eslader

True, but framerate performance if we moved to the Crystal Super would still give us smooth video. Point being, yes we can have great visuals on high-res equipment.

I get pretty close... But yeah, my FPS drops into the 50s from time to time, and if I'm doing something like LAX in a thunderstorm might even drop to the high 40s. Which is still pretty freaking awesome. But I think some historical context is valuable too. Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been released years before the computer that can run it perfectly exists. Even back in the SubLogic days, when it was just a CGA line-art 2d cockpit in a tiny wireframe world with no weather, a grid for the ground, and some triangles on the edges for mountains, the framerate would frequently be a slideshow. The closest I ever came before now to having enough horsepower to run Flight Sim completely smoothly at full graphics settings was in FS4 on a 486, which isn't too surprising because it was basically FS3 with additions like dynamic scenery (on rails, basically sprites that required almost no computing power), which allowed computer tech to close the gap. That I can have graphical and physical fidelity at the level of 2024 while running a 16.5 million pixel VR display and it almost never drops framerates to the point where there's even slightly noticeable stuttering is astonishing.

By banning them from selling their products in the US until they make restitution. But as you pointed out, restitution is rarely actually punitive and ends up being more just a cost of doing business. I think that's pretty much the entirety of the problem. After a certain framerate, higher framerates are just bragging rights. It reminds me of the stereo competitions that used to be really popular in the 90s. The really serious guys would show up towing a minivan that was filled with speakers and amplifiers, all tuned to be as loud as possible at one specific frequency. They'd seal the car up and make sure no one got inside it because the volume would melt their eardrums. It would make this stupid-loud sound for about half a second before the amps fried or the speakers blew, and whoever managed to make the loudest noise won. Totally stupid, definitely no longer about actual audio, and purely for bragging rights. Just like the framerate chase.

This is really going to depend on the hardware you're using. I never have a problem with default sensitivity settings with my yoke, but it's a long-throw Fulcrum One. When I use a joystick, default settings are way too twitchy.

It's a little confusing whether Xbox is losing money, or Xbox is losing money. This is why MS should not have named their games division "Xbox." It would not at all surprise me if the console side is losing money overall. Consoles kind of suck. You pay $650 for a console that's a walled garden, and unlike consoles of old that used instant-load cartridges, modern consoles have load times on par with, or slower than, PCs. If they break, you're often just screwed whereas when a PC breaks, you just replace whatever component died and get on with your life. And generally if you compare a console game to its PC port, the PC one has better graphics because it's not limited by whatever hardware the console comes with. Beyond that, MS is still the new kid on the block in the console world. Nintendo and Sony have been making consoles much longer than the Xbox has been around, and Xbox just doesn't have compelling games that you can only play if you have an Xbox. In fact, it's so bad that they list as "exclusives" games like Forza, Redfall and, yes, even MSFS before it launched on PS5 as Xbox exclusives even though you can get them on PC. Not very exclusive. Back in the day, you bought a Nintendo because you had to have one if you wanted to play Super Mario Brothers. You could not play it on PC and in fact you still can't unless you want to move into illegal emulation territory. There's no such reason to bother buying an Xbox. For MSFS specifically, I'm not making a disparaging distinction between casual and hardcore simmers here, but in general you're not going to find hardcore simmers on console. That's not to say that casual simmers are "less-than," but it is to say that hardcore simmers are much more likely to be ready to drop a truly stupid amount of money on the hobby, and that points directly at marketplace sales.

You also forgot the Xtreme Prototypes Lear25. It can be a real handful to fly, just like the real thing. And it even comes with an 8-track player (also designed by Bill Lear) to get those 70s grooves on. :D

Dunno how it works for you, but I get an update Navigraph popup, click OK and like 30 seconds later it's done. No effort on my part and I haven't even had time to start loading the sim.

At least on my rig, it will work whether I start Pimax Play before the sim or I forget and don't start it until after the sim is already loaded in. This is 2024, though, and I wasn't using a Pimax when I was still on 2020 so your mileage may vary. You won't break anything experimenting with this, so go ahead and see what works.

It's not uncommon if you live in a decently populated place that there will be a VR arcade somewhere near you. You pay an hourly fee to play VR games. That would be a great way to get a quick test to see if VR could work for you without committing to buying expensive hardware.

That represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how AI works. Real humans understand that a question is being asked and that the goal of the asker is to get a correct answer. AI doesn't understand any of that. It doesn't even know that it's having a conversation because its name is a lie; it's not intelligent. Even if you ask a liar a question and get a fake answer, at least you haven't caused the human to suck down enough power to run a microwave to generate the answer. ;)

No, that's what a search engine does. AIs try to interpret what they find online, and they aren't capable of properly vetting the answers they get. They're also designed to come up with answers even if they can't find any. A great example of that is that a whole bunch of lawyers have gotten in trouble over the past couple of years by using AI to write briefs that they then submitted to the court. The problem is that AI likes to cite cases that don't exist, which judges catch and then the lawyer gets nailed. Here's one recent example of that. So when you ask an AI a question, you know that it's going to give you an answer no matter what. "I don't know" is not within its repertoire, so when it doesn't find an answer, it's going to tell you a lie. Even if it finds an answer, it's not terribly good at figuring out if the answer that it found is accurate. All that boils down to, when you run an AI search, you can't rely on the answer and you have to go and verify everything yourself, which kind of eliminates the advantages of having the computer do your work for you.

Hardware demands of the Crystals is going to depend on which flavor you get, but all of them are pretty hungry. I have a Crystal Light, and my 3070Ti could not run 2024 without the graphics settings turned down so low that it blurred out the gauges to unreadability. I had to upgrade graphics cards and now I have more GPU than I technically need for the Crystal Light but that's because I'm hoping it's still good enough for the next VR set I get, which may well be a Crystal Super if they don't come out with something better. I don't necessarily need the higher resolution of the Super but I'd sure like that horizontal field of view increase. At any rate, despite claims on Pimax's website, I probably wouldn't consider one unless I had a 4080 at minimum.

Yep. Back in the day I had a friend who maintained the computers for the flight sims at a major US airline. This was before 9/11, so she was able to invite me over many times to go flying in sims that weren't scheduled for real pilots. Flew the 747-400, DC-9, 737 and 757 many times. We absolutely treated it as a game. She thought nothing was more fun than to wait till I was about 500 feet above the ground on takeoff before killing 3 of the engines. Or I'd be coming in for a landing and suddenly find myself in a supercell when it had been CAVU the whole flight. Fun as hell. And that was back in the early 2000s - I bet they're much better now. Level D sims are the greatest video games ever made, bar none.

Go into the Windows joystick settings and see if the calibration window shows joystick movement when you move it around. If no, then you have a problem with Windows not seeing your controller. If yes, then go into MSFS's axis settings and check for movement indication when you wiggle the stick. If that moves, then you're either setting the wrong axis (which can happen - the MSFS in-sim controller setup scheme is so bad that I bought an external one) or your plane has gust locks that you haven't taken off, so the controls aren't moving because they can't.

That's what I've been saying. Back in the FSX days, I really wanted to fly bizjets but there were very few that were even decent, much less good. Now there are so many I don't think I even have them all. Great time to be a simmer.