8 hours ago, Matchstick said:

MSFS '24 pushes it's curated experience to the front, a cynic might suggest because career mode is designed to push plane sales on the MP rather than third party stores.

Out of the 568 planes on the MP, only 94 are compatible with career mode, and many of those are recent. Career mode is designed to give people structure and goals in a sim that was previously just a sandbox.

9 hours ago, Matchstick said:

Similarly why not offer an unranked open career mode that allowed any plane from any store but had no scoring ?

1. Planes need to meet specific criteria to be compatible with the workflows/scripting in career mode.

2. Remove scoring? That is like working your day job for free. Scoring/virtual credits is the entire point and is what keeps users engaged.

9 hours ago, Matchstick said:

Finally crashing

...can't be enabled without MSFS losing its "everyone" rating and ending up on the news for people flying planes into buildings.

Multiple people in this thread have been scapegoating career mode as the reason Asobo isn't addressing other issues. Career mode has barely been touched by Asobo since the release of the sim. Career mode users are just as annoyed at those annoyed with weather or missing landing gears. I'd argue we're more annoyed, because bugs in career mode can result in a 4-hour flight that ends in a failure, wiping out not only the progress of that flight but also damaging your career reputation and draining your existing credits. The only thing those clouds and landing gears affect is "immersion".

34 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

For pattern practice, I still prefer X-Plane with live weather to make me work harder to get off and on the airfield in good order.

BUT, the gap isn’t all that big any longer, and it’s steadily closing.

My biggest complaint with MSFS's flight model is the ground handling and sometimes the landing flare. Asobo have probably made it more difficult on themselves by supporting CFD and table based AND external flight models. Makes it harder to determine whether an issue is related to MSFS's weather/environmental engine or if it's an issue with how a particular aircraft is translating that data.

It wasn't until I flew the updated Citation X that I realized devs can basically override the sim's turbulence to implement thier own effects. Meanwhile, the Phenom will happily nosedive toward the ground on short final due to the glitches in MSFS's "realistic" turbulence setting (which I'd argue is the most important weather bug to fix, but then you have folks flying the PMDG's into thunderstorms with turbulence set to low and complaining thunderstorms aren't dangerous..)

36 minutes ago, Funky D said:

My biggest complaint with MSFS's flight model is the ground handling and sometimes the landing flare. Asobo have probably made it more difficult on themselves by supporting CFD and table based AND external flight models. Makes it harder to determine whether an issue is related to MSFS's weather/environmental engine or if it's an issue with how a particular aircraft is translating that data.

It wasn't until I flew the updated Citation X that I realized devs can basically override the sim's turbulence to implement thier own effects. Meanwhile, the Phenom will happily nosedive toward the ground on short final due to the glitches in MSFS's "realistic" turbulence setting (which I'd argue is the most important weather bug to fix, but then you have folks flying the PMDG's into thunderstorms with turbulence set to low and complaining thunderstorms aren't dangerous..)

Agree. 👍

All that stuff is up to the devs. Some addons do it well, and others not so much (ground and flare aren’t great with PMDG, IMHO).

One of my pet peeves is addons that will still happily lift the nose on rollout even tho you’re well under Vmu (I still need to report that to FSW re their Lear).

Also the lack of any lean or inertia when turning (the Longitude does this pretty well, which is a nice surprise).

Anyhow, I’m just glad the options are there AND a growing number of devs are taking a crack at those more advanced features. 🤙

I didn't browse the entire thread but I saw some one reopened a thread I had on their main forums about dirt on wheels and bright standby gauges on the cirrus reappearing. Has anyone seen this?

So in other words, previous bugs fixed in su6 now broken in su7 beta. (Shocker).

9 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

P3D never had live weather. Nor DCS (and they just came out and confirmed there it’s not even on the road map)

I could regale you with a long (loooong) list of X-Plane’s Live Weather issues, but that list might be long enough to be considered Off Topic.

Point is that none of those sims have gamification and still have plenty of weather problems.

I have no interest in what other titles had or had not, your constant need to bring up that argument it's extremely redundant. This is solely about MSFS and in this instance the lack of improvement of Live Weather + the visual degradation around SU5 (2020) which was the Xbox release and SU7 with the ill fated METAR update.

