It was a one-off it looked much better this time at KCIC to KACV.  Maybe it was the PG that did not turn off when I disabled it, and needed a reinitialization of 2024 to make no PG stick.  That was the first route I took when 2020 launched.  Clouds look different and I think it's an improvement and thankfully not seeing the heinous grid.  I didn't change anything graphically but one thing I'm happy with is I can go back to TAA and native rendering as with these lightweight planes like the TBM and Longitude I can maintain a frame rate of 50 with ample headroom over that, and that has always been my preferred in 2020.  In 2020 with the most demanding scenarios which is most I now use DLSS4+DLAA w/ frame gen and it's really quite good but still have to do some tricks to avoid strobe/flicker but overall it's vastly improved and I feel it's at Holy Grail level of performance and image quality.  Still way too early, but right now flying into KACV it really doesn't look very different than 2020 and I'd be hard pressed to say it looks better but once again, it's early for me.

16 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

I pretty much dumped P3D the day MSFS 2020 came out. Best decision of my (gaming) life.

"gaming life"!

@Amrick615, one question you should ask is about your preferences / settings. 24 is pretty much all on the server and includes your settings. Very different to P3D of course.

Some people have reported they’ve lost their settings after an update. Is it possible to save them locally and copy them back should things get reset?

25 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Some people have reported they’ve lost their settings after an update.

The official Microsoft wording that they also use in Windows is.. 

MANDATORY UPDATE. 

"You WILL comply or access to your simulator will be denied". 

9 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

The official Microsoft wording that they also use in Windows is.. 

MANDATORY UPDATE. 

"You WILL comply or access to your simulator will be denied". 

How does that answer the question?

2 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

How does that answer the question?

It doesn't but I tried to make it abundantly clear that unlike previous sims where you could NOT install an update if you didn't like changes (p3dv5. 3 vs 4?) with the Asobe /MS sims these are literally mandatory. If settings are lost then tough, you'll have to fix it yourself and do them all again. And again. 

13 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

with the Asobe /MS sims these are literally mandatory. If settings are lost then tough, you'll have to fix it yourself and do them all again. And again. 

The updates to 2024 are done at the server end and not by the user being compelled to install it as was the case with 2020.

But it still begs the question do those updates overwrite your settings? And if they do why is there no system in place for the user to save and restore them?

If this really is the case has anyone raised it with Microsoft? If it happened to me and I’d spent hours configuring my system I’d be livid if those were lost.

5 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

The updates to 2024 are done at the server end and not by the user being compelled to install it as was the case with 2020.

But it still begs the question do those updates overwrite your settings? And if they do why is there no system in place for the user to save and restore them?

If this really is the case has anyone raised it with Microsoft? If it happened to me and I’d spent hours configuring my system I’d be livid if those were lost.

The settings we're talking about here are just the general settings, which include graphics, realism and such. Annoying, but with MSFS2020 and MSFS2024, it takes about three to five minutes to set them back as before.

The controller setup profiles are saved on the cloud and, as far as I've seen, are never lost. They are, in the worst case, un-selected (controller is switched back to default profile), and just need to be selected again. When these profiles appear missing, it's a temporary cloud access bug that is resolved simply by restarting the sim.

5 minutes ago, Daube said:

The settings we're talking about here are just the general settings, which include graphics, realism and such. Annoying, but with MSFS2020 and MSFS2024, it takes about three to five minutes to set them back as before.

That’s assuming the user can remember what they were. Screenshotting is probably required. Not ideal. Why can’t Microsoft save the user preferences and restore them? Hardly difficult.

1 minute ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Why can’t Microsoft save the user preferences and restore them? Hardly difficult.

Let's face it - the 2024 GUI is a total mess/disaster. We have profiles for all our controllers, so (I agree) - why can't we have profiles for all our general settings?

2 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

That’s assuming the user can remember what they were. Screenshotting is probably required. Not ideal. Why can’t Microsoft save the user preferences and restore them? Hardly difficult.

To more directly answer your particular question I purchased 2020 on Steam(i own over 350 games on that platform so I'm very satisfied with it). 

In one year I have not lost a single control setting due to an update. I have lost gfx settings occasionally but usually because they added or changed a visual option so that would be expected for something new. 

My 'beef' is with MS themselves as it seems overwhelming Microsoft Store users are affected by update config losses not Steam users. Steam cloud definitely works by respecting the gamers personal settings in the cloud whereas MS has a history of OWNING all your cloud data (read that eula!) so they can delete it whenever they feel like it. Tough. 

@sloppysmusic, your comments will be useful to @Amrick615. I have yet to purchase either sim.

2020 is what I've been using since FSX and it isn't that bad. Yes, the "feeling" of flying seems a bit off. But if we had like shopping cart simulators, and pretty much everyone knows how to push a shopping cart in real life. We'd all of course say the sim doesn't 100% match real life anyway. And different shopping carts even within the same supermarket handle differently. A wobbily wheel, pulling off to one side or whatever. 2020 doesn't bother me so much anymore for "feeling" a bit off.

The biggest thing I can't quite get used to in MSFS is the pausing and saving. It's maybe just a small niche, but people who do a takeoff, say for a ten hour flight, and then get a call from their uncle who needs help with fallen branches in his yard, and afterwards have to cook dinner for the family, and no idea when they'll be able to get some quiet time back at the computer, seem to sort of have to give up on focusing on their calculated flight time. 

What I mean is you for example meticulously plan a flight from London to Los Angeles, and you estimate say 10 hours and 25 minutes. And some flight you're following on Flightradar that day is looking to do pretty much the same. 

Ahhh, you're looking forward to a nice sunset arrival into LA, the golden mountaintops glowing in the sun, the city lights just coming on beneath you, your flight timed perfectly. Instead you get back to your computer paused at top of decent somewhere outside Barstow. It's already pitch black outside, midnight. Your elapsed flight time is aready showing like 16 hours, you're like what the heck? So you try and adjust that tedious slider, to get back the sort of proper time, but you can't even do that if you ever saved your flight in between.

Sure, you might say who cares about flight time anyway? A real life flight maybe got all sorts of strange vectors, crazy flight level assignments. Who cares about the planned flight time? But anyway, for me at least, that's the biggest nuisance. Not so much whether it "feels" like a game, or the flight model feels off.

The only other slight nuisance I can think of right now is the weather radar. It seems to be more about showing you pretty colors on the little screen, rather than giving you an indication of cells to avoid.

In my opinion, MSFS requires far less tweaking compared to other sims. I don’t even recall ever losing my settings, but if it did happen, restoring them to ultra would be a simple fix.

As for controls, since I use multiple controllers and devices (including Stream Decks), I find it much easier to manage them with an external utility like AAO.

1 hour ago, GCBraun said:

In my opinion, MSFS requires far less tweaking compared to other sims.

Indeed, for most people MSFS is very good out of the box. It never really gets superb though. Often in FSX and P3D when all the addon stars align and that perfect flight/weather/traffic/low vis approach happens I get that jaw drop 'wow is this real?' feeling. In MSFS you will definitely almost every flight get that wow this looks real feeling but not the 'feel' itself. I think it could be the best if the code was opened up to addon devs instead of being behind exclusivity deal encryption. The weather especially.

 

1 hour ago, Antipodeslonghaul said:

So you try and adjust that tedious slider, to get back the sort of proper time, but you can't even do that if you ever saved your flight in between.

Yes! I've saved flights in the PMDG 737 , restarted and I can't change the time of day or weather anymore. Crazy!