29 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

The vastly superior trees, improved terrain mesh, and fix for those annoying "land bars" were more than enough to convince me that I had made the right decision when I upgraded from MSFS 2020 to MSFS 2024 last December.

I have trees modded in 20 and prefer not to have stutters and pop-ins, like I get in 24.

I prefer awesome VR addon compatibility and performance.

Ill stick with MSFS 2020, thank you!

Im still on 2020, ive said in my head that once i get to 1000 hours in steam (currently at time of typing 956 hours), i'll celebrate by purchasing 2024 in a steam sale.

Just upgraded from 2070 5 3600 16 ram to 5060 ti 5800x 32 ram so actually playing 2020 at 60fps its like a new game anyway to me, currently just delved right back into it.

Whatever happens moving forward, 2020 will always be special as that first moment i purchased it back when i had a 1060 6gb, i was just totally blown away, like nothing i'd ever seen before.... Just could not get over it, i used to fly those first 200 odd hours hionestly breathless at times....

It still hits, and certainly on my new PC its hitting again.... but nothing like that first time all those years ago.... going from Dovetails flightsim and FSX, to 2020 was insane.... and yes, for sure to my eyes over time they did mess with it too much, UK still having scorched grass covering most of it is a big bug bear of mine still to this day....

Thanks everybody for replies. Good to hear Goflight will function Yes eventually will have to switch

.......UK still having scorched grass covering most of it is a big bug bear of mine still to this day....

You are not the only one annoyed by that. It affects my enjoyment of certain flights (particularly around EGSS London Stansted). There is also a visible joint line between the desert textures and green fields that stretches a long way between Stansted and EGSU Duxford, which makes the situation even worse!

Edited September 16Sep 16 by Christopher Low

Alhough I still have MS2020 installed, after years of flying it and MS2024 concurrently, I no longer use 2020 and doubt I ever will again. The gap between the two in real-world scenery, performance, and in many other respects is huge, but one feature in particular is unique to 2024 and has me hooked. This is the ability (with a flick of a switch) to get out of the plane and walk wherever I want, on terrain that looks far more real than anything that came before, and then hop back in the cockpit and continue the trip if I wish. For an intrepid land-sea-air explorer like myself, this is incredible and adds a whole new dimension to simming.

Old fightsims, like old soldiers, never completely die (there are some who never moved from FS9 to FSX!) and that's fine. The main thing is that we are happy with whatever sim we are using.

Edited September 19Sep 19 by cobalt

On 9/16/2026 at 3:04 AM, flightyjoe said:

Im still on 2020, ive said in my head that once i get to 1000 hours in steam (currently at time of typing 956 hours), i'll celebrate by purchasing 2024 in a steam sale.

Just upgraded from 2070 5 3600 16 ram to 5060 ti 5800x 32 ram so actually playing 2020 at 60fps its like a new game anyway to me, currently just delved right back into it.

Whatever happens moving forward, 2020 will always be special as that first moment i purchased it back when i had a 1060 6gb, i was just totally blown away, like nothing i'd ever seen before.... Just could not get over it, i used to fly those first 200 odd hours hionestly breathless at times....

It still hits, and certainly on my new PC its hitting again.... but nothing like that first time all those years ago.... going from Dovetails flightsim and FSX, to 2020 was insane.... and yes, for sure to my eyes over time they did mess with it too much, UK still having scorched grass covering most of it is a big bug bear of mine still to this day....

The 5060 TI 16gb is all you need with 1440.

dd

On 9/19/2026 at 9:07 PM, Sky_Pilot071 said:

The 5060 TI 16gb is all you need with 1440.

dd

yep, just glad to be on the 50 series cards despite the hate they get. To be honest i was happy as larry running my rtx 2070 for 5 years, could of stayed on that for longer but in my line of work met a PC builder who built me the rtx 5060 ti 5800x 32 ram for £850, so seemed crazy to pass that up in current climate. Should keep me goiong for next few years.

I will also add that running MSFS 2020 for all these years at 30fps was great, of course 60fps is a big change, but up to that point 30fps was good enough to get me over 900 hours flying.... (ok a lot of that is alsoo in menus but you get my point)

On 9/13/2026 at 8:42 PM, JYW said:

There'd have to be a good alternative case, to put that aside and choose to use a 6 year old, non-current platform.

How about, the changes for the average user are purely cosmetic and mostly not noticeable to someone who doesn't spend 90% of their time in a sim chasing perfect performance and just like to open the sim and fly instead. Currently MSFS2020 is the most stable its ever been and still looks and feels incredible, despite its 6 years of age. It could also be argued that there wasn't any real need for MSFS2024 so quick.

It feels like updating a phone every 12 months. Is there any REAL need or is it just clever marketing that makes you THINK you need the new phone? More power to those currently on 2024 but saying people SHOULD be using a newer platform for no real quantifiable gain other than to go through months of re-organising everything again, and have better looking trees, and may not have anymore updates?! is a complete moot point. The sim works and looks great, what more could someone want?

3 hours ago, El Diablito said:

How about, the changes for the average user are purely cosmetic and mostly not noticeable to someone who doesn't spend 90% of their time in a sim chasing perfect performance and just like to open the sim and fly instead. Currently MSFS2020 is the most stable its ever been and still looks and feels incredible, despite its 6 years of age. It could also be argued that there wasn't any real need for MSFS2024 so quick.

