msfs 2024 First impressions of MSFS 2024.

[lgcharlot]

It took me about 24 hours to break through the first-day installation logjam, but I finally got in the air, for a test flight in my two favorite FS20 planes, the Cub Crafters NX Cub (the one with tricycle gear), and the Beach G36 Bonanza. But right away, I ran into problems - not unexpected in a new release, but these problems left me wondering if Asobo even tested all of the planes before shipping the product. The worst problem with the NX Cub you won't notice in the daytime, but at night it makes the Cub unflyable: the light output from that huge Garmin MFD screen is so intense by the time full darkness arrives, that the pilot is totally blinded, and I couldn't find any way to tone it down. The only way I could land the plane was to scrunch my eyepoint way up at the ceiling as far forward as the cockpit bounding box would allow. There's also a bug in the electrical system config file somewhere, that even with the Master Battery Switch and Avionics switch turned on, and the plane actually flying, the sim is certain that the electrical system is turned off, and it won't let you call ATC (shaking my head here). This plane works perfectly in FS20; what the hell did Asobo do to the plane's model and config files to bollix it up? You can fly it, (but not at night), and only if you don't get a weird feeling just taking off or landing somewhere without making a radio call to anyone. I've never been a "real" pilot, but even I know better then that. One other problem I noticed is that some of the electrical switches that do work in FS20 are "inoperable" in FS24 - including the landing light and pulse/steady switch. There's one other inop switch, the IGN battery power switch, but since the plane flys okay, it must not be essential.

Now on to the Beech Bonanza G36. The problem here isn't with the plane itself, it's with Asobo's assurances to us that "most" 3rd party add-ons in the FS20 Community Folder would transfer directly over to the FS24 Community Folder.  Umm, no, they don't. I very specifically made sure that my G36 Turbo add-on got copied over. This add on boosts manifold pressure to around 36" at altitudes up to about 7,500 feet, and boosts the service ceiling to about 24,000 feet. Not realistic I know, unless you want to pretend that you've got an O2 system installed, but for flying in and out of high mountain airports in the Colorado Rockies, or exploring steep canyons, it's nice to have the extra power. Anyway, it's obvious that the FS24 game engine is ignoring at least some of the add ons in the Community folder. On a climb out of KRIL (Rifle-Garfield County Airport, elev. 5503', I could only get 20" of manifold pressure, and the plane could barely get out of it's own way after I hit 12,000 feet.

A couple of other observations, before I close up:  The key bindings that come with the game for my joystick and keyboard are completely at variance with what I've been used to since FS 2004. I'm going to have to re-program all of them - and so will you if you got used to FSX keybindings and carried them over to FS20. It's crazy: There are dozens of keys that Asobo has bound, 3, 4, even 5 different functions to: you might be trying to lower flaps, click on Joystick Button #4 (for example) and sudden have the engine flame out, because there's also a Cut Throttle keybinding on that button (what were they thinking of?!). This drove me crazy until I saw posts on the Microsoft MSFS Forums where a bunch of other people had crashed on their first FS24 flights before discovering these multiple keybindings.

 

Edited November 22, 2024 by lgcharlot

[Happytfe]

Veeeeeeeeery bad simulator. 
A mix of confusing key assignment, high temperature on graphic card, blurry textures, lots of Trees even in the middle of a city, …. 
 

quit.

refund. 
 

waiting for MSFS2000 updates. 

[Matthew Kane]

3 hours ago, Happytfe said:

Veeeeeeeeery bad simulator. 
A mix of confusing key assignment, high temperature on graphic card, blurry textures, lots of Trees even in the middle of a city, …. 
 

quit.

refund. 
 

waiting for MSFS2000 updates. 

There has never been a release of MSFS that went well, they develop over time

[YukonPete]

3 hours ago, Happytfe said:

Veeeeeeeeery bad simulator. 
A mix of confusing key assignment, high temperature on graphic card, blurry textures, lots of Trees even in the middle of a city, …. 
 

quit.

refund. 
 

waiting for MSFS2000 updates. 

2020 was just as bad at release! It was 6–12 months after release before it started to truly come together. I knew 2024 was going to be the same. I am disappointed, however I'm here for the long game and I have no doubts it will mature in 2025. The one thing I really don't like is the cloud only option, I wish we had the choice to do a full install, Storage is very cheap in 2024. I don't want a refund.

Edited November 23, 2024 by YukonPete

[lgcharlot]

18 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

There has never been a release of MSFS that went well, they develop over time

That's what I keep telling myself. One good experience I had is that in several hours of testing yesterday and today, the sim never threw a CTD at me - the #1 issue that plagued FS20 for more than a year, and that might have caused me to stick with FSX, except that I had already dropped US$750 for an AMD Radeon 6800 XT GPU, which is totally overkill for FSX. A couple of other observations: When you are out of your plane and walking around an unpaved area, the grass and wildflowers are amazingly detailed, and the plants sway gently if there's any breeze blowing, but the colors are wrong - fuzzy and muted somehow. In the mountains, if there are Ponderosa or Lodgepole pines in the area you are walking your avatar, they look amazingly detailed right out to the tips of the branches, and exactly like pine trees. The green color of the needles and the reddish brown of the branches and trunks is pretty close to the real thing. And from the middle of a clearing surrounded by pine forest, you can see that there's lots of variation in the trees, just like there should be. It all looks great, if not a bit "too" perfect. "Is it Live, or is it Asobo?" to steal an old Memorex cassette tape TV advertisement from about 40 years ago.