Here's what they promised remember;

Edited September 14Sep 14 by MarcG

11 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

......ground and flare aren’t great with PMDG, IMHO).

I am generally happy with the ground movement and flare behaviour of the PMDG 737 and 777. The nose gear of the 737 can feel a bit "twitchy" at times when adjusting during taxi, but other than that I am OK with it.

On a side note, I am at last starting to get a feel for the 777 during final approach and landing 👍

Edited September 14Sep 14 by Christopher Low

14 hours ago, Funky D said:

...can't be enabled without MSFS losing its "everyone" rating and ending up on the news for people flying planes into buildings.

You are going to have to back that up with some evidence as MSFS 2020 was "E for Everyone" as is X-Plane
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/36840/microsoft-flight-simulator/
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/6005/x-plane/

-- edit --
Even CS3 was E
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/23911/combat-flight-simulator-3-battle-for-europe/
So ESRB is going to allow you to shoot down other planes and keep an E rating but they would have a problem with ending a flight with a "You Crashed" message if you hit the ground too hard ?

Edited September 14Sep 14 by Matchstick

8 hours ago, MarcG said:

the visual degradation around SU5 (2020) which was the Xbox release and SU7 with the ill fated METAR update.

Well - let's face it, the SU7 with the METAR update happened because a very small but extremley loud VATSIM minority were crying their eyes out because FS2020 METARs didn't completely match real-world METARs, hence making flying VATSIM together with other simulators less than perfect.

Before that the weather system in FS2020 was very, very consistent - frontal systems et cetera were depicted beautifully. After that all was broken (and has been since) - I still think that they had to re-write the complete weather system just to make these local METAR weather systems halfways credible.

In my opinion the community shot themselves in the foot by jumping on this "I need my local airport METAR or I will die" train. Big time.

On 9/13/2026 at 1:36 PM, Matchstick said:

Asobo in '24 have delivered a gamified experience pushing a specific way to play rather than the fully open world that has defined GA flight sims.

Having read through the thread, I still fail to grasp how one can feel the world in MSFS (2024) is any less open than the one in other flight sims, only because gaming elements were added. I think I know why I have trouble understanding this. The world isn't less open! There is nothing I can not do that I could do in the other sims. And to add to that, the MSFS open world, in default state, looks a whole lot better than the world in any other sim.

MSFS 2024 is the most mature sim I have ever used. Tell me, how do the optional career mode and challenges accomplish you can no longer play the sim 'seriously'? I really do not get this 🤔 I think we should all applaud the gamification of flight simulation. It keeps the money coming in to keep improving the core fundamentals of the sim. And these are already pretty good. Name one sim that has so many excellent default aircraft with outstanding avionics. Even the live weather some of us are complaining about is pretty awesome for a default weather engine.

Edited September 14Sep 14 by Rimshot

On 9/12/2026 at 7:09 PM, Funky D said:

In MSFS, I've gotten the same thermal updraft when flying over a parking lot during short final at my old home airport that I used to get IRL. I'm sure the location of that thermal was just a coincidence (realllly doubt MSFS is taking ground color into account for generating thermals), but it's that "lively" feeling when flying GA that I love most about MSFS, even though it is at times overdone.

FWIW, thermals in MSFS do actually take ground color (albedo?) into account amongst various other factors such as clouds, position of sun, terrain slope/topography, temperature, etc (see https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/testing-the-new-airflow-simulation/549454). Now as to how well this is implemented, a gliding expert like @jcomm can chime in.

As for this thread and the debates, I guess it's the same old debates :) IMHO, live weather is the top remaining big thing they need to improve (and this is with acknowledgement that live weather has definitely improved since the SU7 debacle and then in 2024). The core weather engine is certainly capable of depicting varied and realistic/dangerous weather as can be seen when using manual/presets weather. I appreciate it's not a simple problem to solve and perhaps they need to reconsider their weather data provider, but I continue to think it's their METAR blending that needs a revamp. It's ever since the introduction of METAR blending that live weather took a downturn.

