Here's some screenshots from the Tech Alpha 2024 preview build - and some commentary from me.  I'm not necessarily cherry picking amazing shots but there are some neat things I've found in the short amount of time I've had to play with the tech alpha.  And there are some "meh" things hehe...

For some reason my shots no longer show full size on this forum... neither avsim nor Flickr seems to know what's wrong... but click on the pic for a larger version.

Here's a "meh" item...  yes we have the newer imagery now but the airport runway is placed incorrectly.... and there are still plenty of missing buildings at default airports such as 21D shown here.

Fall shaders somewhere in southern MN.  It's great that we have seasons now!  I think the textures are a bit too colorful though... MN is very grey/brown this time of year.  I'd prefer to see less contrast.  

Yes the watermasks in the Carribean are working!

There are sandy textures near the shorelines (and under water)!

Closeup of a beach that transitions to rocky/grassy textures.

 

They weren't lying... pebbles!

This I really love...  they somehow generate a model to cover up what would be stretched textures on steep cliffs/edges - the blending is pretty well done!

A difference in cloud Density (1.0 vs 5.0)

5.0 here just looks real.  The atmosphere is just superb!

City lights of Superior WI and Duluth MN from approx FL200 at 20 miles

City lights of Tripoli Africa low level.  The moon looks nice but there is strong "bloom" effect which I dislike.  Also I doubt one could see the milky way from the light pollution here... maybe though?

A nice atmosphere in NYC just before sunrise - but too many cruise ships!  You get a cruise ship, you get a cruise ship, everyone get's a cruise ship!

Gently ray traced shadows in the xcub cockpit (I've got a RTX 4080) - checkout the new standby AH and EFB tablet

This view looks real to my eyes... heading SE leaving St Paul MN along the Mississippi River

Some neat vapor effects with high G's

Annoying TIN trees still present gah!

Not-so-annoying and simply beautiful fall trees at a small grass strip

Water-skiing with the Xcub!  It is possible... I didn't automatically crash hehe.  And great looking effects too!

Sharp runway textures and an amazing sunrise somewhere in the Swiss Alps

Not sure if this is TIN or just auto generated models at Mt Rainier... but wowzers!  Look at that detail!!  (No virtual pilots were harmed in this scene LOL)

 

well done Ryan!

This is great Ryan, thanks for posting!

That was crazy when I saw all those cruse ships in nyc lol great shots Ryan!

Edited October 14, 20241 yr by Silverbird

Great summary, Ryan! Considering that work will continue over the next few years, there's a lot to look forward to with this sim.

I agree with you about the default airports, bearing in mind we haven't seen the final version yet. The new runway textures are great, but the mega generic and sometimes silly looking autogen buildings (thankfully this was recently acknowledged by Jörg) and the odd placement of taxi-lights and signs are a reason for me to avoid default airports.

Yeah I'm only slightly embarrassed about how many payware airports I've collected over the last 4 years haha.

I didn't really even look at the hangars up close - I bet they're still the same weird non aviation looking buildings though.

Nice shots Ryan.

Beautiful set! FS2024 is looking great.

Interesting narrative Ryan, I still want to learn about airport & aircraft compatibility from FS2020 to FS2024.

Darryl

On 10/14/2024 at 8:01 AM, Ed_S_Pilot said:

Nice shots Ryan.

Thanks Ed hope you are well!

10 hours ago, Pugilist2 said:

Beautiful set! FS2024 is looking great.

I agree - I'm jumping all in on day 1

7 hours ago, SP2472 said:

Interesting narrative Ryan, I still want to learn about airport & aircraft compatibility from FS2020 to FS2024.

Darryl

I don't forsee much work from the dev side to make addons compatible.  Some users were already putting their addons and seeing if they worked in the alpha.

A most thorough (pictorial) treatise...🙂...of MSFS 2024, Ryan...!

While my Standard Edition is ready to go on Xbox Game Pass, I would like to eventually get the Premium Deluxe, which is what I've got now. Indeed, exciting times ahead ...!

Thanks for this commentary...!

Excellent shots, the detail is just nuts. This one in particular looks like its from a regular open world first person adventure game with the level of detail show here. Unbelievable that this is from a flight sim.

This is the perfect excuse I have to get a new machine to replace this 16 year old PC of mine. And Win 10 support is ending in 12 months.

Thanks for sharing those shots.

1 hour ago, ThrottleUp said:

Excellent shots, the detail is just nuts. This one in particular looks like its from a regular open world first person adventure game with the level of detail show here. Unbelievable that this is from a flight sim.

This is the perfect excuse I have to get a new machine to replace this 16 year old PC of mine. And Win 10 support is ending in 12 months.

Thanks for sharing those shots.

16 years!  Wow that's quite the value you got out of that thing!  The new Nvidia RTX 50xx cards are coming Q1 2025 so I'd hold off till then but for the CPU consider the AMD 7800X3D or even the new 9 series X3D.  And if it were me I'd build with 64 GB DDR5 RAM.  Something fast like 6400mhz or so 

Edited October 20, 20241 yr by ryanbatc

13 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

16 years!  Wow that's quite the value you got out of that thing!  The new Nvidia RTX 50xx cards are coming Q1 2025 so I'd hold off till then but for the CPU consider the AMD 7800X3D or even the new 9 series X3D.  And if it were me I'd build with 64 GB DDR5 RAM.  Something fast like 6400mhz or so 

Thanks! Its first gen i7-920, 12GB RAM, GTX 1060 6GB. Lol ancient.  Somehow I can play MSFS on it (although I cant fly over dense metro areas, slideshow begins).

Thanks for your advice on the new PC, I'm really out of the loop on the hew hardware so that is helpful. Excited to plan the new build and hit it with MSFS2024!