3 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

But I've seen plenty of reports in re v2020 scenery working fine (presumably smaller airfields without much of the big airport machinery).

Yes, loads of scenery is working fine. Planes and “utility” programs are the ones that have more work needed. 
 

that said, many planes are working too, and very rapidly many more are becoming compatible. 
 

2024 default planes are also extremely high quality (in terms of high fidelity, yes some have bugs still) so it’s not really that bad that planes are moving over in time. 

8 hours ago, Aglos77 said:

High fidelity simulation is a dying breed whether we like it or not. Most of us who like this are already very old and this is going to die with us.

 

Younger people live in a world where everything is consumed very quickly, with a few exceptions they don't want to spend weeks reading manuals to fly complex airplanes.

 

That is why Asobo has designed 2024 as it has done to try to retain that type of casual players who make four flights to see their house and their sister-in-law's house because they have it on the gane pass and never return to the simulator again.

You're incorrect, and the sim devs have the numbers to back it up.

I'll give you my personal e.g.: it was actually my very young son (maybe 8 at the time), who rekindled my interest in flight simming after a few IRL airplane trips.

I'm not a big fan of airliners for various reasons, but he was interested enough that he taught himself how to fly the 737 and A320. He is, to this day, a better Big Iron pilot that I (just don't ask him to catch a 3-wire or keep a helo right-side up 😉).

You're right in that there ARE a lot of gamers out there, but there are, as always, more than a few who catch the realism bug.

My boy is now old enough that he's shipping off to the USAF, and will be serving on their Big Iron jets IRL. IDK how much flight simming contributed to that interest, but it did give him the confidence to sign up to do it for real.

7 hours ago, Aglos77 said:

I'm not saying I'm dying now my English is pretty bad and maybe I don't express myself well. I want to say that most of us who buy these hi-fi complements are the same as always and that most of us also have already many years, good purchasing power and much more free time.

The people who come from behind in general neither have patience nor have the desire to spend hours watching tutorials or reading complex manuals, they are another type of players who want everything now and immediately.

That's why it's clear to me that Asobo and Microsoft are looking for formulas to retain this type of players with career mode missions etc.

I am clear that MFS thanks mainly to the game pass has been a great showcase for our hobby, what I am not clear is how many of these new users really stay and how many more like high quality simulation as most of us in Avsim.

We've seen a fair amount of data from MS on purchasing habits, and there's plenty to see in the serial Navigraph surveys.

In addition to that, and as an admittedly limited sample, I'll add my formerly young son. 

I only had X-Plane at the time, and there were a good variety of Hi Fi airliners. But I only supplied him with the free Zibo 737 (which is Hi Fi/payware grade). As I'm not an airliner guy, the Zibo more than met my needs. So he had to save allowance and such, and bought his own Boeings and Airbuses thereafter.

And yeah, he had to RTFM 😁

7 hours ago, GCBraun said:

You’re not giving enough credit to the integrated Marketplace. It’s made buying add-ons way easier and sometimes even cheaper. Sure, there’s some junk in there, but the customer reviews make it a lot easier for both newbies and long-time simmers to find the good stuff for the sim.

Yep. I'm surprised that it's taken Laminar Research so long to realize that. They would've easily earned 10x as much from me if I could've purchased thru their (pending) store front.

At times, the Market place is a pain (e.g., right now when I can't get to the v2024 native CH-47, or before when the SWS PC-12 took so long to get approved, but in the end, I prefer the long term convenience of automatic updates, etc.

Esp now that MS have abandoned their idiotic "no weapons on display" standard.

I remember how a bunch of us at Cosford for the flight sim Expo just felt the whole thing was boring and uninspiring.  We would end up hanging out in groups, going to the pub, not really bothered about the whole thing.  There was very little inspiration, the graphics and whole experience felt clunky and dated.  There were titles that looked like Red Dead Redemption 2 out and we were getting OOMs in titles like P3D.  

Then one year we saw a little monitor with the MSFS2020 trailer video and it all changed.  I agree, I think it has saved the whole genre.  

