Tom Wright

Ah no way! Is yours also a Z87 Pro board? The only issue I've got with mine is continuing issues with the USB interface on the board which I've had since it was new. I work around it by using high speed USB 3 hubs. Sometimes (about once every year to 18 months) the board firmware throws a complete hissy and refuses to boot but normally a BIOS flash fixes it for another year! It's been through 3 graphics cards (not due to failures, just upgrades) over those 7 years and overall has served me extremely well even through two house moves and 4 different flight sims! In fact with MSFS sim update 5 performance is extremely good. I expect next year will probably be the year for a complete upgrade as I think I've hit the ceiling now that any new graphics cards would probably be bottlenecked by the board and chipset. Not least because also Microsoft will not support it for Windows 11. I shall be sad to see it go though!

My PC is 7 years old with 16GB RAM. All in all I've had a great experience with MSFS so far with no major issues.

Depending on distance I'd be inclined to go the DM / HDMI-over-Cat6 route rather than 10m+ HDMI cables. You can also get fancy DM transmitters that will take USB as well and transmit all over one Cat6 cable.

Ah, yeah that's a good way of doing it. I have the Microsoft Store version so wouldn't be able to do that unfortunately. Back in the day when I shared a one bed apartment with my ex I had the PC hooked up to the living room TV to get round the lack of space for a desk, but as soon as I upsized my PC got its own room and desk and the TV now just has an Xbox under it!

I use both. I fly the airline and more real world stuff on PC because its much easier to interact with the cockpit with a mouse and keyboard and also sitting up close to a monitor at a desk. But I've also been enjoying doing bush trips and landing challenges on the Xbox whilst lounging on the couch. I just wish the progress/achievement sync worked properly between the two.

I have the Marketplace version and the update download just keeps looping and starting from the beginning over and over again..

Wow, I really hope that it's not $140. I love PMDG, and have proudly flown several of their aircraft in past sims, but as much as I admire their work I just don't think that sort of pricing is acceptable for DLC anymore. I always thought the price hike was originally to do with P3D licensing anyway, back in the day when they charged a premium for the P3D version even when it was essentially the same as the FSX one.

One of my favourite airports in the sim, can't believe it is freeware! He's done Shoreham EGKA as well which is superb.

Probably. The systems on the A320 make it surprisingly easy to master enough to get it from A to B after a few flights. And in the FBW, apart from proper working VNAV implementation, most of the simulation for normal procedures are there. Bear in mind as well though that the FBW is modelling a Neo, the Fenix will be modelling the 'classic' A320. They're not worlds apart, but there are differences so it won't be identical.

This is why things like VATSIM exist.

It makes no difference, I've still got it installed from launch day and it's just been updated/patched as each update has been released. Never had any problems, at the end of the day the version number is identical whether its an original install that's been patched or whether it's a fresh install. I see no benefit in completely uninstalling and forcing a redownload of the complete sim over just letting it update incrementally.

Yes as above I also had a CTD when I tried to start a flight after changing to the FBW from another aircraft. When I started again with the FBW already in the hangar it loaded fine and I was able to complete a 2 hour flight without incident (well.. apart from the temperature fluctuations at altitude).

I've got the regular Arrow (non Turbo) and the Warrior. The Warrior is my favourite actually despite being slower. Probably helps because I'm training in one in RL at the moment but the JF model is an extremely faithful representation of how the real one handles and sounds. It's just fun to throw around the circuit and the local area. The Arrow being a bit faster and with constant speed prop is a bit more of a handful and not as easy to manage speed.

Train Sim World 2 has quite a lot of routes that are quite local to me, so I keep going back to that one. Also recently played (and completed) Lego Builders Journey. As a huge Lego fan I really enjoyed it. A relaxing puzzle game with a good story to it and the ray tracing and graphics are incredible. Also started playing Forza Horizon 4 when I got the Xbox, I'm terrible at it but the graphics are pretty amazing and the depth of gameplay is huge!

Another vote for the Just Flight Pipers - the Warrior is probably my favourite right now. Also finally got round to flying the Aerosoft CRJ at the weekend and that's a really good one too, IMO.

People bust open the cfg files and start plugging their own numbers in and then wonder why they're getting CTDs... But of course it's all Xbox's fault!

It's not the plane that's at fault it's the temperature. There's a bug in the weather that randomly sets the upper air temperatures at about 4x what they should be. That results in very reduced engine performance and climb rates.

Oh I agree. The bugs and issues are annoying, but it's still by far the best sim to fly for me, even with the issues. I've not touched any of the others since it was released and I have no plan to in the slightest.

I ran out of fuel in the A32NX because it was working so hard against such high temperatures! Pretty annoying.

The only thing that's bothering me with it at the moment is the winds/temperatures aloft bug. Made the last flight I just did pretty eventful with the temperature wildly fluctuating..

I'm flying right now and seeing this too. TAT keeps jumping every 10 minutes or so from -21C to +42C cruising over Western Europe. Sends the aircraft from a near stall to an overspeed situation in an instant. Irritating bug.

I'm using it on both Xbox Series S and PC, and it is very noticeably smoother on the Xbox. I would go as far as to say there is no perceivable lag, dropped frames or stutters at all. Panning around is pure bliss. Looks wise it's probably about level with my PC which has the settings on High. Maybe slightly sharper looking but I'm not sure if that's just the TV being slightly better than the monitor the PC is outputting to. Draw distance/LOD is about the same. Both are in 1920x1080.

Is why I never take for granted living in a country with the NHS!

It's the elitist and 'better than them' attitude toward those playing on Xbox that is the most grating. That the fact it's now available on the console somehow makes it less worthy of the sim title and that they have to suffer to accommodate them, when that's not true at all. The irony is if you go and have a scroll through Twitter and read players tweets under the FlightSimulator hashtag people are loving it.

I think the AI ATC assist gets switched on by default after the update, and the AI sets the transponder code for you. Switch off ATC assist in the AI assistance options menu and it should leave the transponder alone.