It feels like updating a phone every 12 months. Is there any REAL need or is it just clever marketing that makes you THINK you need the new phone? More power to those currently on 2024 but saying people SHOULD be using a newer platform for no real quantifiable gain other than to go through months of re-organising everything again, and have better looking trees, and may not have anymore updates?! is a complete moot point. The sim works and looks great, what more could someone want?

Correct. That's why I use 20 and 24 for different things currently, where each has strengths the other doesn't.

7 hours ago, Nandengo12 said:

Correct. That's why I use 20 and 24 for different things currently, where each has strengths the other doesn't.

10 hours ago, El Diablito said:

How about, the changes for the average user are purely cosmetic and mostly not noticeable to someone who doesn't spend 90% of their time in a sim chasing perfect performance and just like to open the sim and fly instead. Currently MSFS2020 is the most stable its ever been and still looks and feels incredible, despite its 6 years of age. It could also be argued that there wasn't any real need for MSFS2024 so quick.

It feels like updating a phone every 12 months. Is there any REAL need or is it just clever marketing that makes you THINK you need the new phone? More power to those currently on 2024 but saying people SHOULD be using a newer platform for no real quantifiable gain other than to go through months of re-organising everything again, and have better looking trees, and may not have anymore updates?! is a complete moot point. The sim works and looks great, what more could someone want?

The answer to your question will depend very much on what matters most to you. To those who are not so much into scenery, and who are much more interested in other aspects of flying, MS2024 may seem not all that much of an improvement (although a close comparison of performance may surprise some 2020 users who haven't checked out 2024 lately). But to simmers who do care about scenery (except at high altitudes), and especially the degree of realism with which the real world is depicted in 2024, it's no contest. As a dedicated user of MS2020 from its inception five years ago, I am truly blown away by MS2024 (a cliche, I admit, but I can't think of a better descriptive term) in its current state. Both in the general appearance of the terrain and in its real-world accuracy MS2024 is a quantum leap, no doubt about it.

In 2026 the current state of the art in photogrammetry is still evolving and getting better over time, albeit with room for improvement especially near ground level. In this respect only -- which applies to a tiny percentage of Earth's land surface -- the scenery in the two sims is comparable. Otherwise it is not even close

An interesting discussion and after reading this thread and a similar on the offical MSFS forum I will jump in too!

I have MSFS 2024, 2020 and X-Plane 12 all installed. I fly 2020 daily, XP12 occasionally and 2024 I start up really rarely, typically after a SimUpdate is released to just check it out.

For my interests MSFS 2020 is my favourite (with Rex AccuSeason & Atmos) - I only fly the DA-62 and use it for IFR practice worldwide. If 2020 was to "go away" I would then throw all my time into X-Plane 12 leaving 2024 as my last option.

Often in 2020 forum threads people posting talk about the end of the life of 2020... My view, I think many in a particular region of the world sometimes overlook that Microsoft is a global company. In my country, and many others when a product is sold consumer law requires the product to be fit for use (be able function) for a reasonable time. I my country that is typically a minimum of 5-7 years for digital (software) products after the last sale. Microsoft today still sell 2020 globally, so it's not being turned off anytime soon.

My thinking about Microsoft's served world, the "digital twin". The main feature of MSFS 2020's SP16 was to unify the 2020 and 2024 global scenery, so there is a possibility that the global base for both 2020 and 2024 are now served from exactly the same database and servers. Just like a website doesn't have a different version of the website hosted for Safari, Edge or Chrome, it's possible that both 2020 and 2024 are both served from the same infrastructure and that the differences (ie cliff edge rendering and landscape TIN that are displayed in 2024) are the result of the application layer (ie 2020 or 2024 application) rather than the server.

Even if Microsoft were to turn off the 2020 servers (assuming that 2020's servers are actually different to 2024) the offline ability allows the sim to continue to be used. 2020 airports and aircraft are local hard drive based, already available to 2020 are 3rd party alternative's to Microsoft's global twin and weather.

So for me 2020 has a LONG life ahead of it and for the foreseeable future will be my daily fly!

Edited September 21Sep 21 by mfahey
Typo correction

You may need to get a slower computer.

dd

6 hours ago, cobalt said:

The answer to your question will depend very much on what matters most to you. To those who are not so much into scenery, and who are much more interested in other aspects of flying, MS2024 may seem not all that much of an improvement (although a close comparison of performance may surprise some 2020 users who haven't checked out 2024 lately). But to simmers who do care about scenery (except at high altitudes), and especially the degree of realism with which the real world is depicted in 2024, it's no contest. As a dedicated user of MS2020 from its inception five years ago, I am truly blown away by MS2024 (a cliche, I admit, but I can't think of a better descriptive term) in its current state. Both in the general appearance of the terrain and in its real-world accuracy MS2024 is a quantum leap, no doubt about it.

In 2026 the current state of the art in photogrammetry is still evolving and getting better over time, albeit with room for improvement especially near ground level. In this respect only -- which applies to a tiny percentage of Earth's land surface -- the scenery in the two sims is comparable. Otherwise it is not even close

I think it depends on your eye as well. To me the orthos in 24 are much better than in 20 in most areas, but the buildings and other objects are a little too videogamey. I feel the lighting and shadowing in the current iteration of 20 look more natural. Just preference I guess.