Hi it's me.  Evening three of MSFS2024.  Day 1 wasn't great as it took about 5 hours to get the sim downloaded, just to find many many game-breaking bugs.  I was quite frustrated like many of you.  Bleh!

Day 2 - The sim loaded okay and even though there are still a lot of bugs (such as not being able to retract the gear, non animating switches/buttons, and bright freaking lights at night on my Premium Deluxe PC24), I was able to get in, bind most of my peripherals/buttons, and figure out my way around the new interface.  I mostly used Free Flight - I did a few longer flights with the PC24 (with gear down lol - shooting two rnav approaches with lpv mins), the PC12 NGX (Sarasota to Miami with loading of a STAR and IAP), and a C700 flight from Pellston MI to Pontiac (KPTK outside of Detroit).  Some of these default aircraft are very broken, unless you load from the runway (which seems to initialize more systems just like in 2020).  So if you're finding planes aren't working from the cold and dark ramp or gate, even though its sacrilege, try starting on the runway.  

The ground textures are hit and miss.  I had some really crisp textures and some super blurry ones, especially today, where at JFK, I had AI traffic flying without wings, without engines, and without fuselages HAHA!  I had extremely blurry aprons, and ground textures.  Some of my planes weren't loading in either, the instruments were grey and parts of the exterior were very blurry.  After about 10 min, the aircraft's textures did fully load in.  I use USA East server.  Yesterday my experience was cleaner.  I suppose Microsoft is trying to balance the servers.  I'm fine with that as some aren't even in the sim yet.  Let's hope for a swift response from MS and smoother gameplay for all!

Here's some random pics from yesterday and today.

Just like I said, my first flight was in the PC24 at KSGS, my home airport.  But like many I found the plane highly inop from the ramp... so I reloaded on the runway.  Initially I was fairly pleased, especially with the beautiful new Honeywell Epic2 avionics from WorkingTitle.  Wow!  The avionics are the heart of the aircraft and they're quite good.  I kept seeing a red arc though around 180 kias....  what the heck... it was the gear.  It wouldn't come up!  GAH!  A major game breaking bug imo.  Let's hope Carenado/MS fix this soon. 

So I went to another local airport, FCM where I used to work ATC.  I tried out the Carenado C404.  It's a fairly basic panel with basic anti icing equipment, and a GNS530.  I shot two approaches at FCM, one on AP, where the AP did not capture the localizer so that was a little annoying as I'm pretty sure the real one does since GS lights up.  But all of the lateral modes worked fine including using the GNS530 as a NAV source in GPS mode.  The plane itself is a bit light I'd say (not having any real world 404 time though!), but it's a reasonable representation of a C404 Titan.  What I did like was the way the aircraft began to ice up.  Especially on the windscreen...  I'm not certain if the real one has a windscreen heater but the defrost knob did help (but only a little which seemed realistic).  So here's my first pic of the 404 coming out of a cloud layer just west of Flying Cloud.  (Oops forgot to retract the landing lights - a little extra parasite drag!)  But you are seeing though, is superb seasonal textures and mostly barren trees.  Yesterday at this time (and depicted here in Live WX), was a little shower, and it was murky just like in this pic.

Next was to check on the Caribbean water masks (because it's so much nicer over there lol).  Yes they're still there (they worked in the tech alpha too).  And they honestly looked really good from about 2000 ft and up.  This is the Carenado Lancair/Columbia/Cessna 400/TTX (whatever name you want to give it) and I thought it also flew reasonably well.  It's got a basic interior and exterior but as usual it looks good.  The sounds were fine, not amazing by any means though.  The AP seemed to function okay.  One thing to note about the sounds - as I understand, most sounds are still streamed in so I think that's why some users are still having poor sound in their planes.

There is a KNOWN bug with the little circle icon in the middle of the G1000NXi MFD but otherwise it seems to work well.  WT has also implemented Pathways, the boxes one can fly through on the PFD if you've loaded an IAP.  Pretty cool stuff that exists on the real units.

Finally!  Your Premium Deluxe C700 Longitude now has a beautiful cabin.  The plane it relatively similar to the 2020 version.  I guess WT did a little extra work on it - but we currently have no way to display charts on the G5000.  I THINK they are planning to integrate their new EFB/LIDO charts with it.  Hopefully Navigraph does too as I prefer those.