Edited December 23, 20241 yr by Langeveldt

13 minutes ago, Langeveldt said:

I remember how a bunch of us at Cosford for the flight sim Expo just felt the whole thing was boring and uninspiring.  We would end up hanging out in groups, going to the pub, not really bothered about the whole thing.  There was very little inspiration, the graphics and whole experience felt clunky and dated.  There were titles that looked like Red Dead Redemption 2 out and we were getting OOMs in titles like P3D.  

That probably echoes what was going on the flight simulation community as a whole, especially when P3D was the platform of choice for many years. Just felt like this dilapidated old thing, held together by duct tape and desperate hopes. Throw another $20-30 addon at it to keep the old girl humming for another few months. Always sitting there pretending it was great, despite it looked, felt and flew like it deserved to have been dragged out back and put out of its misery 5 years prior. On the outside most of us had a painted on fake smile, while inside we looked like Edvard Munch's The Scream as support and enthusiasm was on the decline. 

 

P3D for me felt like some mysterious technology that only streamers knew how to properly configure - I could never get it looking or performing anything like as well as the people who spent hours working out all the necessary tweaks to get it working.

When I first fired up the beta/alpha? of MSFS I was blown away at how good it looked, even with our usernames floating around the screen. It seemed impossible to be seeing actual volumetric clouds and stunning scenery and getting amazing frames - for me, it democratised simming for people who couldn't or wouldn't be able to invest the time required to get the best from the ageing P3D platform.

One thing I was completely wrong about, is I thought Xplane was dead as a result - but it's still going strong and improving impressively.

1 hour ago, Sethos said:

That probably echoes what was going on the flight simulation community as a whole, especially when P3D was the platform of choice for many years. Just felt like this dilapidated old thing, held together by duct tape and desperate hopes. Throw another $20-30 addon at it to keep the old girl humming for another few months. Always sitting there pretending it was great, despite it looked, felt and flew like it deserved to have been dragged out back and put out of its misery 5 years prior. On the outside most of us had a painted on fake smile, while inside we looked like Edvard Munch's The Scream as support and enthusiasm was on the decline. 

 

Are you a fiction writer in your spare time? You certainly have the imagination.

5 minutes ago, IanHarrison said:

Are you a fiction writer in your spare time? You certainly have the imagination.

Oh I apologize Ian. Could you tell me in my supposed fiction where I'm wrong. How's the support for Prepar3D these days? How does it look without hundreds of dollars worth of addons? How is it not held together with duct tape, consider you yourself have a thread from the 11th of this month of it crashing, a thread that has now reached page 3 making it the most active thread in the Prepar3D section; https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/658286-prepar3d-v54-crashing/ - Yes, I can see my fiction of it being a dilapidated old thing has no merit. 

 

 

On 12/22/2024 at 10:05 AM, Fielder said:

Randazzo ! What a funny false name he uses on his forum, LOL!

That's not fair ! ☹️
We have every right not to appreciate the guy for various reasons, but it is not essential to disrespect him.

I have absolutely nothing to do with this guy but I had a brief professional contact with him a long time ago. And he was "already" called Randazzo (very pretty little Sicilian town near Etna BTW) outside the forums.

Unless your message is pure humor, in which case excuse me, my level of English is not sufficient to understand it.
 

On 12/22/2024 at 8:47 AM, psolk said:

Yes, I have the Opencockpit Dual Efis, MCP, NAV, ATC and COM modules running through OI4FS, buttkicker modules using simshaker, VRI overhead using Spad.next, Logitech G13 for custom keystrokes, Aviasoft for remoteCDU's on a client machine and a client machine running FSHUD web interface, Skysim4NG moving map, real time Metar and simbrief and a Brunner FFB yoke... 

To your point, that is part of what is keeping me from 2024.  It all works flawlessly in 2020... 

More importantly, what Porsche do you drive? 

On 12/22/2024 at 1:29 AM, abrams_tank said:

The day that Jorg Neuman and this team announced Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, they saved the simulation community. We were already seeing it, you know, simming was dying. In June of 2019, I figured we had 5 to 7 years more before it would be over.

