2 hours ago, RobJC said:

I rarely get a CTD except in the betas.

Umm, why is it you go back to being in betas then?  Gluttony perhaps?

1 hour ago, Noel said:

So is the visual experience, lighting, clouds/weather, and autogen all on a par with 2020 such that one would hardly notice differences?  And while here setup as identically as possible is performance generally the same, worse or better in XP12 for a high end machine?

It is a mixed bag. Here's my observations vs FS24 so far...

- XP12 loads to the main menu faster.
- FS24 has better performance. I need to turn down settings a bit in XP12 to get the same performance as FS24 with everything maxed out. 
- XP12 takes longer to load the plane.
- XP12 graphics in the cockpit are crisp, and cockpit shadows are very sharp.
- XP12 gauges are sharper.
- XP12 buildings look previous gen. But they aren't melted either. 
- XP12 lighting is excellent. On par.
- XP12 clouds are very good. Close to FS24.
- XP12 world feels more alive. 
- XP12 night lighting is excellent.
- XP12 flight model and handling feels more authentic although I am not a pilot IRL. 
- FS24 is smoother panning. I got motion sickness yesterday and that was at 80-90 fps. No idea. 
- XP12 default ATC is on par with BATC. For me it is enough.
- XP12 control configuration is the way to do it. Period. 
- XP12 seems very stable. Even the betas. Someone is actually doing QA over there. 
- XP12 Hotstart Challenger is the most realistic AC available regardless of simulator. 
- FS24 has a big lead in graphics and smoothness overall. AA is terrible in XP12. 
- XP12 appears to have highly skilled developers who know a lot more about flight sims than most of us do. 
- If XP12 can improve their graphics to 90% of FS24 we've got a horse race on our hands.

 

 

Edited April 15, 20251 yr by RobJC

1 minute ago, Noel said:

Umm, why is it you go back to being in betas then?  Gluttony perhaps?

I don't stay there long, but it just amazes me that they cannot get their act together. 

6 minutes ago, RobJC said:

It is a mixed bag. Here's my observations vs FS24 so far...

As I said years ago, great we have something decent to fall back on should MS/A give up due to the continuous whining and bad reviews here and elsewhere.  Near as I can tell 2024 is well on its way to becoming more fabulous than its predecessor was/is.   No way I would spend one second dicking around with Xplane at this point as...there is no point.

1 minute ago, Noel said:

As I said years ago, great we have something decent to fall back on should MS/A give up due to the continuous whining and bad reviews here and elsewhere.  Near as I can tell 2024 is well on its way to becoming more fabulous than its predecessor was/is.   No way I would spend one second dicking around with Xplane at this point as...there is no point.

Free choice, Noel. I split my time between FS20, FS24 and XP12. No wrong answer, as long as you are happy. 

3 hours ago, G-YMML1 said:

We can still use MSFS2020 happily for some time without issues, especially if Asobo stops dropping those annoying patches. I left FS2004 scene in 2015, twelve years after it's release, and  after the time when FSX bit a bullet and P3D was in its second iteration.

We'll be fine 🙂  There are other things in the world to worry about now.

the days of running older sims long past their end of support date is gone - 2020 is cloud dependent so when MS have had enough, it's gone

there will be no running FS2020 12 years after it's release unless MS commit to running the back-end infrastructure for that long

deleted- misunderstood the post

Edited April 15, 20251 yr by EGLD

3 hours ago, RobJC said:

I was messing around with XP12 and configured my controls. So easy and intuitive. Only someone with no experience at all in flight sims could have come up with FS24’s control assignment design. But then as i play around with XP12 it becomes clear that the people creating it are very experienced. With FS24 (and FS20) a lot of non simmers clearly are working on the project. But the vast difference in resources is clear in many areas. It’s David vs Goliath. 

so many posts saying that thinking the new control settings are bad is just duffy old luddites who cannot accept change

it's just fundamentally a really, really bad design

agreed, XP12 is magnificent in comparison - really simple and intuitive to configure any hardware and save as a profile

29 minutes ago, RobJC said:

as long as you are happy

I'm super happy!  Here's the reality of it:  we are beyond fortunate to have MS/A and LR continuing to advance our favorite hobby.  After all, you know as do I:  most people look at people obsessed with this hobby as more than a little off, and yet look at the sandbox we have to play in now, it's absolutely phenomenal!  My first flight sim was in my pal's garage, when we were both about 9 y/o.  We took his Dad's sawhorse, a simple wooden one with four 2x4 legs, and plywood on the top 2/3 of both sides.  We fashioned a yoke and drew avionics on each side of the plywood dash and sat with our legs under it and pretended to fly!  We've come a long way!

9 hours ago, EGLD said:

it's a fair assumption that the overall trend would be the same for FS2024 in Gamepass, even if the total numbers are bigger

No. While completely logical to think this, it's a dangerous assumption.

Steam is an unrepresentative sample for flight sim statistical trends.

The only time it's somewhat valid is when comparing titles in Steam to other titles in Steam.

I.e., the people that play Steam are a different demographic than people who directly buy their flight sims.

Perforce, they are more "gamers" than "simmers". An e.g. is to look at how many flight sims are available on Steam vs how many games: a tiny fraction.

A similar idea is the breakdown of Xbox flight simmers vs PC flight simmers. 

E.g., how many people buy Xbox just to use MSFS vs those who buy to game, and then decide to try MSFS...?

Many more we could come up with, but you should see the point.

6 hours ago, Keirtt said:

I’d be willing to bet the trends we see among steam users are similar across all platforms. The trend is your friend.

"There are Lies, Damned Lies,...and Statistics."

Sam Clemens/Mark Twain

Glad to hear that XP12 is quite good now. I had 10 and 11 and never really liked the terrible(!) user interface. But if for some reason MSFS vanishes, I know where to go.

43 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

No. While completely logical to think this, it's a dangerous assumption.

Steam is an unrepresentative sample for flight sim statistical trends.

The only time it's somewhat valid is when comparing titles in Steam to other titles in Steam.

I.e., the people that play Steam are a different demographic than people who directly buy their flight sims.

Perforce, they are more "gamers" than "simmers". An e.g. is to look at how many flight sims are available on Steam vs how many games: a tiny fraction.

A similar idea is the breakdown of Xbox flight simmers vs PC flight simmers. 

E.g., how many people buy Xbox just to use MSFS vs those who buy to game, and then decide to try MSFS...?

Many more we could come up with, but you should see the point.

how many flightsims are there on gamepass?

What is the point?

if the point is to say that both msfs and msfs24 are not very popular on steam, then there is nothing new. Flight simulation is a niche hobby, needing investment in time, money, etc.

if the point is to say that msfs24 is less popular right now compared to msfs, then nothing new again. Msfs24 was not ready on launch day, nobody will deny it. But SU2 is close and microsoft/Asobo are working hard on it so better days are ahead of us. No, it's not normal and the game should have been ready on release day but we all know it is theory in flight simulation. Only a few add-ons are ready on release day and it is far from being a majority.

Let's see again in December, msfs24 will gain ground days after days. And we all know that it will pass msfs in a few months, anybody who thinks otherwise is in a deny. We won't have any choice after all because most devs will drop msfs soon or later. This was mostly announced by Aerosoft, Ini and PMDG and no doubts others will follow. Happy or not, most of us will switch in a few months.

 

8 minutes ago, sdirand said:

Only a few add-ons are ready on release day and it is far from being a majority

PMDG 737 series was not launched until just over TWO YEARS after 2020 launched.