What's the point of this pic?  Well... I had an aircraft "malfunction" and ended up in the woods.  What a STARK contrast from 2020 wilderness!  This is nowhere special... just a forested area near Hibbing MN KHIB

Speaking of Up North....  I flew out of Duluth KDLH and I was talking to one of my ATC buddies - they had a little snow as well a day before we did down here.... and what do ya know?  Some snow on the ground in the sim!  It looks totally reasonable to me... early snow in late fall looks brown and white haha.  This L39 isn't bad at all... just the canopy displays some weird issues when the sun hits it... like it's tough to see outside.

AVERT YOUR EYES!  LOL!  Night flying in the sim is...uhh...interesting.  Some planes apparently need major work to their emissive instruments and lights.  The PC24's dome light (and other areas as you can see) are extremely blinding.  I get it, that irl, you wouldn't want to turn on the dome light but I think the nuclear blast is a bit over the top!  In some aircraft, like the Dornier Seastar, the main MFD and PFD is similar to this.  It's a game breaker. 

Here's the PC12 NGX in a climb from SRQ to MIA.  I've got nexrad on the PFD and a whole flight plan entered.  It's highly automated if you like.  Everything loaded here fine except the IAP wouldn't let me load the outer IAF.  Not sure if that's a lido data issue or what.  I'd be curious if Navigraph could fix it.  I did post a bug to the WT discord though.  The PC12 seems a bit slow vs real world numbers.  The real one tops out around 290 ktas but I'm unsure of what altitude would achieve the fastest cruise speed in true.  The sounds again, are eh... okay.  Not amazing.  Aside from the cruise speed thing, it flies fine.  There's a few ways to interact with the Epic avionics - you can touch on screen - the grey boxes or grey areas, and you can enter data from the smaller glass keypad by the center console.  You can also hover your mouse cursor and click and drag to range in/out on the MFD.  I believe the PC12 is missing some pages on the Epic like pressurization and electrical.  I guess that would need to be added by Carenado (hmmmm lol). At any rate, WT did a superb job on this - you can see I've selected SVT on the left PFD but left the right PFD with the classic AH.  I think for non mountain flying I may prefer the classic look for readability.  The second pic shows the live weather clouds - I honestly think they are improved and are more dense than 2020.   2020 almost always showed me semi transparent clouds which breaks immersion.

The C408 Sky Courier hosts the G1000 NXi - does around 210 ktas at 12k ft.  It's mainly for cargo but it would make a decent short hop pax hauler with seating configs up to 19.  I departed Memphis for Little Rock here.  I did fail the left engine for fun.  It did initially roll a bit and yaw towards the left engine which is correct, and then I lost a lot of airspeed to hold altitude.  It wasn't very dramatic so I'm unsure of how realistic that would be.  There is a bit of a visual bug here (with the engine operating normally) - the shadow of the individual prop blades hits the fuselage hehe.

The Erickson Air Crane is a heavy lift helo from Blackbirdsim (Milviz) - it looks beautiful!  The interior is reasonable as well.  The flight model.... eh....  is plausible.  I wasn't in love with it though.  The sounds were decent.  The new lighting is EXCELLENT.  I really enjoy it.  It's spot on imo.  As I was flying I passed over a mine of some sort.  I realized that Asobo generates 3d parts to cover up what would be stretched textures on sheer cliffs.  This looked really well done here!

Here's another Premium Deluxe helo that I was happy about - the Airbus H225 created by HPG simulations.  I own their H160 and this 225 is looking quite good.  I've barely scratched the surface though so far - I think there's an Autopilot.  Navigation is via FMS with full procedure support and charts (where lido data is available) on the EFB in cockpit.  I did happen to have a rare right PFD freeze on this flight... but I was pressing random buttons haha!  The Devs aren't sure what happened but they WILL be updating the helicopter as 2024 progresses.  Checkout that Citation Latitude AI!

It's quite detailed inside and out, the textures are superb, the sounds are nice, and the flight model is quite good too (not that I've flown a heavy lifter such as this!)  You will need to rebind controls for helicopters... but once you load a new heli all you do is go to Controls and select the profile you made for the others if you want the same controls.

As I was simming yesterday, I got a notification that my 2020 marketplace addons were added to 2024.  Sure enough, the superb FSReborn M500 showed up!  It works really well in 2024 with some minor non game-breaking exceptions.  I've also dragged and dropped my Black Square Dukes and A2A Comanche into 2024 and they also work with minimal minor bugs!