Save me??? Not a chance!

The more I see the Randazziling marketing spin the more a realize that MSFS2024 could put a large dent in his sales! The Boeing aircraft included with MSFS2024 are on a level that is good enough for a very large number of people most likely. They may also improve as MS/Asobo corrects some of the bugs and current shortcomings.

 

43 minutes ago, Sethos said:

Oh I apologize Ian. Could you tell me in my supposed fiction where I'm wrong. How's the support for Prepar3D these days? How does it look without hundreds of dollars worth of addons? How is it not held together with duct tape, consider you yourself have a thread from the 11th of this month of it crashing, a thread that has now reached page 3 making it the most active thread in the Prepar3D section; https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/658286-prepar3d-v54-crashing/ - Yes, I can see my fiction of it being a dilapidated old thing has no merit. 

 

 

My P3D crashed because of external factors related to my PC. Nothing to do with the Sim at all. I am not denying that 2024 is a far more advanced product, it darned well ought to be seeing that it is 10 years more modern.

I just object to your using such derogatory terms about the sim which was once the pinnacle of flight sim. "Despite it looked, felt and flew like it deserved to have been dragged out back and put out of its misery 5 years prior (sic)" That is twaddle and you know it. For its time, it was the best.

4 minutes ago, IanHarrison said:

Mi P3D se colgó por factores externos relacionados con mi PC. No tiene nada que ver con el Sim. No niego que 2024 sea un producto mucho más avanzado, debería serlo, ya que es 10 años más moderno.

Me opongo a que uses términos tan despectivos sobre el simulador que alguna vez fue el pináculo de los simuladores de vuelo. "A pesar de que se veía, se sentía y volaba como si mereciera haber sido sacado a rastras y haberlo sacado de su miseria hace 5 años (sic)". Eso es una tontería y lo sabes. Para su época, era el mejor.

Don't take it wrong, we have been engraved with programmed obsolescence, suddenly one day a new toy comes out and it seems to us that we have been playing with garbage and everything we have enjoyed was a lie.

 

I still play videogames from more than 15 years ago and I feel fortunate for not closing myself to anything, life is very short and leisure time is very short.

Just now, IanHarrison said:

My P3D crashed because of external factors related to my PC. Nothing to do with the Sim at all. I am not denying that 2024 is a far more advanced product, it darned well ought to be seeing that it is 10 years more modern.

I just object to your using such derogatory terms about the sim which was once the pinnacle of flight sim. "Despite it looked, felt and flew like it deserved to have been dragged out back and put out of its misery 5 years prior (sic)" That is twaddle and you know it. For its time, it was the best.

I suppose if you're wearing some strong rose-tinted glasses, that could be one perception of it. Another more nuanced take could be the fact that we're in a niche genre, meaning choices are inherently limited and we kind-of have to accept what we're given. Prepar3D lived and died by the community support it inherited from the FSX days, it was the lifeblood of the platform and if you wanted the best third party products flight simulation had to offer, that was your only choice. Though unless you were huffing some very, very strong chemicals and want to engage in some serious revisionism, criticism was hailing down over it for YEARS because it ran like a dog, it was a dreadful product out of the box requiring hundreds of dollars worth of addons to knock into shape, it was unstable, it had mountains of problems but it was accepted because there were few other choices. So calling that "the best", pretending the underlying product was the bees knees is intellectually disingenuous at best. Remove the third party scene that kept it alive and the core product was way past its expiry date.

Also that EXACT reason why Randazzo said what he said. Prepar3D was losing steam, people were tired of the platform for years and for every passing release, it just confirmed it was going nowhere. Also why it died from one day to the next; because everyone was itching to put it in the grave and so they did. If Prepar3D was oh so fantastic, it would have kept a much larger playerbase even at the release of MSFS, because a lot of 'hardcore simmers' do have a lot of objections against its direction. Though not even that stopped 99% of people from bailing.