6 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

This should be obvious, but a lot of people are extremely dissapointed and even angry at the moment.

And I do get that, and I’m also really not enjoying the whole setup rigmarole right now. But some people seem to be really losing their marbles over what are teething problems, not the permanent state of the sim, ‘They lied! It’s just a money grab! There are virtually no changes! They should be fired! It’s the end of MSFS!’

Seriously, people should be honest with themselves and ask if they really have the temperament to handle the many frustrations of new platforms and their infrastructure in a calm way. And if the answer is no, then just wait because, unless you’re at least filing bug reports, you're not doing yourself or the rest of the community any favors.

People are quick to jump to conclusions because their favourite video games on Steam (I have 100 games on Steam) are rolled out as betas (early access) now with continuous updating, some of these games over several years with updates. None of them approach the complexity of this simulation.  However, most are quite playable at the outset. This is not the paradigm of MSFS. Given now the significant cloud effect on this game we definitely are in new territory and time will tell how it plays out. Did I expect MSFS 2024 to rock and roll out of the gate?Nay. Calling it early access would have been more accurate. I don't think many of these negative posts would have disappeared but the rebuttals easily justifiable.

Be that was it may, I'm on board as I  have been since the Sublogic days come hell or high water.

20 minutes ago, Farlis said:

I read some people from Azure speaking up and pointing fingers at Asobo. The infrastructure is there, you just have to ask for it and order it to be made available to you. And that is not Azure's job, it's the job of the people who plan to run an all streaming platform.

 

Cost could be an issue. Azure data centers are extremely robust, but that comes at a price. I work for a very large corporation with a worldwide footprint that uses a lot of Azure services, and I know that the IT spend for Azure is many tens of thousands of dollars per month. That is probably true of any large enterprise system that uses Azure. 

MSFS’s connectivity to Azure costs us (the end users) absolutely nothing. The XBox Games division of Microsoft has to foot the bill. I don’t know what internal revenue arrangements are used by XBG to pay for streaming services for games like MSFS, but it may not be currently “enough” to support the guaranteed bandwidth and QOS that the simulator requires to work properly 100 percent of the time with the new “all streaming” model.

32 minutes ago, EmaRacing said:

It was the copy of MSFS launch: Youtube videos showing the exact state of the release version, Youtubers saying this is the pre production release, the final one will be PERFECT, TRUST ME BRO.
I want you guys playing it for a month or 2, then I'll come back here to read because you're the only ones I trust.

I would NEVER put 1 ounce of credit to any of these YouTubers! They do all they can for views.

I don't believe this is a money grab either. It's simply how companies do business these days. Push out a product to soon and worry about fixing it later!

A few have probably spent a small fortune upgrading their PC, i did for one, couple that with the way the release has gone has probably tipped them over the edge. PC's are no longer cheap to build, even doing it  yourself. 

1 hour ago, RobJC said:

I don't believe it was a money grab. Just an old fashion cluster @#$% software launch. 

This.

Microsoft have obviously been justly proud and excited by what they’ve achieved with 2020.

Nothing is for free and the continuous updates, improvements and content have been payed for by all of us through that thirty percent cut taken from the Marketplace….this thing is a cash cow; we’re not talking micro transactions but substantial repeat sales….

and yes, all those evil ‘gamers’ on their Xboxes play a vital part here too.

However, at the moment, 2024 seems to be a triumph of ambition over actuality and they’re being roasted over it.

Perhaps they deserve it a little too……

 

 

2 hours ago, Mike T said:

You don't have to have thousands of posts to have your voice heard or to be taken seriously. The more loquacious people here tend to look down on people who would rather observe than reply en mass to every thread. 

That said - Microsoft has a market cap of over $3 billion, so to my knowledge, they are in business to make money from anyone willing to give it to them. It's how capitalism works. 

Unfortunately, in the gaming world, it's a race to the bottom. Lately, the most anticipated titles with budgets in the hundreds of millions are released in various states of mess. But the market tolerates it and publishers keep doing it. I don't blame the publishers, after all, caveat emptor.

 

I don't mean to split hairs. I'm sure you just misstyped and your point is valid.

Market Summary > Microsoft Corp

3.09 trillion

 USD

Market capitalisation

 

 

4 minutes ago, WestEnd said:

I don't mean to split hairs. I'm sure you just misstyped and your point is valid.

Market Summary > Microsoft Corp

3.09 trillion

 USD

Market capitalisation

 

 

Thanks for the correction - I meant trillion. 

For the benefit of the doubt, they may have overlooked all the issues. However, this is highly unlikely given experience and infrastructure power on their side. So, I'd say yes to an intended money grab, at least a grossly negligent one.  

Ya the nonsense title aside, just for the flight dynamics and ground handling revamp alone I would have paid the new sim price.. but as many have already noted above there are also various other tangible improvements: massive increase in ground details and visual fidelity, weather and clouds, lots of beefed up default aircraft, atmospheric lighting revamp, high fidelity flight planner, 3D trees and biomes, seasons, better multi-threading, aviation activities, etc etc.

And to expect all of above as free updates to 2020 is ridiculous.

For any bugs in the above functionalities, well, early adopters need to realize they are gonna have to be ok with those. Otherwise they should have stuck with 2020 for longer.

For the launch day(s) issues and overall server capacity and streaming clusterf***, perhaps MS/Asobo could/should provide some sort of compensation, but who knows.

But regardless, the claim that the new sim is a money grab is farcical.

1 hour ago, Ant1975uk said:

And what were they trying to achieve? because from where I standing 2020 is a far more stable and solid experience. So they want you to not actually fly the planes but walk about on the ground looking for animals? Is that their vision?

You pick out just animals to suit your argument?  How about the greatly increased terrain resolution that stops you landing anywhere?

1 hour ago, Ant1975uk said:

We didn't ask nor need this new version. We didn't need or ask for cloud gaming. 

Simple. Don’t purchase it

-B

To be fair, FS is not intended to be offered as a public service. It is a product offered for sale as part of a business with the intention of making a profit. Call it a 'money grab' if you like, but it is just business.

I've been flight simming since the Sub-Logic days with stick figures on a Commodore 64.  Each new release blows me away.  Yeah it's got some bugs, but look how far it's come!  Patience.    

MSFS 2020 had worse initial issues on release, you might want to wait a month or so for the issues to get sorted out.

It’s pretty common for “shotgun” releases these days … too many variables that can’t be covered during testing cycle … it’s not a NASA rocket launch, just entertainment software.

Money grab is only relative to context of what you expected from the product.  For example, I prefer physics/flight/systems accuracy, and I honestly have not noticed any difference.  But, there are visual improvements as pointed out and I’d venture to guess that 90% of the MSFS users are graphics driven as the primary “new feature”.  Graphics sell, always.  

IMHO, MSFS 2024 is visually better with the exceptions of clouds, still pretty unrealistic in 90% of the weather situations, but can shine when one hits the right weather conditions and time of day (10%).  I don’t think weather/clouds will ever be “realistic” on current and next gen hardware as they are render intensive (the multi-pass visibility layers needed for clouds/fog/haze depiction).  I was hoping there would be a graphics setting that would allow for more realistic weather depiction at very high cost of FPS, but looks like that will not happen because it would open the door for complaints on low FPS as users max out their graphics settings and it definitely would NOT a viable setting for XBOX.  Very high quality weather depiction is not programmatically impossible (it’s done for many film/movies) but it is just too much processing workload to be rendered in real time.