Rural northern Wisconsin seen here - I've flown over this area irl about the same time of year and wow it looks spot on!  Late fall in MN/WI/MI is ugly haha!  I do notice a few trees on the roads here and there... minor but a little annoying.

Oh, here are the Pathways on the G1000 NXi PFD in the Cirrus.  TimHH and I were really hoping for a G7 variant but alas, it's still the G6 from the latest 2020 update.  But, you can now pop the chute!  CHUTE HAPPENS!  We are also trying hard to get our Cirrus paints into the new sim.

A little morning light strikes the fuselage of the delicious PC24 (dang it Asobo/MS/Carenado - fix this plane!!)

The last plane I tried and which I surprisingly enjoyed, was the Carenado C90 GTX King Air.  It's honestly pretty dang good.  The textures are great inside and out. It uses the ProLine 21 for avionics, has decent interior night lighting.  The sounds are good enough too.  It made for a nice evening flight from Boston to Nantucket.

I've also gotten Track IR 5 working really well now.  I have not yet tried VR.  I wanted to have the servers working well enough before I complained about reducing settings from pancake mode lol.  I know the launch has been unacceptable for a lot of us!  It's frustrating when you drop 140 USD or more on a product from a major company.  I don't understand how it could have passed final QA testing....  That being said... day 2 was WAAAAY better for me than day 1.  So maybe week 2 will be better for everyone?  Lots to fix!  But lots of great looking things so far!

 

 

 

 

Are you using HDR?

3 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

Are you using HDR?

Nope.  I don't think my monitor does that.  

Fine shots, but to say nothing from them is blowing my away..

Very hard so see much different to MSFS2020 and as i am a Liner pilot i would not see that much near the ground so mixed feelings here..

cheers 😉

Thank you for the intense testing and the detailed report, Ryan!

AI traffic unfortunately is a mess right out of the box.

After a 1 hour test flight I see aircraft sunken into the airport tarmac, 45 degrees as if slammed into the ground because of a main gear collapse or something...

AI is off as of now. Traffic making 360 spinning around. Almost only generic AI. Waiting for fsltl in due time.

Edited November 22, 20241 yr by Piotr007

Fsltl works ok'ish I see. Even performance hit seems low.

I love the free roaming of world camera with all details in developer mode😱😱

Simply wait a view months and it will all work much better! So far I never watched that a new sim worked from the beginning on...

And than there will be more shots and information showing the difference between 2024 and 2020! I can wait for it...🙂 

Nevermind. Got a CTD galore with fsltl for no apparent reason 

6 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

Nope.  I don't think my monitor does that.  

Can you post more shots of the updated Longitude (maybe it's own thread)?🙂

The toolbar fsltl makes it crash. Otherwise test is going on.

Strangely ini airplanes do not have functioning terrain radar nor actual TCAS?

Edit: fsltl ctd's the sim over time nontheless. Safe to report that it does not work as a whole in msfs2024, sadly.

Edited November 22, 20241 yr by Piotr007

10 hours ago, pmplayer said:

Fine shots, but to say nothing from them is blowing my away..

Very hard so see much different to MSFS2020 and as i am a Liner pilot i would not see that much near the ground so mixed feelings here..

cheers 😉

The aprons, ramps, taxiways, runways are quite different, more high res than in 2020.  The border of where the runways touch the grass is light night and day hehe.  I guess you guys have too much to do in the airplane to notice haha!  And the lighting is vastly better.  If you have RTX 40xx card, the ray traced cockpit shadows are nice improvement.  Also the tires on the pavement make contact better and ground handling is improved.

1 minute ago, ryanbatc said:

The aprons, ramps, taxiways, runways are quite different, more high res than in 2020.  The border of where the runways touch the grass is light night and day hehe.  I guess you guys have too much to do in the airplane to notice haha!  And the lighting is vastly better.  If you have RTX 40xx card, the ray traced cockpit shadows are nice improvement.  Also the tires on the pavement make contact better and ground handling is improved.

I will see, maybe in a half year i am jumping over to MSFS2024, but allways reading comments here, some update from Asobo side are of course also necessary so the timeline from a half year looks possible to me..

cheers ☺️

18 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

forested area near Hibbing MN KHIB

lovely shot Ryan ... good to stop / land in remote places 😉

Great review, Ryan. Thank you very much!! Before the launch, I told myself to give them a few weeks before jumping ship. And I am certain that in a few months, we will all be enjoying FS2024. 🙂