58 minutes ago, Torsen said:

 Is it usable atm for me? Yes and I'm having a lot of fun even in career mode. [....] I just opened my first cargo company, bought a used 172 and doing just this moment my first flight with it. 2024 can already look better, perform better and fly better than 2020 for me.

I also generally like MSFS 2024 enough to stick with it, and I don't experience many problems. I like the new user interface, but there are two things that I don't like.

1) the visuals are not better than 2020 on my system. I may have to play more with settings, but a friend reported that he got much better results after enabling HDR. Apparently that is not possible on my system. I know I need to go into the XBox app's game pad (or so) to enable it in MSFS 2024, but it is not available in that app either, nor in Windows settings (greyed out). Not sure why.

2) I am underwhelmed by the career mode. It looks nice, but I am an experienced simmer and don't like being restricted to small planes for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, I find the scoring system not very transparent. Despite 5 attempts or so, I couldn't get the score for my first solo flight to more than a B. I then took the PPL test and thought I did much worse than before but got an A. Then I did what I thought was a really good first mission, with excited customer comments, and got a score bordering C. All that with no idea why I got these grades.

You seem to have made more progress than me, but I am not motivated to continue with it after flying just one mission after the PPL. I want to fly turboprops and set up regular routes. Is that achievable without having to grind through months of flying with single-piston 4-seaters?

Peter

1 hour ago, qqwertz said:

I also generally like MSFS 2024 enough to stick with it, and I don't experience many problems. I like the new user interface, but there are two things that I don't like.

1) the visuals are not better than 2020 on my system. I may have to play more with settings, but a friend reported that he got much better results after enabling HDR. Apparently that is not possible on my system. I know I need to go into the XBox app's game pad (or so) to enable it in MSFS 2024, but it is not available in that app either, nor in Windows settings (greyed out). Not sure why.

 

Peter

Is your monitor capable of HDR?

I'm having a very goods time with it since it's obvious it has to use certain built-in features.

It's WAY better than the Career Mode that was in FS2020, aka "Free Flight".  Which is also still available so it's not like we have lost anything here for crying out loud.

1 hour ago, qqwertz said:

 

2)...Despite 5 attempts or so, I couldn't get the score for my first solo flight to more than a B. I then took the PPL test and thought I did much worse than before but got an A. 

Peter

As far a PPL rating goes in real life, your instructor is designed to push you to be excellent, not let any bad habits come about, and nicely nitpick you on everything...if they are a great instructor. The examiner (at least for a PPL) is more about your character and less about being precise. THey understand you have little hours, are going for a PPL and really just want to observe that you are ready as you've proven your knowledge in the written and they have reviewed it with you in the oral portion. So in a way, The PPL portion is close to realistic IMHO.

Now for the Commercial Rating, I was a bit disappointed. I would of hoped they would of taught Chandelles, Lazy Eights, Slow Flight, Turns Around a Point in the lessons and have the test be a bit more as well. Its almost like the PPL is your Student Rating and the Commercial is your PPL. Its suppose to be enjoyable, rewarding and universal since the end user can be anyone at any age with zero hours to ATP rated, so I get it.

4 minutes ago, Ident said:

As far a PPL rating goes in real life, your instructor is designed to push you to be excellent, not let any bad habits come about, and nicely nitpick you on everything...if they are a great instructor. The examiner (at least for a PPL) is more about your character and less about being precise. THey understand you have little hours, are going for a PPL and really just want to observe that you are ready as you've proven your knowledge in the written and they have reviewed it with you in the oral portion. So in a way, The PPL portion is close to realistic IMHO.

Now for the Commercial Rating, I was a bit disappointed. I would of hoped they would of taught Chandelles, Lazy Eights, Slow Flight, Turns Around a Point in the lessons and have the test be a bit more as well. It’s almost like the PPL is your Student Rating and the Commercial is your PPL. It’s suppose to be enjoyable, rewarding and universal since the end user can be anyone at any age with zero hours to ATP rated, so I get it.

