ground scenery with offline textures replacing sat imagery in large swaths of the planet, The team acknowledged the problem but did nothing that I see. On the contrary…

 

On 1/8/2024 at 11:11 PM, g-liner said:

Worst

- PMDG for their treatment of console users, charging for liveries with no bundles, no 737 updates, making out they’re trying to save us money. 

It's not like they want to be greedy and charge for liveries.

It's just that it's impossible for vendors to upload free stuffs on the marketplace. they have to charge a minimum. If it was possible to do otherwise, of course the Xbox liveries would be free, just like they are on PC.

Worst: only checking and realizing that snow coverage is totally borked in the sim after users made quiet some noise in the forums, fixing an utterly embarassing calculation error and selling this as «improvement» to the userbase. Resulting in almost equally bad snow coverage as before...

1 hour ago, sdirand said:

It's not like they want to be greedy and charge for liveries.

It's just that it's impossible for vendors to upload free stuffs on the marketplace. they have to charge a minimum. If it was possible to do otherwise, of course the Xbox liveries would be free, just like they are on PC.

Virtually all livery creators in marketplace release liveries in bundles offering discounts except PMDG, there’s loads of ways of releasing liveries in a more affordable way on marketplace than what PMDG have done. 
 

It’s 100% like they want to make money from liveries, as they haven’t released them in bundles or in larger packs so you have to buy less volumes of them. 

16 hours ago, sdirand said:

It's not like they want to be greedy and charge for liveries.

It's just that it's impossible for vendors to upload free stuffs on the marketplace. they have to charge a minimum. If it was possible to do otherwise, of course the Xbox liveries would be free, just like they are on PC.

Why don't they just release all liveries in one download for $0.01?

1 hour ago, KL Oo said:

Why don't they just release all liveries in one download for $0.01?

There's a minimum regular price for add-ons on MSFS Marketplace of $4.99 apparently.

Some PMDG defenders will regurgitate the official line of 'technical limitations' as to why the liveries are bundled in multiple packs. Which is interesting when other add-ons with huge file sizes are available for purchase on Marketplace. Did PMDG offer a Xmas sale on those livery packs (which is permitted to drop below this regular price)?

On 1/8/2024 at 1:24 AM, Jeff Nielsen said:

That's mainly why FS2024 is being done.  2020 can't handle what we and they want it to do.  Not sure if you had the chance to watch the video at FSExpo where Jorg and Seb talked at length about some of what 2024 will bring and why.

Now, whether it will help with ATC and AI traffic, who knows, but there's bigger fish to fry, IMO, than those things.

Yes, they almost certainly looked at MSFS's codebase and realized that making some of the bigger systemic changes to core behaviours they wanted would require a more fundamental rebuilding of parts of the sim. That's very difficult to do with a product that's already live, without just putting out a brand new version.

And of course, I'm sure business considerations factored into it too.  After four years of free updates and even a bunch of free add-ons, I'm not going to balk at buying a new version - especially if my add-on collection will carry over.

On 1/8/2024 at 1:42 PM, RobJC said:

I hope that is accurate. But I am a bit skeptical. 

They've said the vast majority of add-ons should just work, but that (I believe) they'll require a small amount of work to fully utilize changes to things like contact points on aeroframes.  So your Fenix or whatever will still work, but it'll work the same as it does now unless they update it for 2024.  If anything breaks, I suspect it'll be add-ons that do deeper tinkering with the sim.

Best:

- Inibuilds new A300-600R

- FBW A320 neo - the latest update is sublime

- Just Flight Avro Vulcan.  Had been waiting for this since abandoning X-plane for MSFS

- Flying Irons Simulations bf109 - wow.  Just wow.

Worst:

There's not many - I think MSFS in VR is already at a level that I never thought we would be in my lifetime.  But:

ASOBO P-51 Reno Mustang range.  Most of them simply won't fly.  I bought three of the variants and two cannot be used - the engines cut as soon as you move the throttle.  It's a known bug and yet the ones that don't work (the majority of the variants) remain on the Marketplace.  ASOBO - as above, you are clearly better than this!

Best:

1. Dawn/dusk sky colour improvement. Great that Asobo introduced it with SU14 after Biology's investigative work. Even better that Drunq's 3-file mod has been made compatible to allow for further colour tweaking.
2. MSFS adaptive LOD mod. Literal game-changer!
3. Arrival of a genuinely affordable Airbus-style FCU (that can now be made to fully work with the Fenix A320). So very happy with it.

 

Worst:

1. Worsening terrain texture bug. As one of the key features of this sim, it's disappointing to see the problem spreading.
2. Performance deterioration after SU14. Just another area where a SU takes us two steps forward and one back, especially when most people had excellent performance post-SU13.
3. Expert Series ATR. Too many issues to make it enjoyable. Uninstalled.

 

Edited January 11, 20242 yr by F737MAX

There are several great things about MSFS, but most of the ones arrived in 2022 (i.e. Fenix/PMDG/Maddog) or earlier (FBW, default ground scenery). Also, there are still several things that make me run back to P3D, but were carried over from previous years (availability of historical or at least sim-time-synced WX, disabling transitions between custom cameras, etc). So, limiting myself to things that happened in 2023, this is my personal ranking:

Best:
- Frame generation mod. Now I no longer need a new GPU to sustain 60 FPS. And more important, I can now bear the transitions between custom cameras better.
- WT enhancing all the default avionics in the 78X and 748 (and then Kuro and Horizon Sims extending them to the 788 and 789).
- A2A coming to the game. I never thought I would happily spend $50 in a GA plane; when the most I've ever paid for one was just $17 (also for an A2A bird).

Worst:
- It's been more than 3 years since release, and there aren't yet any proper longhaul airliners, with all the functions available in previous sims. And I'm not talking about PMDG, but at least QW 787/Aerosoft Airbus level. Yes, there are still some things that aren't yet properly done in the MSFS 787s, like VNAV, but I won't extend here.
- As an Argentinean, the fact Marketplace stopped regional pricing here and started charging in USD (at least for the Steam version). Addon prices therefore skyrocketed for me. Now I have to think at least thrice before considering an addon.
- Regressive bugs in MSFS, specially in the A310. The most detailed default MSFS bird is sadly the buggiest one since SU14. Disarming a bomb is more relaxing than loading the A310 without getting a CTD or blank screens. And while I understand there's a fix already developed, Asobo/MS' inertia for releasing it is exasperating.

Edited January 11, 20242 yr by Luis Hernandez

1 hour ago, F737MAX said:

1. Performance deterioration after SU14. Just another area where a SU takes us two steps forward and one back, especially when most people had excellent performance post-SU13.

 

So its not my imagination... After several weeks out of the game, I found the sim not as smooth as I remembered it to be. 

Another positive that I have noticed in MSFS is that it seems to simulate atmospheric refraction of the Sun when it is right on the horizon. It is a subtle effect, but I think it looks quite realistic.