Apart from weather, the other big thing they needed to improve IMO from 2020 was flight and ground dynamics. And I feel they've delivered on that aspect to the point where I don't see any appreciable differences compared to the best of other sims out there. Again, it always comes down to how the aircraft developer makes use of the sim platform's core FDE and toolbox, and there are numerous examples of both GA and large aircraft (both in the default fleet and 3rd party space) where stellar dynamics/physics are implemented, and easily show an improvement (sometimes significant) over 2020.

In addition to flight dynamics/physics, numerous other advancements have obviously gone into 2024, so the usual hyperbole about MSFS straying away from free-form flight simulation is just plain silly. If MS/Asobo's aim was to purely cater only to the casual gaming crowd, they would NOT be bothering with numerous aspects/features that have required a lot of dev expense, hiring of Working Title, etc etc (deep avionics, AAU default aircraft whose fidelity is unprecedented for default birds, bothering with CFD for both flight and atmospheric dynamics, and on and on).

As for the culling issues... I understand their aim to improve performance for both lower-end PCs and consoles, and ideally the performance and visual quality should be able to scale across various hardware capabilities via user settings (with consoles of course being frozen on specific settings). That's the part that could be complex to implement well, and I wish they could get right.. so that those with higher-end hardware can benefit, and those with lower-end can also benefit (i.e. not at the expense of each other).

Edited September 14Sep 14 by lwt1971

2 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

hiring of Working Title, etc etc (deep avionics, AAU default aircraft whose fidelity is unprecedented for default birds,

Thank you for adding this in!

The leap forward in visual quality AND systems fidelity of the Default aircraft in MSFS is unprecedented.

It reminds me of @MattNischan’s Longitude “Not Study Level” video from awhile back:

2 HOURS of all the Hi Fi systems included in the Longitude - a FREE Default addon for many of us.

IIRC, this was where I learned that MSFS’ default avionics are tracking GPS satellite locations and reception(!), and that the Longitude’s systems take into account arcane metrics like hydraulic temperature(!).

Seems like Serious Simmer stuff to me 😎

And from what’s been shared so far, the pending Expert Series Praetor is going to push the Hi Fi boundaries even further!🎉

Edited September 14Sep 14 by UrgentSiesta

3 hours ago, Rimshot said:

I think we should all applaud the gamification of flight simulation. It keeps the money coming in to keep improving the core fundamentals of the sim.

It also keeps a steady stream of future Serious Simmers coming in to the hobby. Yep - some of those noob Xbox gamerz kids actually get hooked and turn into cranky old timers like us! 😂

Add to that, we know for a fact that some folks will not only become Serious Simmers, but then go on to get their IRL wings 😁👍

All because “gamification” works. 🤙

Edited September 14Sep 14 by UrgentSiesta

9 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I am generally happy with the ground movement and flare behaviour of the PMDG 737 and 777. The nose gear of the 737 can feel a bit "twitchy" at times when adjusting during taxi, but other than that I am OK with it.

On a side note, I am at last starting to get a feel for the 777 during final approach and landing 👍

Yep. They’re great jets, and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

But at the same time, it’s an area that could use some improvement in terms of inertia and ground effect. 🤙

26 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Seems like Serious Simmer stuff to me 😎

"Serious simmers" only care about the wheels. Nothing else matters.

12 hours ago, MarcG said:

I have no interest in what other titles had or had not, your constant need to bring up that argument it's extremely redundant. This is solely about MSFS and in this instance the lack of improvement of Live Weather + the visual degradation around SU5 (2020) which was the Xbox release and SU7 with the ill fated METAR update.

Here's what they promised remember;

I bring up other titles because of the incredibly myopic perspective of some folks.

Most of my comments here are in response to the ridiculous assertion that “Asobo don’t understand flight sim or flight simmers”.

When we peel the blinders back and actually take a look at the world around us, we see that many of these claims of “developer negligence” can’t be reasonably be supported.

Once you realize that most other sims out there have these issues, you might realize these are actually rather difficult issues to resolve.

You should try it - It really helps assuage the bitter anger. 🙂

Edited September 14Sep 14 by UrgentSiesta