I don’t think they modeled exams by FAA standards because  they night rating . As far as exams itself they are more like a joke. They could have made them more educational with reasonable expectations and throw couple fundamental  maneuvers . Whoever came up to those didn’t really look at existing career apps that did it way better. It seems like doing ATC calls and holding short at predesignated places all it takes to be a pilot lol

 

 

18 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

I don’t think they modeled exams by FAA standards because  they night rating . As far as exams itself they are more like a joke. They could have made them more educational with reasonable expectations and throw couple fundamental  maneuvers . Whoever came up to those didn’t really look at existing career apps that did it way better. It seems like doing ATC calls and holding short at predesignated places all it takes to be a pilot lol

 

 

I'm agree with you. The only thing I can think is that they kept in mind the end user and wanted to make it enjoyable and fun. So lets say a user has experience in either simming or RL flying. They can skip the lessons, fast track the exams and get to the career missions they really want to do. However, if the user has no experience then the lessons are some good starting points to learn and there seems to be little wiggle room for error if you are looking to get a high score in the training lessons. If that was the thought process in the design, then I'd say that seems to be a great plan as you point out there are existing career apps a user can use if they want more realism.

It can be frustrating. Just to list a few that I find annoying:

Getting dinged for exceeding flap speeds when I'm not exceeding flap speeds (DH-2, B36 etc). 

Seemingly arbitrary and undefined criteria in the grading system.

Wanting you to takeoff and land with tailwinds.

Sending you to airports in IFR conditions with no published approaches (after you pass your instrument rating).

Inability to sort missions...at all.

Nevertheless, a pretty good start I guess. I can't seem to stop playing in the career mode as I'm caught up in the mission grinding to get 'the next rating'.

I'm having a great time with it despite all the issues.

 

Thanks Richie. Its nice to see an actual list of items that arent working correctly to know instead of just says theres bugs or its broken. 

I think its by design, but maybe a show stopper for me concerning Career Mode. I can't seem to free flight myself and my company airplane. I'm sitting at the same location as my plane, CYXX. I want to head over to CYCD to fly a couple jobs and it seems the only way I can get there is to pay separately for me and my plane to get there. I can't seem to find a way to jump in my plane and just fly there.

 

Am I missing something?

3 hours ago, Ident said:

As far a PPL rating goes in real life, your instructor is designed to push you to be excellent, not let any bad habits come about, and nicely nitpick you on everything...if they are a great instructor. The examiner (at least for a PPL) is more about your character and less about being precise. THey understand you have little hours, are going for a PPL and really just want to observe that you are ready as you've proven your knowledge in the written and they have reviewed it with you in the oral portion. So in a way, The PPL portion is close to realistic IMHO.

Now for the Commercial Rating, I was a bit disappointed. I would of hoped they would of taught Chandelles, Lazy Eights, Slow Flight, Turns Around a Point in the lessons and have the test be a bit more as well. Its almost like the PPL is your Student Rating and the Commercial is your PPL. Its suppose to be enjoyable, rewarding and universal since the end user can be anyone at any age with zero hours to ATP rated, so I get it.

Can you imagine the average simmer being willing to study and practice for the real hours it takes to get a PPL 🙂  Let's see, I started my lessons in 2016, soloed sometime in 2017, actually got my PPL in 2018, course I bought my own airplane in there, and after I solo'ed I could fly most anywhere in the area I wanted to in my own plane, a lot of freedom so I was in no hurry to face that examiner, but still 🙂 

The point is, its a sim, it can't be like the real thing, and how much reality it does convey is going to depend on the implementers taste.  I don't know if I'll actually use the career mode or not, but I never had the illusion it would be "realistic"...

 

Simmers need to get their refunds to send a message. This is not ready. And not acceptable.

1 hour ago, laserit said:

I think its by design, but maybe a show stopper for me concerning Career Mode. I can't seem to free flight myself and my company airplane. I'm sitting at the same location as my plane, CYXX. I want to head over to CYCD to fly a couple jobs and it seems the only way I can get there is to pay separately for me and my plane to get there. I can't seem to find a way to jump in my plane and just fly there.

