I have been inactive for the last few years due to my wife's health problems.  Some of you may remember me for mods I made primarily for Carenado products.  As they say, life is what happens to you when you were planning for something else.  Anyway.....

Before I start, I want to do a brief credibility check.  I have been flying for 51 years.  Civilian, corporate, and US Navy Strike Fighters.  I am a US Navy trained test pilot.  I don't tell you any of that to impress, only to suggest that I may know what I'm talking about occasionally.    

Since LM basically abandoned us and everybody else not willing to spend taxpayer money with the introduction of P3Dv6, I decided to give MSFS a try.  My opinions are mixed good, bad, and totally unacceptable.

THE GOOD

The graphics are breathtaking.  The world is real.  Eventually someone will figure out how to filter out the photogrammetry trees automatically.  The scenery SDK is awesome, harkening back to the old "Instant Scenery" days of FSX.  The terraforming is far superior to anything in FS9, FSX, or any P3D.  The falloff function removes the razor sharp lines between different colors and textures.  I can do a very accurate and pleasing to the eye airport in no time.

Helicopter flying is very nice compared to FSX/P3D.  Although there is no way to mechanize it like the real world, force trim actually works.  Anti-torque and translational lift are nicely modeled.  My favorite is the TAOG Hangar Lama SA315B.

The sim runs smooth as silk on my machine with pretty much everything set on ULTRA.  It's a $7K home build so it is very powerful.  I don't know how well the sim runs on something more average.  

THE BAD

Where is my tower camera?  I got an addon to emulate it but the lowest altitude I can get the viewpoint is the approximate orbit of the moon.  And it wont zoom any farther than a 50x binocular.  Really miss the camera that was in every other MS sim. 

THE TOTALLY UNACCEPTBALE

The airplanes fly like (enter bad word here) and the systems suck.  All of them including Black Square, A2A, FLYSIMWARE, and Blackbird.  The Asobo ones are a complete joke.  Carenado may be the worst.  I could live with that if we could get into them and fix them like we could in P3D.  But everything is locked down for whatever reason and we can't.  We're stuck with whatever horrendous flying qualities and bad systems came with the software and most of these if not all will become expensive hangar queens because they bear no resemblance to an actual airplane with an airworthiness certificate.  I just don't understand the business model.  These developers want to publish and move on.  They do not want to publish and continue to support, support, support.  We were the shock absorber for them.  I can't begin to count how many hours we all spent modifying bad product into good product at no cost to the publisher.  And the publisher sold more units because of our mods.  We are now removed from the equation and the products are inferior...far inferior to the P3D products we all corrected in terms of flying qualities and systems.  

Just a guess, but I also think the sim itself has some bad code (or lack of code).  Every airplane I have purchased, including the A2A Aerostar, exhibits extreme trim changes with speed and power/thrust and microscopic trim rates to correct those extreme changes.  Not even A2A could get that out of their models.  Makes me believe that many of the almost limitless aerodynamic coefficients present in FSX/P3D may not be modeled in MSFS.  There is no .air file.  It's all hidden away somewhere if it exists at all.  Asobo seems to be of the opinion that can all be corrected by simply changing flight control curves.  Flight control response curves are totally independent from mass properties, aerodynamic damping, and aerodynamic coefficients.  It's a band aid, and not a good one. 

MY CONCLUSION

MSFS is a child's toy to be played on XBox by kids that should be doing their homework.  It is an intro to pretty graphics and has nothing to do with flying actual airplanes.  It does not cater to us.  I suppose we're not enough of the market share. 

I went and looked a XPlane12 briefly.  It looks like a comic book.  No thanks.   

We lost our simulator when LM went to P3DV6 , turned the lights out in the cockpit, and negated every aircraft addon we had. 

For me, I will fly the occasional helicopter in MSFS but he airplanes are just too awful.  It's back to P3Dv5.3 until something better comes along.     

Edited January 24Jan 24 by whamil77
spelling

Thank you for your detailed report. I read it – sincerely – with great interest...and now I'm wondering: What goal do you hope to achieve with this post?

28 minutes ago, whamil77 said:

MSFS is a child's toy to be played on XBox by kids that should be doing their homework.  It is an intro to pretty graphics and has nothing to do with flying actual airplanes.  It does not cater to us. 

we, we like it a lot, we fly a real airplane, not Navy but real nevertheless. we don't have an Xbox, but we would buy one if it supported VR and let us use all our addons we have for MSFS.

So be it.  I'll take flight simming in any form it takes.

dd

There is no stated goal.  It was a lament.  

If I had a goal it would be that Asobo and the developers would open the architecture to the point users had the same access to the product as we had in P3D and could therefore make corrections to bad and marginal products such that they become pleasing to use.  

Yawn....

I read this also and always intrigued by what RWP say as they have a true to life comparison... me...well, just my desk!

Genuinely, what sim is out there that emulates the real thing as close as possible? Some expensive software perhaps? I dont know what LevelD sims use but should imagine they are fairly close to the real thing?

50 minutes ago, whamil77 said:

There is no stated goal.  It was a lament.  

Ah. Ok. 

So sick of these posts! Do these peaple not see how far flight simulation has come?

Each to their own ...

2 minutes ago, YukonPete said:

So sick of these posts! Do these peaple not see how far flight simulation has come?

Great point actually - my first sim was FS2 at about 3fps and wire frame graphics. Could you imagine the uproar these days.

The excitement of the first photographic scenery of San Francisco, the first textured graphics in FS5 just to name a few milestones.

I never would have thought we'd have what is available now.

Edited January 24Jan 24 by DavidP

I couldn't disagree any further here, with all due respect most naval or miliary aviators are not the best judge of GA, airliners or corporate bizjets. I have been flying the ga and the bizjets now for over 30 years myself. I have used many models available on flightsims both MSFS based and XP to enhance my learning and type rating courses in real life. It works. 100% incredible learning, skills, flows and more. The recent MSFS2024 with fenix, pmdg, flightfx make a very believealbe and hi quality model... exact, precise and far beyond the flying qualities of default. As for the GA stuff by carenado, I like them all , not perfect but better than imaginary would be and they work, both in scanning your instruments to performance to much more.. it is clearly "good enough". 

Sadly, most military aviatiors approach sims with a dim light, predisposed to not like it nor expect more than is realistic. Try DCS then. Meanwhile I'll keep loving how great FS2024, fs2020 and XP12 currently are. My 11,000 hours of real flying time ain't half of what many have, but it is a hell of a lot more than many.... and to  me, these current sims are phenomenal. 

 

Peter James / Pilot Pete's Flightsim Flight Level Youtube Channel / Flying Magazine Author.

1 minute ago, DavidP said:

I never would have thought we'd have what is available now.

That's the fun in simming (and IT generally) since 40+ years 😜😁

To each his own. I hear what OP says and appreciate your opinion. I am not flying and never did before planes in real life. Except in rows 1 and beyond. But I like what I see and get after using flight sims (yes, simulators) since FS4. And only wonder whether you ever tried a Fenix or PMDG plane in MS2024. Those - incl. Ini350 - are the ones I fly almost daily. Suggesting you give those a try and then share your opinion. For an Investment of about 150 bucks for MSFS2024 and one of those planes I could not be happier. Of course a real plane is different but a wet hour in Cessna comes at a higher cost than my invest. As I said, to each his own. Now leaving this thread alone and getting some popcorn 🍿 

I feel like I just went back in time to the year 2020.