I need to jump around more, explore more of the virtual world in this sim at different seasons, before settling on a final opinion, but in the area of the central Rocky Mountains where I've been flying, the ground colors aren't quite right from altitude. The valley bottoms along river courses should be more green and less gray, even in early winter, as it is now, and the mountainsides should be more varied in color - everything from gray granite, to orange sandstone. And I can't understand why the air looks so smoky and hazy when there is no wind blowing, and the condition setting is "Clear Air". Mountain air in Colorado is crystal clear, with unrestricted visibility of up to 50 miles as long as there aren't any forest fires burning. Maybe this sim actually models fire smoke?

BTW, I got to visit Wellington once - we spent most of the day at Te Papa - a truly awesome museum, and I was amazed and gratified to see the care your curators put in to the collection of land survey gear - most of my fellow Americans that aren't Civil Engineers or Land Surveyors would walk right past that display with hardly a glance. That's what I did the last 7 years of my career, albeit with modern electronic theodolites (Total Stations) and GPS gear. I also walked up to the top of Mt. Manganui when we were in Tauranga, and saw the big Geological Survey Control Monument at the summit. We have similar installations in the States, but much smaller: they are generally a heavy steel pipe concreted several meters deep into the ground, with a full time GPS receiver and Geodetic grade antenna bolted to the top of the pipe under a plastic weather dome, and powered by an adjacent solar panel and batteries.

[lgcharlot]

40 minutes ago, YukonPete said:

2020 was just as bad at release! It was 6–12 months after release before it started to truly come together. I knew 2024 was going to be the same. I am disappointed, however I'm here for the long game and I have no doubts it will mature in 2025. The one thing I really don't like is the cloud only option, I wish we had the choice to do a full install, Storage is very cheap in 2024. I don't want a refund.

Your profile says you live in Yukon. That made me think, someone should make a set of Buffalo Airlines liveries for the DC3, CL-415, Lockheed L-88, and the C-46, if there actually is a C-46 available for MSFS, with Avatars of Joe and Mikey to go with them! Humor aside, my experience with FS20 was the same as yours: it was more than a year before I could get through an 8 hour flight in the 747-8i without a CTD, although landings in San Francisco in any of the big aircraft with approach and touchdown speeds around 140 knots were still dicey for another year after that, if you pushed the sim to the limit by having it be raining, too.

Edited November 23, 2024 by lgcharlot

[Antipodeslonghaul]

I thought the hangar was sort of a refuge. A place to talk about aliens, cats, the weather etc., to get away from all the hullabaloo of botched installations, user interfaces etc. That stuff feels like dreary office work.

[Happytfe]

4 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

There has never been a release of MSFS that went well, they develop over time

Imagine buying a car and they give it to you without wheels. Then you say: oh, but you will see that in the future it will go better.

when I buy a product, it's because its finished.

 

[Piotr007]

Landing from EHAM to EDDB. Berlin melted away like after nuclear blast. Nice cloud game.

[LHookins]

6 hours ago, Happytfe said:

Imagine buying a car and they give it to you without wheels. Then you say: oh, but you will see that in the future it will go better.

when I buy a product, it's because its finished.

This is more like buying a car where the climate control doesn't work quite right, the cruise control is inop, and a few other similar glitches.  Otherwise the car is drivable.

People would still buy it to be the first ones having it.  Think of being the first person on the road with a Tesla.

Some people have a rule of never buying version 1.0 of anything.

Hook

[Happytfe]

3 hours ago, LHookins said:

This is more like buying a car where the climate control doesn't work quite right, the cruise control is inop, and a few other similar glitches.  Otherwise the car is drivable.

People would still buy it to be the first ones having it.  Think of being the first person on the road with a Tesla.

Some people have a rule of never buying version 1.0 of anything.

Hook

In happy ive never wanted to be the first. 😂

Im Also sure Tesla build its cars very will finished. 

 

[SierraDelta]

18 hours ago, Happytfe said:

Veeeeeeeeery bad simulator. 
A mix of confusing key assignment, high temperature on graphic card, blurry textures, lots of Trees even in the middle of a city, …. 
 

quit.

refund. 

 

10 hours ago, Happytfe said:

Imagine buying a car and they give it to you without wheels. Then you say: oh, but you will see that in the future it will go better.

when I buy a product, it's because its finished.

 

Soooo, when did you buy it?

[Farlis]

20 hours ago, Happytfe said:

Veeeeeeeeery bad simulator. 
A mix of confusing key assignment, high temperature on graphic card, blurry textures, lots of Trees even in the middle of a city, …. 
 

quit.

refund. 
 

waiting for MSFS2000 updates. 

What an odd metric to tell a good sim from a bad sim...

[Happytfe]

4 hours ago, SierraDelta said:

 

Soooo, when did you buy it?

Yesterday

[MrFuzzy]

On 11/23/2024 at 7:50 AM, YukonPete said:

2020 was just as bad at release!

No, not like this.