 

Am I missing something?

I'm wondering about this myself. I picked Indiana as my base for lols and now I'm stuck again in Indiana.

Despite the issues, I'm having fun...I think I'm having fun and that's what matters.

9 times out of 10, my aircraft is placed part way into a hangar on startup.

Is stall/spin recovery part of PPL training? Crosswinds landings?

The main lesson in career mode: Abort abort abort! There are no penalties for aborting a mission. Very similar to the get-there-itis of real life, but you can call it the complete-mission-itis in the sim:

 

If you load and your plane is in or too close to a hangar, abort.

If you load and your plane is in a foot of water, abort.

If you're in an X Cub and halfway through the mission you can't make your destination without entering IMC conditions, abort.

If you get dinged for a bunch of things you didn't do (extending flaps overspeed, deviating from the runway, flying through clouds when there is no other choice to complete the mission, no communications when there was no option for communications, etc.), abort.

If you reach your destination and the sim wants you to land in a 20kt tailwind, abort.

 

Yes, you will lose time and progress, but at least you won't be losing reputation or even worse, crashing your own plane. Career mode needs a lot of work, but I'm still having fun even with all the bugs, limitations and annoyances.

There seems to be scoring bugs with the banner flying and (from what I've read) the tornado missions so I haven't bothered with them (even though the banner flying is a lot of fun, and it was interesting to learn how this is done in real life). If you get a poor score before any no-skip and no-issues multiplier and you did everything by the book, just don't bother with that mission type again unless you want a lower reputation which will lock you out of certain specializations. The multiplier doesn't seem to count toward your reputation, so you can score close to S tier but then get your reputation dinged down to B because you scored poorly on the core mission objectives themselves, often for no reason whatsoever.

I haven't moved into multi-engine or turbines yet and have just been making boatloads of money flying my own 172 around. It would be nice if you could enter free flight with your own plane to change locations, but this isn't an option. Someone posted a wish for this on Reddit, but I didn't see a wishlist item on the MSFS forums for this yet.

The trainings and certifications are a bit of a letdown as you progress and obviously were not play tested at all. I empathize for anyone new to flight simulators trying to learn concepts from within the sim alone. They recycled a lot of 2020 training content with some odd concepts (overflying the runway and entering the pattern on upwind, not starting your final descent until entering base leg, to name a few), then revert to real-world concepts in the career missions themselves (standard 45-degree downwind pattern entry, for example).

It may be due to having assistance options off, but the first thing I heard when starting the IFR career training mission was ATC telling me to change my squawk code and ident. The nav source on the CDI was set to the VOR instead of GPS. Training didn't go over any of these things, but maybe the co-pilot assistance would have taken care of them for me. At decision hieght, the airport was still in a cloud. I kept trudging to complete the mission, but it should have been one of those instances where I aborted!

If the career flights start getting frustrating, take a break. Fly some of the challenges (which seem to be a bit more fleshed out and actually tested) or just do some free flight and go back to the career mode at a later time. I don't think career mode will ever be perfect since it depends heavily on random scenarios, but I'm sure it will get better with time.

1 hour ago, jfv said:

Can you imagine the average simmer being willing to study and practice for the real hours it takes to get a PPL 🙂 

 

Well as a simmer from '98 to present, I took the written and my physical in 2018. Having passed those, about a month later I started my PPL lessons. I solo'ed on the second day at 3.8 hours, did my night cross country on the 3rd day. I did 25% of my needed 40 hours (just over 10 hours logged) ferrying an instructors plane from Nantucket to Jacksonville in one day with no autopilot in his C172. Took my checkride at 40.3hrs six months after my 1st flight. This by no means is the norm but it does make a statement towards how flight simming can help with learning. I was also 49yrs old so theres a bit of life experience mixed in with that as well as working for Flight Safety and sitting in on CIME flights where the cadet would do either commercial maneuvers, multi engine maneuvers or we would just do cross country flights. We were only allowed to go up with cadets who had their PPL and mostly I would just sit in the back and observe and listen to the Instructor/Pilot interactions.